By the time President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein of the deadly weapons he was allegedly trying to build, every piece of fresh evidence had been tested — and disproved — by U.N. inspectors, according to a report commissioned by the president and released Thursday.
Washington Post: free registration
I don’t know if Americans will EVER seriously consider the legality of the Iraq war. We had a chance to vote Bush out of office and something happened…something that is still not clear…that prevented us from doing so.
But voter suppression, funky exit polls, and vulnerable code aside, the election should not have been close. And when lackey commissions come out with conclusions like the one above, you know that something is seriously off kilter in the American electorate.
Perhaps the ‘duct-tape fatwa’ was so effective that we were terrified into submission. Perhaps the 9/11 attacks were so visually horrifying, that our collective lust for revenge needed to be assuaged.
Perhaps the media has become such a mouthpiece for our military-industrial complex, that we can be moved to accept whatever agenda they lay before us.
But sometime soon, and the day cannot be far off, there has to be a reckoning for the lies that we have been told.
At least, that is what I keep telling myself.
..is my only depressing response.
Maybe you lot can do better in the States than we have done with Teflon Tony Blair on the same issues here.
I got drunk with my Republican neighbor yesterday and she blurted out, “They lied! They lied about Saddam’s weapons!” She then ranted on about the Schiavo circus, the prescription Medicare scam, the bankruptcy bill, the monstrous deficit — sounding basically just like one of us — and ended on a screech, “The Democrats are just as corrupt! Just as bad! I want a NEW party that represents ME!” It stoked a tiny flame of hope in my heart.
Ross Perot…
Bush figured on the war time president thing being enough to get him there and that was correct. America is a very militarist nation. The religious right are a blood-thirsty bunch. Bush deliberately polarised America further so as to ensure he could con his “supporters” by making it all about loyalty to party. It got him close enough to steal the election.
There’s another reason we lost the election: we didn’t have a candidate.
Kerry never stood against the war–never stood for much of anything.
I supported him (what else could I do?), but he was a lousy candidate and never did represent my views.
My response is the same as Welshman: Don’t hold your breath. Humans remain too emotional and driven by the adoption of symbols, and the confusion of symbols for reality.
I can only be a loud echo, of the comments placed so far. I like the rest, try to keep a glimmer of hope that this country will awaken.
For all we can do is shout, and await a true echo of a united response for true justice.
infidel, that glimmer is reflected on the other side of “the pond” as well.
thankfully communities like this keep that glimmer burning
like to make the point that the above grey box citation should be bookmarked, saved, emblazoned on your foreheads, and repeated…repeated…repeated… to your soulless Republican acquaintances… at every opportunity… until they submit to the truth, and admit the truth, and show respect for the truth.
We knew the case for war was dead before we started the war.
On a personal note, hopefully in my lifetime will I see a ‘watergate type’ hearing involving bushco and the whole iraq mess/lies and the war profiteering. I want bush to be regarded in the history books and the public mind as much worse than Nixon. Hope, hope, hope is all I can say.
If not that then what he’s done with the domestic agenda regarding education/religion/environment and have that legacy be a lasting blight on his presidency. When people start realizing that after 5 years in office nothing, but nothing in this country has gotten better as far as jobs, economy or health care.(fuck his stupid medicare reform bill and I think a lot of bush people are seeing that that was/is another mess they got screwed on)
As for this realistically happening I don’t know. People-bush supporters-never like to admit they are wrong or were wrong about anything. That’s human nature. Especially when it comes to a president and how that is all tied up into a nationalistic ‘patriotism. In a way if you admit you were taken in by a president’s lies than a lot of people think then that was somehow a personal failing on their part thus don’t want to admit to this. Who does?
However I can only hope again that reasonable people who are bush supporters-not the bush cultists-when they do turn will become like reformed smokers and be the most vocal against him and help take him down.
If not during his presidency than at least while he’s still alive to see his place in the history books showing him to be worst president ever for what he’s done to this country.
If Bush doesn’t get tarred with some kind of major publicly aired scandal while in office, and especially if the dems don’t start winning elections, I’m afraid we’re going to be stuck with “Victor’s History.”
“if they only knew” and “now they know, why don’t they” are based on the premise that the US has the right to decree which countries can have or not have which weapons, that the US is in effect, the owner/boss of earth.
