Dowd: Purity of the Powells

[CatWoman]

this is a good one.

p.s. I can't stand Maureen Dowd, but I'll give credit where it is due.


WASHINGTON — Washington is in the virtue business this week.

Center stage is a riveting father-son drama. (No, not that one.)

At the Federal Communications Commission, Michael Powell is trying to save America's virtue, while over at the State Department, his father, Colin, is trying to save his own virtue.

They are both obsessing about something that should have been there, but suddenly wasn't.

The son demanded an explanation for Janet Jackson's missing material, while the father wrestled with an explanation for Saddam Hussein's missing matériel.

The son opened an inquiry into something everyone had already seen, as the father defended his speech making the case for war based on something nobody has seen.

(Who could have guessed that Saddam's W.M.D. would be less scary than Ms. Jackson's pierced metal sunburst, a Weapon of Mammary Destruction aimed at the CBS chairman, Les Moonves? Or, as Jon Stewart points out, that a government so reluctant to investigate intelligence lapses is so eager to investigate a breast lapse?)

Asked in a Washington Post interview on Monday whether he would have recommended an invasion if he'd known that Iraq had no weapons, the secretary of state replied, "I don't know," adding that the "absence of a stockpile changes the political calculus; it changes the answer you get."

But the words had barely left his mouth before furious White House aides forced Mr. Powell to eat them. Just as Janet Jackson had to repent for revealing too much, so did the top diplomat. Secretary Powell had to go out and clarify his remarks to reporters, telling them the war was justified even if weapons are never found.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/05/opinion/05DOWD.html

[teryang]

1. Making the despicable amusing

Thanks for the laughs! :D

[lumpy]

2. You know

what a tangle web we weave when first we practice to deceive. Good interview.