shanek
16th June 2003, 04:43 PM
Today's leading contender for contempt, however, is not Hillary, but President Bush and his deceiving administration.
At issue here are high crimes – not misdemeanors – that make Watergate and the Iran Contra, much less Bill Clinton's peccadilloes, pale in comparison. But to watch the debate, elevated to operatic levels by neoconservative opinion and policy makers, one gets the impression that whether Hillary really loves Bill or whether he caught her off guard are the defining moral questions of the day.
Here's the nub and the rub: Smart people know that truth is immutable and objectively ascertainable. They know that, while a lie is a lie, some lies are face-saving understandable fibs, while others are deadly and dreadful breaches and infractions.
Bush's lies about the war on Iraq were the latter.
Bush acted solo to obstruct the very checks and balances put in place to ensure that a measure of parliamentary representation, for what it's worth, ensued. Yet he continues to equate his will to war with the will of the bamboozled American people.
Contrast the many diverse voices, working to resolve the matter peacefully, with an administration that wanted nothing other than to go to war. Still less convincing were the flaccid, foolish and buffoon-like media, standing firm behind the administration. Their reports on WMD were almost always backed by "unnamed sources close to the administration" (read: high-stake Iraqi defectors and exiles), a journalistic no-no. Their uncritical, shoddy, embed evidence consisted of unverified accounts of overactive Geiger counters, and nondescript footage of rusty vats. No weaponized chemicals and no dispersing systems were found.
The justification of last resort now animating the nation, thanks to the propagandists, is addressed by the Future of Freedom Foundation's Sheldon Richman: "There is no warrant in the U.S. Constitution for the president of the United States to launch a war in order to liberate people from a brutal government." Unless, of course, you join liberals in adopting the odious doctrine of a "living Constitution," as the conservatives have clearly done.
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33022
At issue here are high crimes – not misdemeanors – that make Watergate and the Iran Contra, much less Bill Clinton's peccadilloes, pale in comparison. But to watch the debate, elevated to operatic levels by neoconservative opinion and policy makers, one gets the impression that whether Hillary really loves Bill or whether he caught her off guard are the defining moral questions of the day.
Here's the nub and the rub: Smart people know that truth is immutable and objectively ascertainable. They know that, while a lie is a lie, some lies are face-saving understandable fibs, while others are deadly and dreadful breaches and infractions.
Bush's lies about the war on Iraq were the latter.
Bush acted solo to obstruct the very checks and balances put in place to ensure that a measure of parliamentary representation, for what it's worth, ensued. Yet he continues to equate his will to war with the will of the bamboozled American people.
Contrast the many diverse voices, working to resolve the matter peacefully, with an administration that wanted nothing other than to go to war. Still less convincing were the flaccid, foolish and buffoon-like media, standing firm behind the administration. Their reports on WMD were almost always backed by "unnamed sources close to the administration" (read: high-stake Iraqi defectors and exiles), a journalistic no-no. Their uncritical, shoddy, embed evidence consisted of unverified accounts of overactive Geiger counters, and nondescript footage of rusty vats. No weaponized chemicals and no dispersing systems were found.
The justification of last resort now animating the nation, thanks to the propagandists, is addressed by the Future of Freedom Foundation's Sheldon Richman: "There is no warrant in the U.S. Constitution for the president of the United States to launch a war in order to liberate people from a brutal government." Unless, of course, you join liberals in adopting the odious doctrine of a "living Constitution," as the conservatives have clearly done.
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33022