•• Ohhhhhh, so now it's a WMD "Program" ••

In an article published yesterday in Salon, Jake Tapper writes:

When President George W. Bush says "cow," does he really mean "milk"? Does he use the terms "light bulb factory" and "light bulb" interchangeably? According to White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, when the president declared two weeks ago Friday that "weapons of mass destruction" had indeed been found in Iraq, he was merely using a term -- as he has on myriad occasions -- that he wields as a synonym for weapons of mass destruction programs as well.

A June 10 NY Newsday article titled "Bush Admin. Now Says Iraqi WMD a 'Program' " points to a new pattern amongst the Bushies when speaking of "Iraq's WMD's":

Faced with the awkward possibility that no significant caches of weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq, Bush administration officials are recasting their earlier predictions by insisting evidence will emerge that Saddam Hussein at least had a "program" for such weapons.

Bush used the term "program" in three consecutive sentences on the issue Monday. "Iraq had a weapons program," Bush told reporters. "Intelligence throughout the decade showed they had a weapons program. I am absolutely convinced, with time, we'll find out that they did have a weapons program."

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, while declaring Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that she believes such weapons will be found, asserted it would take some time "to put together a full picture of his weapons of mass destruction programs."

Not since the Nixon administration has there been a U.S. admin is so brazen in its flagrant hubristic contempt and utter disregard for the American peoples' intelligence and respect; leading up to the Iraqi war, and on a weekly basis, if not a near-daily basis, the Bushies and their neocon architects of this New American Century of preëmptive and multiple wars, lobbed and levied rationale upon rationale for an immediate war on Iraq at the American public, but it now appears the Bushies may not have truly ever leveled with the American people after all.

Critics contend the word "program" is too imprecise to be meaningful. "It can mean anything," said Mel Goodman, a retired CIA analyst. "It can mean documents, anything; no matter how benign, they will find some various purpose for it."

As usual, the Democrats are nowhere to be found.

•• Republicans v.s. Republicans ••

However, yesterday, the No. 2 Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Arizona Republican Senator John McCain (who claims he still believes weapons of mass destruction will be found) called for hearings and says Congress should investigate whether intelligence was cooked.

And it's not everyday that you find TWO columns written in right wing publications by hardcore staid in the wool Republicans (albeit the Neocons would refer to these two dudes as Paleocons) who are asking for an explanation as to the motives for a war on Iraq, and for sources to backup the justification for that war in two recent articles, "An Unnecessary War" by Pat Buchanan and "Who Screwed Up" by William F. Buckley.

American Conservative magazine founder and editor Buchanan's column at WorldNetDaily asks:

What was America's real motive for attacking Iraq? Was it oil? Empire? To make the Middle East safe for Sharon?

That these questions are being asked, not only by America's critics, is the fault of the administration alone. For its crucial argument as to why it had no choice but to launch the first preventive war in American history is collapsing like a sand castle in a rising surf.

Iraq, in retrospect, was no threat whatsoever to the United States. We fought an unnecessary war, and now we must rebuild a nation at a rising cost in blood and treasure. [Emphasis added]

But even if we acknowledge that as a quandary, we don't satisfy critical concern over what was said by administration spokesmen that induced us to go to war. [Emphasis added]

[Snip]

But we are nevertheless entitled to know: How was intelligence information, presented as conclusive, so apparently illusory? Who was it, on the assembly line between the first man who spotted what he took to be WMD activity in Iraq, and the Defense Intelligence Agency and the president of the United States, who beamed out to the world not suspicions of WMD activity but affirmations of it, who screwed up? Who deceived, or was carried away? And what vaccines have our leaders taken to guard against other deceptions of like character?

•• Chickenhawk turns chickenshit ••

Curiously enough, NeoCon Kingpin Chickenhawk Bill Kristol turned into a chickenshit on this past Fox Sunday News and sought cover while leaving Bush and Powell out in the cold to take the direct hits -- of which he himself fired:

In comments sure to be seized upon by Bush administration critics at home and abroad, one of the leading proponents of the war in Iraq said Sunday that President Bush may have misstated the case that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. attacked.

"We shouldn't deny, those of us who were hawks, that there could have been misstatements made, I think in good faith," Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol told "Fox News Sunday."

Asked, by whom, the leading Iraq war backer explained, "By the president and the secretary of state, [statements] that will turn out to be erroneous."

"I don't think we need to be apologetic about the war," Kristol insisted. But he said the U.S.'s inability to uncover significant quantities of Iraqi WMDs means that the war may not have been as necessary and urgent as previously believed. [Emphasis added]

Kristol, who made his comments just minutes after Secretary of State Colin Powell said on the same broadcast that there was no doubt Saddam had WMDs when the U.S. attacked, did acknowledge, however, "There has been evidence that they had an ongoing weapons of mass destruction program, I think, even if they did not have as large a stock of the weapons as we thought."

Oops. There's that word again: "program", as in a "weapons of mass destruction program".

Riiiiight.