General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWe will NOT forget.
The Arc of the Moral Universe... Is Twisted
by David Michael Green
The story that the Right tells itself in order to save itself from itself is that it was all one big innocent cock-up, for which they had no responsibility:
.........................
Youd have to forget that Bush and his cronies confided to family friend and author Mickey Herskowitz in 1999 that they were already planning on invading Iraq, in part because of the political capital they believed a quick and decisive victory would generate for use in ramming through their domestic agenda. Apparently they had been mightily impressed by the political benefits accrued to Margaret Thatcher after winning the Falklands War and sought the same for themselves. Herskowitz had tapes of Bush saying these things, since the author was ghost-writing Bushs pre-campaign obligatory autobiography. Until he wasnt. When smarter heads caught wind of what W. had confessed, a campaign operative showed up at Herskowitzs house one morning at 7:00 AM to confiscate the tapes and files.
Youd also have to forget that Treasury Secretary Paul ONeill confirmed that invading Iraq was being discussed at cabinet meetings from the very beginning of the Bush administration, well before 9/11, and that in these deliberations it was not a matter of if, but when, the administration would launch a war.
Youd have to omit Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfelds dictated instructions to an aide on 9/11 to go massive - sweep it all up, things related and not in which he sought to justify the administrations full empire-building agenda using the events of that day as cover.
Youd need to forget how yet another insider terrorism czar Richard Clarke confirmed that Bush pulled him aside just days after 9/11, poked him in the chest, and ordered him to find a link between the al Qaeda attack and Saddam Hussein.
And one would also need forget, as well, the admission by Paul Wolfowitz often labeled the architect of the Iraq war, and thus the ultimate insider that the whole WMD campaign was purely for bureaucratic purposes. That is, that within the administration they all had their own reasons for wanting a war against a country not only not harming the US but not even threatening it, but in order to have any hope of selling such an obvious stinker they all had to get on the same page, and that page was WMD. Never mind that it was a Whole Mass of Deceit and they not only knew it, they built it.
More things to forget:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/05/27/arc-moral-universe-twisted
Martin Eden
(12,843 posts)They did everything they could to conflate Saddam with bin Laden in order to link Iraq with 9/11. This false perception they persistently hammered home was totally as odds with the available intelligence.
A decade earlier al Qaeda had approached Saddam looking for help against a mutual enemy, but Saddam knew the jihadists posed a long term threat to his regime. Rather than conspire with al Qaeda he kept a wary eye on them. Cheney/Bush took this nugget of intel and ominously warned the American people that Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda had "ties" going back ten years.
The cold hard fact of the matter is the policy makers in the Bush adminsitration were bent on invading Iraq before GW took office, and it was a major foreign policy goal from Day One. They did not decide to go to war based on an objective assessment of the available intelligence and the ostensible threat posed by Iraq. They purposely cherry picked and misrepresented the available intel to gain public and congressional support for a decision that had already been made.
Anyone who says otherwise is ignorant and/or a liar.
AuntPatsy
(9,904 posts)seveneyes
(4,631 posts)WillyT
(72,631 posts)Solly Mack
(90,758 posts)AtomicKitten
(46,585 posts)Rex
(65,616 posts)Without stupid people, the GOP house of cards comes tumbling down.
spanone
(135,781 posts)Scuba
(53,475 posts)... millions of us knew it was wrong and based on lies.
KG
(28,751 posts)even the current admin.