Today's topic is credibility -- specifically, recent claims by certain high-ranking present, former and perhaps soon-to-be-former Bush administration officials. The aim is to answer a simple question: Should we believe these three Bush loyalists if they tell us that rain falls down instead of up, or should we look out the window to make sure?
The present official is political czar Karl Rove, long regarded by friend and foe alike as some kind of cutting-edge genius, who seems to have the darnedest time figuring out this newfangled e-mail stuff.
By law, official White House communications are supposed to be preserved. But the administration says that many of the RNC e-mails have somehow been lost-- and also that millions of e-mails seem to have vanished from the official White House system, although they might have been captured on backup tapes.
We're supposed to believe that Karl Rove doesn't bother to keep track of his electronic correspondence.
On to the former official: World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, who until 2005 was deputy secretary of defense and a chief architect of the calamitous Iraq war. Not that Wolfowitz had much credibility left, after predicting before the war that Iraqis would greet U.S. troops as "liberators" and that the cost of the war would be mostly defrayed by Iraq's oil revenue.
Ironically, Wolfowitz has railed against corruption as the scourge of many developing countries, making World Bank aid contingent on transparency and accountability. Yet Wolfowitz first gave the impression that he recused himself from involvement in the Riza deal when, in fact, he was right in the middle of it.
We're supposed to believe that for a central bank official in, say, Nigeria to arrange a sweetheart employment deal for his girlfriend would be corrupt, but for Wolfowitz to do so is perfectly legitimate.
Finally, the perhaps soon-to-be-former official: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is certain that nothing improper happened in the firing of the U.S. attorneys but seems terribly confused about what role he might have played in the whole affair. Or might not have played. Or whatever.
Gonzales had an op-ed Sunday in The Post that included this positively breathtaking claim: The attorney general of the United States writes that "to my knowledge, I did not make decisions about who should or should not be asked to resign."
To his knowledge? What on earth does that mean? Is Gonzales in the habit of making decisions without his own knowledge? Does he have multiple-personality issues?
Rove, Wolfowitz and Gonzales are making the last-ditch argument of a cheating husband caught in flagrante: Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?
They just hope we're guppy enough to believe them! Fat chance, boys.
I wonder if they'll have the stones when in extremis to trot out the all-purpose excuse?
IOKIYAR.
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