Sick, I really am getting sick of these moderate liberals who exculpate themselves form any warmongering now. Just one example: Kevin Drum:
Liberals, for their part, need to accept the obvious: in 2002, virtually everybody believed Iraq had an active WMD program. The CIA believed it, … [t]he British believed the same thing. The Germans and French believed it. Former Clinton administration officials believed it. Lots of Democratic members of congress believed it. They were all wrong, it turned out, but they weren’t lying. The simple fact is that virtually everyone who had access to the full range of classified intelligence at that point in time thought Iraq had an active WMD program. Scott Ritter is about the only exception.
This is factual wrong, very wrong and it is irrelevant, but I have seen it in creeping up in variants all over the net. Check the comments to that piece if you want some serious debunking, or ask this man.
Kevin and others are rewriting history to save face – their face.
The scrutinized history is this:
- There was no possibility that Iraq could have WMDs, except maybe a forgotten cookie jar of old unusable mustard gas.
- There was a bunch of proven liars with documented nefarious aims, claiming without any proof that Iraq had WMDs.
- There were hundreds of millions of stupid folks who out of stupidness, or just to keep their head low, made themselves believe the proven liars lies.
- There were billions who didn´t believe this bullshit
- The hope is that maybe some of the stupids will at learn something from this.
The new history tale goes like this:
- Everybody believed there were WMDs.
- Everybody came to believe this, because Cheney has deceived them.
- Impeach Cheney.
My condolence to everybody who did believe in the old history. Sorry folks, but it is dead. The new history is now the reality. No learning or insight required here.
Another variant of this is the attribute inevitable. You know, after that guy DUIed my spouse, I just had to kill his neighbors children – and his brother-in-law’s grandparents and siblings – and I had to burn down that village. It was inevitable, just like the war on Afghanistan was inevitable.
I have heard the word inevitable often, in my teens, when I tried to discussed WWII and death camps with some older folks in Germany: "You know Poland did attack us, right? It was all inevitable."
