Conservatives' core duty on WMD

[Pikku]

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0708/p09s01-coop.html

Interesting. A former Reagan aide wrote this:



This is not the government created by the Founders. This is not the government that any believer in liberty should favor.

It is foolish to turn the Iraq war, a prudential political question, into a philosophical test for conservatism. It is even worse to demand unthinking support for Bush. He should be pressed on the issue of WMD - by conservatives. Fidelity to the Constitution and republican government demands no less.

[Martin Eden]

1. CATO institute has been critical of Bush and this war

As have other traditional right-wingers, such as Pat Buchanan, and even the John Birch Society. It's the damn neocons and partisan repukes that have hypocritically turned their backs on what should be their core values, in order to support their pResident at all costs.

This was a basically fair article aimed at conservatives and appealing to what should be their higher ethics. However, I do STRONGLY disagree with one paragraph:

--snip--
Moreover, it's hard to imagine the administration simply concocting its WMD claims. The president, though a practiced politician, isn't the type to lie so blatantly. Whatever the faults of his lieutenants, none seems likely to advance a falsehood that would be so hard to maintain.
--end of snip--

They haven't had to maintain their falsehoods because their corporate media whores haven't required them to!!!

They've gotten away with so many blatant lies, they became overconfident and accustomed to saying anything they want. Now that some of the most consequential lies are being questioned shrubco is being given the benefit of the doubt -- keeping the outrage way below the level it should be.

[priller]

2. Maybe the author doesn't quite realize

The Bush cabal are not conservatives, they're RIGHT WING RADICALS. And being radicals, the most important thing to them is loyalty to their radical cause. All other considerations--ethics, principles, responsibility, etc--fall by the wayside. It's not a "philosophical test for conservatism", it's a test of loyalty to their ideology.