"Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again, �
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies among his worshippers."
Truth has a way of asserting itself despite all attempts to obscure it. Distortion only serves to derail it for a time. No matter to what lengths we
humans may go to obfuscate facts or delude our fellows, truth has a way of squeezing out through the cracks, eventually. But the danger is that at
some point it may no longer matter. The danger is that damage is done before the truth is widely realized. The reality is that, sometimes, it is
easier to ignore uncomfortable facts and go along with whatever distortion is currently in vogue.
We see a lot of this today in politics. I see a lot of it � more than I would ever have believed � right on this Senate floor. Regarding the situation
in Iraq, it appears to this senator that the American people may have been lured into accepting the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, in
violation of longstanding International law, under false premises. There is ample evidence that the horrific events of September 11 have been
carefully manipulated to switch public focus from Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, who masterminded the September 11 attacks, to Saddam Hussein, who did
not. The run-up to our invasion of Iraq featured the President and members of his Cabinet invoking every frightening image they could conjure, from
mushroom clouds, to buried caches of germ warfare, to drones poised to deliver germ-laden death in our major cities. We were treated to a heavy dose
of overstatement concerning Saddam Hussein's direct threat to our freedoms. The tactic was guaranteed to provoke a sure reaction from a nation still
suffering from a combination of post-traumatic stress and justifiable anger after the attacks of 911. It was the exploitation of fear. It was a
placebo for the anger.
Since the war's end, every subsequent revelation that has seemed to refute the previous dire claims of the Bush Administration has been brushed
aside. Instead of addressing the contradictory evidence, the White House deftly changes the subject. No weapons of mass destruction have yet turned
up, but we are told that they will in time. Perhaps they yet will. But our costly and destructive bunker-busting attack on Iraq seems to have proven,
in the main, precisely the opposite of what we were told was the urgent reason to go in. It seems also to have, for the present, verified the
assertions of Hans Blix and the inspection team he led, which President Bush and company so derided. As Blix always said, a lot of time will be needed
to find such weapons, if they do indeed exist. Meanwhile, bin Laden is still on the loose and Saddam Hussein has come up missing. The Administration
assured the US public and the world, over and over again, that an attack was necessary to protect our people and the world from terrorism. It
assiduously worked to alarm the public and blur the faces of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden until they virtually became one.
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