The vice-president, Dick Cheney, continues to assert that weapons will be found. This is not a sound mental attitude and is evidence of one of two kinds of flaws for which higher office should be denied him. If he is just being a "coach" and urging his small group of personal followers to continue to believe in their collective illusion, then we need keep him from being a heartbeat away from the presidency by any means possible. The last thing any Nation or People need is a "coach" who urges us to blindly follow a known illusion. If, on the other hand, he really believes what he said, then his soundness of mind is drawn into question, for here is someone who believes his own half truths over ever mounting evidence to the contrary.
In either case, Cheney is out, and if Bush keeps him as running mate, then here is another reason to deny the Republicans a second term. That they would place such a mind so near to power is about as irresponsible as a political Party can get.
The administration in the main has now made their fall back position "well, Saddam Hussein is a nasty man, and we should be glad we got rid of him, whatever the reason." This is one of those ideas that is obvious true, but which, as we say in logic courses, begs the question - it doesn't really answer the question that needs to be asked.
The real question can be understood this way. Certain individuals urged our Nation to War, which is probably one of the most dangerous actions a People can be encourage to take. The question is not whether any excuse can later be found to justify this, but whether the people who urged this course of action can be seen in retrospect to have been sound and wise in their judgments. That is the test, and there is no other.
This is more than Monday morning quarter backing, by the way. This is no game being played. Our sons and daughters are dying over there, and the whole world's political balance has been altered. There is no business more serious on such a scale, and the American People have a duty to look squarely at these people (Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Pearl and so forth) and ask ourselves whether they knew what they were doing.
Clearly they did not. They took weak intelligence and spun it into a fabric of fantasy, essentially betting (read their promises - "we will find weapons") they could prove their case once we had invaded. They were wrong, and it is the kind of wrong that leads to only one conclusion: They are neither intelligent or wise enough to wield the kind of power that goes with America's place in the world.
What is worse, is that if we give them a second term, we clearly now will have no one but ourselves to blame for the consequences. The first time this group were unknowns and had a kind of appeal. Now we have seen them in action, and nothing they have done has been anywhere near the standard to which we are obligated to hold them.
