The White House and it's dogs have been in full attack mode for a couple days now, today releasing Clarke's resignation letter, which contained praise for the president and expressed that it had been an honor to serve him, as evidence that they guy is a flip-flopper.
Of course, they didn't mention that nobody writes scathing, angry resignation letters to the president. They leave quietly, they always say nice things. If he had written, "I'm out of here, you psychotic mutherfuckers!" would they hold that up as evidence of his consistency of opinion? No, it doesn't matter what anyone says, they'll spin it the way they want.
I obviously don't know, but there is mounting evidence that Clarke is telling the truth. Fred Kaplan at Slate makes a very convincing case. But even from my mostly uninformed position, I have to ask, why would he lie? How could he think he'd get away with it?
If charges this serious were completely without merit, as the administration is claiming, wouldn't it be easy to prove it? People like Clarke and Paul O'Neill back up what they say with documents, eye-witnesses, you know.. evidence. The White House rebuts by saying, "we think he's a jerk and he's mad because he lost his job."
Uhh.. okay, but what about those charges? Does being mad make him a liar? Can't he be mad about losing his job (I'm not saying he is) and still be telling the truth? Seriously, what about those charges?
Of course, one could ask the same questions about the president and his people. Why would they lie? Well, now they're lying to protect their asses, because they fucked up big. They may not have been really lying before, many of them probably really wanted to believe what they were saying was true, and their extreme ideology and unwillingness to reconsider their positions based on new facts (or old facts) blinded them to the truth, a trait very nearly as bad, perhaps in some ways worse, than out-and-out lying.
A partial list, thus far, of people the administration says have an axe to grind, and are lying:
- Richard Clarke - 30 year terrorism expert
- Paul O'Neill - former Treasury Secretary
- David Kay - former top U.N. weapons inspector
- Hans Blix - totally important guy
- the CIA
- Joe Wilson - former ambassador
And those are just people who used to be on their side (or were on nobody's side).
