September 29, 2003
Smoke and Mirrors: Administration Flails in its Efforts to Justify War…
The Bush Administration’s mouth-pieces were out in force on the Sunday “news” talk shows trying to justify a War that never should have been prosecuted. Condoleezza Rice (who I now find it very hard to trust) said the administration relied on “an enrichment” of 5-year-old intelligence to rationalize its—now much maligned—claims that Iraq had WMD, and was therefore a clear and present danger to the United States.
The house of WMD cards is slowly crumbling, and even the usually muted Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is chiming in, stating that it has concluded that most of the information provided by Iraqi defectors was of little or no military or intelligence value. How can any intelligent, rational person still cling to the fantasy that the Bush Administration did not lie to the American people in its zeal to invade a sovereign nation?
Posted by V. Edward Martin at September 29, 2003 11:30 AMMan… what happened to my comment? I’ll try again…
Does this mean the UN lied over the past decade as it imposed sanctions on Iraq because of WMD’s?
Does this mean the Clinton White House lied in 1998 when it attacked Iraq?
Posted by: CJ at September 29, 2003 07:59 PMDoes this mean the Clinton White House lied in 1998 when it attacked Iraq?
Yes with a qualifier: at that juncture the UN had been kicked out of Iraq and Saddam was aggresively testing the limits of the no-fly-zone.
But that’s overshadowed by the fact that impeachment hearings were being held and smells like wagging the dog.
Posted by: Stephen VanDyke at September 29, 2003 08:49 PMClinton lied to launch those cruise missiles, remember? That supposed biological weapons lab turned out to be an aspirin factory. Two wrongs do not make a right.
Posted by: Stephen VanDyke at September 29, 2003 09:39 PMActually the U.N. was never “kicked out” of Iraq.
They left on thier own. But in retrospect it doesn’t really matter.
There might have been a time when Iraq was truly a threat, but at the time we attacked, they were not. The U.N. kept the sanctions in place mostly due to U.S. insistence, and most likely not out a real belief that Iraq had the WMD we kept, and keep claiming they had and have.
This is not about Clinton, he is out of office, never to return, this is about the “current” administration. Be that as it may, if memory serves me correctly, the Clinton White House attacked Iraq, over repeated violations of the Southern no fly zone, and other violations of U.N. resolutions. At that time, back in 1998, Saddam might still have had WMD, but today if he has (had) them, where are they? We occupy the country, and have been there for close to seven months now, surely we should have been able to find something by now. After all, there are only so many places you can hide a WMD.
Yeah, actually it does matter when the same people who insisted on WMDs in 1998, which Clinton and Dachle and other congressional Dems did. If it comes out that the WMDs are not their then it is a direct impugning of the entire intelligence apparatus. To say that he lied is ridiculous and anyone who honestly thinks Bush lied is extremely uninformed on recent history. The Dems (and their Green Party toads) are counting on a short American memory in order to paint the WMD pre-war contention as a Bush invention. If a plurality of the electorate continues to not be retarded, as in the 2000 election, Republicans will win handily in 2004. Prediction: 47 state landslide, with NY, CA, MA the only holdouts from reality.
Posted by: Third Loser at September 30, 2003 09:00 PM
