Giving us the business

Rarely will you read an article that better crystalizes the modern anti-war liberal than this one from the New York Times entitled "The Intelligence Business".

Turns out their stance is close to the one perpetrated by Dean, Gore, Moore, Sheehan and various other anti-war mongrels. Nothing shocking there, it's just nice to see an MSM outlet finally come clean and prove the liberal bias we've been accusing them of for years. It must have been 'liberating':

Beyond dragging out the process further, the intent, obviously, is to suggest that Bush said the same things that Democratic senators and others did. That has no significance. They did not decide to have a war and had access only to the sanitized intelligence fed to them by the administration. Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush did think there were dangerous weapons in Iraq - back in the 20th century. By the time the war started, those weapons had long been eliminated by inspections and sanctions.

Good Lord, in one fell swoop they tried to take Kerry, Clinton and all the democrat congressmen who voted for the Iraq War resolution off the hook. Funny, these same talking points can be found on the Democrat Underground message board any day of the week. But I particularly enjoyed this passage, "Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush did think there were dangerous weapons in Iraq - back in the 20th century". Yes, and Kerry was still saying this in 2003, before he got the nomination.

But the real clincher was the use of Ray McGovern. Any publication using him as a single source to rebut Bush policies without giving the reader any background simply gives themselves away

Ray McGovern, an analyst for 27 years at the CIA, stood in the audience and asked why Rumsfeld lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The secretary shot back, "I did not lie."

Surely if they were using an adminstration source who had some dusty old ties to the KKK or Ayrian Nation or even owned a rebel flag at some distant point in the past the Times would have happily informed us. Almost immediately. But since he's a virulent anti-Bush impeachment advocate the background becomes unfit to print.

Let's step through their likely intended effect--we're told he was a career CIA analyst, which off the bat means he's a rightwing nutjob. And, since he's a rightwing nutjob critical of Bush, that in fact must prove Bush really is Hitler.

But aside from McGovern, here's what really trips my trigger:

First, there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Period.

Well, they're wrong. There were WMDs in Iraq--lots of them--at some point in the past, but Saddam spent the 90s gaming the UN inspectors and we simply don't know what happened to them. Therefore, there can be no "period" in any such statement. Besides, the Times reported on the DOCEX/Harmony document release, which might shine some light on that question. Well, at least I think they did. I seem to remember one story amidst a near torrent of Abu Ghraib follow-ups.

But it's quite fascinating to watch people who passionately advocate describing the world in shades of grey transform themselves into deterministic black and white thinkers.

LIES, I TELL YOU 5/10/06

Ray McGovern is not satisfied with Rummy's answers at the event he disrupted the other day, so he's leading a merry band of anti-war folks over to the Secretary's house on May 18th. Together with Cindy Sheehan, they're delivering some petitions calling on Bush to not attack Iran based on lies. No news there, unless you work at an MSM outlet and had no clue of McGovern's background aside from his 27 years in the CIA (wink, wink).

But something from the article jumped out:

"Of course, this conjures up Winston Churchill's famous phrase when he said—don't quote me on this, okay? I don't want to be quoted on this, so don't quote me. He said 'sometimes the truth is so precious it must be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies.'"
—Donald Rumsfeld, US Department of Defense Briefing, September 25, 2001

Bear with me, lefties, but let's assume for a moment Rummy is not a fascist warmonger. What was he referring to? No doubt the origin of the attack. And wonder what he thought of all that fine grain white powdery stuff that rained down on Washington later that year? Is there still a desperate need to keep the truth secured by that bodyguard of lies?

Mary Cheney was on Hannity and Colmes last night. She seems a very sincere person. It's evident she thinks a lot of her dad, and believes he's getting a bad rap. President Bush once told Bob Woodward that history would have to judge him on the Iraq war. Perhaps one day we'll discover whether paranoia or prudence ruled the day.