Okay, George, I’ll take # 13- Invading Iraq for $100. Naw, I’m not yet convinced. Give me # 4 – Iraq War Is A Necessity for $80. Jeez, that’s pretty weak George. How about #21 – Saddam Must Go for $60. Hey, it’s a Daily Double. Just like Halliburton, I can double my money just like that.
Please read the following. Yes, it’s old news but worse (for the non-critical thinkers), factual old news. Like the Tommy Flanagan/Jon Lovitz pathological liar character on “Saturday Night Live,” the Bush Administration lurched from reason to reason like a waiter offering the special du jour.
But first enjoy this Flanagan/Lovitz,SNL excerpt to get a taste of what I’m talking about:
“Tommy Flanagan: Hello, my name is Tommy Flanagan, and I’m a member of Pathological Liars Anonymous. In fact…I’m the president of the organization! I didn’t always lie. No, when I was a kid, I told the truth. But then one day, I got caught stealing money out of my mother’s purse. I lied. I told her it was homework–that my teacher told me to do it. And she got fired! Yeah, that’s what happened! After that, lying was easy for me. I lied about my age and joined the army. I was thirteen at the time. Yeah…I went to Vietnam, and I was injured catching a mortar shell in my teeth. And they made me a three-star general! And then I got a job in journalism, writing for the National Enquire…er, Geographic! Yeah…I was making twenty thousand a ye.. month! In fact, I won the Pulitzer Prize that year! Yeah, that’s the ticket…”
Bush administration has used 27 rationales for war in Iraq, study says
Andrea Lynn, Humanities Editor
University of Illinois News Bureau
5/10/04
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — If it seems that there have been quite a few rationales for going to war in Iraq, that’s because there have been quite a few – 27, in fact, all floated between Sept. 12, 2001, and Oct. 11, 2002, according to a new study from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. All but four of the rationales originated with the administration of President George W. Bush.
The study also finds that the Bush administration switched its focus from Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein early on – only five months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
In addition to what it says about the shifting sands of rationales and the unsteady path to war in Iraq, what is remarkable about the 212-page study is that its author is a student.
The study, “Uncovering the Rationales for the War on Iraq: The Words of the Bush Administration, Congress and the Media from September 12, 2001, to October 11, 2002,” is the senior honors thesis of Devon Largio. She and her professor, Scott Althaus, believe the study is the first of its kind.
For her analysis of all available public statements the Bush administration and selected members of Congress made pertaining to war with Iraq, Largio not only identified the rationales offered for going to war, but also established when they emerged and who promoted them. She also charted the appearance of critical keywords such as Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Iraq to trace the administration’s shift in interest from the al Qaeda leader to the Iraqi despot, and the news media’s response to that shift.
“The rationales that were used to justify the war with Iraq have been a major issue in the news since last year, and Devon’s study provides an especially thorough and wide-ranging analysis of it,” Althaus, a professor o f political science, said.
“It is not the last word on the subject, but I believe it is the first to document systematically the case that the administration made for going to war during critical periods of the public debate.
“It is first-rate research,” Althaus said, “the best senior thesis I have ever seen – thoroughly documented and elaborately detailed. Her methodology is first-rate.”
Largio mapped the road to war over three phases: Sept. 12, 2001, to December 2001; January 2002, from Bush’s State of the Union address, to April 2002; and Sept. 12, 2002, to Oct. 11, 2002, the period from Bush’s address to the United Nations to Congress’s approval of the resolution to use force in Iraq.
She drew from statements by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Policy Board member and long-time adviser Richard Perle; by U.S. senators Tom Daschle, Joe Lieberman, Trent Lott and John McCain; and from stories in the Congressional Record, the New York Times and The Associated Press. She logged 1,500 statements and stories.
The rationales Largio identified include everything from the five front-runners – war on terror, prevention of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, lack of weapons inspections, removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Saddam Hussein is evil, to the also-rans – Sen. Joe Lieberman’s “because Saddam Hussein hates us,” Colin Powell’s “because it’s a violation of international law,” and Richard Perle’s “because we can make Iraq an example and gain favor within the Middle East.”
For the rest of this article, go here:
http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/04/0510war.html
For the complete thesis, go here:
http://www.pol.uiuc.edu/news/largio.htm
