A whole bunch of Republican and Democrat officeholders who voted for and/or promoted and/or started the Iraq War are today trying to avoid their responsibility for that evil U.S. aggression. They are blaming flawed intelligence. This group of major league liars includes both Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush. They deserve our contempt for promoting the BIG LIE and attempting to rewrite recent history in complete and utter disregard for the American public who they evidently think deserves nothing better than lies.
The Downing Street Memos are alone sufficient to refute their claims. They are here, and here is a quote:
“C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.”
This web site states
“There is now in the public record a large body of evidence that vividly illustrates:
Bush’s long-standing intent to invade Iraq
Bush’s willingness to provoke Saddam (in a variety of ways) into providing a pretext for war
The fact that the war effectively began with an air campaign nearly a year before the March 2003 invasion and months before Congressional approval for the use of force
The administration’s widespread effort to crush dissent and manipulate information that would counter its justification for war
The lack of planning for the war’s aftermath and a fundamental lack of understanding of the Iraqi society”
The flawed intelligence was produced as part of a massive propaganda campaign that was obvious to many observers at the time. Cheney and Rumsfeld even installed a parallel “intelligence” operation to produce material to justify what they intended to do all along. They fixed the intelligence around the desired policy.
Besides the lies being newly-promoted, doesn’t the buck stop on the desks of elected officials? They, not the CIA or any intelligence bureaucracy, are elected to make this most important decision, the decision to attack another nation. They are not robots who are paid to rubber stamp or worse CREATE intelligence that is uncertain, distorted, manipulated and biased. They have the responsibility for their decisions. It goes along with their power to launch the country into war.
Any politician who now is rewriting events for his or her own political convenience deserves to be rebuked and held in contempt. They are showing the world their true petty and evil characters.
5:30 pm on May 21, 2015
