Funny, isn't it, how some words stay with you?
I acted in a production of "The Importance of Being Earnest" at James Madison High School in Brooklyn, New York, in the last century.
I have never forgotten Earnest saying he's spoken the truth, "pure and simple," only to have Algernon retort:
"The truth is rarely pure and never simple."
Oscar Wilde comes to mind because of the WMD issue.
Given my politics, I'm tempted to believe the Administration lied about WMD, pure and simple. Well, it did lie but that's not the end of the story.
Intelligence professionals David Kay and Kenneth M. Pollak are saying the CIA made mistakes in trying to trace Saddam Hussein's weaponry.
We know, too, that Chaney, Rumsfeld and others leaned on intelligence analysts to bend their findings to fit Administration preconceptions.
(Rumsfeld went so far as to create his own little CIA in the Pentagon.)
Conclusion? The Bush Administration fell victim to inaccurate intelligence, but did some victimizing of its own.
And then the White House told us, the electorate, a bunch of half-truths. (Yes, "half-truths" is kind, but remember the other side of that formulation, half-falsehoods.)
So the truth is complex. And the complexity does not end there.
The Administration first tried to justify its war on Iraq by tying the Iraqis to 9/11. It still does by using the "war on terrorism" formulation.
WMD was the second public justification and when it didn't quite soar, the White House moved to its third story - freeing the poor Iraqis from tyranny.
In fact, all three stories are mostly fiction. The Administration's intellectual rationale is well described by Tom Friedman, Fareed Zakaria, Jim Hoagland and other neo-con journalists who favored the war of choice.
All say the White House believes it can change the course of history in the Middle East by bombing Iraq into democracy. In theory, Iraq's fall and conversion will initiate the toppling of many Arab dictatorships - a "democratic domino" strategy? - winding up with peace between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs.
The neocon journalists' idealism is huge. But what's happened to their skepticism? I never read them wondering if the White House has other motives.
Historically, you rally the population around a war against an external enemy to consolidate your own power. It's hard to vote against the flag.
The White House strategy combines idealism and cynicism. The idealism, that is, of democratizing the Arab World and the cynicism of keeping power by playing patriot.
Sound cynical? So be it.