...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Monday, July 14, 2003
      ( 11:41 AM )
 
Not to Put Too Fine a Point On It...

Ari is trying to quell the growing credibility gap with comments like this:

"This revisionist notion that somehow this
is now the core of why we went to war, a
central issue of why we went to war, a
fundamental underpinning of the president's
decisions, is a bunch of bull," Fleischer told
reporters Monday.

This is the same line that was repeated by all the BushCo lackeys on the Sunday Morning Talk shows. But Ari and the clan miss the point. It isn't that the country is suddenly upset merely because a statment that has now been proven to be based on lies and forgeries indicated that Iraq obtained nuclear material was in the State of the Union address. It's not that we all thought we went to war because of this one piece of evidence and now we're mad about it. It's not about this piece of evidence itself at all. It's about one key word in that sentence:

The British government has learned that
Saddam Hussein recently sought significant
quantities of uranium from Africa

We went to war, we attacked another nation, we sent our troops into harm's way and now have to keep them there, we ruined relationships with allies, we declared the UN "irrelevant" and stomped all over that body's historical role in mitigating worldwide disasters... all because BushCo pounded into us day after day that the threat from Saddam Hussein was IMMINENT. The urgency of the matter is what prompted him to completely usurp the authority of the UN and to completely disregard the findings and work of the weapons inspectors on the ground who knew what they were doing and what they were looking for. The president declared in his State of the Union address that Saddam had recently acquired these nuclear materials...implying that the nuclear weapons program was being built up and was an immediate and urgent threat to us.

It's not just the lie, Mr. President, it's the malice and aforethought that went into framing that lie in just such a way that the plausible deniability could be claimed, all the while the emphaisizing factor of the statement ignored by the administration. Shame on you. Shame on Congress that blindly followed and sent our troops into this sham of a venture without questioning or taking the time to deliberate on the consequences of their actions. Shame on the media for not caring enough to actually investigate the situation. Shame on us if we let you keep your office after next year.

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