"The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world is to be in reality what we would appear to be." — Socrates Origin of my YouTube Documentary on Iraq WMD — and then some http://mounteverestoftheobvious.com/ An axiom for self-deception is that irrationality is directly proportional to the individual’s emotional investment in the issue. In other words, the more personal the subject matter, the more ridiculous a person is willing to be. In the aftermath of the Zimmerman verdict, Sean Hannity asked an excellent question that can be altered to apply in any context. And yet the same person who posed that perfectly-framed probe, would never risk a crack in his convictions on Iraq by applying the same principle of intellectual inquiry. Any conversation on pre-war intelligence that doesn’t include the names Professor Houston Wood, David Albright, and Greg Thielmann is an exercise in ignorance. I’ve been in contact with all three — digging deeper into this subject matter than all others before. Last July I interviewed world-renowned nuclear scientist Professor Wood — the North Star on the nuclear charge. I had been in email correspondence with him for months, but it became clear that an in-person interview was needed, and to my great fortune he granted it. Originally that interview was intended solely as research for the book I am writing, but the timing of the trip came with a twist. The Zimmerman verdict arrived the following weekend, and the aftermath of senseless certitude reminded me of the decade of delusion on Iraq. When I witnessed Tamara Holder respond to Hannity’s question with such an outrageous answer, I knew I had a golden opportunity on my hands. I immediately turned off the TV and started typing — and 1 week and 20 pages later, I had a pretty darn good paper. I wrote it with a Facebook audience in mind (knowing full well that hardly anyone would take the time to read it). But to seize the moment and flush out my thoughts as fast as possible, I needed a tangible audience (even if only imaginary). So I posted it on Facebook and got exactly what I expected. And then it hit me — what if I could take that material and transform it into a medium that might raise some eyebrows? On that day I started writing my very first script. In a society that systematically derails reason, evidence alone cannot penetrate such depths of duplicity. As a conduit to the recognition of reality, I inject elements of emotion into my documentary to illustrate a story that can be easily understood by all. Thank you for your time and I hope that you enjoy my documentary. Richard W. Memmer

• published: 18 Sep 2014
• views: 15