Claims from an enemy of Saddam taken at face value, a jury-rigged intel process, a media campaign of lies and spin, and domestic political calculation; a military attack executed in violation of US and international law (even had the allegations been true), followed by a complete lack of critical evaluation by the press; and hurting mostly Iraqi civilians.
Sounds familiar? However, I’m not talking about Bush, 2002-3. This is not a unique script, this is a blueprint – the intel process has been corrupted for a long time.
You remember Bush’s grandstanding about Saddam, “the guy who tried to kill my Dad”? Well, except that that was a lie, too. After a long search, I finally found Sy Hersch’s 1993 article on the subject.
I recommend reading the article in full.
It not only details the spin, but also how Clinton was pushed into his first bombing campaign by various forces (in the bureaucracy, in politics, in the media) to ‘retaliate’ for this assassination attempt – some of them leftovers from the Republican national security bureaucracy, some of them the same ‘liberal’ hawks who uncritically accepted Bush’s lies, but still want to sell out to the Republicans now.