Fooled

Four years ago, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen (in)famously wrote:

This is where Colin Powell brought us all yesterday.

The evidence he presented to the United Nations -- some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail -- had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool -- or possibly a Frenchman -- could conclude otherwise.

...

Here was a reasonable man making a reasonable case.

...

But the case Powell laid out regarding chemical and biological weapons was so strong -- so convincing -- it hardly mattered that nukes may be years away, and thank God for that. In effect, he was telling the French and the Russians what could happen -- what would happen -- if the United Nations did not do what it said it would and hold Saddam Hussein accountable for, in effect, being Saddam Hussein.

The French, though, are so far deaf to such logic. Their foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, said that the consequences of war are dire and unpredictable. He is right about that. But the consequences of doing nothing -- and mere containment of Iraq amounts to nothing -- are also dire and somewhat predictable.

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If anyone had any doubt, Powell proved that it has defied international law -- not to mention international norms concerning human rights -- and virtually dared the United Nations to put up or shut up. There is no other hand. There is no choice.

And with that, Richard Cohen put his shoulder to the wheel, lining up with countless other Wise Men of Washington to shove us all down the path to war.

Today, he wrote this:

Gore would not have taken the United States to war in Iraq. He would have finished the job in Afghanistan -- it was al-Qaeda and its Taliban enablers who were responsible for the attacks on us on Sept. 11, 2001, not Saddam Hussein, no matter how vile he might have been.

Oh.

Richard Cohen isn't French, so... as Obi-Wan Kenobi once said, "Who's more foolish -- the fool, or the fool who follows him?"

Tom Hilton has more.



Behold my White Beard of Wisdom.

Stop The War.