Prometheus 6

One of the major reasons Americans are so easy to stampede is our short attention span. If we had a sense of history we wouldn't get caught up in the same scams over and over again. Americans don't even need a sense of history to make good political decisions. All we need is a sense of continuity.

Case in point: Newt Gingrich's The Only Option is to Win. He makes a number of observations and speculations that, given his political bent, are reasonable. But about a third of the way in he makes this bald assertion.

It is because the Bush administration has failed to win this argument over the direct threat of Iranian and North Korean nuclear and biological weapons that Americans are divided and uncertain about our national security interests.

For the record, if you want to undermine well constructed rhetoric, look for bald assertions. You will find it to be opinion, demostrably false or both.

The problem is the Bush adminstration didn't make the argument for far too long. And the arguments it did make shifted, were disproved, changed, were disproved again...current justifications bear no resemblance to those advanced pre-invasion. The Bush adminstration denied the truth about conditions on the ground in Iraq.

And this is key: every prediction made by the anti-invasion side of the debate has come to pass. Every ignored warning has bitten Bush's butt. Every last one of them.

Then there's this.

It's a year old, but that's when American's current behavior was learned.

Yet Bush is running the military and will be for the next two years. There is nothing that can be done about that.

America is divided about our national security interests because they are in the hands of a known failure that has openly refused to consider change.