I'm loving this guy!
TP.c: What prompted you and your colleagues to write this particular letter, which not only calls on the president to seek the vice-president's resignation, but also the return of U.N. inspectors to Iraq and an independent investigation of this matter?
McGovern: Well, it's a very simple word, outrage. What we're seeing going on here is beyond the pale.
I did a lot of philosophy studying when I was in college and good old St. Thomas, eight centuries ago, talked about the virtue of anger, saying that if there is just cause to be angry and you are not angry, then you're sinning. I just felt -- and I think my colleagues did -- that we ought to quit sinning, we ought to start speaking out and being angry, because that's the appropriate reaction.
We had been issuing these statements. Now, four of them have taken the form of a memorandum to the president. Actually, we set it up exactly as we used to in the old days: memorandum for; subject; from; and all of this business. We hadn't had a statement since May 1, and so much had happened over the past week, with the revelations that Ambassador Joe Wilson had started with, we decided that it would be irresponsible on our part not to take a look at sifting through all this information and try and make some sense out of it for those Americans who, frankly, have not had the experience that we have had at senior policy and intelligence levels, and try to just give them our read on it, tell them what's going on.
As we looked at this evidence and the bizarre to-ing and fro-ing where administration people are alternately covering up for one another and then sliding daggers into one anothers' back, it seemed to me that the American people really did need some help here. So we talked it over and we sat down and composed this thing over the weekend. On Monday morning, we sent it out.
http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8367
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