Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Condi's continuum

During her Sunday morning pedicure/oatmeal mask on Fox News Sunday, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice defended the 2002 authorization of force against Iraq with an historical comparison so breathtakingly inane that it caused Chris Wallace to, well, he didn't say anything:
"…It would be like saying that after Adolf Hitler was overthrown, we needed to change then, the resolution that allowed the United States to do that, so that we could deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown."


Keith Olbermann does a better job of anybody picking this one apart, and it's worth watching.

Condi claimed that stabilizing Iraq is "part of a continuum" which flows organically, much like flowers and chocolates from a Sadr City mosque, and whose genesis, nay, immaculate conception is traced to the 2002 war resolution. Ipso facto the Democrats should just butt out and let the continuum do it's metaphysical thing.

Just like the Democrats did in 1945, after Nazi Germany was defeated and the President went back to Congress for a $12.5 billion resolution to rebuild Europe. I'm sure Congress told President Truman, "Resolution? Resolution? Sheeet Harry, you don't need no stinkin' resolution! You have continuum on your side!"

Continuum models explain variation as involving a gradual quantitative transition without abrupt changes or discontinuities, according to a definition I found at Wikipedia. So Condi is saying that the transition from fabricating evidence for war, to invading a country for no reason, to precipitating the violent deaths of 500,000 Iraqis, to taking more time to pacify Baghdad than it took FDR to defeat Imperial Japan, to fomenting Civil War between the Shiites an Sunni, to spending yet more blood and treasure on a war we already lost, is a continuum, a non-stop flight to Freedomville, without an annoying stopover in Rule-of-Law-istan.

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