Iraq: Errors and Lies
The fraudulence of the case for war was actually obvious even at the time: the ever-shifting arguments for an unchanging goal were a dead giveaway. So were the word games — the talk about W.M.D that conflated chemical weapons (which many people did think Saddam had) with nukes, the constant insinuations that Iraq was somehow behind 9/11.
.. That’s because the war party didn’t want to hear anything that might raise doubts about the rush to invade. Indeed, the Army’s chief of staff was effectively fired for questioning claims that the occupation phase would be cheap and easy.
.. Never mind Jeb Bush’s verbal stumbles. Think, instead, about his foreign-policy team, led by people who were directly involved in concocting a false case for war.
.. And, who can forget the “Axis of Evil” declaration, labeling Iraq, Iran & North Korea as the Axis of Evil, then proceeding to destroy the first member on the list. To no one’s surprise the two remaining members immediately set about developing nuclear weapons. They had to know that an Iraq with nuclear capabilities could not have been invaded.
.. At the time, I did not believe Bush and I did not believe our Australian PM. But I did believe Tony Blair. It is time for Blair to admit how badly he failed so many millions of people like me. We thought he was better than that. Shame on you, Tony Blair, for still pretending otherwise.
.. I always thought that the strangest thing at that time was the almost total disdain for the UN weapons inspectors and Hans Blix. Disdain from the politicians as well as the media. The inspectors went where the CIA told them they would find WMD’s, and they always found nothing – time and again.
Surely some analyst in the bowels of the CIA must have concluded their WMD intel was dead wrong. But I imagine he or she found few higher-ups that would listen. To the contrary, the worse the intel looked, the quicker Bush and his team wanted the UN out. A few more months of inspections and even the most pure-blooded hawk would have to admit that there are no WMD, therefore no rationale to invade.
.. My (now deceased) father was a recently retired foreign service officer at the time of the debate about going in to Iraq over “WMD,” and he told me at the time there was no question that the inspectors had shown Saddam Hussein was unable to acquire said weapons and simply did not have them. He found it breathtaking that Colin Powell was willing to stand in front of the UN (and, later, news cameras) claiming the contrary as a justification for war, and smash his reputation in this way