By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
The late, great Democratic Senator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, said it in 2003, and it bears repeating: “You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.”
There was a reason he said it. By 2003 the nation had been gripped by viral Neoconitis, our Dubby questing for the imaginary WMD like Jason after the golden fleece. Essentially, George and his hawkish handlers destabilized the most dangerous region on the planet for ego satisfaction and material gain and needed a good cover story. Unfortunately for George, he picked one that was sheer fantasy and took the whole world on a joyride that would turn into an epic failure, leaving a legacy of belligerence, torture and excess behind. But never was heard a discouraging word from our Dubby during those years when nationalism held us hostage.
I think George really thought he’d find enough remnants of those pesky weapons to justify every dark projection he held about the man who tried to kill his daddy. Once you make a decision about what something means — and in this case, put the full weight of the United States of America behind it — you’re stuck with it, and Dubby wasn’t a man to overthink things. Those were the days when flag pins were a requirement, when patriots would never question the motives of our military, when ‘freedom fries’ turned snack food into a political statement. Moynahan was, at that point, crying in the wilderness.
By the time it became apparent that Saddam’s weaponry was a figment of everyone’s imagination — even his own — Iraq had become a quagmire. Because it’s not in the Republican playbook to admit a mistake, it only took a nanosecond for the Dubby to shift his talking points so that occupying Iraq had always been about promoting democracy in the heathen outback. Once that historical rewrite was in place, Bush seemed to lose interest in the wars; perhaps financial issues were already nipping at his heels, complicating his reality, but that’s another post.