As Dave Barry would say, "I am not making this up." Hat Tip to Think Progress: http://thinkprogress... However, the original story gives better context to his statement:
Inhofe, speaking to the press before Cheney's arrival, lambasted Democrats for Thursday's Senate vote to begin withdrawal from Iraq by Oct. 1 and the press for "mischaracterizing" the reasons for U.S. involvement."The whole idea of weapons of mass destruction was never the issue, yet they keep trying to bring this up," Inhofe said.
When asked why Gen. Colin Powell, then U.S. secretary of state, told the United Nations in 2003 that such weapons posed an imminent danger, Inhofe replied: "I can't answer that. In fact, I've never been one of the real strong fans of General Powell."
Pressed for an explanation, Inhofe said weapons of mass destruction were "incidental" to the decision to invade Iraq.
"The media made that the issue because they knew Saddam Hussein had used weapons of mass destruction. So we knew that they were there. But that was incidental to the fact we were going after terrorist camps."
Our intelligence system has said that we know that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction - I believe including nuclear. There's not one person on this panel who would tell you unequivocally that he doesn't have the missile means now, or is nearly getting the missile means to deliver a weapon of mass destruction. And I for one am not willing to wait for that to happen.
There's actually something in chess called the Egyptian defense. http://www.amazon.co... That's what Inhofe is using -- he's in the land of de Nile.
Here are the key paragraphs:
"The Inhofe Scale will be used to measure statements (but most definitely not the speakers who make them) that exhibit a noticeable and willing detachment from reality. The scale is calibrated so that 100 equals the detachment seen in Senator Inhofe's "greatest hoax", polar bear, and Mars quotations, seen above. Extra consideration is given to positions espoused with an excessively cavalier attitude or downright meanness, and those from people or organizations that have a obligation to get it right.
"Just to be clear, this is a measurement of detachment from widely accepted reality, not a measure of how much the speaker disagrees with me.
"And by "willful detachment from reality" I mean far more than simple ignorance. If my neighbor's eight-year-old son suggests that it would be cheaper to make cars fly than to clear roads with snow plows in the winter, he's speaking from simple ignorance and the typical boyhood fascination with all things that fly. If that boy's father were to make that same suggestion in all seriousness, then we could only conclude that he was delusional or willfully detached from the facts."
Sen. Inhofe's own misstatements of reality seem to run consistently at the 99 to 100 mark on the Inhofe Scale.