Late Monday night, with chatter still brewing around regarding the evidence the NFL presented to various reporters (including CBSSports.com’s Mike Freeman) against Saints players, New Orleans quarterback Drew Brees offered up an interesting observation on Twitter.
In a tweet at 10:25 pm ET (which has since received over 1,500 re-tweets), Brees likened the Saints bounty evidence to the now-infamous “weapons of mass destruction” that then-President George W. Bush maintained were present in Iraq.
WMD’s were the impetus for America starting the Iraq War, with Bush and his administration refusing to back off the notion that Saddam Hussein was hanging out with a payload of seriously destructive weapons.
Once we got into Iraq, well, not so much.
And Brees might have a point here: the NFL’s clearly proven that there was a pay-for-performance system at work within the Saints organization. But the league’s evidence that there was a “bounty system” isn’t as clear-cut, unless you count a picture of the Dog.
The problem for the Saints is that once the NFL used the logic of a bounty program to get inside, they found some bad dudes doing some bad things and are putting a stop to it. That at least gives them an “ends justifies the means” sort of logic to operate on here, with enough circumstantial evidence to justify their decisions.
Oh, yes: it’s probably worth noting that the NFL is not, you know, the government starting a war.
WRITTEN BYÂ Will Brinson | Senior NFL Blogger & FULL STORY HERE
***UPDATE***
Drew Brees Tweeted this earlier this afternoon: