Stay classy, Tony

For some people who supported the war in Iraq the whole run-up to and conduct of the war has caused them to reconsider what they advocated for, what they enabled, and what they did. Especially in the area surrounding the hyped up intelligence, WMD's, 'smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud' nonsense that preceded the war. Some people would be ashamed of that, how the war cost thousands of soldier's lives, hundreds of thousands of civilian's lives, destabilized millions, cost trillions, and has seemed to provide little tangible benefit in the end.

Tony Blair isn't one of those people.

"If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?" Blair was asked. He replied: "I would still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam Hussein]".

Significantly, Blair added: "I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat."

Obviously. But then again, "Some asshole is running his country in a despotic fashion" is less of a compelling argument than "OMGZ, you guys! We're all gonna die in an exploding hellfire of nuclear destruction! Think of the baby bald eagles!" Just ask the people in Rwanda, or Somalia, or the Sudan, or... actually, let's just say Africa and be done with it.

It's nice that when confronted with the cost of a war based on lies that resulted in nothing, the man will resort to the "Nope, still not convinced" defense while droning on and on about doing what he thought, in his heart of hearts, was right. You have to appreciate that commitment to narcissistic self-belief and self-regard. Plus he did get a kick-ass medal of freedom, and if you denigrate the Iraq war then you taint the integrity of that honored and legitimately bestowed award.

Stay classy, Tony.

Witchcraft

ThinkProgress hits us with another except from former speechwriter Matt Latimer's book on the White House, which may or may not be titled I'm Not Shitting You: This Is Really What Was Going On For Eight Years. This go around he looks into the practice of awarding Presidential Medals of Freedom. You know, the award that was designed back in 1945 by Truman in order to award those who had toadied longest and hardest for his most unpopular policies and make it look like some level of success had been achieved. At least that's what I think it was for. Anyway, this bit is about why Harry Potter author JK Rowling didn't get one.

This was the same sort of narrow thinking that led people in the White House to actually object to giving the author J.K. Rowling a presidential medal because the Harry Potter books encouraged witchcraft.

This in addition to the fact that she had ladyparts, she's a foreigner, and Dick Cheney felt her novels unfairly slandered snake faced, demonic warlocks. That's right, in an office populated with hundreds of adults, the question over whether to award an intensely politicized award hinged on a serious discussion about witchcraft. And the person they were debating over wasn't Aleister Crowley. It's a shame that waterboarding, rendition, or illegal wiretaps didn't involve mystical incantations, lightning scars, or wands, otherwise we might have been able to avoid that whole bit of unpleasantness.