First, Do No Harm

There sure are a lot of broadsides being fired by both parties in reference to the unfolding of the war in Iraq. This includes video links to political leaders who looked the camera square in the eye and, before the war began said something like, "I know Saddam is developing weapons of mass destruction".

I think there is hell of a lot more to this than first meets the eye. For example, I worked in Air Force Intelligence as an enlisted man in the late 60's and early 70's. Part of that time I helped train air crews in weapons recognition and current intelligence. I remember once having this old major who prepared and presented "Combat Intelligence" briefings to Wing stand up meetings and air crews on alert. He would take reports we were fed from various US agencies, CIA, NSA, FBI, etc. and "summarize" them. The man had a very vivid imagination and a penchant for the dramatic. As a result, he had folks thinking "the enemy" was doing things when there was no proof otherwise. Stuff like, "satellites the size of a basketball that could read a Russian's name tag from outer space" (probably not a distortion now but certainly one back then).

The truth was mixed with fiction and, since everything was "classified", no one really talked about it they just believed it or not. Point is he had most folks believing it and, if permitted and encouraged, they would have probably dropped some of the same statements with 'certainty' that both parties did on Saddam and WMD. I believe someone got overzealous, others picked up the ball and ran with it (including most of the American public) and we ended up with thousands of our son's dead and what, a trillion dollars in the hole?

So we need more of the 'nurse' or 'Missouri' mentality if we are going to save this great country. What I mean is we need to be like the nurse doing a JCAHO inspection on a hospital who says, "Great, so you are holding regular infection committee meetings. Could you please show me the minutes for the past two years? And could you assist me on tracking the paper trail on action items from those meetings? And could I meet with two of your committee members for a couple of minutes?"

Of course, the biggest problem for all of us in doing this is time. Most of us have so much going on we feel forced to accept much of what we hear on faith and, as Hillary, Nancy, Joe and most others would probably say, "That is an extremely shaky, often dangerous approach to things." So rather than "lies and hyprocisy" as stated by many writers and representatives from both parties, I would call it a rush to judgement and would say most of us are guilty of it.

This also makes me reflect on one of the most well known credos of medicine, derived from Hippocrates, "First, do no harm." This should be integrated into the oath of office for all our elected officials and also be something we all keep engraved on our most prominent refrigerator magnets. This won't make us perfect but it sure could make us better.

We are all guilty.