It's always easy to tell when some grandiose scheme or another has blown up in the faces of the right wingers who promoted it in the first place. They not only disown said scheme; they start blaming it on Democrats.

Hours after retired chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay came out and said that he no longer believed that Iraq had stockpiles of hidden weapons of mass destruction, a curious thing happened.

On Usenet, we have a group of refugees from Newsmax and the GOP who live for nothing but to spin everything they can Putsch's way. One of my readers, Mad Cat, ingeniously named this group "The Chimp Pimps," and I do wish he would stop coming up with lines like that when I'm sipping my morning coffee. This keyboard is shot.

In any event, the Chimp Pimps decided that the reason Putsch thought there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was because Bill Clinton had told him there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and let's face it: if an honest, open, friendly, neo-fascist right winger can't trust Bill Clinton, why, then, who can he trust?

Now mind you, these are the very same people who have spent the 28 months since 9/11 parrying claims that the Putsch administration got warnings about such an attack by saying that the reason they didn't take the briefings on Osama bin Laden seriously was because anyone who worked for a man who would lie about getting a blow job was just as likely to lie about peril to America, and so they didn't pay any attention to the warnings from the outgoing Administration.

Well, that's certainly reasonable.

The reason we attacked Iraq, invaded Iraq, and are occupying Iraq is because Clinton thought there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that it would be nice if we could get Saddam out of office.

The thing is, nearly everyone believed both Administrations and their claims about weapons of mass destruction. We believed it because we figured that on something this important, our leaders would take the time to make sure they knew what the hell they were talking about.

Of course, to that end, Clinton somehow failed to launch a war that so far has cost over 15,000 lives, including 500 American troops, at a cost of some 120 billion dollars. We may never know for sure whether Clinton believed his own claims that Saddam was a threat because he had WMDs, but we do know that he didn't launch a foolish and ill-advised war, alienating most of the world and sticking the US in a horrendous quagmire.

Clinton told us Saddam had WMDs, and he looks a bit foolish as a result.

Putsch told us Saddam had WMDs, and we've lost thousands of lives and billions of dollars, and have our own personal rebellious colony as a result.

So it's only fair that Clinton take more blame, just to kinda even things out. The Chimp Pimps want us to know it's not fair that Clinton should be a reasonable man who was mistaken, while Putsch was a homicidal maniac who shot from the hip.

What's more, Iraq is all the fault of the Democrats because they voted to authorize the war in Iraq. Especially that MIZZUS Clinton. She voted for the war! Boo! Hiss! Those mean old Democrats made that nice Mr. Bush screw up!

There have been a few folks on the left who claim that the Democrats supported the authorization for Iraq on the cynical premise that it would turn into a major clusterfuck and do Putsch political damage. Certainly, it took no great talent as an oracle to realize that while a war in Iraq would be very quick and decisive (and few people at the time seemed to notice this contradicted the caws about Saddam's massive military might), the peace would be long, bloody, and unproductive.

But nobody expected that no WMDs would be found. Nobody thought the troops would do such a comprehensive job of alienating the Iraqis who would have supported them through stupid, clumsy and often vicious occupation tactics. Nobody thought Saddam would eventually be found, already a captive in a hole in the ground, a prisoner with no power whatsoever.

Certainly, the Senate couldn't have known this when they voted Putsch a too-open-ended hand in dealing with Saddam.

The vote had a few conditions. First, it had to have approval from the UN. Putsch, days after swearing he would force a vote at the Security Council to show that France and Germany stood alone against the proposed war, had to back down when it became clear that this wasn't the case. This gave Congress, that stand of noble and brave Americans, a chance to look off in all different directions while whistling tunelessly. It also said that force should be the last resort if all other options failed. Putsch spent at least ten minutes exploring those other options.

Finally, it was the Democrats' fault Just Because. For ten months, Usenet, on a near-weekly basis, would erupt with a storm of messages with the headers, "WMDs FOUND!!!!!!!!!!" This was applied to rusted out artillery shells, anything resembling a powder, and even equipment to make hydrogen. There was an inverse correlation between the strength of the claim and the number of exclamation points following the claim, with the result that Usenet had enough exclamation points scattered around to cover a million fistfights between Batman and the Riddler. The Chimp Pimps who posted such messages, week after week, month after month, bitterly blamed liberals and Democrats for this since, after all, if we weren't standing around looking unconvinced, they wouldn't have had to post such messages!

At this point, there's about as much chance that anyone will find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as there is that OJ will find Nicole's real killer.

And finally, the chorus of claims that WMDs have been/will be/should be found in Iraq have dwindled down to the isolated rants from the real nutcases on Usenet, the ones who believe that the moon landing was faked, Hillary killed Vince Foster, and George W. is honest and competent.

Kay doubts there were any such weapons in Iraq after 1992. Powell, still cute in his pink hotpants, admits that the case for WMDs looks a little uncertain now. A pity he didn't think to mention that during his little session in front of the UN last February when he had "twenty-four eight by ten glossies with circles and arrows and text on the back explaining what each one was."

Just think: a few years ago, he was seen as being likely to be America's first black President. Now people will remember him for pointing to a building that had a generator and no running water and claiming, with his bare face hanging right out, that it was a sophisticated chemical weapons lab.

But it's the Democrats' fault. They made the Republicans do it.

Next week: How tax cuts are a failed liberal policy. (CBO says we can expect 2.4 trillion in new debt over the next decade, so we may not have to wait a week to start hearing that one!)

ERRATA: In my previous essay, "Newspeak", I very stupidly refused to listen to my inner instincts, and attributed the term "newspeak" to Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World", instead of George Orwell's "1984." I even had it written correctly the first time, referring to 1984 as "dated only by its title" and then I wienied out.

What's really embarrassing is that I must have read both books a half dozen times as a teenager, and if that was quite a few years ago, it's still no excuse. My thanks to the folks who pointed out the error for not making a few pithy observations on my intelligence and memory.

Topplebush.com
Posted: January 27, 2004