May 13, 2006

This week's Cindy...

A lefty-loon has resigned his professorship because Rice is speaking at his campus. Thank you Condolezza--well done. He writes:

DEAR Father Leahy,

I am writing to resign my post as an adjunct professor of English at Boston College.

I am doing so -- after five years at BC, and with tremendous regret -- as a direct result of your decision to invite Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to be the commencement speaker at this year's graduation.

Many members of the faculty and student body already have voiced their objection to the invitation, arguing that Rice's actions as secretary of state are inconsistent with the broader humanistic values of the university and the Catholic and Jesuit traditions from which those values derive. [I'll bet those claimed "values" include tolerance for diverse opinions...]

But I am not writing this letter simply because of an objection to the war against Iraq. My concern is more fundamental. Simply put, Rice is a liar.
She has lied to the American people knowingly, repeatedly, often extravagantly over the past five years, in an effort to justify a pathologically misguided foreign policy. [Too true. Liberating the oppressed, fighting terrorism, promoting democracy and economic freedom--can't get much more pathological than that. Why, she's actually helping the wogs VOTE. How un-Christian. Or at least, un-Jesuit.]

The public record of her deceits is extensive. During the ramp-up to the Iraq war, she made 29 false or misleading public statements concerning Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda, according to a congressional investigation by the House Committee on Government Reform. [Guess what. We are now learning that Iraq/Al Qaeda ties were MORE extensive than we thought. And The Duelfer Report revealed that even Saddam's own generals and top aides thought Iraq had WMD's. Not to mention all the world's intelligence services. So, clearly, no lie.]

To cite one example:
In an effort to build the case for war, then-National Security Adviser Rice repeatedly asserted that Iraq was pursuing a nuclear weapon, and specifically seeking uranium in Africa. [And the 9/11 Commission Report revealed that Joe Wilson reported to the CIA that Iraq WAS trying to buy Uranium from Niger. Niger's in Africa. (He Wilson lied and said the opposite in his famous NYT op-ed.)]

I'll spare you more back-and-forth. But what really galls me about guys like this is that he doesn't actually believe that telling a lie is so dreadful. This is just posturing because it suits his purpose at the moment. If the subject was one of those lefty anti-war activists who had claimed that the invasion of Iraq would surely lead to deadly WMD attacks, millions of deaths, millions of refugees, chaos across a "destabilized " Middle East, etc, etc.---THOSE lies wouldn't bother him a bit. Nor, you can be sure, was he bothered when Kerry was forced to retract a massive lie during the 2004 campaign.

Posted by John Weidner at May 13, 2006 6:01 PM
Weblog by John Weidner