Well, What Do You Know?

A couple of days ago I mentioned the topic of "Faith in Politics," more specifically the foolishness of asking any political figure at any time, "How does your faith guide you?"

Well today, yet again, we've been handed a frightening example of the dangerous way in which "faith" guides our idiot president.

Yesterday a declassified summary of the government's latest National Intelligence Estimate was released to the public; it states that -- and stop me if you've heard this one before -- we got it all wrong when it came to our alarmist theories about the imminent threat from an Iranian nuclear weapons program.

Never one to be deterred by the facts presented to him by his own people, President Bush immediately called a press conference to essentially plug his fingers in his ears and go "LA LA LA LA LA NOT LISTENING LA LA LA LA." For months now he and his delusional, lunatic Vice President have steadily increased the drumbeat heralding yet another potential war in the Middle-East, this time with Iran.

His predictably -- stupidly -- stubborn assertion now that he's been told that at the present time there's absolutely no evidence of a burgeoning Iranian nuclear threat?

It can be summed up in one mind-boggling sentence: Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there.

This is of course the kind of response you'd expect from a petulant six-year-old.

It's also the kind of willful proclamation of faith that's the accepted stock-and-trade of an entire Fundamentalist belief system. No wonder the Hardcore Jesus Folks love Bush so much.

What it highlights however is the danger inherent, even for a moment, in suspending the evidentiary burden of proof -- the one that all but the most irrational individual tends to apply in making 99% of his or her daily decisions. If you're willing to believe something as seemingly imperative as the demands of a supreme being without a shred of actual proof, then why shouldn't you also be willing to buy into something as insignificant -- in a relative sense -- as the idea that Iran has an invisible nuclear weapons program?

By that skewed standard, any leap of logic makes perfect sense.

Make no mistake, I have no doubt whatsoever that Iran can't be trusted. Unfortunately, so far our president has proven that he can't be.

And right now that proof will have to make the difference.

(I've chosen to gloss over the intricacies -- and there are so many -- of just how this all went down and what a major blow this report is to the sliver of worldwide credibility this administration has left. You can see a couple of takes on the infuriating details here and here. I also confess that I'm giving Bush the benefit of the doubt in suggesting that he truly believes that Iran is a threat; the more cynical and at this point even likely possibility is that he doesn't care one way or the other -- that he's simply seeking the same thing he and his Neo-Con pals always have: A war without end.)