Dead Parrots

Sometimes I feel like we are living in a Monty Python sketch. For the past year, the Bush administration has been pushing for a military confrontation with Iran by claiming that the country is developing nuclear weapons.
Now we find out that Iran halted its nuclear arms bid in 2003 according to a National Intelligence Estimate that came out over a year ago. So the Bush administration has been pushing this line about Iran and nukes all the time knowing that the consensus view of the intelligence community was the complete opposite.
And now when you try and confront the administration or its apologists/defenders they start acting like the pet shop owner in the Monty Python skit, refusing to acknowledge that the parrot is dead.
“Iran’s nuke program is dead.”
“No, it’s not. It’s only resting.”
And so on.
But that is the state of political discourse today. We essentially have a rouge regime in control of our country pushing forward with a foreign policy agenda that is opposed by the vast majority of the citizenry. And the only way they can continue to do this is by repeatedly denying the obvious. They lie. They obfuscate. They play word games (”The President never said it was an ‘imminent threat’.”) And they push ahead as if the will of the American people does not matter.
And if they succeed in doing so and still win the next election with a Bush clone like Giuliani, then perhaps they will have been right.