Finally, as
promised, a Special Comment about the president's cataclysmic deception
about Iran.
There are few
choices more terrifying than the one Mr. Bush has left us with tonight.
We have either a
president who is too dishonest to restrain himself from invoking World War
Three about Iran at least six weeks after he had to have known that the
analogy would be fantastic, irresponsible hyperbole - or we have a president
too transcendently stupid not to have asked - at what now appears to have
been a series of opportunities to do so - whether the fairy tales he either
created or was fed, were still even remotely plausible.
A pathological
presidential liar, or an idiot-in-chief. It is the nightmare scenario of
political science fiction: A critical juncture in our history and, contained
in either answer, a president manifestly unfit to serve, and behind him in
the vice presidency: an unapologetic war-monger who has long been seeing a
world visible only to himself.
After Ms. Perino's
announcement from the White House late last night, the timeline is
inescapable and clear.
In August the
president was told by his hand-picked Major Domo of intelligence Mike
McConnell, a flinty, high-strung-looking, worrying-warrior who will always
see more clouds than silver linings, that what "everybody thought" about
Iran might be, in essence, crap.
Yet on October
17th the President said of Iran and its president Ahmadinejad:
"I've told people
that if you're interested in avoiding World War Three, it seems like you
ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge to make a
nuclear weapon."
And as he said
that, Mr. Bush knew that at bare minimum there was a strong chance that his
rhetoric was nothing more than words with which to scare the Iranians.
Or was it, Sir, to
scare the Americans?
Does Iran not
really fit into the equation here? Have you just scribbled it into the
fill-in-the-blank on the same template you used, to scare us about Iraq?
In August, any
commander-in-chief still able-minded or uncorrupted or both, Sir, would have
invoked the quality the job most requires: mental flexibility.
A bright man, or
an honest man, would have realized no later than the McConnell briefing that
the only true danger about Iran was the damage that could be done by an
unhinged, irrational Chicken Little of a president, shooting his mouth off,
backed up by only his own hysteria and his own delusions of omniscience.
Not Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, Mr. Bush.
The Chicken Little
of presidents is the one, Sir, that you see in the mirror.
And the mind reels
at the thought of a vice president fully briefed on the revised Intel as
long as two weeks ago - briefed on the fact that Iran abandoned its pursuit
of this imminent threat four years ago - who never bothered to mention it to
his boss.
It is nearly
forgotten today, but throughout much of Ronald Reagan's presidency it was
widely believed that he was little more than a front-man for some
never-viewed, behind-the-scenes, string-puller.
Today, as
evidenced by this latest remarkable, historic malfeasance, it is
inescapable, that Dick Cheney is either this president's evil ventriloquist,
or he thinks he is.
What servant of
any of the 42 previous presidents could possibly withhold information of
this urgency and gravity, and wind up back at his desk the next morning,
instead of winding up before a Congressional investigation - or a criminal
one?
Mr. Bush - if you
can still hear us - if you did not previously agree to this scenario in
which Dick Cheney is the actual detective and you're Remington Steele - you
must disenthrall yourself: Mr. Cheney has usurped your constitutional
powers, cut you out of the information loop, and led you down the path to an
unprecedented presidency in which the facts are optional, the Intel is
valued less than the hunch, and the assistant runs the store.
The problem is,
Sir, your assistant is robbing you - and your country - blind.
Not merely in
monetary terms, Mr. Bush, but more importantly of the traditions and
righteousness for which we have stood, at great risk, for centuries:
Honesty, Law, Moral Force.
Mr. Cheney has
helped, Sir, to make your Administration into the kind our ancestors saw in
the 1860's and 1870's and 1880's - the ones that abandoned Reconstruction,
and sent this country marching backwards into the pit of American Apartheid.
Grant, Hayes,
Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland ...
Presidents who
will be remembered only in a blur of failure, Mr. Bush.
Presidents who
will be remembered only as functions of those who opposed them - the
opponents whom history proved right.
Would that we
could let this president off the hook by seeing him only as marionette or
moron.
But a study of the
mutation of his language about Iran proves that though he may not be very
good at it, he is, himself, still a manipulative, Machiavellian, snake-oil
salesman.
The Bushian
etymology was tracked by Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post's website.
It is staggering.
March 31st: "Iran
is trying to develop a nuclear weapon ..."
June 5th: "Iran's
pursuit of nuclear weapons ..."
June 19th:
"Consequences to the Iranian government if they continue to pursue a nuclear
weapon ..."
July 12th: "The
same regime in Iran that is pursuing nuclear weapons ..."
August 6th: "This
is a government that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon
..."
Notice a pattern?
Trying to develop,
build or pursue a nuclear weapon.
Then, sometime
between August 6th and August 9th, those terms are suddenly swapped out, so
subtly that only in retrospect can we see that somebody has warned the
president, not only that he has gone out too far on the limb of terror - but
there may not even be a tree there ...
McConnell, or
someone, must have briefed him then.
August 9th: "They
have expressed their desire to be able to enrich uranium, which we believe
is a step toward having a nuclear weapons program ..."
August 28th:
"Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons ..."
October 4th: "You
should not have the know-how on how to make a (nuclear) weapon ..."
October 17th:
"Until they suspend and/or make it clear that they, that their statements
aren't real, yeah, I believe they want to have the capacity, the
knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon."
Before August 9th,
it's: Trying to develop, build or pursue a nuclear weapon.
After August 9th,
it's: Desire, pursuit, want ... knowledge, technology, know-how to enrich
uranium.
And we are to
believe, Mr. Bush, that the National Intelligence Estimate this week talks
of the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program in 2003 ...
And you talked of
the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program on October 17th ...
And that's just a
coincidence?
And we are to
believe, Mr. Bush, that nobody told you any of this until last week?
Your insistence
that you were not briefed on the NIE until last week might be legally true -
something like "what the definition of is is" - but with the subject matter
being not interns but the threat of nuclear war.
Legally, it might
save you from some war crimes trial ... but ethically, it is a lie.
It is
indefensible.
You have been
yelling threats into a phone for nearly four months, after the guy on the
other end had already hung up.
You, Mr. Bush, are
a bald-faced liar.
And more over, you
have just revealed that John Bolton, and Norman Podhoretz, and the Wall
Street Journal Editorial board, are also bald-faced liars.
We are to believe
that the Intel community, or maybe the State Department, cooked the raw
intelligence about Iran, falsely diminished the Iranian nuclear threat, to
make you look bad?
And you proceeded
to let them make you look bad?
You not only knew
all of this about Iran, in early August ...
But you also knew
... it was ... accurate.
And instead of
sharing this good news with the people you have obviously forgotten you
represent ...
You merely
fine-tuned your terrorizing of those people, to legally cover your own
backside ...
While you filled
the factual gap with sadistic visions of - as you phrased it on August 28th:
a quote "nuclear holocaust" - and, as you phrased it on October 17th, quote:
"World War Three."
My comments, Mr.
Bush, are often dismissed as simple repetitions of the phrase "George Bush
has no business being president."
Well, guess what?
Tonight: hanged by
your own words ... convicted by your own deliberate lies ...
