Angry Again
Banned
Whew, At Least He Wasn't Fooling Around
DANIEL RUTH LINKY
Published: Oct 10, 2004
I f it weren't for all the body bags, the lost limbs, the dead civilians, the imploded infrastructure, the civil war, the car bombings and the lost prestige and honor around the globe, George Bush's adventure in Iraq might serve as a dark ``M-A-S-H'' meets a poor man's Huey Long- lite satire.
Yep, that march to democracy is going just swimmingly. Maybe it will catch on in this country one of these days.
OK, I apologize for sounding like a broken constitution on this point, but let me see if I have this straight one more time.
The entire nation was brought to a literal standstill for almost two years while a special prosecutor and the U.S. Congress investigated and eventually impeached a sitting president essentially for engaging in the same behavior many, many other occupants of the White House have been guilty of.
Finger Bowls
Yet George W. Bush and his fellow West Wing finger bowls misled, mismanaged and obfuscated their way into a war they weren't prepared to win at a cost of untold lives and treasure - and at least half the population (if the polls are to be believed) doesn't care.
Last week, in an exhaustively detailed dissection of the primary predicate for going to war in Iraq, The New York Times revealed that George Bush and his fellow West Wing vichyssoise distorted and ignored contrary evidence that Saddam Hussein barely had the wherewithal to produce a Roman candle, much less nuclear weapons.
And days later, the chief U.S. weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer, officially echoed what one report after another has concluded: that Saddam Hussein harbored no weapons of mass destruction. Nada. Zippo. Bupkes.
What would you call this? The Mother of All Flip-Flops?
Or put another way, Neil Diamond on tour was a greater threat to this country than Iraq.
And at least 50 percent of the population doesn't care, not after all the flag-draped coffins, not after the destroyed lives and not after the rise of terrorism around the globe. They still don't care.
Big Trouble
It's a monumental piece of reporting, but in essence the Times' story focused on the Bush administration's argument that Saddam was attempting to reconstruct his nuclear weapons program by focusing on Iraq's attempts to obtain high-strength aluminum tubes.
These tubes, Vice President Dick Cheney asserted, represented ``irrefutable'' proof that Iraq was on the road to nuclear intimidation and blackmail because the tubes could only be used in the construction of uranium centrifuges.
There's a barnyard phrase that could be applied to Cheney's delusions.
But poppycock will have to do. In fact, the Times noted, the leading nuclear weapons experts within the intelligence community in this country had knocked down the ``tubes for nukes'' theory well in advance of Cheney's public advocacy of the claim.
Yet the Lion of Crawford continued to promote the phony tubes argument in his public remarks.
And, indeed, two days before Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered his now-discredited babble to justify war against Iraq before the United Nations, his own intelligence experts warned against linking tubes to nuclear weapons.
Still, Powell pressed ahead with the cooked-up WMD gibberish.
To date, numerous former weapons inspectors, the Sept. 11 commission, legions of media reports and most recently Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and former Viceroy to Iraq Paul Bremer have all, in one way another, refuted the administration's rationale for killing all these people.
And at least half of the populace doesn't seem to give a flying fig.
Whew! It's a good thing George W. Bush isn't fooling around with an intern.
Then, he'd be in really heap big trouble.
Columnist Daniel Ruth can be reached at (813) 259-7599.
DANIEL RUTH LINKY
Published: Oct 10, 2004
I f it weren't for all the body bags, the lost limbs, the dead civilians, the imploded infrastructure, the civil war, the car bombings and the lost prestige and honor around the globe, George Bush's adventure in Iraq might serve as a dark ``M-A-S-H'' meets a poor man's Huey Long- lite satire.
Yep, that march to democracy is going just swimmingly. Maybe it will catch on in this country one of these days.
OK, I apologize for sounding like a broken constitution on this point, but let me see if I have this straight one more time.
The entire nation was brought to a literal standstill for almost two years while a special prosecutor and the U.S. Congress investigated and eventually impeached a sitting president essentially for engaging in the same behavior many, many other occupants of the White House have been guilty of.
Finger Bowls
Yet George W. Bush and his fellow West Wing finger bowls misled, mismanaged and obfuscated their way into a war they weren't prepared to win at a cost of untold lives and treasure - and at least half the population (if the polls are to be believed) doesn't care.
Last week, in an exhaustively detailed dissection of the primary predicate for going to war in Iraq, The New York Times revealed that George Bush and his fellow West Wing vichyssoise distorted and ignored contrary evidence that Saddam Hussein barely had the wherewithal to produce a Roman candle, much less nuclear weapons.
And days later, the chief U.S. weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer, officially echoed what one report after another has concluded: that Saddam Hussein harbored no weapons of mass destruction. Nada. Zippo. Bupkes.
What would you call this? The Mother of All Flip-Flops?
Or put another way, Neil Diamond on tour was a greater threat to this country than Iraq.
And at least 50 percent of the population doesn't care, not after all the flag-draped coffins, not after the destroyed lives and not after the rise of terrorism around the globe. They still don't care.
Big Trouble
It's a monumental piece of reporting, but in essence the Times' story focused on the Bush administration's argument that Saddam was attempting to reconstruct his nuclear weapons program by focusing on Iraq's attempts to obtain high-strength aluminum tubes.
These tubes, Vice President Dick Cheney asserted, represented ``irrefutable'' proof that Iraq was on the road to nuclear intimidation and blackmail because the tubes could only be used in the construction of uranium centrifuges.
There's a barnyard phrase that could be applied to Cheney's delusions.
But poppycock will have to do. In fact, the Times noted, the leading nuclear weapons experts within the intelligence community in this country had knocked down the ``tubes for nukes'' theory well in advance of Cheney's public advocacy of the claim.
Yet the Lion of Crawford continued to promote the phony tubes argument in his public remarks.
And, indeed, two days before Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered his now-discredited babble to justify war against Iraq before the United Nations, his own intelligence experts warned against linking tubes to nuclear weapons.
Still, Powell pressed ahead with the cooked-up WMD gibberish.
To date, numerous former weapons inspectors, the Sept. 11 commission, legions of media reports and most recently Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and former Viceroy to Iraq Paul Bremer have all, in one way another, refuted the administration's rationale for killing all these people.
And at least half of the populace doesn't seem to give a flying fig.
Whew! It's a good thing George W. Bush isn't fooling around with an intern.
Then, he'd be in really heap big trouble.
Columnist Daniel Ruth can be reached at (813) 259-7599.
