War Is Heck
One sees buttons that read, "At least Clinton's lies didn't kill anyone." Harsh words. Yet the Iraq war is the result of deceptions in which the president and his administration have indulged and indeed continue to indulge. Planned before the attack on the World Trade Center, it is not part of the so-called war on terror. Iraq was not involved in the attack and was not seriously linked with al-Qaida. There were no weapons of mass destruction. There is little hope of a peaceful and democratic Iraq. The Iraqis hate us (as the Gallup Polls there indicate). There will not be a shift of the balance of power in the Middle East. The ouster of Saddam Hussein might cost eventually thousands of American and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives.
Some defenders of the president argue that he did not deliberately deceive the American people. Yet he and the vice president and the neo-con intellectuals continue to repeat the falsehoods, modifying them ever so slightly so they will enjoy some superficial plausibility: We may still find the weapons of mass destruction, there were some "connections" between Iraq and al-Qaida.
If you tell a big enough lie and tell it often enough, some people will believe you. Never admit your mistakes, never assume responsibility for the consequences of these mistakes. Keep repeating the same old deceptions -- often with a show of anger -- and enough people will believe you to re-elect you. The war proves that you are a strong leader, a man who can make the tough decisions, a man not greatly concerned about "sensitivity."
If ever there were high crimes and misdemeanors, the lies about the war in Iraq fit that category. We are an odd people. We impeach a president because he lied about his private sex life, which killed no one and harmed no one beyond his family. Yet we support and may well re-elect a ''strong'' president whose lies are responsible for so many flag-draped caskets, so many poignant obituaries, and so much grief.
-- Andrew Greeley
