"They said we would be greeted with flowers, leaving out the very important adjective: exploding," political commentator and comedian Al Franken said of the George W. Bush Administration's hopes for Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Franken, the founder of Air America Radio and host of one of its shows, spoke to a full Cohen Auditorium Tuesday afternoon. The speech, hosted by the Tufts Democrats, was mostly serious in tone.
He presented a laundry list of accusations of dishonesty of the Bush Administration from the buildup to the Iraq War to the present. "These guys just lie out of habit," Franken said.
Franken mentioned the aluminum tubes cited by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell in his address to the United Nations Security Council as an example of the way the administration hid information.
He said then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice had been told by the Department of Energy that the tubes could be used for purposes other than nuclear reactors.
He also mentioned the Downing Street Memo, a record of a meeting of advisors to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, which showed Bush had decided on war with Iraq in the summer of 2002.
Once they decided on war, Franken said, the members of the Bush Administration mismanaged the effort. Instead of using 400,000 troops as recommended by military experts for peace enforcement, he said, the United States invaded with 150,000.
More troops would have prevented the looting and destruction of infrastructure in the country, he said.
Franken, who waived his appearance fee, criticized no-bid military contracts to companies like Halliburton. President Harry Truman, he said, called war profiteering "treason."
"Our young men and women are being killed because Congress won't do its oversight job," Franken said of reconstruction contracts.
The audience applauded when Franken called for Bush to take responsibility for his mismanagement of the war. Franken then went into a satire, pretending to be Bush making an apology for misleading America.
Franken was promoting his newest book, "The Truth (with jokes)."
During the question and answer session, Franken was asked about his thoughts on conservatives' opposition to gay marriage. He said it is a civil rights issue and does not see how marriage is threatened by allowing gays to marry.
"I'm not going to walk down the street and see two guys with rings and say, 'Boy, that looks good to me, honey.'"
Just as Americans regret forbidding interracial marriage, so too would conservatives eventually be won over. "Forty years from now we'll be embarrassed we didn't let gay people have equal rights," he said.
When asked about the rationality of being a conservative, Franken defended the right. "In fairness to conservatives there are people who have a different world view" that is characterized by "rugged individualism" and "tough love."
"It's not good to demonize conservatives," he said. "A lot of people don't have time [to stay informed] so they look for someone that's like them."
Tufts Democrats President senior Aaron Banks said it took many members of the group to organize the event's logistics. "Getting him to come here was actually the easiest part," he said.
