Iraq and the 'L' Word

[jbfam4]

Iraq and the 'L' Word

By Richard Cohen
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/21/AR2005112101233.html?nav=hcmodule
Tuesday, November 22, 2005; Page A29

Along with such creations as American POWs still being held in Vietnam and the Bill Clinton drug-smuggling operation at a remote Arkansas air strip, the unhinged right wing has now invented the myth that Democratic members of Congress have called President Bush "a liar" about Iraq. An extensive computer search by myself and a Post researcher can come up with no such accusation. That's prudent. After all, it's not clear if Bush lied about Iraq or was merely the "useful idiot" of those who did.

The term "useful idiot" is not a reflection of IQ. I resurrect it from the Cold War days when anticommunists used it to contemptuously describe certain communist sympathizers. I think sometimes the phrase probably went through the dark mind of Vice President Cheney and certain other Bush administration officials who must have known that their dear president was exaggerating the case for war. Cheney, for one, is too smart and too calculating not to have known that the envelope was being pushed past the point of verifiable truth.


What is both amazing and appalling about Bush is that he seems not to care. The way things look now, he will go down in history as an amiable dunce -- Clark Clifford's scathing and misapplied characterization of Ronald Reagan -- who took his country to war for reasons that did not exist. This is a blunder without peer in American history and possibly an assault on democracy: The people, through their representatives, are supposed to make an informed decision about war. It is incredible to me that Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about sex, but nobody -- that's nobody -- in the entire Bush administration has been fired, not to mention impeached, for this shedding of American blood. Cheney, a man of ugly intolerance for dissent, should have been the first to go. His has been a miserable, dishonest performance -- which he continues to this day.

The restraint of responsible war critics has been remarkable. Despite a recent headline on the Wall Street Journal's editorial page -- "What If People Start Believing That 'Bush Lied'?" -- the "L" word has been prudently withheld by elected Democrats. But you would think that Bush himself would wonder about how he's gotten to this place where he looks like such a fool: wrong on the biggest issue of his presidency. He went out there and told the American people things that were not true. Does that mean he lied? Maybe not. Maybe he was just repeating the lies of others.

[occuserpens]

1. What a jewel!

"Useful idiot" is a term for a puppet, not for a puppet master.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Another good article by Richard Cohen, who is detested by lots

of folks here.

[occuserpens]

3. Cohen most certainly is

A Useful Idiot

[Martin Eden]

4. "the 'L' word has been prudently withheld by elected Democrats"

That quote from Cohen's commentary raises a very interesting point -- should the Democrats come right out and accuse the Bush administration of lying?

If Democratic Congressional leaders made a statement using the 'L' word, it would certainly create a firestorm and focus even MORE attention on the specifics of how the Bush administration deliberately misrepresented what was known and unknown about Iraqi WMD's and ties to al Qaeda.

It just might provioke a reckoning that could regain a Democratic majority and lead to impeachment.