in David Brooks’s column today fairly leaps off the page: “[Bush] began this war in Iraq repeating the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence, that our creator has endowed all human beings with the right to liberty, and the ability to function as democratic citizens.” I see two problems with this formulation: God has manifestly not “endowed all human beings with . . . the ability to function as democratic citizens,” and the Declaration of Independence says no such thing.