A day after New Orleans quarterback Drew Brees compared the NFL’s evidence in the Saints’ bounty program to the Bush administration’s evidence for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Brees has said he thinks he chose his words poorly.
“I apologize if the WMD comment offended anyone. Especially our military. There is no one I respect more than our service men and women,” Brees wrote on Twitter. “My WMD comment has nothing to do with politics or our brave military. Merely an analogy to show how media influences public perception.”
That apology came after Brees took some criticism when he wrote on Twitter on Monday that the NFL’s public case that Saints players and coaches deserve to be suspended for their role in the bounty program is no more accurate than the Bush administration’s public case that Saddam Hussein had WMDs.
“If NFL fans were told there were ‘weapons of mass destruction’ enough times, they’d believe it,” Brees wrote. “But what happens when you don’t find any????”
In his apology Brees made clear to note that he respects those who serve in America’s military, but I’m not sure how anyone could have interpreted Brees’s original tweet as disrespectful to the men and women who served in the Iraq war. I can see how people could have interpreted Brees’s tweet as critical of the Bush administration and the other politicians who put those men and women into the Iraq war, but there’s nothing in the initial Brees tweet that in any way criticizes the members of the military who fought in the war.
Still, Brees has decided, upon reflection, that a comparison between Roger Goodell’s case for the bounty suspensions and George W. Bush’s case for the Iraq War was not a comparison he should have made.
