"We know where they are, they're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad."

--Donald Rumsfeld on WMD, March 30, 2003

"What we're giving you are facts and conclusions, based on solid intelligence."

--Colin Powell on WMD, February 5, 2003

(Thanks to the Daily Show for the footage of these statements)

This week the White House has officially put an end to the hunt for WMDs in Iraq, essentially admitting (to the extent that the Bush White House admits anything) that the whole thing was a canard.

Now, of course, I never believed for a second that WMD had thing one to do with the invasion of Iraq; indeed only those who unquestioningly lap up whatever cock'n'bull story eminates from authority figures, ever believed that in the first place. (I'm looking forward to the Bob Novacks and Ann Coulters of the world, who so vigorously defended the WMD canard, tap dance their way around this one.) So this isn't anything like a surprise. Administration officials were even quoted at the time as calling WMD merely the most expedient way to garner US support for the unilateral action they'd already decided to take. The real reason-- oil, democracy in a middle eastern country, Saddam tried to kill my daddy-- whatever it was, it wasn't WMD, and no thinking person could really have ever been fooled.

What I want to know, though, is whether there will be any backlash whatsoever here. If you don't believe the administration was blatantly lying (as I do) with the WMD story, then you have to believe they were just wrong, and have no conceded as much. Which is worse? Personally I think being wrong is worse; at least if it was just a lie, I can understand that they felt they had to use propaganda to generate support for something they knew had to be done but which would be unpopular. Something administrations have done for a long time. But if they were just plum wrong? That gets a little scary, since we're in Iraq for God knows how long (we're still in Korea, for God's sake), and Iraq is now far more dangerous to Americans than it was with Hussein in charge. Will the American public be at least a little ticked off that they were lied to? Will Bush have to bear the burden of having been wrong? Or will self-righteous arrogance rule the day, and they'll totally skate on this debacle? I'm betting the last one.

Labels: The politics