This is a core Americqan cultural value, and one of its many downsides is that few people are likely to feel that the US needs weapons or any reason to invade, bomb, and occupy the nation or nations of its choice, and murder, rape, and torture its citizens.
It is a tragedy, because it precludes any possibility of any internal reckoning on the part of American subjects themselves.
They remain trapped in their own net, either the US is a democracy, and the gunmen and torturers are carrying out the will of the people, a scenario which has its own logical conclusion, or the US is a military dictatorship whose citizens are held hostage by brutal thugs paid by warlords, and is in urgent need, and should be actively seeking, liberation by nations less grievously afflicted.
becomes a yawning gulf when the UN is marginalized. Why?
The idea of collective security and arms control was a good one born out of the catastrophe of two world wars and the unleashing of nuclear energy.
The security council took the largest of the victorious nations from World War Two, and basically provided that those nations would be responsible for preventing another world war and the proliferation of nuclear arms.
I’m being simplistic here, but this is basically how it evolved, especially once China and Russia acquired their own nukes.
The US could have a claim to prevent another country from acquiring nuclear weapons if it worked within the Security Council confines, and it was consistent in the application of the principle.
Unfortunately, we are not doing that and haven’t been doing that.
So, I can’t refute your point.
I hope you enjoyed my use of your handle in this diary.
Whatever many may have once hoped the UN might be, it exists today primarily to “put an international face” on US policies.
The idea of putting this or that kind of “face” on grisly actions is popular, but another tragedy – its effectiveness is largely limited to the face-putters.
Kind of like the stout middle-aged gentleman who desires, on his trip to the beach, to attract the attention of pretty co-eds, and toward that end, purchases the latest styles of “phat” beach and swimwear, instructs his barber to cut his hair as if he were eighteen, and strides along the sand, quite pleased with his appearance, and wondering why the co-eds seem so disinclined to enjoy his company.
Even before I followed politics more closely I used to wonder why it was they the US seemed to have the right to say who/who shouldn’t have weapons. Whether I consciously thought it or not it seemed rather illogical to me and grandiose on our part to be able to make those kind of sweeping statements.
Now that I know our political history better it seems even more wrong. Rather like bush wanting his new nuk-u-lar bunker busters while dictating to other countries once again.
millions of deaths could have been avoided, and the future of the US could be very, very different. 🙂
Well thanks but I certainly never thought of myself as much of thinker at all but just kinda a commonsense or fair outlook.
Your analysis is correct if you treat the US as a separate country from the rest of the American empire. Another perspective is to see the US as one part of the American empire. In this case most of the wars and killings, the claim of right to intervention and the interference with “other” countries becomes internal imperial policy towards wayward colonies.
It becomes as logical for Washington to demand veto of the weapons held by Iraq or Iran as those held by California or Texas. Hardly controversial for a dictatorship (and that is what the imperium is since 90% of the citizens have no vote) to enforce military supremacy over it’s territory and ruthlessly attack revolts within it’s borders (eg Saddam’s revolt).
The US empire is no different from the old Soviet one really. A lot of talk about rights and so on but in the end it’s all about a brutal centralised authoritarian military power ruling over a lot of colonial property, most of which speaks a different languange and has a different culture and history. In both the Soviet and American cases there’s lip service to a moral form of government but in fact it’s all about violence and force and running the system for the benefit of an extremely small number of elites supported by a bureaucrat class that oils the machinery of empire. The fruits of the economy and technology of the empire are spent on the elites and bureacrats and the rest of the people out there in the hinterland are just scum, surfs, slaves.
I actually think this perspective makes more sense but in the end it’s a wave/particle sort of thing.
At any rate I think you need to keep flipping back and forth to get a proper understanding of things.
whatever pillaging and rapine it wishes to loose on Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. as an internal matter, as it considers these nations its property.
However, as it becomes increasingly clear to the rest of the world, that everyone is essentially waiting for the sound of the bombs overhead and the boots at the door that this proprietary philosophy is not limited to those nations currently enjoying the attentions of American wetworkers.
Even Europe, which has been allowed a very generous level of autonomy in exchange for certain concessions, is looking at a very emerging situation, where the combination of their own demographic shift and US demands creates something of a conflict between the traditional European view of the purpose of a government to benefit the people, as opposed to the American ideal of the people as assets who are empowered to serve the corporate oligarchy.
This is a book that has been read before, a genre, in fact, and the shelves of history are lined with volumes of variations on the theme, none have happy endings.