Smoking Forest
A commenter at Swampland dug this one up from Council of Foreign Relations President (now Emeritus) Leslie Gelb,
as conveyed by Joe Klein.
Even the business community, usually a fairly tough-minded precinct, seems jelly-kneed at the prospect. "I have never seen such unanimity on any foreign policy issue," says Leslie H. Gelb, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who made a speaking tour of mostly business audiences in the Midwest and on the West Coast in December. "They want a smoking gun. It doesn't make a difference when I point out that we have a smoking forest, that it's clear Saddam has these weapons and doesn't want to disarm."
As Leslie Gelb is one of the most serious people of all in Washington, the fact that we know beyond all doubt that his laughably false assertion was indeed laughably false hasn't really diminished his ranking very much. Long after going around the country selling this disastrous war to "jelly-kneed" business audiences he's hanging around with the also very serious Joe Biden peddling even grander and more exciting ideas for Iraq, a three state solution which Gelb has been pushing as far back as November 2003.
Now one might think that after selling one disastrously bad idea that all of our very serious newspapers might consider that perhaps they weren't actually obligated to publish his op-eds, or calling him for quotes, but one would wrong as our pal Leslie seems to have no trouble getting his stuff placed.
Gelb, unsurprisingly, gets described as a "centrist," a label reserved for the most serious people, such as Senator Joe Lieberman.
I'm actually not trying to pick on Gelb who, in the pantheon of Very Serious People of Washington, seems to be generally a lot more intelligent and sane than most.
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