Today it’s “W.” I knew George Bush was one sick son of … Mommy Dearest. Barbara Bush, made Genghis B., then a teenage boy, drive her to the hospital after she had miscarried. On her lap this awful woman carried the remains of the expelled fetus, which she showed to boy George.
Did we really need to know this? And why oh why has this dreadful man come out of hiding!
I have no wish to re-litigate his murderous reign. But the idea that Bush was justified in waging war on Iraq is preposterous. The fact that “W” has come out with His Truth to loud applause reflects very badly on his base, which includes very many American historians.
“BUSH’S 16 WORDS MISS THE BIG PICTURE”:
Reducing this administration’s single-minded will to war to an erroneous 16 words ignores the big picture. First came the decision to go to war. The misbegotten illegality that was this administration’s case for war followed once the decision to go to war had already been made. The administration’s war wasn’t about a few pieces that did not gel in an otherwise coherent framework; it wasn’t about an Iraq that was poised to attack the U.S. with germs and chemicals rather than with nukes; it was about a resigned, hungry, economic pariah that was a sitting duck for the power-hungry American colossus.
By all means, dissect and analyze what, in September 2002, I called the “lattice of lies” leveled at Iraq: the uranium from Africa, the aluminum tubes from Timbuktu, the invisible “meetings” with al-Qaida in Prague, an al-Qaida training camp that existed under Kurdish—not Iraqi—control, as well as the alleged weaponized chemical and biological stockpiles and their attendant delivery systems that inspectors doubted were there and which never materialized.
But then assemble the pieces and synthesize the information, will you? Do what the critical mind must do. The rational individual, wedded to reality, reason, and objective, non-partisan truth saw Bush’s sub-intelligent case for war for what it was. He saw Bush as the poster boy for “the degeneracy of manner and morals” which James Madison warned war would bring—the same “bring ’em on” grin one can also observe on the face of a demented patient with end-stage syphilis. The rational individual saw all this, and understood that when Madison spoke of “war as the true nurse of executive aggrandizement,” he was speaking of the disposition of this dictator.
Hold the CIA responsible for giving in to the War Party’s pressure, if you will. But recognize that the CIA was only obeying the wishes of its masters. The CIA had attempted to resist. Witness the early statements by Vince Cannistraro, former counterterrorism chief, who scoffed at the concoction of an al-Qaida-Iraq connection. Having come under fire after September 11, the agency gave in to White House pressure to politicize and shape the lackluster information.
Unforgivable? Yes. But consider who the intelligence community takes its corrupt cues from. Perhaps New Jersey’s poet laureate Amiri Baraka had a point when he wondered, “Who know [sic] what kind of Skeeza is a Condoleezza.” The National Security Adviser has since September 11 been rocking the intelligence community with her antipathy to the truth. As if her Saddam-seeded nuclear-winter forecasts were not bad enough, on September 8, 2002, she told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that “We do know that there have been shipments into Iraq of aluminum tubes that really are only suited to nuclear weapons programs.” “That’s just a lie,” an appalled David Albright of the Institution for Science and International Security told The New Republic.
In her latest damage control interview with Blitzer, Rice continued to insist that Saddam Hussein was threatening his neighbors when the president pounced, and, as justification for the war, she still makes reference to Saddam’s effort to pursue a nuclear program in … 1991, and to the burying of old centrifuge parts prior to the first Gulf War. Rice, of course, continues to deny the Niger forgery.
Clearly, Whitehall and Washington will not willingly give up their dark secrets. With few exceptions, such as U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd; Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Dennis Kucinich; John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee; and Bob Graham of Florida, the utterly disposable and detestable Democrats have been only too pleased to aid and abet this (heritable) executive dictatorship.
And the media will continue to do what their collective intelligence permits: focus only on the one lie, thus making the lattice more impenetrable.
UPDATE I (Nov. 9): LOOTER. Genghis Bush is now openly exhibiting the pistol his invading army looted off Saddam Hussein. At the very least, this is tacky. Primitive.
UPDATE II (Nov. 10): YOU LIE, W. SPIEGEL ONLINE: “Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has said that ex-US President George W. Bush is not telling the truth in his memoirs, released on Tuesday. Schröder said he never offered his unconditional support for Bush’s aggressive policy against Iraq.
In his memoirs, called “Decision Points” and released on Tuesday, Bush writes that Schröder told him in January 2002 that the US president had his full support when it came to his aggressive Iraq policy. Bush wrote that Schröder indicated he would even stand behind Bush should the US go to war against the country.
On Tuesday evening in Berlin, Schröder denied that he ever made such a promise. “The former American president is not telling the truth,” he said. He said the meeting in question focused on the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and whether those responsible were supported by the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
“Just as I did during my subsequent meetings with the American president, I made it clear that, should Iraq … prove to have provided protection and hospitality to al-Qaida fighters, Germany would reliably stand beside the US,” Shröder said. “This connection, however, as it became clear during 2002, was false and constructed.”
