Some Thoughts On Credibility

There was a time when David Kay was the Great White Hope of the far
right. His name was once bandied about by White House press
secretaries, cabinet members, and drug-addled talk show hosts. We were
told over and over "David Kay is still looking for WMD in Iraq, and
he's already found so much. You'll all be very sorry that you made this
an issue."
As most of you probably know, David Kay has since renounced Bush's war.
Yesterday he spoke at Harvard, and I don't think he'll be cited by Rumsfeld anytime soon:

The former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq warned on
Monday that the United States is in "grave danger" of destroying its
credibility at home and abroad if it does not own up to its mistakes in
Iraq. "The cost of our mistakes ... with regard to the explanation of
why we went to war in Iraq are far greater than Iraq itself," David Kay
said in a speech at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of
Government. "We are in grave danger of having destroyed our credibility
internationally and domestically with regard to warning about future
events," he said. "The answer is to admit you were wrong, and
what I find most disturbing around Washington ... is the belief ... you
can never admit you're wrong."

Contrary to what you'll hear from the White House, the WMD hunt is over. It has been abandoned by the chief weapons inspector. And to make matters worse, he is pouring salt in their wounds at the worst possible time:

He cautioned the intelligence community against jumping to
premature conclusions, as it did in Iraq. "One of the most dangerous
things abroad in the world of intelligence today actually came out of
9/11 ... the insistence of 'Why didn't you connect the dots?' The dots
were all there," he said. "When we finally do the sums on Iraq, what
will turn out is that we simply didn't know what was going on, but we
connected the dots -- the dots from 1991 behavior were connected with
2000 behavior and 2003 behavior, and it became an explanation and a
picture of Iraq that simply didn't exist," Kay said.

Coming on the heels of Dick Clarke's book/60 Minutes appearance is (or
at least should be) absolutely devastating. Yet once again, Bush and
his cronies appear unable to accept reality. They casually brush off
Senior Terrorism Advisor Richard Clarke, Chief Weapons Inpector David
Kay, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, Ambassador Joe Wilson, etc. as
being nothing more than disgruntled former employees. It seems as
though in order to believe the White House, you have to assume that all
of these people who've been public servants for decades
are all simply liars. The White House expects America to accept that
these people have put years of service to the country and their
reputations on the line just to wrong Bush.
In today's Washington Post, Richard Cohen sums it up rather well:

Pity poor George Bush. For some reason, he has been beset
by delusional aides who, once they leave the White House, write books
containing lies and exaggerations and -- this is the lowest blow of all
-- do not take into account the president's genius and all-around
wisdom. The latest White House aide to betray the president is Richard
Clarke, who was in charge of counterterrorism before and after the
attacks of Sept. 11. He says Bush "failed to act prior to September 11
on the threat from al Qaeda." As with former Treasury secretary Paul
O'Neill, another fool who had somehow risen to become chairman of
Alcoa, Clarke's account of his more than two years in the Bush White
House was immediately denounced by a host of administration aides, some
of whom -- and this is just the sheerest of coincidences -- had once
assured us that Iraq was armed to the teeth with nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons. Among them, of course, was Condoleezza Rice, who on
Monday insisted in a Post op-ed column that Bush not only did
everything just right, but so, really, did Bill Clinton. Both
administrations "worked hard," she wrote.
This is not what Clarke says in his new book and in interviews
conducted in tandem with its publication. On the contrary, he says the
Bush administration not only belittled the terrorist threat -- China
and missile defense were its initial preoccupations -- but it took its
own sweet time coming to grips with al Qaeda. From the start, he says,
certain White House aides were fixated on Iraq -- and after Sept. 11,
apparently so was Bush. He said he encountered the president the next
night in the Situation Room. "See if Saddam did it," the president
ordered. "But Mr. President, al Qaeda did this," Clarke says he
replied. The president persevered: "I know, I know, but . . . see if
Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred."
[...]
The White House has opened its guns on Clarke. He is being contradicted
and soon, as with poor O'Neill, his sanity and probity will be
questioned. It's getting to be downright amazing how former White House
aides tell the same tale -- a case, the White House wants us to
believe, of hysteria or unaccountable betrayal. I'd like to believe my
president, but as Clarke quotes him in a different context, "I'm
looking for any shred." As with Saddam Hussein, it doesn't exist.

Posted by flow Frazao on March 23, 2004 at 09:09 AM | Permalink