As I was perusing over at Billmon, I couldn't help meditating on this George W. Bush quote.
"I'm confident that our search will yield that which I strongly believe, that Saddam had a weapons program."
What is the basis of this confidence? Is it based on facts at all? If he was so confident before the war, what were the facts then that formed and sustained it? Hasn't it shaken his confidence at all that he is in a mad scramble to find such evidence now? After the fact? So much so that they are putting a tight lid on any information until such time a solid case can actually be made?
In other words, there never was a case. A solid one. As we've been saying all along, many of us here in the blogosphere, the case was a fraud. A bait and switch. The mainstream media has finally latched on to this, even though all the evidence was there to figure this out before the war. It's nice to have the mainstream media actually noticing the obvious again, but what took them so long? What was the nature of the mass denial and repression that took place before the war? The trauma of 9/11? Anthrax? The continuing scares related to the constant and highly publicized color-code terrorist watch system?
I still want to know what the basis of President Bush's faith, and confidence, was and is. Before the war and now. It doesn't make sense. Is this a religious kind of faith, which needs no facts and only revelation? How can President Bush possibly be so assured? So confident? The guy was the first to tell you a few years back he was no foreign policy guru, and in fact was quite ignorant about the in's and out's of the world, and now he's got crystal vision on events and conspiracies for which he has no evidence?
He's lying. Or he's a self-deceiver. Neither is honest, or prudent in a president and leader of a chaotic and dynamic nation and world. It's time the administration comes clean, and at least acknowledges some doubts. Self-doubts. Because there is no reason for absolute confidence. None. No certainty whatsoever. Otherwise, there would be no mad scramble now to find the evidence. And no effort to keep everything under wraps, in order to temper criticism, in the meantime.
The critical moments are ahead of us. Will our leadership come clean, and admit the obvious? Or will this farce continue, steadily eroding our good name and real faith in the defense of deception?
