But did she leave out a central argument, one which the adminstration used to the American public, Congress and the United Nations to go into Iraq, ENTIRELY? It sure sounds this way but watch THE VIDEO YOURSELF.
Our view? Why is this administration losing independent voters and being left with just its staunch supporter base? This quote from Rice is a prime example. Rather than mention and acknowledge past arguments — which we somehow thought included weapons of mass destruction (which was later programs of mass destruction, which later vanished) — that explanation is left totally out. All of this leaves people who analyze issues — that includes thinking Republicans (who remember George Bush’s promises about the Supreme Court on the campaign trial), centrist Democrats and independents — with growing evidence that this administration is willing to completely to discard as easily as shrink wrap its arguments on issues when the arguments don’t work or prove not to be correct. And it wants people to forget it ever made them.
In terms of credibility, this administration is going to be lumped together with the Nixon and Johnson administrations. Would it really have taken Condi Rice that much effort and expended that much political capital for her to have mentioned WMD? We somehow seem to remember it having been mentioned before somewhere.
UPDATE: Crooks And Liars’ John Amato comments in detail on this in a Huffington Post piece. Read it all but here’s a small piece:
I thought the reason we went into Iraq was because they had WMD’s? Members of the administration even outed an undercover CIA agent and smeared her husband in retaliation because somebody actually had the nerve to do a little fact checking on the lies that the White House told about Iraq’s WMD capabilities…
So nice of you to level with the American people after all else has failed. Might a ” bolder approach” have been honesty from the beginning? You should try it sometime. It’s a moral value after all.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.