The Downing Street Memo

I'm not sure if this is the smoking gun that people think it is, but it brings up the absolutely cynical nature of the Democrats votes on the Iraq War.

It seems to me that anyone with half a brain could see that we were going to war with Iraq for reasons unrelated to terrorism or weapons of mass destruction or any of the other nonsense that the Bush administration was pushing at the time. The reasons offered were simply not good reasons. Had the Democrats had anything remotely resembling a backbone, they would have voted against the war.

As far as Bush is concerned, either he is so stupid as to believe his own lies and therefore shouldn't be President on intelligence grounds or he knowingly lied to the American people and shouldn't be President on moral, ethical, and legal grounds.

But this has all been obvious for a long time. So, what will a smoking gun do for us anyways?

My current thought on this whole situation is that it is a little bit like Enron. The Bush administration got away with it because of greed--not just their own, but the others who were supposed to act as checks on their power. If the Democrats hadn't been so craven, they would have risked their political careers to voice true opposition to the war in Iraq. If the media hadn't been so afraid of losing access, they would have reported more honestly. If the Supreme Court hadn't acted as the judicial arm of the Republican party, the man wouldn't be President in the first place.

It'll be interesting to watch when it all turns (if it turns). We'll be treated to the spectacle of all of the people who should have stopped this mad ride condemning the Bush administration as if Bush and his cronies were the only ones who did anything wrong. "We didn't know! We had no smoking gun! We could only speculate...."

And so it goes....