Letters to the Editor
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David Schlaefler's letter is right on...
Let me begin by saying that I offer no apologia for the Iraq War. I wasn't convinced it was a good idea at the time, and I'm still not convinced. It certainly has been mismanaged. But I, too, have found it interesting (read "ridiculous") that so many are willing to castigate President Bush as some sort of evil genius who *tricked* America into war on the basis of WMD's he *knew* weren't there, and yet neither he nor anybody who worked for him had the foresight (and cold, calculating heart that *only* Republicans have) to think, "Gee. Maybe we ought to plant some." If we grant for the moment (and the evidence is there) that invading Iraq was a huge mistake, why is it so difficult for those on the Left to at least contemplate the possibility that President Bush believed that Iraq was a threat because that's what he wanted to believe, and evaluated the evidence accordingly? Why do so many insist that the president must have been motivated simply by the desire to enrich is pals at Halliburton?
And since so many letter writers are quick to point out that "everybody knew" there were no WMD's, why have so few found fault with the Democratic pols who voted for the war? Are they any less criminal?
This article and the Craig/Vitter Republican "hyprocrisy" stuff (with which I wholly agree) prompt me to leave the true believers on the Left with the following query: your two consisent knocks against the president have been that he is both stupid and a liar, yes? Does this mean you'll be similarly bothered by a Hillary Clinton presidency? Her Husband is dogged by allegations about Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones, and yet she calls the Monica Lewinsky affair "a vast right wing conspiracy." Which was that: lying, or stupidity? (BTW, Senator: a blowjob is a conspiracy of two -- a tiny left wing conspiracy, in your husband's case) And Travelgate and Hillarycare -- do the mendacity and stupidity of these two episodes bother no one? Does no one suspect that what's past is prologue? "She could harldy be worse than W" is not a counterargument.