Alexander Pope Quotes
Dogs, ye have had your day!
Homer. The Odyssey of Homer. Translated by Alexander Pope, vol. 5, Bernard Lintot, 1726, p. 147.
As Secretary of State, Powell was going to address the UN Security Council on the 5th and he was coordinating his speech with the other agencies of the government. His criterion was that he only wanted to make accusations that were backed up by incontrovertible evidence. However, VP Richard Cheney and his aide, Scooter Libby, kept inserting an accusation that Iraq was involved with and supported Al Qaeda. This was one of the many speculations that those who wanted to justify attacking Iraq kept using as Domestic propaganda. When Powell asked for proof or intelligence reports and none could be provided, he removed the accusation from the speech explaining why. However, at the last minute, Cheney and his staff put the accusation back in, and that triggered the quotation. Unfortunately, Powell was so busy fending off totally absurd accusations, that he accepted the CIA assurances {79468} that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons that were about to be operationalized and never heard from those who questioned the credibility of the sources for the basic accusation. Powell had great trust among the diplomats of the world then gave the United States version to the Security Council and justified our coming invasion of Iraq. But the intelligence report, despite the assurances of the CIA and the Vice President, was false and Iraq not only was not close to a nuclear weapon but he had no program at all at that time to try and develop one. Powell resigned and his credibility about the world was ruined as he was then seen as just another lying politician.
Alexander Pope is seen as one of the greatest English poets and the foremost poet of the early 18th century. He is best known for satirical and discursive poetry, including The Rape of the Lock, The Dunciad, and An Essay on Criticism, and for his translation of Homer. After Shakespeare, Pope is the second-most quoted writer in English, according to The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, some of his verses having become popular in common parlance (e. g., damning with faint praise). He is considered a master of the heroic couplet.
