Seldom has an image so clearly marked the turning of the world. One of man”s mightiest structures collapses into an immense white blossom of churning, roiling dust, metamorphosing in 14 seconds from hundred-story giant of the earth into towering white plume reaching to heaven.
For more than two years the United States has been fighting a war in Iraq that was launched in the cause of destroying weapons that turned out not to exist.
The great value of the discussion recounted in the Downing Street memo…is to show, for the governments of both countries, a clear hierarchy of decision-making.
When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked for a title. I dillied and dallied, begged for more time, and of course the deadline passed.
It was October 16, 2002, and the United States Congress had just voted to authorize the President to go to war against Iraq.
Just past dawn on January 30, Iraq’s Election Day — the fourth of the US occupation’s “turning points,” after the fall of Baghdad, the capture of Saddam Hussein, and the “handover of sovereignty” — I stood at the muddy gates of Muthana Air Base outside Baghdad watching the sun rise, pink and full, into a white-streaked sky; then, feeling a sudden tremor beneath my feet, I started abruptly: the explosion was loud and, judging by the vibrations, not far off.
“Issues don’t win elections, constituencies do.” As this political chestnut suggests, issues serve politicians mainly as a way for them to consolidate constituencies—and “make a majority,” as Andrew Hacker puts it.
Between the publication of my article, “Abu Ghraib: The Hidden Story,” and the receipt of these letters, and mainly thanks to the President’s nomination of Alberto Gonzales to be attorney general and the hearings that followed, we have had a public discussion of the “outrageous memos authored by highly placed administration lawyers” to which Mr. Rivkin refers.
Driving north from Tampa on Florida’s Route 75 on November 1, as the battle over who would hold political power in America was reaching a climax but the struggle over what that battle meant had yet to begin, I put down the top of my rented green convertible, turned the talk radio voices up to blaring, and commenced reading the roadside.
At least since Watergate, Americans have come to take for granted a certain story line of scandal, in which revelation is followed by investigation, adjudication and expiation.
“Go to Haiti!” James Chace leaned in close, left hand grasping my upper arm, fixed me with that incomparable stare, raised his right index finger and, like some unlikely fire-and-brimstone New England preacher reincarnated in blazer and khakis, intoned portentously: “Hear me well, young Danner: Go to Haiti!”
It seemed somehow fitting, and fittingly sad, that Colin Powell saw his resignation accepted as secretary of state on the day marines completed their conquest of Falluja
One of the last times I saw James Chace I was standing right here, at this very podium, and he was sitting right…there.
It has been clear for several months that the United States is losing its war in Iraq. What remains to be seen is whether Americans will come to realize this fact before the election or after it.