UPDATE III: LOTS OF LYING. SPIEGEL ONLINE: “With its invasion of Iraq, the United States rid the Iraqi people of a tyrant. But it also broke the law and destroyed tens of thousands of lives. With the release of close to 400,000 Iraq logs by WikiLeaks and the coming publication of George W. Bush’s memoir, it is time to take stock of a war that was catastrophic for Iraq and America’s standing in the world.”
“In early October, there were 500 unidentified bodies in the Baghdad city morgues. According to one doctor, just as many bodies are being delivered to morgues today as in 2007. At least 630 people were shot to death with silenced pistols in the last three months alone. Although most were guards at checkpoints, the victims also included politicians and their relatives, as well as a television reporter who suddenly collapsed in the middle of a broadcast, in broad daylight. The source of the fatal shot could not be located. The atmosphere is eerie.”
“‘I have friends who returned from their self-imposed exile in Damascus last year. Now they’re packing their bags again,’ says Ahmed, a young attorney who is sitting under a ceiling fan in the Shah Bandar Café in downtown Baghdad”
Unfortunately, it would take forever to find my old computer archives but I was screaming how the “case for war” was utterly bogus. James Webb and Marine General Zinni said as much. Ron Paul said it as well as did the paleocons.
Sadly, some “libertarians” went along with and still go along with (Boortz, some of the CATO/Reason group…) the “Liberation of Iraq” IL-LOGIC.
What the hell is an aluminum tube good only for a nuclear weapons program? Is this a new law of physics? That is like the warehouse seen from space that “could house a bio warfare lab” – yes and the warehouse could house a ballet studio, cell phone store, or strip joint!
And 95% of Republicans/Conservatives engage in the BIG LIE to this very day!!! Few of the idiotic media enablers have apologized as well for going along with the propagandized poop.
Remember how they said by “fighting a war over there we won’t have to fight one over here.”?
I drove home today from work. On the way home I passed through the Mexican suburb of Farmers Branch, Texas. I say Mexican only because it now looks like Chiapas, Mexico. I had to contain my rage as I drove past the dental clinic with all the advertencias festooning the windows. They advertise the fact that the clinic proudly accepts Medicaid and CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program). CHIP brags on its website that it does not check the immigration status of an American (sic) child’s parents. http://www.chipmedicaid.com/english/qualify.asp
Remember this ongoing invasion of the Republic on Veterans Day and not the fraudulent invasion of the artificial construct known as Iraq.
It’s the invasion the elites would rather you forget.
Rogerrr – one does not even have to become a citizen in order to VOTE:
http://michellemalkin.com/…/9th-circuit-overturns-az-proof-of-citizenship-voting- rule/
Citzenship is good for people to pay taxes!
I am ashamed that I ever voted for W. He was a terrible President. Roger, I live in Houston and I see the same things here. So much of our city is crime ridden and looks like a third world country. Many of these problems caused by immigrants from south of the border. If I could find comparable employment in the midwest I would leave in a second.
Condoleezza Rice was absolutely the wrong person for the job (either job, National Security Advisor or Secretary of State.) She was expert in matters Soviet, which do not equate to matters Middle Eastern except in the minds of Americans (and others) blissfully ignorant of foreign cultures. Given the executive nod by Bush the Younger, she ventured into uncharted (for her) territory where, had she any sense comporting with what is required to discharge the duties of high office, she might have trusted the analyses of those more experienced (CIA, specifically) regarding conditions in the Middle East. She didn’t—and her “mushroom cloud” comment (Saddam may nuke us!) resounds ignobly to this day. Yet the buck has to stop at the top: George W. Bush picked this incompetent for his Cabinet; and given his recent efforts to rehabilitate his image (perhaps to place brother Jeb more favorably for a national office run—the Bushes are a “dynasty,” after all), it’s important to remember the rotten choices he made, and their consequences.
Barb – I have encountered many “Condoleezas” (white, black, male, female) in the government – pleasant people who seek out consensus and suck their way up the ladder through amiable consensus.
There are very few people who wish to have the role of Court Skeptic and point out the flaws in the so-called consensus, the spurious logic, the unproven assertions, etc. If you wish to be the person who gets to serve on lots of “expert” committees, be the yes-man or yes-woman. If you don’t mind never being invited back to attend program reviews of projects that later fail, be the Court Skeptic.
[Actually, Myron, in the private sector, where you have to make something that works and that the masses will want to buy—men with good minds who can do all that are not shunned as in government, where the aim is to move taxpayer dollars around. Of course, in the giant corporations, which are comprised of many fiefdoms, and, like government, lack a clear chain of custody—in these entities, things work almost as badly.–IM]
But as you say, the buck ends with Bush, not the “consensus” of nodding heads who merely repeated the same bulls**t 1 million times over as if that made it true….