Posted on April 12, 2007
At a time when political pundits mull over the prospect of a female or a black president amidst what will surely be the biggest spending escapade of an election ever witnessed in our nation’s democratic history. At a time when Democrats and Republicans alike wring their hands in anxious anticipation over the outcome of a war spending bill that could possibly set timetables on President Bush’s Iraq strategy, and hence usher in an era of co-determinative foreign policy between the legislative and executive branches. Vice President Cheney appeared in a broadcast of everyone’s favorite pill-popping political talk show host, Rush Limbaugh, to again re-affirm the Bush administration’s candid statement that there was beyond a shadow of a doubt an undeniable connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq before the U.S. invasion.
Unfortunately for the vice president, the Pentagon decided to release on the same day a recently declassified report which confirmed that the connections between al-Qaeda and Iraq before the invasion were few and limited if they even existed at all. Oddly enough, in the days since this blatant contradiction surfaced amongst the highest of government authorities, the majority of news coverage has still centered on — yes, you guessed it — the future of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby and the still-lingering questions of who helped her inject drugs into her buttocks and when (if ever) an accurate autopsy will be performed on the decaying remnants of the former playmate.
Though I jest at the lack of scruples amongst our national media outlets — an observation biased no small amount by the involuntary switch from Atlanta Braves baseball coverage to the DNA discovery on TBS — the problem presented by this occurrence is severe. In a conflict in which more than 3,000 U.S. servicemen and women have sacrificed their lives, the American public and the families of our nation’s soldiers deserve the utmost sincerity about the reasons we broadened our conflict to include an Iraqi invasion.
According to the Washington Post, the CIA reported that the links between al-Qaeda and Iraq were “necessarily speculative” and that Iraqi training in the field of weapons of mass destruction was equally unsubstantiated. The report from the Pentagon goes on to say that the pre-war intelligence given as a reason for invading Iraq must have come from other sources. Are we truly to believe that if our military presence in Iraq was absolutely necessary — which it should be if we are to ever use our armed forces anywhere in the world — the intelligence suggesting such a necessity was gathered by an entity more reliable than our own foreign intelligence service?
The fact of the matter is that in the midst of a heated showdown on Capitol Hill, our vice president is standing not for truth or moral integrity, but for a shaky reasoning: to continue the flow of unabated power to an executive which is out of touch with the American public. We have a new secretary of defense, a new ground commander, and an altered strategy for Iraq and I’ll be the first to admit that our troops deserve the support and diligence necessary to carry out the orders of commander in chief. But in an all-too-familiar trend the Administration asks for blind trust instead of giving an honest account of the status quo. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
Patrick Callahan is a junior political science major.
