MemeMachineGo!

Jeff Cooper's cogent reaction to administration hypocrisy (via Electrolite):

The vague hope I felt last week that, after the president's speech to the U.N., we were finally on our way to a sensible approach toward Iraq has evaporate. The administration's sullen response this week to Iraq's acceptance of unconditional inspections (dubious though that acceptance was) suggested that the U.N. speech was not a culminating step in a master plan, as some commentators seem to suggest, but rather represented the latest in a series of improvised and fundamentally dishonest steps in support of a predetermined policy. [...]

This approach to government — determine a policy, then offer a series of dishonest (or at best half-honest) rationales in support of the predetermined policy — is deeply corrosive in a democracy; it betrays utter disdain for the public. And, as others have observed, this approach has characterized the Bush administration from day one, from the tax cut on down.

No need to be reasonable about it. Elayne Riggs' version.

So, the icky war part out of the way first. So we're all like, "Hey, let weapons inspectors back in!" and they're all like, "Dude, you pulled out, inspectus interruptus was your idea from the last time you bombed, and you're like spying on us anyway!" and we're all like "Shyeah, as if, let us in or we bomb you!" and they're all like "This is sooo like just a pretext, we say yes and you'll find something else!" and we're like "No, dude, we swear, no pretext and we're serious and we have lots of bombs!" and they're all like "Let me talk to Kofi okay?" and Kofi's all like "Yo, yo, dude!, they mean business and they have bombs fer sher, we've seen 'em!" and they're all like "Jeez, okay already, your inspectors that you pulled out anyway can come in again" and now we're all like "Psyche, dude! Too late! Not good enough! Give us a minute to think of more demands before we bomb you anyway!" So like, what I want to know is, isn't that the very definition of pretext?