|
A hype that began with the first Bush administration, which made Saddam Hussein, a former ally of sorts, into the replacement demon after Soviet communism fell. Fear of the USSR, formerly, was the engine that drove the military industrial complex from which the bulk of the US's power bloc comes. Saddam became the new engine, the justification for bulked up weapons programs, the ready-made target for wag-the-dog expenditures of hardware and political capital that even the Clinton administration found irresistable. This is why the bipartisan Washington consensus formed on the "grave threat" and "imminent danger" of Iraq's phantom WMD programs, even though the evidence long existed that it was neither. This is why freepers can easily cite instances of Democrats making the same out-of-touch-with-reality assertions about the "dangers" of Saddam that they and their Bushist masters are still in thrall to. Unfortunately for the Bushists (we hope!), the hype has been found out to be what it is. Now they have no option but to keep faking it and hope we all fall for it again.
|