I don’t get it. You suddenly get evidence — I don’t know if it proves or just strongly suggests — that this administration lied to all of us about war, and your reaction is not to go after the administration, but to dismiss the evidence? And to put down the people who are calling you screaming about why you haven’t bothered to mention it? What is wrong with this picture?
- Molly Ivins
If a President lies, it would stand to reason he would be held accountable, and justifiably so. After all, Bill Clinton was impeached over his affair with Monica Lewinsky. One might expect then, were documented proof to be offered up that George W. Bush lied about his intentions regarding Iraq, Our Sainted President might suffer a fate similar to Clinton. Right? Well, not exactly. Apparently, allowing a female intern to break in her knee pads in the Oval Office is a crime FAR worse than killing 1700+ American soldiers.
Judging by the reaction of the mainstream media, the general feeling seems to be that while the war in Iraq is an unfortunate mess, AT LEAST BUSH DIDN’T GET A BLOWJOB FROM AN INTERN. After all, illicit sex? In the White House? Good Lord, man…what about the children??
The reality here is that we’re talking about more than 1,700 dead American soldiers? And for what? The WMDs that we were told Iraq possessed? Nope, nothing there. The terrorism that Bush alleged that we need to fight in streets of Baghdad so that we didn’t have to do it in the streets of New York? Well, not exactly. There WAS no terrorist threat in Baghdad prior to our invastion of Iraq. The current problem is one that the American occupation has created and continues to exacerbate.
So, we can anticipate the media beating the drums and Our Sainted President on trial in the well of the Senate? Well, not exactly….
Here are some aggravating factors. Thomas Friedman, columnist for the New York Times, recently wrote that “liberals” no longer want to talk about the war because we were against it to start with and probably hope it ends in disaster. Good Lord, who does he think we are? Does this man actually think we are out here cheering every time another American is killed?
Mr. Friedman, real, actual, honest-to-God American liberals are out here in the heartland, and we know the kids who are dying in Iraq. They are from our hometowns. We know their parents. That’s why we hate this war. That’s why we tried to tell everybody else it was a ghastly idea.
We are not sitting here gloating because it is the horrible mess we said it would be. We’re in agony. There is nothing pleasurable about being a Cassandra. I have said from the beginning that if this thing worked out the way Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Cheney all said it would, I would be perfectly happy to get down on my knees and kiss George Bush’s feet.
The second aggravation is that the very prestigious papers that are now dismissing the Downing Street Memos have already themselves admitted that their pre-war coverage was — I don’t know, you pick the adjective. Slack? Inadequate? Less than rigorous? Wrong? And now they’re saying, oh hell, this isn’t news, we knew it all along.
For reasons that I can neither understand nor begin to explain, the mainstream media has completely ignored the story of the Downing Street Memos, except to hold forth on…well, not much of anything, really. Here we are, presented with what would seem incontrovertible evidence that Our Sainted President planned on going to war all along and manipulated intelligence to bolster his case.
What’s wrong with this picture? Where is the outrage, the demand for answers? Where is the press hounding George W. Bush and demanding that he come clean in the same way they did Bill Clinton? Surely, you’re not going to tell me that having illicit sex in the Oval Office is far worse than a war purchased with lies, deception, and the bodies of more than 1,700 young Americans?
Yes, but at least George W. Bush didn’t have sex with an intern….
Oh no, Clinton wasn't impeached for getting a blowjob from an intern or lying about it. He was impeached because she was an ugly intern. Republicans have their standards, ya know?
But at least Clinton didn't plant a gay escort with no journalistic credentials into the Press Corps so he could toss him softball questions (and maybe ball him softly after press briefings).
Seriously though, the media's silence on the Downing Street Memo is stunning. This is all but proof that Bush engaged in an illegal war but no one outside of the blogging universe is even discussing it. Its really quite sad.