I made the mistake of reading Peggy Noonan's column today on The Great Scandals. Or maybe it wasn't a mistake because the emptiness of her accusations convinces me further that this is all just the president's enemies saying, "Gosh darn it. We want a flurry of scandals and we're not going to let the facts stop us from having it!" Barring the revelation of a lot more wrongdoing than we've heard to date, all three of the Big Three Outrages are already becoming scandals that'll bring down the Obama presidency the way Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate, the Trooper Scandal, the murder of Vince Foster, et al, were all scandals that were certain to bring down the Clinton presidency and destroy Hillary once and for all.
Anyway, I was going to write something here about smoke and mirrors and then I read Andrew Sullivan who said it much better.
Even if all the scandals were valid — and right now, it doesn't look like any of them are in terms of White House involvement — it would take about fifty of each of the three to collectively equal Watergate, let alone the impeachment and incarceration we should have had over Iraq. And I still don't get how anyone can look at these two sentences…
- "But our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous — not a premeditated — response to what had transpired in Cairo."
- "We do know that the Iraqi regime has chemical and biological weapons. His regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons — including VX, sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas. His regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of biological weapons — including anthrax and botulism toxin, and possibly smallpox."
…and say #1 is an outrage for which officials, up to and including the President of the United States should be fired or punished…and then say #2, which led us into a war, is just the kind of innocent slip-up that sometimes happens in government…