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WMD? What WMD? Other Than That, Mrs. Lincoln...By Rick Horowitz If there's one thing I don't want to be, it's a party pooper. I mean, don't you just hate it when you're ready to have a great time, to throw an absolute knockout of an event, and you've got all the food and all the music picked out -- and the marching bands, too, if you're inclined toward marching bands -- and your friends from all over the country are flocking into town, and suddenly some little guy with a clipboard is knocking on your front door and telling you you've got mold in the basement? Me, too. But there is this little matter of the weapons. I almost hate to bring it up, especially when everybody who's anybody in Washington is, at this very moment, gearing up for "Celebrating Freedom, Honoring Service." Unless, of course, it's the other way around: "Celebrating Service, Honoring Freedom." It's hard to remember. Whichever -- it's the all-things-to-all-people (but bring plenty of money) theme of the Bush inaugural festivities, and only a churl would think of getting in the way. But there is this little matter of the weapons. The weapons of mass destruction, that is. In Iraq. You remember Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, don't you? They were in all the papers. They just don't happen to have been in Iraq. At least that's the nearly final, nearly official word on the subject, according to the Washington Post. The search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction has been shut down, the Post reports -- a perfectly successful mission, aside from the small but inconvenient fact that the searchers never actually found any weapons of mass destruction. Imagine that. And imagine how surprised Dick Cheney must be, since there was no doubt -- or so he said -- that Iraq had those kinds of weapons. Imagine how surprised Donald Rumsfeld must be, since he even knew -- or so he said -- exactly where those weapons were being stored. Imagine how surprised Condoleezza Rice must be, since she was so eager to sound the alarm about Iraqi weapons and smoking guns and mushroom clouds. And imagine how surprised George Bush must be, since he is, after all, the president of the United States, and these experts and advisers were his experts and advisers, and since Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were his No. 1 justification for going to war with Iraq in the first place. They were even more important -- as a justification, that is -- than the supposed connections between Iraq and the attacks of 9/11, or Iraq's supposed working relationship with al-Qaeda, or Iraq's supposedly reconstituted nuclear-weapons program -- none of which has actually been shown to be the case either. Imagine that. You'd think that being a wartime president after having all your pre-war justifications shot out from under you would dampen your mood just a bit. But if this president is damp, he's doing his best not to let on, especially not in front of the cameras. There he was the other night, put ever-so-slightly on the spot in an interview snippet with Barbara Walters, who was wondering about the need for a war against weapons of mass destruction when there apparently weren't any weapons of mass destruction. And there he was, coming right back at Barbara Walters with that frustrated, I-can't-believe-you-still-don't-get-this grin of his, and his old standby about how the world is safer with Saddam Hussein out of power, as if that should end any discussion. As if saying it makes it so. As if, as long as he can keep chanting that one favorite sentence over and over again, reality -- the bombs and the blood, the martyrs and the mayhem, the missed opportunities, the increased threats elsewhere -- wouldn't dare intrude. As if going to war with Iraq was worth it. Of course -- I almost hate to bring it up -- "going" to war with Iraq isn't quite accurate. George Bush didn't "go" to war with Iraq, any more than Dick Cheney or Don Rumsfeld or Condi Rice did. George Bush "sent" people to war with Iraq. Hundreds and hundreds of them aren't coming back. Party on. Posted
1/13/05. Get fresh commentary from syndicated columnist Rick Horowitz
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Rick Horowitz
