Jewish World Review Nov 17, 2005/ 15 Mar-Cheshvan,
5766
Suzanne Fields
A tangled web of lies
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |
Lies are deadly stuff. Like all poisons, they have to be handled
carefully. "Oh, what a tangled web we weave/ When first we practice to
deceive," writes the poet and novelist Sir Walter Scott. Mark Twain was
practical about it, too: "If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember
anything."
Lies are particularly lethal in politics. They create a cauldron
of double toil and trouble, nearly always in unpredictable ways. When a
president lies, he's asking for it. "I am not a crook," said Richard Nixon,
and he was driven from office. "I did not have relations with that woman,
Miss Lewinsky," said Bill Clinton, and he was impeached. Now we're told, and
told and told, that George W. Bush lied to get us into a war in Iraq. That
could be impeachable stuff, too. A poll taken for The Wall Street
Journal/NBC News suggests that 57 percent of Americans believe that George
W. "deliberately misled people to make the case for war with Iraq." In
Europe, the percentage is even greater, and in the Middle East, nobody ever
believes anybody about anything (and with good reason).
Somebody is clearly lying to somebody, proving that "A lie will
go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on." But even a casual
examination of the public record demonstrates that the president is not the
liar.
The lied-about president finally pulled his boots on with a
speech on Veterans Day, reproaching not just the liars but those who listen
to lies: "It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war
began." He reminded those with short memories that a bipartisan Senate
investigation found that no pressure had been applied to alter the
intelligence findings about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Look again,
he said, at more than a dozen United Nations resolutions citing Saddam
Hussein's possession and development of chemical, nuclear and biological
weapons of mass destruction.
John Bolton, the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations,
cites the record of the Iraqis' own admission that they had developed
chemical weapons, and their later assertion that they had destroyed them.
"They were obstructing the inspectors, and it was perfectly
reasonable to think that they still had those capabilities," the ambassador
told me over lunch (of roast chicken) this week in Washington. "In
retrospect we should have done better at probing that assumption." But that
doesn't diminish what was once reasonable to believe. He calls attention to
the remarks of Chief Inspector Hans Blix in a briefing to the Security
Council in 2002, that it was imperative that Iraq furnish strong proof of
the claim that there were no biological, chemical or nuclear weapons left in
Iraq.
" . . . [I]t would need to provide convincing documentary or
other evidence," Mr. Blix said of Iraq at the time. "Production of mustard
gas is not exactly the same as production of marmalade." Only months before
we went to war against Iraq, Mr. Blix found 122-mm chemical rocket warheads
in a bunker 105 miles southwest of Baghdad, and wrote that "they could also
be the tip of a submerged iceberg." (Icebergs in the desert? But we got his
point.)
If, as Mr. Blix now claims, he was only being cautious and that
the president "misled himself," Mr. Blix gave the president considerable
assistance.
Norman Podhoretz notes in Commentary magazine that the chief of
staff for Colin Powell, when he was the secretary of state, said "the
consensus of the intelligence services 'was overwhelming' in the period
leading up to the invasion of Iraq that Saddam definitely had an arsenal of
chemical and biological weapons, and that he was also in all probability
well on the way to rebuilding the nuclear capability that the Israelis had
damaged by bombing the Osirak reactor in 1981." There was also a credible
belief that Iraq would be able to make a nuclear weapon in months to a year
after it acquires 'sufficient weapons-grade fissile material.'"
The list of Democrats who believed as the president did, and
fell all over themselves saying so, is a long list, and includes Bill
Clinton; Madeleine Albright, his secretary of state; Sens. Hillary Clinton,
John Kerry, Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd; and Rep.
Nancy Pelosi, the current leader of the Democrats in the House. If you don't
believe me, you can Google 'em.
The warning by William James has a particular resonance for our
time: "There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear
it."
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© 2005, Suzanne Fields, Creators Syndicate
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