Grand Old Prevarication: Richard Cohen

[jbfam4]

Grand Old Prevarication

By Richard Cohen
Thursday, September 2, 2004; Page A23

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54698-2004Sep1.html

NEW YORK -- On the very day that George Bush changed his mind and said that the war on terrorism was in fact winnable, the following things happened: Suicide bombers killed 16 people in Israel; 12 Nepalese service workers (dishwashers, etc.) were massacred in Iraq; five Afghans were accidentally killed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan; nine people were killed by a suicide bomber at a Moscow subway station, and five more American servicemen were reported dead in Iraq. For worldwide terrorism, it was not a bad day.

Events such as these -- in other words, the truth -- are not permitted to impose themselves on a national political convention, particularly one specifically designed to turn a funeral into a wedding. Instead we get the march of the bromides (Is this a great country, or what?), the standard recitation of distortions (Rudy Giuliani's speech, which was neither fair to John Kerry nor accurate about him) and rhetorical affidavits from the president's own family attesting to his character, his cuteness and the fact that he has, despite all evidence to the contrary, an interior life. Laura Bush says her husband worried about whether to go to war.

All of this is more or less standard stuff, a convention of any organization being a grand opportunity to lie. This is particularly true of our two great political parties, which have not, when you come to think of it, survived for so long by leveling with the American people. But the point does come -- or at least it ought to -- when the gag reflex kicks in. I reached that point when, in speech after speech, the war in Iraq was described as a defensive one in which America had no choice. This total and purposeful misreading of history came out of the mouth of almost every speaker, including the sainted John McCain.

Bush himself sets the party line. No fact changes his conviction that the war in Iraq is justified. It does not matter to him that the stated reasons for it -- those weapons of mass destruction -- did not exist. Without missing a beat, he simply changed his war aims. It is now, in retrospect, the removal of Saddam Hussein. And if you challenge him on that, he comes back with a so's-your-mother response that goes like this: Are you sorry Hussein's gone?