Inhofe’s Litany Of Lies
United States Senator Jim Inhofe from Oklahoma addressed a town hall yesterday and decided to leave his sense of decency and his responsibility to the truth at home. According to Inhofe, President Obama is disarming the military, is destroying everything good about America and is determined to turn foreign terrorists loose on United States soil. It would all be pretty scary stuff if any of it was actually true. Inhofe has never been one to rely on genuine facts to form his opinions. He is one of the strongest global warming deniers in congress and recently announced proudly that he would vote against any health care reform bill without bothering to actually read it. He had evidentially learned all he needed to know about the bill from the media. This is all after he stated he was voting against Sonia Sotomayor without even showing the common courtesy to meet with her first.
Inhofe’s Troubling History With The Truth
If you want more proof of Inhofe’s stunning ability to just make things up out of thin air then just look at his tortured history with the issue of WMDs in Iraq. In August 2002 he stated unequivocally:
“Our intelligence system has said that we know that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction — I believe including nuclear. There’s not one person on this panel who would tell you unequivocally that he doesn’t have the missile means now, or is nearly getting the missile means to deliver a weapon of mass destruction. And I for one am not willing to wait for that to happen.”
In October 2005 after the existence of WMDs was proven to be completely false, he seemed to hang on desperately to the idea. In a letter to a constituent he said he “firmly believe(s) that weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq, and the evidence points to this argument.” By 2007 he became visibly upset every time the issue was mentioned and blamed the media for giving it more importance than it deserved by saying “The whole idea of weapons of mass destruction was never the issue, yet they keep trying to bring this up.”
Who knows what his position would be today if he was asked. Maybe he believes that Obama and his Muslim brother Saddam Husain invented the whole filthy lie regarding WMDs in order to embarrass the Republicans so that the Democrats could destroy the world. After all, it’s as plausible a theory as anything else that came out of his mouth at his town hall on Wednesday.
The Core of His Dishonesty
The reality is that Inhofe has no reason to curb his open hatred for Obama in any way. He is a conservative senator in an ultra-conservative state that didn’t have a single county that voted for Barack Obama. I lived in Oklahoma for a couple of years and learned some valuable lessons about the south and race while I was there. I came to believe that there is a certain segment of the population in Oklahoma that has been raised to think about African Americans in a purely racial way. Inhofe is certainly of the generation where major civil rights changes were being forced on states like Oklahoma. Desegregation went down hard in Oklahoma. Civil rights laws are still resented there even today. I am not saying that Inhofe’s remarks are based purely on race but his ability to think the absolute worst of this President, no matter what the facts say, is very troubling.
What Does It Really Mean
Thankfully, it doesn’t matter that much. Inhofe or any other senator elected from Oklahoma is never going to support a single one of Obama’s policies and the state will never vote Democratic in 2012. So Inhofe can keep on lying and Oklahoma crowds can keep on cheering and they both can allow history and the truth to pass them by. Maybe when Texas leaves the union it can drag Oklahoma and Inhofe along with it right back to the 19th century.
I also lived in Oklahoma for many years and I can honestly say that the ultra conservatives spewing hate and lies (like Inhofe and Coburn) drove me to seek asylum in more liberal areas of the U.S. It’s a shame because Oklahoma is a beautiful place to live except for the political climate.
Moving to Oklahoma was a real culture shock for me. I originally come from the northwest where race and religion are a very small part of the political debate. There, I couldn’t escape it.