The latest proof that our public life has become a rolling Rorschach test – in which the views people take away from an event depend mostly on the perceptions they bring to it – comes with Bob Woodward’s new book, “Plan of Attack.”

The big Rorschach moment is sparked by the now-famous scene in the book when the president hears the CIA present its case that Saddam possesses weapons of mass destruction. Bush, to his credit, is unimpressed with the agency’s evidence. George Tenet protests, crying that “it’s a slam-dunk case.”

Some Bush critics are using this scene – which, in retrospect, is admittedly shocking – to conclude, Rorschach-style, that Bush and his team perversely pressed forward even though they didn’t actually believe Saddam had such weapons or that they posed a threat. But no fair-minded reader of the whole book (as opposed to the headlines about Tenet’s folly) can reach this conclusion.

Why not? Because time and again Woodward offers evidence that senior officials were worried that Iraq would use WMD on our troops or on others:

• Tommy Franks told Donald Rumsfeld from the get-go that the United States had to assume Saddam had WMD, so we’d have “to plan to fight against it and in a potentially contaminated battlefield.” (Page 61)

• Dick Cheney said similar things: “We’re going to have to really look hard at how we protect ourselves against the use of weapons of mass destruction, both in the field as well as in the rear.” (Page 64)

• Donald Rumsfeld had WMD on his list as well: “What would be done,” asked Rumsfeld in one early meeting, “if Iraq used weapons of mass destruction?” (Page 75)

• Ditto for President Bush, who wanted Gen. Franks to work hard “on plans to respond if Saddam used WMD either against neighbors or U.S. forces.”

• Colin Powell argues at one point (Page 150) that Saddam is crazy and might unleash WMD if it’s clear he’s going down.

I could go on (and on – Pages 208, 214, 324, 327 and 404, for example), but you get the point. To believe that Bush was lying about WMD – as in, the president and his team didn’t believe Iraq really possessed WMD – implies a conspiracy so vast that it extends to a collective commitment to con Bob Woodward by cooking up a phony retrospective pre-occupation with WMD in the war planning.

Now, I’m hardly above conspiracy theories: Indeed, I generally believe there is a right-wing conspiracy to de-fund government through tax cuts for the best-off, and to discredit and dismantle vital social programs. But this kind of WMD hoax is a conspiracy gone too far.

The real problem that Woodward’s reporting brings home is that the American (and allied) intelligence communities were remarkably wrong about the status of Iraq’s weapons programs. This has profound implications for our ability to deal wisely and credibly with threats in places like North Korea and Iran.

The need to focus on fixing this intelligence deficiency seems obvious; yet, somehow, in today’s Rorschach political culture, it is the obvious debates that get marginalized, while the more preposterous ones (like the supposedly pervasive culture of torture among U.S. troops) get center stage.

Here’s where the president’s dissembling is truly damaging, and also inexplicable. How could a president who had the guts to risk his presidency on this war lack the courage to talk honestly about what we’ve learned about our intelligence mistakes?

All he’d have to say is that every advanced nation thought Saddam had WMD; that repeatedly in the 1990s we found Saddam had been further along than we thought; and that in this context, after Sept. 11, he judged the risks of inaction to be greater than the risks of action. Is that so hard?

Bush would add that his administration will do whatever it takes to understand how our intelligence went wrong, and to make sure it doesn’t happen again – for the sake of both U.S. credibility and global security.

This presidential honesty wouldn’t solve our current difficulties in Iraq – but it would inspire broader confidence that Bush is facing facts, and not relying on delusions or wishful thinking.

Bush doesn’t do this because at this point it’s all about the election and the fight to preserve power. This means not giving an inch, no matter how disconnected from reality such denials make the White House appear.

Such polarizing calculations, multiplied, help explain how Woodward’s book has given us the most surreal proof of our Rorschach culture: Both political parties urge their supporters to read the book, convinced that it bolsters their worldview.

Matthew Miller is a syndicated columnist and author. Reach him on the Web at www.mattmilleronline.com.