Who Knows What "Evil" Lurks....

David Frum, claimed in his "insider" book about the Bush presidency, The Right Man, that he came up with the infamous "axis of evil" idea for Bush's 2002 State of the Union speech.

Frum's idea was to charge North Korea, Iran and Iraq as the "axis of hatred." But, it was supposedly Michael Gerson.... hailed as Bush's phrase-crafting chief speechwriter and advisor from 1999 until he left the White House last year.... who tweaked it by changing "hatred" to "evil."

Now.... Matthew Scully in an article in latest issue of The Atlantic... paints a blistering portrait of Gerson, saying that Gerson accepted credit for words he did not write.

Scully, who worked with Gerson for five years, accuses Gerson of glory hogging, claiming, "Few lines of note were written by Mike, and none at all that come to mind from the post-9/11 addresses-- not even 'axis of evil.' "

Scully claims, as reported in "Bush's Muse Stands Accused," (WaPo) that after Frum came up with "axis of hatred," that he, not Gerson, was the one who came up with the change to "evil."

So it turns out these fateful words, the birth of which shaped our disasterous foreign policy and presaged our trumped-up invasion of one of the anointed evil triplets, Iraq, is the creation of shallow wordsmiths, each seeking some attribution credit.

These strawmen are still unwilling to soberly reflect on the consequences of their word creations.... no shame, no regret, no second-thoughts.... as they bicker over paternity.

In the incurious and ideologically-driven White House, the true meaning of nations in an "axis".... an alliance of two or more nations to coordinate their foreign and military policies.... wasn't the point.

After all, Iran and Iraq were warring enemies.... North Korea an internationally isolated pariah. Nothing close to an axis.

But, in the propaganda buildup to the invasion of Iraq, what better image to stir the collective national memory than World War II's holocaustic Axis... Germany, Italy and Japan.

Instead of fighting over authorship of this fateful phrase.... or any of the demagogic utterances from The Decider... this axis of weevils - Scully, Gerson and Frum.... should instead scurry into the shadows of anonymity.