Commentary: It’s hard to weigh facts if you aren’t listening
Feb 10 2003
Here’s something to consider in this crucially important issue of whether President Bush was victim or victimizer, fooled or fooler, in the matter of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Say you have this colleague and he swears X is true, cites “facts” to buttress his argument and tells you that he will stick unswervingly to the path dictated by the solid-gold intelligence provided him.
You, on the other hand, are certain that Y is true and you cite facts that should cause a reasonable person to have reasonable doubts or at least conclude that caution is warranted.
While you’re making your argument, however, your colleague is holding his hands over his ears and chanting, “Lalalalalalalalalalalalala. I can’t hear you.”
Every time you make the effort to convince others that your colleague is wrong or acting precipitously, he and his supporters accuse you of being a girly-man, not a team player or, worse, French.
Afterward, it turns out that your colleague’s facts were pretty much bogus.
OK, is he a liar?
These are the hairs being split even in the most charitable viewing of the events that led up to the Iraqi war.
Another version, of course, is that Bush and friends knew their facts were highly suspect but were intent on following a path long before we even knew there was a path to choose.
Let’s give President Bush the benefit of the doubt. Let’s say he was gripped by the principle that toppling Saddam Hussein was the right thing to do for a host of reasons over and above WMDs.
So, then, emphasizing WMDs anyway and drowning out contradictory facts and the naysayers with “lalalalalalalala” is warranted?
Sorry, it doesn’t wash. It’s still reckless disregard, a sad commentary on his trust in us and sloppy leadership in any case.
There were plenty of credible doubters pitching reasonable doubts. The administration’s reaction: in one case, outing the CIA employee wife of one of the outspoken doubters.
In another, they trotted out gravitas-rich Colin Powell and had him point to things on grainy photographs to make a whole lot of us believe that there existed imminent threat, whether those words were ever specifically used or not.
Then they brought the vice president out of his bunker to do more of the same.
They got him and others to connect the dots between Hussein and al-Qaida, even if these dots were dubious factoids picked out of a nest of contradicting factoids.
And with Bush’s cover finally blown, folks now note that he acted on the same intelligence that our previous president, Bill Clinton, and, even the French and Germans, also believed in. I must have missed it. Did Clinton invade Iraq because of WMDs? At some point, Republicans will have to grasp the notion that Clinton isn’t president anymore and isn’t responsible for Bush’s actions.
David Kay, the departing U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, told a Senate committee that the WMDs haven’t been found and won’t be found because they probably haven’t existed for a while. He blamed a massive failure of intelligence.
It now appears that the president will do what Kay suggested: form an independent body to investigate.
No one should be surprised, however, if the findings aren’t released until after the election, though such information may actually be useful to voters.
Whatever the findings, however, they will not alter the fact that the primary reason we went to war was false. Yes, a lie.
There are really no hairs to split here. Our leadership messed up, big time.
It’s important to find out if the intelligence was manipulated. But it’s equally important to find out how and why Americans were manipulated.
There is nothing contradictory in being thankful for Saddam’s ouster and upset about how we got there.
The evidence is compelling that we were led down a path strewn with dishonesty, evasion, reckless disregard for truth and a cynical view of us as simpletons to be duped.
O. Ricardo Pimentel writes for Tribune Media Services.
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