perfidy

I'm baaack! (finally...)

So, the President has now admitted that the ironclad evidence that Iraq had purchased fissionable uranium from African nations was, in a word, vaporous. Reminds me of the time when the President made up that bit about Iraq buying up aluminum tubes that were only for use in reactors. One event implies nothing. From two like events you can posit the existence of a third.

The NYT has their story, and "Philippe de Croy" of the Volokhs writes,

Whether his credibility is becoming a problem domestically I do not know. There are plenty of people in this country who will continue to defend the Bush administration almost no matter what happens either because they find Bush personally appealing or because the importance of keeping the Democrats out is so great that they would rather excuse Bush and go on trusting him, more or less, content to call for the heads of whatever underlings were, ahem, “responsible” for any misinformation that was distributed. They feel that it beats the alternative. I understand why

I am sure some countries will continue to provide us with ample respect and cooperation in any case because they regard it as so strongly in their interest to do so. But at the margin the cost in credibility will have to be high. I should think that most countries -- their people and their leaders -- will look back at the war on Iraq and remember the incredulous indignation we heaped upon those who would not go along with us. Then they will look at what came out afterwards and conclude that we are clowns or worse. They will not focus on what we claimed that was true. They will focus on what we claimed that was false.

This situation was always one of my biggest underlying reservations about the libervasion of Iraq. Don't get me wrong-- I am delighted, repeat delighted that Saddam Hussein is no longer the man in power in Iraq. But I always felt the risks of libervasion were very high when it comes to the international stage. That's not to say that we must bow and scrape before the UN when we wish to change our trade relationship with Cameroon, but the poisonous war of words that raged earlier this year could turn out poorly for the US. Our incredulous indignation, which is exactly what it was, though seemingly justified in February, could bite us in the ass if in the future we must fend off a truly immediate, credible threat from abroad and the rest of the world 'chooses' to believe we are crying "wolf."

[moreover] The administration's credibility on domestic matters has never been that high from my point of view. I think he's heading for a perhaps hollow, bitter, Nixonian second term at home, and a Wilsonian one abroad.