Stumble It!
Have you noticed it? Hot off the presses, yesterday and today, the latest CW mantra -- or is it a meme? -- GWs LIES!™ about WMDs "have made the future of pre-emption based on intelligence close to impossible," wrote Andrew Sullivan:
And President Bush is ultimately responsible for this. Tenet has taken the fall, but it will take years and years before the U.S. regains the reputation for credibility that this president has destroyed.
Forget the 9/11 commission's conclusion that this was a "global intelligence failure." The sky is falling, the sky is falling, and it's Bush's fault! It will take a generation before the U.S. regains the reputation for credibility that this president has destroyed, we heard more than one talking head (including the Washington Post's Dana Priest) repeat yesterday. But we say, chin up. What with the world's short attention span, it shouldn't take more than a news cycle or two to move on to the next thing. And speaking of how quickly they forget, the PoliPundit, DJ Drummond, has pulled up some delicious snippets of big-media interviews last January with David Kay, "whose words have been quoted by many a Bush-hater to suggest the President lied." From The Telegraph:
Dr. Kay, who resigned last week as head of the Iraq Survey Group, said that he had uncovered evidence that unspecified materials had been moved to Syria shortly before last year's war to overthrow Saddam.
An interview with Bert Lauer on the "Today Show":
Lauer: Based on everything you now know, was it prudent to go to war against Saddam?
Kay: It was absolutely prudent to go to war. The system was collapsing, Iraq was a country with desire to develop WMDs, and it was attracting terrorists like flies to honey.
Lauer: Are your earlier comments being exploited for political reasons?
Kay: Inevitably yes, but what we have is a national security issue that shouldn't be exploited as a political issue.
Lauer: Should we continue to search for WMDs as Vice President Cheney has suggested?
Kay: Absolutely.
Senator Jay, call your office. And then this gem with Tom Brokaw:
Brokaw: David, as you know, a lot of the president’s political critics are going to say, "This is clear evidence that he lied to the American people."
Kay: I think if anyone was abused by the intelligence it was the president of the United States rather than the other way around.
Brokaw: The president described Iraq as a gathering threat — a gathering danger. Was that an accurate description?
Kay: I think that’s a very accurate description.
Of course "the world" and its media fellow-travelers only forget things that don't fit the "GWs LIES!™ about WMDs" narrative, so we can expect the "it will take a generation" meme to be around for awhile.
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