Friday, March 24, 2006

WMDs? Yeah, whatever.


It's amusing (well, OK, depressing and amusing) to watch the spin these days drifting up from the town square in Wankerville, proclaiming that WMDs were not a big deal in the decision to invade Iraq, and that WMDs don't really matter, and that that wasn't the real reason for invasion in the first place and ... yadda yadda yadda.

Of course, former White House Press Reptile Ari Fleischer would beg to differ (emphasis added):

Q Well, we went to war, didn't we, to find these -- because we said that these weapons were a direct and imminent threat to the United States? Isn't that true?

MR. FLEISCHER: Absolutely. One of the reasons that we went to war was because of their possession of weapons of mass destruction. And nothing has changed on that front at all. We said what we said because we meant it. We had the intelligence to report it. Secretary Powell said it. And I may point out to you, as you may know, there is a news conference at Department of Defense today at 2:00 p.m. to discuss one element in this.

Of course, the eagle-eyed reader will notice how Fleischer left himself a weaselly out by claiming that WMDs were only one of the reasons for the invasion, but he wasn't so careful here, was he?

Q Ari, part of the reason for the war was WMD. Now, well into the war, WMD has not been found. The American public is going to the television every morning, listening to the radio every morning, trying to find out if, indeed, WMD was found. Does the administration feel there's some awkwardness right now with these statements of they're professionals at hiding, and we know it's there? I mean, is there some sort of awkwardness about the fact that this has not been found as of yet?

MR. FLEISCHER: No. We know Saddam Hussein is there, but we haven't found him yet, either. The fact of the matter is we are still in a war, and not everything about the war is yet known. But make no mistake -- as I said earlier -- we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about. And we have high confidence it will be found.

So ... can we drop this new talking point? It just makes you wankers look like fools. Even more than usual, if that's possible.

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