The No Regrets of the Regrettable Frank Gaffney, Jr.
Who Knew? For those two or three humans now alive who don’t understand that Dick Cheney was uninterested in compiling honest intel prior to the Iraq invasion and occupation, that doubt was erased by “he who shall be obeyed” himself. Yesterday, during an ABC News interview where he also charmingly defended torture, Cheney strongly disagreed with Karl Rove’s recent statement (i.e. lie) that the United States would have avoided war in Iraq if the Bush administration had known there were no WMDs. “I disagree with that,” and then added, “As I look at the intelligence with respect to Iraq, what they got wrong was that there weren’t any stockpiles . . . What they found was that Saddam Hussein still had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction. He had the technology, he had the people, he had the basic feedstocks.”
The Chickenhawk Shuffle. So, tonight, the chickenhawk’s cheerleader extraordinaire, Richard Gaffney, Jr., was on Chris Matthews‘ Hardball and, rather than denying that we would’ve gone to war regardless of the existence of WMDs, leaped to defend not merely the VP’s statement, but its “truthinesss” too, i.e. as Colbert explained, “the truth we want to exist.” Gaffney, a protege of the indescribable Chickenhawk-in-Chief, Richard Perle, is among the more radical neoconservatives and believes that war dissent is tantamount to treason. A consistent reinventor of truth, he sprang to Cheney’s defense, returning insistently to wingnut talking points that:
(1) Hussein was a bad bad bad bad bad man, really really really bad;
(2) the White House operated with the best intel available at the time (forgetting to mention that the intel was fabricated and ran counter to the predominant opinions of the vast majority of seasoned intelligence analysts, even among our allies);
(3) virtually everyone who had access to the White House’s intel agreed that Hussein had WMDs (again, apparently forgetting to mention that the intel that people were relying on was fabricated);
(4) after the invasion, when no stockpiles of WMDs were unearthed, it was still discovered that Hussein had possessed the possible components of possible WMDs and could have possibly at some future date produced some “aerosol cans of” vaporized bad stuff that might have at some point entered the United States and wound up being possibly inhaled by people like Frank Gaffney, Jr.;
(5) when, during the run up, neoconservatives said there was “no doubt” that Hussein had WMDs, particularly nuclear weapons, but afterwards discovered that, of course, they did not have any at all, they were still correct because . . . well, see number 4 above; and
(6) Hussein was a bad bad bad bad bad man, really really really bad.
A Cooked Chickenhawk. On Hardball tonight, Gaffney, ostensibly there to face off against Mother Jones‘ Washington bureau chief David Corn, found himself increasingly on defense against the host himself. While Corn had much to offer, he spent most of his time as a bemused bystander watching Matthews barely able to stifle launching himself against Gaffney’s projected image. It was cheering to see. (Where is that kind of rage from the Democratic party when we need it? Will they ever learn it?)
Gaffney chickenhawked on about Hussein’s capabilities. Failing at that, Gaffney maintained – again, inaccurately and dishonestly – that the Bush administration’s post-invasion evaluation of Iraq’s WMD status, the so-called Duelfer Report, that Iraq had the “capability” to reconstitute its WMD programs, and to quickly fabricate “aerosol cans” of poisonous substances. The Duelfer Report did nothing of the sort, as the Washington Post reported:
Duelfer, whom the Bush administration chose to complete the U.S. investigation of Iraq’s weapons programs, said Hussein’s ability to produce nuclear weapons had “progressively decayed” since 1991. Inspectors, he said, found no evidence of “concerted efforts to restart the program. . . The findings were similar on biological and chemical weapons. . . The former regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions. Neither was there an identifiable group of WMD policy makers or planners separate from Saddam” tasked to take this up once sanctions ended.”
Richard Gaffney, Jr. Sends His Regrets. Again, Bush’s own report concluded “No W. M. D.” Gaffney, though, didn’t budge. In the fashion so well developed by chickenhawks without conscience, he wore on, with a nauseatingly memorable, “it is regrettable that any Americans died, it is regrettable that they had to die, but I believe they did have to die.” He, Richard Chickenhawk Gaffney, Jr., believes that other people had to die.
Both Matthews and Corn tried to represent the reality-based community, but Gaffney would 
have none of it, and fought off any suggestions that the war was “sold” to the American public. Matthews, in no uncertain terms, set him straight:
[P]eople in the middle supported this war because they believed that America was threatened by nuclear – possible nuclear attack – from Saddam Hussein. I believe that was the reason that sold the war to the middle of the country politically, and now to step back and say, “Well, it didn’t matter, they didn’t have any weapons over there, they didn’t have nuclear stockpiles . . . You know the capability is not the case that was made. . .”
Matthews finished, flushed with anger. The “shamelessness of our VP Dick Cheney . . . is profound.” Profound in the very worst sense.
