One might also argue," Vice President Cheney said in a speech on Monday, "that untruthful charges against the commander in chief have an insidious effect on the war effort." That would certainly be an ugly and demagogic argument, were one to make it. After all, if untruthful charges against the president hurt the war effort (by undermining public support and soldiers' morale), then those charges will hurt the war effort even more if they happen to be true. So one would be saying in effect that any criticism of the president is essentially treason.
Lest one fear that he might be saying that, Cheney immediately added, "I'm unwilling to say that" -- "that" being what he had just said. He generously granted critics the right to criticize (as did the president this week). Then he resumed hurling adjectives like an ape hurling coconuts at unwanted visitors. "Dishonest." "Reprehensible." "Corrupt." "Shameless." President Bush and others joined in, all morally outraged that anyone would accuse the administration of misleading us into war by faking a belief that Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear and/or chemical and biological weapons.
Yes, how dare we note the facts that we all can see? How dare we point out that not only is the emperor buck nekkid, but he's been streaking the stadium the entire damned time?
And really, when Vice President Go Fuck Yourself and his unholy minions start whinging about the incivility of it all, you just have to wonder for a minute just what sort of planarian such tactics are aimed at. On one hand, nobody could actually be stupid enough to buy into such hypocrisy, but on the other hand, that "more in sorrow than in anger" horseshit is aimed at somebody.
And it has been pointed out quite voluminously that Big Time's real contribution to the institutions of American government is the consolidation of executive power. You want the imperial presidency? 'Cause that's exactly what he's given us.
Interestingly, the administration no longer claims that Hussein actually had such weapons at the time Bush led the country into war in order to eliminate them. "The flaws in the intelligence are plain enough in hindsight," Cheney said on Monday. So-called WMD (weapons of mass destruction) were not the only argument for the war, but the administration thought they were a crucial argument at the time. So the administration now concedes that the country went to war on a false premise. Doesn't that mean that the war was a mistake no matter where the false premise came from?
So does this mean we can take back Slam Dunk Tenet's Medal O' Freedom, then? Can we adopt a resolution censuring Colin Powell for his shamelessly irresponsible water-carrying? Oh, he's sorry now, but he fucking well knew better then, and he allowed himself to be trotted out in order to win over some of the fence-sitters. He knew he was getting jerked around, that Rummy and Cheney essentially had put him on a need-to-know basis, and he still went ahead and played the company-man role.
You know, when you get right down to it, we're in this because the bureaucrats who were supposed to provide oversight failed miserably to function in that capacity. Had they done their jobs with a modicum of honesty and probity at the time, we wouldn't be having this argument. Instead, we get a bunch of ex post facto "we told you so"s from Larry Wilkerson. Too little, too late.
Cheney and others insist that Bush couldn't possibly have misled anyone about WMD since everybody had assumed for years, back into the Clinton administration, that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. That's why any criticism of Bush on this point is corrupt, reprehensible, distasteful, odiferous, infectious and so on. But this indignation is belied by Cheney's own remarks in the 2000 election. In the vice presidential debate, for example, Cheney was happy to agree with Bush that Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction would be a good enough reason to "take him out." But he did not assume that Hussein already had such weapons. And he certainly did not assume that this view was the general consensus. "We'll have to see if that happens," he said. "It's unfortunate we find ourselves in a position where we don't know for sure what might be transpiring inside Iraq. I certainly hope he's not regenerating that kind of capability."
If you're looking for revisionist history, don't waste your time on the war's critics. Google up Cheney's bitter critique, in the 2000 campaign, of President Bill Clinton's military initiatives, specifically the need for more burden sharing by allies and a sharply defined "exit strategy." At the time, there were about 11,000 American troops in Bosnia and Kosovo, working alongside about 55,000 from allied countries. If only!
Mm-hmm. And you can bet your last buck that had Clinton elected to go into Iraq and take out Saddam, you'd have found Ann Coulter hanging from the rafters on the callow, careless manner in which Clinton regarded the troops. Instead we are inundated with the post-Stalinist "get in line" commentary of her and her fellow travelers, insisting that anyone who tells the truth is some fifth column useful idiot. It's shameless and despicable, and its usefulness to them seems finally to be dwindling.
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