The Rude Pundit Can't Even Wrap His Head Around This One:
Here's how the case against Iraq is like a rape trial. Let's say there's this woman - call her Jane (no symbolic resonance - it's just easy to spell). Jane is a skanky bitch whore who likes to fuck men and then leave them cold, alone, and flaccid. She loves the cock. Can't get enough of it. She loves cock every which way - in her mouth, ass, kooz, hands. Jesus Christ, if you had a small enough dick, she'd let you fuck her ears. She is total fucking nympho - she doesn't distinguish - she'll fuck fat guys, skinny guys, even guys with chicken pox as long as she gets her fill of cock. Everyone who sees her knows she's heading for HIV or worse some day. However, she gets checked, like clockwork, every few months, so she can go forth and fuck some more. But let's say that one night she's kidnapped and drugged and a train is run on her by about thirty guys who, when she's bleeding, begging, sore, and weeping, keep beating and fucking her. And Jane, slut that she is, takes her tired, semen-stained, broken body to the hospital where she is helped to file charges against her assailants. They are arrested, which is satisfying, but a couple of cock-free months later, Jane discovers that she has HIV. At the trial, the defense attorneys are chomping at the bit to talk about her sexual history, much like Kobe Bryant's lawyers; they wanna show that Jane nothing more than a cock monger who finally fucked herself into oblivion. The judge at the trial allows that evidence, and, when the prosecutors tell the judge that Jane has HIV from the rape, after all the years of fucking, and isn't it just awful that not only was she raped, but she got HIV from the event, the judge says, "What's the difference?"

So it goes with George Bush, whose attitude is like the dickhead college frat party guy who's been told that if he keeps snorting coke and skipping classes he'll fail and then it turns out he passes all his classes. Bush apparently has decided that the spin on the whole issue of weapons of mass destruction is to say, "So what?" In what is perhaps the most public of Bush's blatant moves towards an absolutist presidency, in an interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC, the following exchange took place (the Rude Pundit generally refrains from long posted excerpts, but fuck it):

DIANE SAWYER: But let me try to ask — this could be a long question. ... ... When you take a look back, Vice President Cheney said there is no doubt, Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, not programs, not intent. There is no doubt he has weapons of mass destruction. Secretary Powell said 100 to 500 tons of chemical weapons and now the inspectors say that there's no evidence of these weapons existing right now. The yellow cake in Niger, in Niger. George Tenet has said that shouldn't have been in your speech. Secretary Powell talked about mobile labs. Again, the intelligence — the inspectors have said they can't confirm this, they can't corroborate.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yet.

DIANE SAWYER: — an active —

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yet.

DIANE SAWYER: Is it yet?

PRESIDENT BUSH: But what David Kay did discover was they had a weapons program, and had that, that — let me finish for a second. Now it's more extensive than, than missiles. Had that knowledge been examined by the United Nations or had David Kay's report been placed in front of the United Nations, he, he, Saddam Hussein, would have been in material breach of 1441, which meant it was a causis belli. And look, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous person, and there's no doubt we had a body of evidence proving that, and there is no doubt that the president must act, after 9/11, to make America a more secure country.

DIANE SAWYER: Again, I'm just trying to ask, these are supporters, people who believed in the war who have asked the question.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, you can keep asking the question and my answer's gonna be the same. Saddam was a danger and the world is better off cause we got rid of him.

DIANE SAWYER: But stated as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons still —

PRESIDENT BUSH: So what's the difference?

DIANE SAWYER: Well —

PRESIDENT BUSH: The possibility that he could acquire weapons. If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger. That's, that's what I'm trying to explain to you. A gathering threat, after 9/11, is a threat that needed to be de — dealt with, and it was done after 12 long years of the world saying the man's a danger. And so we got rid of him and there's no doubt the world is a safer, freer place as a result of Saddam being gone.

DIANE SAWYER: But, but, again, some, some of the critics have said this combined with the failure to establish proof of, of elaborate terrorism contacts, has indicated that there's just not precision, at best, and misleading, at worst.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yeah. Look — what — what we based our evidence on was a very sound National Intelligence Estimate. ...

DIANE SAWYER: Nothing should have been more precise?

PRESIDENT BUSH: What — I, I — I made my decision based upon enough intelligence to tell me that this country was threatened with Saddam Hussein in power.

DIANE SAWYER: What would it take to convince you he didn't have weapons of mass destruction?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Saddam Hussein was a threat and the fact that he is gone means America is a safer country.

DIANE SAWYER: And if he doesn't have weapons of mass destruction [inaudible] —

PRESIDENT BUSH: Diane, you can keep asking the question. I'm telling you — I made the right decision for America —

DIANE SAWYER: But-

PRESIDENT BUSH: — because Saddam Hussein used weapons of mass destruction, invaded Kuwait. ... But the fact that he is not there is, means America's a more secure country.

We can ramble on here and say the difference is over 400 American lives, thousands of injuries, tens of thousands of dead Iraqis (as Mark Morford points out, between war and sanctions, the United States has killed more people in Iraq in the last few years than Saddam could have ever hoped to in his wettest bondage wet dream). We could point out the devastation to the U.S. economy wrought by this policy, the fact that Osama is still out there, the fact that America is not safer at all, and on and on. Nobody on earth, save for a few people on his payroll, would ever believe that it is not an objective good that Saddam Hussein is not in power.

So why does "What's the difference?" go beyond the pale? Because it is such a public declaration of contempt for any opposing viewpoint. Because "What's the difference" means that nothing the President says matters if the outcome is one that can be spun into higher poll numbers. Because "What's the difference" is the attitude of those who will act on their own behalf without regard for greater good. Because "What's the difference" said on a national interview without any fear of recriminations from the statement means that we can be lied to and those in power can count on our complacency as long as they can make present images of a degraded enemy to us. Because, in the end, "What's the difference" means that the powerful don't understand democracy and don't care because neither do the rest of us.

Who is Jane in this equation? Who is the HIV-infected rape victim? Is it Iraq? Under Saddam or after? Is it the American public? The Constitution, which is suffocating behind glass in Washington and threatens to become another tattered, yellowed vestige of history?