Why Did We Ever Listen to Lindsey Graham? By Joe Conason

[justaprogressive]

"De mortuis nil nisi bonum," said my father whenever a political adversary passed away, repeating the ancient Roman admonition to speak only good of the dead. So, in assessing the career of Lindsey Graham, lately deceased senator from South Carolina, let's note in fairness that he spoke passionately and often in support of Ukraine's struggle against its Russian oppressor, a righteous cause he shared with liberals and progressives in the opposing party.

However much Graham did for Ukraine, what his career shows most clearly is how powerful conservatives routinely escape the memory of their ruinous decisions — and go on to promote further destruction with every breath. Most of them never express regret for the chaos and death they help to cause, and instead persistently attempt to justify the wreckage left behind.

Today, and no doubt for years to come, America will continue to live with the consequences of Graham's blundering and blithering — and our failure to ignore him after the first time around.

Very few American politicians would still seek to justify or excuse the momentously bad judgment that led us to invade Iraq more than two decades ago. Many of the senators who voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution in 2002, including Democrats and Republicans, have expressed at least a degree of remorse for that lethal error. More than once, Hillary Clinton has said it is her deepest regret.

But on that ill-fated vote's 20th anniversary, Graham waved off any pangs of guilt for the thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed. "Intelligence was faulty," he dismissively told a reporter, referring to the comic-book depictions of an arsenal of mass destruction hidden somewhere by the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. According to the late senator, we should be grateful that Iraq — now governed by Iranian-backed warlords and militias — is a "democracy," kind of. Freedom House still rates it as "unfree."

https://www.creators.com/read/joe-conason/07/26/why-did-we-ever-listen-to-lindsey-graham]

[malaise]

1. THIS

Most of them never express regret for the chaos and death they help to cause, and instead persistently attempt to justify the wreckage left behind.

[RandySF]

2. Why is the press trying to salvage his reputation?

[mdbl]

4. They're trying to woo the magat viewers

Fux Nooze should be concerned.

[displacedvermoter]

6. Because they had him on TV weekly, daily and constantly lying and

making fun of people who disagreed with him in that oily southern fashion, and did I say lying?

He was in all this with them, and in singing his praises in death, it makes them look less stupid as it is clear his ideas and strategies were failures, failures the media broadcast to everyone on a regular basis.

[CrimsonBight]

3. Seriously, why the fuck was this guy a regular guest on major news outlets?

Whenever the issue of armed conflict arose, Graham made sure to be on the wrong side. And yet, the talking heads at these allegedly liberal news outlets let him ramble on about Eye-ran and Izrul, without serious challenge.

[Solly Mack]

5. Telling the truth about people after they die can save a person all manner of contortions.

Same goes for when they're still alive.

[Mike Nelson]

7. We had to listen to him...

... if we watched political news. People were always putting mics to his mouth, and he would not shut up.

[MurrayDelph]

8. I had to look up the Latin

It translates to "of the dead speak nothing but good."

He's dead. Good.

[fujiyamasan]

9. I had never seen the Latin phrase

I had only seen the translated English phrase attributed to the actress who had the feud with the other.