Grumpy Old Statesmen

There is no more dispiriting sight than a senior politician using his former position to lend credibility to the most disreputable of causes.

Example #1: Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark has joined Saddam Hussein's defence team:

Khames Hameed al-Ubaidi said Clark was in Baghdad and will meet with the defense team on Sunday night or Monday morning, when the trial is scheduled to resume.

If Clark is not allowed to participate in the courtroom, he will act as a legal adviser, al-Ubaidi said.

A U.S. official close to the Iraqi High Tribunal said there have been no motions made by Hussein's attorney to have an international lawyer work on the defense team. But the official said that if the proper motion for that was filed it would probably be accepted.

Example #2: Paul Hellyer from putting sailors in little green uniforms to making friends with little green men:

On September 25, 2005, in a startling speech at the University of Toronto that caught the attention of mainstream newspapers and magazines, Paul Hellyer, Canada’s Defence Minister from 1963-67 under Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prime Minister Lester Pearson, publicly stated: "UFOs, are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head."

Mr. Hellyer went on to say, "I'm so concerned about what the consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war, that I just think I had to say something."

Hellyer revealed, "The secrecy involved in all matters pertaining to the Roswell incident was unparalled. The classification was, from the outset, above top secret, so the vast majority of U.S. officials and politicians, let alone a mere allied minister of defence, were never in-the-loop."

Hellyer warned, "The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning. He stated, "The Bush administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide."

Neither of these men realize the damage they have caused to their reputations by embracing tyrants and crackpots. The exchange of credibility only goes one way in these arrangements, and it's not to Clark and Hellyer.