For liberals the truth is considered a smear

E.J. Dionne:

Even as jurors pondered whether Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff should be convicted for lying about what the Bush administration did to smear one of its critics, there was Cheney accusing another adversary of doing the work of the terrorists.

The fabricate-and-smear cycle illustrated so dramatically during the case of I. Lewis "Scooter'' Libby explains why President Bush is failing to rally support for the latest iteration of his Iraq policy. The administration's willingness at the outset to say anything, no matter how questionable, to justify the war has destroyed its credibility. Its habit of attacking those who expressed misgivings has destroyed any good will it might have enjoyed. Bush and Cheney have lost the benefit of the doubt.

Yet Cheney has learned nothing and forgotten nothing. His latest demon is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom he accuses of validating al-Qaeda's objectives.

...

It is a remarkable echo chamber that liberals live in. Libby nor anyone else said anything untrue about Joe Wilson who said several untrue things about the administration in order to undercut the war effort in Iraq and start the false narrative that "Bush lied" to get support for the Iraq war. Dionne's whole premise is without merit.

As for the Cheney point about Pelosi and Democrats validating al Qaeda's strategy, all a reasonable person has to do is put the strategy of al Qaeda beside the Democrat policy proposals to see how valid his criticism is. But in the liberal world any challenge to their orthodoxy or policy ideas is a smear. Any resistance to their unprincipled attacks on the President's policy is a smear. You can always tell when a criticism hits home with a liberal. If it does, it is a smear.