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William Safire asks a good question

by Prometheus 6
November 19, 2003 - 6:49am.
on News
'Mistakes Were Made'
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

What if, by some miracle, everyone 'fessed up to mistakes made about the surprisingly easy overthrow of Saddam and its unexpectedly bloody aftermath, and mistakes now being made in building democracy?

Me first.

"On more than one occasion I read a William Safire op-ed looking for signs of honesty."Closest to my heart are the following gems:


(1) In London, the amalgam of isolationists, pacifists and anti-Blair leftists — once certain they would spoil a state visit by branding the U.S. president a monster militarist — would generously admit that they had been a noisy minority, and that their discourtesy triggered a reaffirmation by most Britons of the ties between two freedom-speaking nations that lead the world in defeating tyrants.

And Safire would admit he doesn't actually believe the script the U.S. press executes on behalf of the Bushistas, but that doesn't matter.

(3) Hawkish idealists like me who believed that Iraqi scientists, including "Dr. Germs," would come forward promptly to reveal where supplies of biological weapons were hidden were mistaken, at least for now.

And Safire would admit he included this facetiousness in hopes establishing a claim of even-handedness while never actually admitting a thing.

(6) Former spooks who convinced reporters that there was never any connection between Saddam's Iraqi regime and Osama bin Laden's terror network would forthrightly assert they were uninformed about the decade-long links that were revealed in the classified memo the Senate Intelligence Committee requested from Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith. (The secret memo detailing 50 instances has gone relatively uncovered by major media because it surfaced in the current Weekly Standard, but is the subject of an automatic leak investigation — yet another time-wasting mistake.)

And Safire would admit this is the classic VRWC manuever, attempting to get promote another "story" in the Weekly Standard (that right-wing cross between the National Enquirer and soft porn) to ational prominence. And in a twofer, he's helping helping along the regime's plan to deal with the Valerie Plame leak scandal

  1. Continue the normally scheduled leaks
  2. "Investigate" each of them until people get so tired of leak investigations they shut the very words out of their conciousness
  3. Punditize extensively on the uselessness of such investigations
(7) Kurdish leaders on Iraq's Governing Council who indulged past grievances by spurning Turkey's offer of 10,000 troops to help suppress the terror campaign would realize, too late, that they not only dismayed Americans who supported the Kurdish cause through thick and thin, but also missed their historic opportunity to reverse the tide of ill will that hurts the Kurds more than the Turks.

And Safire would admit that not one of the "dismayed Americans who supported the Kurdish cause through thick and thin" is in a position to help the Kurds in any way beyond the rhetorical.

And mind you, these are just the special dishonesties in the op-ed.

Of course, even if this great day of confession came to pass, Safire could in all honor remain silent and never make the admissions I'd like to see. Because these dishonesties weren't made by mistake.

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