Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
If state-level loonies like Chris Buttars, Warren Chisum and Gerald Allen have a comrade in arms at the Federal level, it has to be Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma. This guy can be counted on to bring the crazy more than anyone else in Congress. Here's a perfect example of the sort of bizarre statement that makes you wonder what color the sky is in his world:
Inhofe, speaking to the press before Cheney's arrival, lambasted Democrats for Thursday's Senate vote to begin withdrawal from Iraq by Oct. 1 and the press for "mischaracterizing" the reasons for U.S. involvement."The whole idea of weapons of mass destruction was never the issue, yet they keep trying to bring this up," Inhofe said.
When reminded by a reporter that the White House made WMDs the centerpiece of their case for war, including sending Colin Powell to make that famous speech at the UN about how Hussein's immense stockpiles of WMDs were an imminent threat to the US and the rest of the world, Inhofe responds by pulling a non-sequitur out of his posterior:
When asked why Gen. Colin Powell, then U.S. secretary of state, told the United Nations in 2003 that such weapons posed an imminent danger, Inhofe replied: "I can't answer that. In fact, I've never been one of the real strong fans of General Powell."Pressed for an explanation, Inhofe said weapons of mass destruction were "incidental" to the decision to invade Iraq.
"The media made that the issue because they knew Saddam Hussein had used weapons of mass destruction. So we knew that they were there. But that was incidental to the fact we were going after terrorist camps."
Oh, well, if you never liked Colin Powell then I guess he never made the case for WMDs to the UN at Bush's request. If only this was Oceania, where we could go back and just erase all that pesky reality from the archives. That darned old media, actually quoting what the administration said and not what their apologists want to pretend they said 5 years later. The facts are clearly biased. Damn liberals.
Comments
Inhofe in 2002:
"Our intelligence system has said that we know that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction -- I believe including nuclear. There's not one person on this panel who would tell you unequivocally that he doesn't have the missile means now, or is nearly getting the missile means to deliver a weapon of mass destruction. And I for one am not willing to wait for that to happen."
(taken from http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/30/inhofe-media-invented-wmd-excuse-for-iraq-invasion/)
Posted by: Raymond | May 3, 2007 9:30 AM
What terrorist camps?
Posted by: Mustafa Mond, FCD | May 3, 2007 10:10 AM
Wait! You mean when Bush said that Iraq might have WMDs and all that talk about pre-emptive strikes and what-have-you... that was all incidental to terrorist camps? Like Al-Qaida terrorist camps? But I thought Iraq was not shown to have any direct connection to Al-Qaida? That they just had WMDs? But then, where are the WMDs?
This circular logic reminds me of something... Mmm... donuts.
Posted by: Brian Thompson | May 3, 2007 10:16 AM
"I can't answer that. In fact, I've never been one of the real strong fans of General Powell."
That's hilarious. I love politics. They get to pretend like they're real dumb and then get paid about a zillion dollars. That's great.
Posted by: 396sx | May 3, 2007 10:32 AM
In a strange way Inhofe may actually be revealing the truth. WMDs were never the primary reason for the administration's invasion of Iraq. WMD's were however the reason the administration used to convince the public that we should invade Iraq.
Posted by: Ratel | May 3, 2007 10:42 AM
Cordova...um, er, Inhofe, may actually be right--the decision to invade Iraq might not have been based on WMD (they were just the excuse)--it may have been based on perceived "messin' with Texas."
Posted by: mark | May 3, 2007 11:24 AM
That's the problem with ideologues, they can never be convinced of anything that's contrary to their position.
Posted by: Stuart Coleman | May 3, 2007 12:26 PM
Ratel, that's exactly what I was going to type. Inhofe is exactly right, if you read his statements carefully. Bush/Cheney were going to invade Iraq regardless of WMDs.
Of course, they needed to lie about WMDs to gain approval, but it never was the reason they invaded. They couldn't likely say, "We're greedy bastards who want to line the pockets of our friends by killing thousands of people."
Posted by: itchy | May 3, 2007 12:33 PM
I wonder how Powell stands up straight with the weight of all those knives in his back. He sure is the favored scapegoat of the Bush administration and the Republicans.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | May 3, 2007 4:54 PM
As a resident of Oklahoma, I would like to assure everyone at SciBlogs that I did not vote for that asshole.
Posted by: Wes | May 3, 2007 10:20 PM
While I don't remember everything I've posted on the interwebs in the last 4 or so years, I do think I posted something along the lines, that Bush administration (and GOP Congress) used the 'grass-roots' organization to do much of their war campaign pitching. Little Green Footballs, WND, and whatnot, could go on and on about finding WMD "under that next rock, over there", even after the invasion. What I noted back then was this seemingly organized effort of 'conservative' citizenry's promotion of the war, which was much more forceful than the administration's. After all, these smaller organization easily fall into obscurity once their mission is accomplished, all the while the administration, being still in the limelight, can quickly shift their position to a less controversial stand, such as the "think about the poor Iraqi citizens oppressed by Saddam".
Posted by: daenku32 | May 4, 2007 1:16 PM