Q: What did Senators Daniel Akaka, Jeff Bingaman, Barbara Boxer, Robert Byrd, Lincoln Chaffee, Kent Conrad, Jon Corzine, Mark Dayton, Dick Durbin, Russ Feingold, Bob Graham, Daniel Inouye, Jim Jeffords, Ted Kennedy, Patrick Leahy, Carl Levin, Barbara Mikulski, Patty Murray, Jack Reed, Paul Sarbanes, Debbie Stabenow, Paul Wellstone and Ron Wyden know and when did they know it?
A: They knew in 2002 that the president of the United States was, at best, a disingenuous messenger. They knew Saddam was contained. They knew U.N. inspectors were searching for nasty bugs and chemical monstrosities and coming up empty. They knew heebie-jeebie tales of airborne drones and aluminum tubes and mushroom clouds were literally unbelievable.
They knew fanciful justifications for preventive and preemptive wars were geopolitically suicidal, unAmerican and just plain immoral. They knew that American troops thrust into the Middle East powder keg were a smoldering fuse. And they knew that no matter how politically gratifying an "Aye" vote might be, their war-authorization duty was to block the war's authorization.
Many of their Senate colleagues who failed in that duty now plead ignorance and manipulation; an otherworldly defense, since others served the same cooked intelligence failed to be ignorantly manipulated.
Hence the erstwhile prowar crowd -- some of whom now seek a promotion -- were carrier victims of either breathtaking gullibility or simplistic brainwashing or homicidal opportunism, "pure and simple," to quote the transparent manipulator. And everyone knows it -- a hyperbolic phrase I generally avoid, except in this case everyone really does know it.
But honest admissions aren't deployed by the aspiring higher-office bunch. Instead, they treat us to brazen insults to our own intelligence, which somehow, and somewhat uniquely, I guess, resists manipulation.
Most commonly we're treated to, "If I knew then what I know now, I would not have voted 'Aye,'" which is sold as heroic humility, but is in reality, as already suggested, little more than an admission of staggering malfeasance, since others less gullible or opportunistic or more immune to manipulation did know then what they know now, and appropriately voted "Nay."
Their shaky mea culpa, of course, is a product of reversed winds of war; but its origin was a prophylactic against the dreaded charge of Democratic weakness on national security matters. They wanted the electorate to know they're prepared to be every bit as ghoulish and irresponsible as Republicans in unleashing deadly firepower, no matter how flimsy the evidential excuse.
But one candidate has taken an even more insulting approach in deflecting the "soft on national security" assault.
"If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from," she offered a New Hampshire crowd Saturday -- without adding, "thankfully."
"She has argued to associates in private discussions that Mr. Gore and Mr. Kerry lost, in part, because they could not convince enough Americans that they were resolute on national security," explained campaign associates. Her "image as a strong leader, in turn, is critical to her hopes of becoming the nationâs first female president.... Apologizing might hurt that image," one adviser further explained.
Yet the lingering question of an apology, whether forthcoming in time or not, wildly misses the relevant point (although an honest apology, "I knew my vote was depraved, but I wanted to cover my butt," would come closer). Such an apology is not the objective. It's too late -- thousands of deaths and a half-trillion dollars too late -- for that.
The objective, rather, is a nominee who lacks a record of grotesque gullibility, easy manipulation, or lethal opportunism. Is that too much to ask of someone asking to be commander in chief?