Colin Powell, lying liar who helped spread lies about Iraq’s imaginary weapons of mass destruction, is dead. Although he regretted his role in spreading the lies that led hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women, and children to an early and violent death, that doesn’t make them any less dead. Let’s roll the tape!

Also, too.

Powell’s lies followed him to his grave. Even the Washington Post, of which you’ll read more in a few lines, noted Powell’s disgraceful tap dancing in their hagiography obituary.

Gen. Powell harbored deep misgivings about the timing of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the size of the invading U.S. force. But he ultimately supported the action, lending his considerable credibility to making the public case for war. It was a move he later regretted…

Throughout 2002, Gen. Powell continued trying to slow the march to war with Iraq, warning Bush in a meeting in August that an invasion could destabilize the Middle East and shackle the United States with a great reconstruction burden.

“You break it, you own it,” he recalled saying.

But Gen. Powell eventually threw his substantial public credibility behind the decision to attack Iraq, agreeing to Bush’s request to present the U.S. case for war to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003.

His 75-minute speech, asserting that Iraq possessed chemical, biological and perhaps even nuclear weapons, proved deeply embarrassing when no weapons were found after the invasion. He told an interviewer several years later that the speech would remain a “blot” on his career, which was “painful” for him to accept.

A “painful blot.” LOL, as the kids say. You know what’s REALLY a painful blot? “When you’re feeling your freedom and the world’s off your back, then some cowboy from Texas starts his own war in Iraq,” and the next thing you know you’re burying your mangled wife and children because someone dropped a bomb on your house, or maybe your husband came home with no legs, or maybe in a flag-draped coffin.

But yeah, I guess knowing you’re responsible for all that bloodshed is painful. Omelets and eggs, amirite?

While we’re on the topic of lying liars, Iraq War propagandist and Washington Post editorial page editor/columnist Fred Hiatt has some thoughts to share on the topic of lying.

How does a lie become respectable?

Bit by bit, step by step, cowardly dodge by cowardly dodge.

Case in point: The Japan-America Society of Washington, D.C., inviting Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty (Tenn.) to its annual gala this week as featured guest and honorary chairman…

But Trump is not, really, gone, and Hagerty, to the surprise of many, has emerged as one of his most loyal acolytes — and one of the most complicit in questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

As late as Jan. 2, Hagerty was vowing, along with fellow Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn, to vote in the Senate not to recognize Joe Biden’s victory in the electoral college. They said they had “concluded without any reservation that we will stand against tainted electoral results from the recent Presidential election…”

When the Senate was able to resume business, he and Blackburn both voted to certify the electoral results after all.

He’s been trying to crawl back into Trump’s good graces ever since, including by sponsoring the Protect Electoral College Act, which calls for the Government Accountability Office to audit the use of absentee ballots in 2020…

The Japan-America Society celebrates the friendship between the world’s oldest democracy and Asia’s oldest democracy. I asked Ryan B. Shaffer, society president, whether a willingness to acknowledge the legitimacy of elections, win or lose, shouldn’t be a minimum requirement for becoming an honorary chairman…

There’s an argument to be made that, at times of intense partisanship, it’s more valuable than ever that people from across the spectrum can encounter each other in nonpartisan arenas such as the Japan-America Society…

By the accumulation of uncounted such little-noticed decisions, Trump’s lie is legitimized and an essential pillar of democracy is eroded: that the loser recognizes the winner, knowing another election opportunity will come around.

Apparently Fred’s not a fan of lying anymore. But if anyone knows that a lie becomes respectable “bit by bit, step by step, cowardly dodge by cowardly dodge,” it’s Fred Hiatt who, along with Colin Powell, helped bring death to thousands of innocent people.

At least Powell felt bad about it and went public with his regrets. Hiatt has never, to the best of my knowledge, admitted that he was wrong.

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