Woodward Disguises Bush Aims in Invading Iraq

[stewert]

Why is Bob Woodward’s latest book, “Plan of Attack,” is being promoted by the
administration? Because it portrays an in-charge President Bush and presents him
as genuinely concerned (and seemingly misled) over the threat posed by Iraq’s
“weapons of mass-destruction.” Unfortunately, the nation’s most-famous
investigative reporter got it wrong.

You would not know from Woodward’s book that the CIA’s National Intelligence
Estimate (NIE) on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction – used with Congress to hype
the threat - was written several months after the administration decided to make war
on Iraq. That decision had little to do with WMD or with supposed ties between Iraq
and al-Qaeda. It had everything to do with the imperative seen by Bush’s
neoconservative advisers to gain dominant influence over strategic, oil-rich Iraq and
to eliminate any possible threat to Israel’s security. With that twin aim, the rationale
was generally consistent with several decades of U.S. policy objectives in the Middle
East. Where the Bush administration broke new ground was in its decision to launch
a preemptive war when there was nothing to preempt.

Full Story:

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0430-04.htm