This is the statement that jumped out at me from the president’s press conference this morning. (And, for what it’s worth, I was surprised and impressed that he held one just now.)
We gathered a lot of intelligence. That intelligence was good, sound intelligence on which I made a decision.
And in order to, you know, placate the critics and the cynics about intention of the United States we need to produce evidence. And I fully understand it, and I’m confident that our search will yield that which I strongly believe: that Saddam had a weapons program.
I want to remind you, he actually used his weapons program on his own people at one point in time, which was pretty tangible evidence.
You can see where this is going, can’t you? This is really great-moments-in-goal-post-moving.
Saddam had a weapons program.
And how can you believe he didn’t have a weapons program, when he actually used the weapons from his weapons programs, albeit fifteen years ago.
This isn’t just a slip of the tongue or a Bushism. This is where we’re going. As the White House now wants to define it, the question is whether Iraq ever had a weapons program. Or, to put it more precisely, whereas some people are foolish enough to believe that the standard is whether Saddam actually still had the weapons programs we know he once had, the real standard is whether Saddam actually once had the weapons programs we know he once had.
This is too silly to even talk about. Everybody knows that’s not what we’re talking about.
