In case you hadn't noticed, there's a lot of noise on the wire lately about why the US, with a little help from our friends, invaded Iraq. Between the findings of no WMDs and the more recent Downing Street controversy, it looks like the answer is not easy to pin down.
I don't want to get into that. Like a Buddha, the question has infinite incarnations.
What bothers me is if the President lied to drive the decision process for war. Or, if the president presented the situation from a skewed perspective, if the decision for war was made not because of what we knew going in but instead because of a desired outcome, namely an outcome that would be to our advantage, whatever that advantage might be.
There's a new noise on the wire today, one that resembles the noises that began as a murmur early in the last President's second term -Bill Clinton, remember him?- and grew into a vindictive firestorm of impeachment. The allegations that our current President lied about the reasons for the US to go to war has got people talking about impeachment again.
With the President's party as a majority in both the House and Senate, actual impeachment proceedings are a remote possibility. Yet that does not absolve the question. Lying about your sex life is inappropriate for the President -lying about anything is inappropriate for the leader of our country.
If a lie brought the US in to the present bloody quagmire, that seems a far more impeachable offense than any indiscretion at the White House, one whose cost in lives and suffering is a crime of the highest order.
No comments:
Post a Comment