City Newspaper Archives - 1/2008

IRAQ: Facts and fiction

Published on Jan 04, 2008
The articulate letter from Jim Delaney (The Mail, December 12) excoriating Democrats for defeatism was astonishing. I agree, we do need to "eschew ideology in favor of truth" and that "it should be our duty to strive to be intellectually honest." Maybe Delaney agrees with Patrick Moynihan - who said: "You're entitled to your own opinions. You're not entitled to your own facts" - even though Moynihan was a Democrat.

Nonetheless, Mr. Delaney's letter reveals some opinions, but no facts that might support them except for misrepresentations. Notable among these is the distortion referring to intelligence from "every worldwide source" including the UN that "confirmed the existence of WMDs."

Really?

The only support I can think of for that "fact" is that Delaney has disingenuously referred to intel that predated any actual inspection regimen and subsequent "intel" cooked up by Cheney's "Team B." Cheney obviously does not agree with Moynihan's maxim. There is no end to Cheney's willingness and compulsion to invent his own facts. Has any US administration has been as much in denial of uncooperative, non-ideological facts as the one to which Delaney lends his support?

Delaney's letter would lead one to suppose that only the ideological rigidity of the Democratic leadership stands between Bush and victory in Iraq. But the Democratic leadership has shown remarkable unwillingness to hold fast to first principles (as distinct from ideology), such as any inclination to enforce either domestic or international law.

It isn't the ideological rigidity of Democratic elites that leads us into our refusal to see any light at tunnel's end, Mr. Delaney. Rather, it is the belief and opinion of 70 percent of US citizens, faced with an unbearable, endless stream of unhappy facts, who have come to see for themselves the relentlessly misbegotten nature of this outlaw war.

MIKE CONNELLY, ROCHESTER