Jules Witcover is obvious suspicious, as he explains in A Tardy Retreat to Civility Tribune Media Services 11/23/05. After encouraging their followers to blast war critics as unpatriotic, Bush and Cheney both have recently made noises trying to sound like decent guys. A stretch for both of them.
Witcover observes that in the same speech were he generously admitted that Congressman John Murtha is a "patriot" - as if Murtha needed the official designation to be granted by the Dark Lord of Torture - he went on to call war critics "dishonest and reprehensible."
Witcover also noticed that the Dark Lord is hardly ready to address the issues about distorted and fraudulent claims about the nonexistent Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction":
The vice president in his speech went on to argue, remarkably, that although the weapons of mass destruction that the administration cited as the rationale for invading Iraq were not found, "We never had the burden of proof; Saddam did." It was a startling dismissal of the grounds the American people were told threatened their safety, requiring the invasion of another country.
The comment was reminiscent of one made by Bush in a December 2003 interview with Diane Sawyer of ABC News, in which he answered, "So what's the difference?" when she noted no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq.
It also recalled the comment quoted in Vanity Fair in May 2003 by Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense at the time, saying to justify the invasion, "We settled on one issue that you could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction." In other words, the easiest sell was raising the specter of another deadly attack.
All in all, the conciliatory Bush and Cheney comments towards Murtha and dissent were quite astonishing for a pair who have worked overtime playing the patriotism card since 911 against criticism that puts their conduct of the war in a questionable light.
Amen to that!
No comments:
Post a Comment