Anticipation

Imagine my consternation upon publishing this week’s column. A few hours after writing the following…

Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad have carried out horrendous attacks in Israel. Many innocent people have been killed. But these groups don’t have WMDs. And they’ve never indicated an interest in attacking Americans.

…this happens. Of course, there’s no evidence that a Palestinian group was involved. But the fact that it occured in Gaza sure makes it look that way. So I’m waiting for the inevitable e-mails that say “see? they DO target Americans!” Well, maybe they do…now. If so, that’s a new development, one that certainly wasn’t true when Bush implied that it was.

The Bushies have a lot of problems with the time-space continuum. They like to say, for instance, that Clinton made a strong WMD case against Saddam in the ’90s, so why are Democrats arguing against the same WMD case in the ’00s? The answer is that time passed: Saddam destroyed his WMDs in accordance with UN requirements between 1998 and 2003. The inspections worked.

Similarly, Hamas et al have never deliberately targeted Americans. At least not until now–and whatever they’re up to now doesn’t change the fact that Bush lied through his simian teeth.