What Happened to the Truth

by Gordon Cooper

From Broader View Weekly, June 6, 2008


There is a very astute criterion for determining truth given to us in the Levitical Law of the Old Testament: “…On the evidence of two or three witnesses a matter shall be confirmed.” (Deuteronomy 19:18 NASB) This standard has been accepted and incorporated into our legal system. It is a very good standard, as we have many clear examples of “He said, She said” scenarios in which we are left with no valid establishment of where truth actually resides. The current belief that ‘truth is relative’ has led us to some very dangerous waters, with no secure harbor for our trust. It seems that each time an enterprising individual decides to “tell it all” (for a sum and a brief jaunt before the limelight of every talk show in Hollywood) we end up with various shades of “the truth”.

In the current scene being played out on the morning “news” shows and on the pages of the daily papers, we have a former White House press secretary telling us “the truth” that he was supposedly unable to tell us before this particular day and time. A day and time, by the way, which would just happen to be the most headline grabbing and consequently, more profitable for book selling.

So then, what exactly must we do to ascertain whether this Scott McClellan is telling us the truth, or whether the former Scott McClellan was telling us the truth? Let us go back to the above-mentioned criterion that has served us well for centuries. Let us look for “two or three witnesses” and let us also look at the current McClellan’s own words in his preface.

“Writing it wasn’t easy. Some of the best advice I received as I began came from a senior editor at a publishing house that expressed interest in my book. He said the hardest challenge would be to keep questioning my own beliefs and perceptions throughout the writing process…I’ve found myself questioning my own thinking, my assumptions, my interpretations of events. Many of the conclusions I’ve reached are quite different from those I would have embraced at the start of the process. THE QUEST FOR TRUTH HAS BEEN A STRUGGLE FOR ME…I DON’T CLAIM A MONOPOLY ON TRUTH…AFTER WRESTLING WITH MY EXPERIENCES OVER SEVERAL MONTHS, I’VE COME CLOSER TO MY TRUTH THAN EVER BEFORE.” (Emphasis mine.)

The choice of words is very significant here and bears some analysis. While I do not claim to be a psychologist, I can easily see how a person can change his/her “perceptions” and “interpretations of events” to the point where they can easily accept a truth as theirs, without ever establishing or proving it to be absolute truth.

So, now let us go back to the days before the Iraq War began and listen to “two or three witnesses” who saw a different truth.

We have quotes from several news sources – apart from those bought and paid for by the U.S. Government – that Saddam Hussein had acquired and sought to acquire more weapons of mass destruction. We had proof that he used them on his own people. We had verification that he was promoting terrorism as well as rewarding the families of Palestinian homicide bombers with $25,000 “bonus checks”. We had several UN Resolutions that were indisputably violated by Saddam. We had several instances where he violated the no-fly zone and fired on our patrol planes.

We had, at those times when McClellan took the party line and delivered the words of the President with his fingers tightly crossed behind his back, as if he was somehow absolved from fibbing, a climate much different from the climate we have today. Just as the sunny weather we are now enjoying in early June tends to shield our memory of those icy days of January, the current environment of security and relative absence of terroristic threats tends to shield us from the days 2002 and 2003. In those days, the terrorists were spreading their evil and threatening the citizens of Spain, France, Germany and many other nations. They seemed to have the upper hand as they fought against our conventional means of warfare and negotiation with unconventional weapons of suicide bombings and broken negotiations. Today, we, and Scott McClellan, enjoy a relatively secure world with the terrorists losing battles daily on the streets of Iraq and – more importantly - in the hearts of the Iraqi people.

The decision to use force in Iraq was approved by a vote of 296 – 133 in the House of Representatives and a vote of 77 – 23 in the U.S. Senate (On October 16, 2002, several months before Coalition Forces “rushed to war” in Spring ’03), based upon their belief in the truth of two or more witnesses that a very real threat existed in Saddam’s regime. A coalition of like-minded sovereign nations agreed with that assessment and joined us in the liberation effort.

The lesson to be learned from this is not that we acted in some kind of blind nationalism – but that we acted upon the best basis of truth at the time, i.e. the testimony of several witnesses. Another lesson to be learned is to “follow the money” whenever we are seeking the motive of an individual who tells a different story at different times. A hefty book contract and a speaking tour under the spotlight comes much more easily when you can say something sensational and if you can drop it into the middle of a media-rich presidential campaign.