Shit. (Sorry folks, I couldn't stand to put the pretend-word "S#!+" in my title when it pertains to Paul Wolfowitz, a true sack of shit if ever there was one.
Anyway, this is a spin-off from dengre's diary that's currently on the rec list, which pumps the interview that Guy Raz did of Wolfowitz on NPR today. It's a good diary, but it missed an important hole in Raz' otherwise brilliant interview. I feel that the baldface dissembling that Wolfowitz was allowed to get away with there deserved its own diary, and its own expose'.
Below, as they say, the fold (and this won't take long):
So Wolfowitz made the asstertion I'm going to post below several times in the interview, but I'm just going to post the clearest one here:
GR: In defense of the argument that foreign policy realists are making, they're not saying that democracy promotion shouldn't happen; I think the argument they're making is it shouldn't happen at the point of a gun.
PW: There's no argument that you don't do it at the point of a gun, and one of the points I make in that article is despite a lot of inaccurate representations — including this use of the word "architect" to describe me, I'm sorry — we went to war in Iraq, those of us who supported it, because we believed —
GR: I mean, you were described that way in 2004 and —
PW: You're not the only one who did it, but I don't want to get into an argument. ... The real point is this: Look, people who supported it, including me, did it because we believed Saddam Hussein was dangerous, and not because we believed we needed to go to war to install a democracy in Iraq.
So how many heads exploded when that little revisionist tidbit dropped from Wolfie's arse? I know mine did, but not so explosively that I wasn't able to do a little googling. Here, from Wolfowitz' own mouth on a trip to Turkey in the runup to the invasion, as posted on GlobalSecurity.org, July 18, 2002, comes the undoing of the baldfaced lie of a lying sack of shit (and, irony of ironies, it's an NPR interviewer who prompts his statement):
Q: (inaudible) National Public Radio. Can the United States carry out an attack against Iraq without Turkish cooperation?
WOLFOWITZ: I've said it many times and I'm happy to say it again. The
President of the United States has said one thing and he said it very
clearly. Which is that a regime like the one in Iraq, that is hostile
to United States, that supports terrorism and that has weapons of mass
destruction and is developing more weapons of mass destruction, is a
danger that we can't afford to live with indefinitely. What we do
about it, how we solve that problem, involves a whole range of
decisions which only the President can make and he hasn't made them
yet. In fact, for making those decisions it's very important to him to
have the benefit of key countries, and key parties, and Turkey is as
important as any country in figuring out how to grapple with this
issue. What I think there is no question about is that when there is a democratic Iraq, and that is our goal...
So there you have it: Paul Wolfowitz, Lying Sack of Shit (emhpases are mine, btw).
On second thought, let me refine that: Murderous Lying Sack of Shit.