Today is the fourteenth anniversary of the day when Charles Krauthammer announced to the world:
Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.
It’s now been 168 months since that confident pronouncement – or, put differently, we’ve seen 33.6 Krauthammer Credibility Intervals come, and then go, without any sign of self-assessment, let alone personal acceptance of responsibility for his prominent cheerleading for a war that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Still out there opining.
{ 12 comments }
Pavel A 04.23.17 at 1:06 am
He’s too busy championing the newest intervention in Syria. “America is back”, he opined recently, to slaughtering random human beings in messy conflicts where we’ll fail to make any progress. I’m sure the original death toll just wasn’t high enough for him…
Donald Johnson 04.23.17 at 2:08 am
Tom Friedman of Friedman unit fame is also writing thingslike this —
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/12/opinion/why-is-trump-fighting-isis-in-syria.html?_r=0
Warren Terra 04.23.17 at 4:21 pm
Ah, the nostalgia of a time when we had to debate whether we might have a credibility problem, back before we had a President each of whose statements is – per fact-checkers –
far more likely to be lies than to be the truth, and who is so ignorant and is served by such a cavalcade of freaks and incompetents that it’s likely he couldn’t find the truth even if he wanted it.
Marco 04.23.17 at 8:04 pm
The day of self-assessment will never arrive for the likes of Krauthammer. But we should never make it easy for them to continuously cheer for war. Thanks for keeping this alive.
Manta 04.23.17 at 10:04 pm
Johnson @2
“In Syria, Trump should let ISIS be Assad’s, Iran’s, Hezbollah’s and Russia’s headache — the same way we encouraged the mujahedeen fighters to bleed Russia in Afghanistan.”
It’s a parody, right?
ozma 04.23.17 at 10:37 pm
I am grateful to you for this public reminder. So few remember. Even fewer care.
The persistence of our historical lessons now seems to be like that of our technological baubles.
CJColucci 04.23.17 at 11:07 pm
Where is Richard Widmark when we need him?
roger gathmann 04.23.17 at 11:19 pm
I’m beginning to lose hope. You mean, we haven’t found the nuclear tipped drones of saddam Hussein yet? Next we will find out that SH could not obliterate London in 48 hours, as per one of the greatest human being ever to walk the earth or be prime minister of Great Britain, Tony Blair (for confirmation of that description, you are urged to contact Tony Blair associates, an umbrella organization for all your PR, Security and Reform needs).
Im crushed.
hix 04.23.17 at 11:22 pm
That problem has long been solved. Those weapons have been found in time. Alternative facts, problem solved. (Actually i heard a Prof claim just that yesterday in a seminar, no joke)
engels 04.23.17 at 11:41 pm
It seems like the conditional is true: you didn’t find the weapons; you have a credibility problem.
Raven 04.24.17 at 12:41 am
ozma @ 6: Oh, but learning from history is ever so much less fun than getting to repeat it over and over and over again….
Uncle Jeffy 04.24.17 at 1:49 am
Thanks, Henry. I was afraid that this day of infamy would somehow be forgotten (as I often wish would happen to the Kraphammer himself), but you’ve kept his insanity in our hearts for another year. Or, as I toasted this evening at dinner: “Here’s to Charles Krauthammer – and the snake that bites him.”
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