It's going to be a long, hot, sweltering summer for Dubya. Howard Dean kicks it up another notch with a blistering critique demanding that Bush own up to the screw-ups in his Administration.

Mr. President, the time for evasiveness, secrecy, contradictory statements and ducking responsibility is over. As a candidate, you repeatedly pledged to bring honor and integrity to the White House. It’s time you fulfilled that pledge by telling the American people the truth.

[...] It is now abundantly clear that beyond the Niger uranium example lays an unacceptable pattern of distorted intelligence manipulated to serve your political ends. Once you had settled on a predetermined result – war with Iraq – your Administration selectively used questionable intelligence while ignoring, burying or rejecting any evidence that undercut your single-minded march to war.

This is on the heels of a statement earlier in the week demanding accountability.

I seek accountability. There are those in the administration who clearly misled the American people and the world. There needs to be an immediate bipartisan independent investigation and those responsible in the administration shouldn’t wait for the outcome of the investigation, they should resign today. But I also seek accountability from those who voted to give the President a blank check without asking the tough questions when they needed to be asked and long after it’s clear how mistaken this path was for our nation.

The challenge now is to move forward. Our intelligence on the ground continues to be weak. Our soldiers are increasingly in harm’s way. We still don’t have adequate plans for securing the peace. And the administration is still not being honest about the realities of occupying Iraq and the commitment and resources necessary for the long-run.

These are the serious questions that need to be asked: how long will we be there? How much will it cost? All of these are questions that should have been debated and discussed beforehand. That we are only debating those questions today is a failure of the leadership in Washington, both of this administration and of Congress.

Give 'em hell, Howard!