A place where logic dies

While the rest of the sensible world celebrates John Warner's (R-VA) decision to oppose the troop 'augmentation'. Glenn finds a maddening little nugget from before the war with Iraq (From Larry King Live in the early part of 2003):

KING: What if Saddam Hussein tonight in a fit of sanity decides he totally wants to cooperate. That's it. Whatever Bush ask for short of exile. What does he do?

WARNER: You asked me what does he say, and my reply to that would be, he has no credibility.

KING: But he can't -- that's nothing.

WARNER: But he could establish credibility with quick and prompt actions.

KING: Like.

WARNER: And they'd have to manifest themselves as compliance with the Security Council resolutions all of them. But especially 1441. I am going to disarm, here it, is go find it. Not hide-and- seek. . . .

You know, I asked George Tenet, CIA director basically what you just stated, and he's written a letter, it arrived in my office an hour ago. And he states, we have now provided all of the information that we could to the inspectors. Yet they have not uncovered anything.

Because Saddam Hussein from the very beginning after 1991, decided that he's going have to endure some type of inspection regime as he continues to build weapons and he's become very skillful to keep these manufacturing base of weapons of mass destructions active, mobile and beyond the ability of any inspections to really catch it. And this is proof of it. We've given them all the information, they can't find it.

KING: What's his purpose, he's inviting war. . . .

WARNER: The group of nations agreed on [the inspections], and I think Hans Blix tried to make it work. But he's been outsmarted.

I don't mean to suggest that Warner's change of heart is unwelcome (although, I believe this is being done to carve out a sensible center- which is staying in Iraq for a long time). Yet, we shouldn't forget how we got here. A lot of very foolish people, put on nice suits and thought that because they looked serious they were serious.