The second you shun something that doesn’t fit the narrative you want — you have contaminated your perception.
I’m sure many of you found it maddening when the Left played the race card to discard your criticism. Well I didn’t appreciate being called a “Bush hater” for going after the truth that nails both parties to the wall.
Purely on the math alone — Colin Powell’s case to the UN revolved around 3 WMD claims
- Chemical
- Biological
- Nuclear
Defenders of the Indefensible invariably ignore #2 and #3 and distort the hell out of #1:
That you even think that something so complex and convoluted could be explained away so easily — is a monumental problem all by itself . . .
Does this sound like an arsenal of chemical weapons from an active WMD program to you?
- Remnants from Iraq’s arms program in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war
- All had been manufactured before 1991
- Filthy, rusty or corroded, a large fraction of them could not be readily identified as chemical weapons at all
- Some were empty, though many of them still contained potent mustard agent or residual sarin
- Most could not have been used as designed, and when they ruptured dispersed the chemical agents over a limited area
- Many chemical weapons incidents clustered around the ruins of the Muthanna State Establishment, the center of Iraqi chemical agent production in the 1980s
The administration had its hands on 60,000 tubes — and yet not one of them was presented by Powell at the U.N. According to HUBRIS, they scrapped the idea of displaying a tube — since Powell would be holding up the one piece of evidence that was most in dispute.
As David Albright put it:
Teddy would be appalled:
The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole.
Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile.
To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or anyone else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about anyone else.
— Theodore Roosevelt (Kansas City Star, May 7th, 1918):
One Voice Became Two 