Friday, July 11, 2003

16 words, and whaddaya get ...

... another day older, and deeper in the Iraqi qWagmire.

I should be able to write a better headline than that, but seeing that the administration was even lying about their own lies ... It's just too over the top.

Now I know why Atrios moved to an even-more-undisclosed location. How I wish I could too. Like to another planet. I'd move to that new gas giant except I can meet Rush without travelling 600 light years.

And things are going to get even uglier, since we know the Bushes turn brutally vicious when cornered -- witness 43 stomping McCain in South Carolina 2000 or 41 Willie-Horton-izing Mike Dukakis. Or Jebbie any day of the year. So brace yourselves...

Anyhow, Dean has been standing up on Iraq for some time -- and he does late night interviews on CNN too. And alert reader Thumb came up with a headline:

Give 'em hell, Howard!

So this is a serious credibility problem, and it's a lot deeper than just the Iraq-Niger deal, it has to do with assertions by the secretary of defense that he knew where weapons were that turned out not to be there, it has to do with assertions by the vice president there was a nuclear program that turned out not to exist, and assertions made by the president himself, not just about the acquisition of uranium, but also about the ability of [deposed Iraqi President] Saddam [Hussein] to use chemical weapons on the United States.

The big deal is not so much that we went to war over a deal between Iraq and Niger which didn't exist and that the administration knew ahead of time it didn't exist. The big deal is the credibility of the United States of America and the credibility of the president in telling the American people the truth and the rest of the world the truth. That's a very big deal.

Yes, give 'em hell Howard. I don't care if the veins in your neck do pop, as Evelyn Neives's sleazy little piece of character assassination has it in WaPo. Nothing wrong with a little righteous anger, now that the age of irony is dead. Me, the stuff these guys pull, I'm amazed the top of my skull doesn't blow off.