Grand Delusion (Richard Cohen)

[coda]

Grand Delusion
Two Leaders Who See What They Want to See
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, June 22, 2004; Page A17


I believe Cheney.

I believe the vice president when he claims that there was a link of some sort between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda -- and by intended implication with the events of Sept. 11, 2001. I believe, that is, that he is not necessarily lying, not making things up. I believe, in other words, that Cheney's -- and President Bush's -- insistence on this association is just more evidence that the two of them are blinkered by ideology and seeing precisely what they want.


<snip>


Were there contacts between Hussein's regime and al Qaeda? Maybe. It's not inconceivable that someone in the regime wanted to keep an ear open. Were those contacts nefarious? Who knows? Did they lead in some way to the events of Sept. 11? It appears not. No evidence suggests that's the case, and the lack of such evidence is not proof of anything. It is not up to the critics of the war to prove the negative any more than it is up to astronomers to prove that the dark side of the moon is not made of green cheese. A little intellectual discipline is in order here.


<snip>



Was Cheney lying or was he merely so driven by ideological or intellectual conviction that to him the occasional tree became a forest? It's hard to say. As my colleague Al Kamen reports, the vice president did indeed say it was "pretty well confirmed" that one of the Sept. 11 terrorists, Mohamed Atta, had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence official. Actually, that meeting has never been confirmed, and Cheney, for obvious reasons, has recently unconfirmed his statement, insisting he was never so definitive. Kamen confirmed he was.


<snip>


But just as Cheney and Bush missed the forest for the trees, so do those who defend them and insist that the Sept. 11 commission overstated the case by reporting (in a draft) that "no collaborative relationship" existed between Iraq and al Qaeda. The fact remains that Hussein's fingerprints are not on the attacks of Sept. 11 and that the United States went to war for stated reasons that have simply evaporated -- weapons of mass destruction and that vaporous link between two very bad men. This brings me not to a joke but to the wisdom of the late Don Quixote, who says something to remember when this or that intelligence report is trumpeted by Cheney or Bush in justification of an unjustified war.


"Facts are the enemy of truth."




http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59146-2004Jun21.html

[izzie]

1. Well tipping at windmills worked. Or for some time.

I see them trying to keep it up and that is fine with me. The people who wish to believe will and the ones on the fringe will cut it off.

[Jack Rabbit]

2. Mr. Cohen is entirely too charitable to Bush and Cheney

They and other members of the junta and their allies told lies that they had to know were lies. There were simply too many facts available to the public that contradicted their case for war against Saddam to justify the kind of certainty they assumed; moreover, if the facts spoke for a war against Saddam, there would have been no need for an Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon. The mission and behavior of the OSP is not the mark of people confident in their assertions; it is the hallmark of liars.

Nevertheless, even assuming Mr. Cohen's too charitable interpretation of event has any merit, it is a case to remove the junta at the earliest opportunity. In my view, they are willful liars and war criminals of the same quality as Saddam himself; in Mr. Cohen's view, they are self-deluded and incapable of sober judgment. In either view, they are dangerous and should not be trusted with America's safety. November 2 can't come soon enough.