The End of the Search

January 13, 2005

What can we say? The search for Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” has finally ended. None were found, of course. Even the hawks who insisted that Saddam Hussein had

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them aren’t demanding that we keep looking.

President Bush, not missing a beat, says the war on Iraq was still justified — even though the very justification he insistently gave for it has been exploded. He now talks as if he’d never believed it himself. He probably didn’t.

Bush and his people — Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, Tenet, et cetera — repeatedly said there was “no doubt” that the weapons existed, threatening us. Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Britain that an Iraqi attack might be just 45 minutes away. The war propaganda continued, monotonously, for months upon months.

It was all nonsense. But skeptics were scolded for not believing a president who “knows so much more than we do.” What he “knew” was that his CIA director called the evidence of those weapons a “slam dunk, Mr. President.” When people call you “Mr. President,” they’re going to tell you what you want to be told.

As the columnist Richard Cohen points out, CBS News just fired four of its top executives for getting one story wrong. Bush hasn’t fired any of the yes-men who were wrong about a far graver matter. But that’s what yes-men are supposed to do: go with the boss, right or wrong. Maybe especially when he’s wrong.

Back when Bill Clinton was still swearing on his Bibles that he’d done nothing untoward with Miss Lewinsky, he hauled out his whole cabinet to vouch for him. They dutifully did so. You might wonder how, say, his secretaries of state and agriculture could be so sure of his innocence in this matter, but again there was “no doubt.” And having staked their honor on Clinton’s honor, none of them resigned when he finally admitted his lie.

“I’m with you when you’re right, governor, but not when you’re wrong,” an aide is said to have told Louisiana’s legendary rascal Earl Long. Long quickly set him straight: “You stupid son of a bitch, I don’t need you when I’m right!”

[Breaker quote: But
no end to the war]

Bush doesn’t need his underlings when he’s right, as long as they serve him well when he’s wrong. And they’ve certainly done that. Colin Powell especially sacrificed much of the esteem he’d built over a long career when he parroted Bush’s baseless assertions. The phrase weapons of mass destruction was Bush’s Monica Lewinsky. For months you couldn’t turn the radio on without hearing it.

And once more, nobody is resigning because it turned out to be a deception. Nor is indignation sweeping the country. People who voted for Bush aren’t acting disillusioned. Hawkish pundits aren’t blushing. Even opponents of the war aren’t excited. A cynical resignation seems to be universal.

The only conclusion I can draw is that we all take presidential prevarication for granted now. It’s as if lying were part of the job description for the nation’s highest office.

So here’s the story: Republicans were indignant when Clinton lied about his Oval Office antics. It was matter for impeachment. The Starr Report supplied the details, right down to the cigar. Then Bush restored morality to the White House and lied us into a war, and we lived happily ever after.

Clinton lied so glibly, even when he didn’t have to, that everything he said was taken with a grain of salt. He was already “Slick Willie” before he was president. Eventually his own party had to deal with his notorious character: Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut gave a resounding speech on the Senate floor rebuking him, and Vice President Al Gore, running for president, played down his connection with his own boss.

Nothing like that is happening among Republicans today. The party is united behind a president who started a war under false pretenses, which then veered off into something else. Nobody feels impelled to express even mild reservations. So far there has been no Republican Joe Lieberman, trying to show that the party still has a conscience. Or at least a capacity for embarrassment.

Clinton told lots of little lies, and the habit caught up with him. Bush has told one deadly whopper, and he’s still getting away with it.

Joseph Sobran

Copyright © 2005 by the Griffin Internet Syndicate,
a division of Griffin Communications
This column may not be reprinted in print or
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