MAUREEN DOWD\’S IGNORANT SNARK-FEST

Here is as much of New York Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd\’s ignorant snark-fest  about the war in Iraq as I can stand to put up (you can read the rest, if you care to, by clicking here):

It isn\’t about what we know now.

It\’s about what we knew then.

It is simply not true, as Republican presidential aspirant Scott Walker said on Friday, that “any president would have likely taken the same action Bush did with the information he had.”

That\’s not giving enough credit to W. and his frothing band of Reservoir Dogs.

It took a Herculean effort of imagination, manipulation and deception to concoct “the information” that propelled the invasion, occupation and destruction of a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

When the Republican House majority leader at the time, Dick Armey, balked at invading Iraq unprovoked, because Saddam was a clownish tyrant but not a nuclear menace to America, Dick Cheney summoned Armey to his Capitol hideaway and coerced him with brazen fabrications.

In just that beginning, there is enough material for to write about for me to charlie-horse every typing finger.

Let\’s start with the claim that “it is simply not true” that a different President would have taken different action than “W, and his frothing band of Reservoir Dogs”.

Since the key reason Mr. Bush took us to war was that our CIA, with other intelligence agencies around the world, had told us saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), let\’s see how the Democrats he ran against – and the current preseumptive presidential nominee felt about this situation:

“We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.”
Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002.

“Iraq\’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.”
Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002.

“I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force – if necessary – to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.”
Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002.

“We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction. “[W]ithout question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime … He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. And now he has continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction … So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real …
Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003.

“In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.”
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002

Do those look like the words of people who, if President, would not have considered military action against saddam hussein?

Then we have the blow-off of saddam as a “clownish tyrant”. 

Well, here\’s how “clownish” that tyrant was – via a January 26, 2003 article in Ms. Dowd\’s own venue, The New York Times:

DOING the arithmetic is an imprecise venture. The largest number of deaths attributable to Mr. Hussein\’s regime resulted from the war between Iraq and Iran between 1980 and 1988, which was launched by Mr. Hussein. Iraq says its own toll was 500,000, and Iran\’s reckoning ranges upward of 300,000. Then there are the casualties in the wake of Iraq\’s 1990 occupation of Kuwait. Iraq\’s official toll from American bombing in that war is 100,000 — surely a gross exaggeration — but nobody contests that thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians were killed in the American campaign to oust Mr. Hussein\’s forces from Kuwait. In addition, 1,000 Kuwaitis died during the fighting and occupation in their country.

Casualties from Iraq\’s gulag are harder to estimate. Accounts collected by Western human rights groups from Iraqi emigres and defectors have suggested that the number of those who have \’\’disappeared\’\’ into the hands of the secret police, never to be heard from again, could be 200,000. As long as Mr. Hussein remains in power, figures like these will be uncheckable, but the huge toll is palpable nonetheless.

Just as in Stalin\’s Russia, the machinery of death is mostly invisible, except for the effects it works on those brushed by it — in the loss of relatives and friends, and in the universal terror that others have of falling into the abyss. If anybody wants to know what terror looks like, its face is visible every day on every street of Iraq

Does that look like the actions of a “clownish dictator” to you?  Or like the actions of a demented mass-murderer?  Maureen Dowd has given us her opinion; what\’s yours?

I don\’t know what\’s wrong with Ms. Dowd.  I don\’t know what – other than a pathological hatred which supersedes facts – could possibly cause her to write this latest column.  But if this latest column is typical of what she now provides New York Times readers, maybe it\’s time to think about packing it in.