In a previous post
we explored the spectacle of George W. Bush bungling through an attempt
at an expression of remorse — this time over the state of the economy —
as only he can. It’s what you’d expect from a guy who believed he was
on a mission from God, and has watched it go horribly wrong.
He still has to “Keep the faith,” and convince himself that all is
pretty much as it should be, close enough, or well on its way there.
But the rest of us don’t.
So, in one of the many interviews we’ll be treated to as we (and W.)
wait out the clock, the president’s thoughts (such as they are) turn to
national security the war in Iraq.
In one interview with Charlie Gibson,
in which Bush said he wanted to be remembered as a president who
“helped achieve peace,” he also said he regrets the WMD intelligence
“had been better.” (This, from a man who was “very pleased” with the Iraq war outcome just before Thanksgiving.)
“A lot of people put their reputations on the line and
said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam
Hussein,” Bush said. “It wasn’t just people in my administration. A lot
of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington, D.C., during
the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were
all looking at the same intelligence.”“I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess,” Bush said.
When pressed by Gibson, Bush declined to “speculate” on whether he
would still have gone to war if he knew Saddam didn’t have weapons of
mass destruction.“That is a do-over that I can’t do,” Bush said.
(Join the club, Dub’. We all kinda wish there had been better intelligence — heck, any intelligence — during your administration.)
Well, except that it’s been pretty well documented that the
intelligence wasn’t so much the problem as the cherry-pinking of
intelligence. In some cases, the Bush administration just told lie upon lie.
Nine hundred thirty-five to be exact.
President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top
officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made
at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11,
2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s
Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive
examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an
orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and,
in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings,
interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key
officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari
Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had
weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them),
links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning
of the Bush administration’s case for war.It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of
mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the
conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including
those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006),
the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose
“Duelfer Report” established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq’s
nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis
of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that
culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003. Not
surprisingly, the officials with the most opportunities to make
speeches, grant media interviews, and otherwise frame the public debate
also made the most false statements, according to this first-ever
analysis of the entire body of prewar rhetoric.
You can search the database for yourself. My favorite is Colin Powell exclaiming, “I’m not reading this. This is bullshit,”
during the four days and three nights of preparation — during which 38
pages allegations against Iraq was reduced to six — for his nonetheless
preposterous performance at the U.N.
February 5, 2003
Colin Powell addresses the UN in an attempt to sway world opinion in
favor of war in Iraq. Powell makes a series of inaccurate statements
that will badly tarnish his reputation.Powell says, “I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative
telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to al-Qaida.” This
is al-Libi, who provided information under torture and will recant
everything. Powell highlights Curveball’s “eyewitness” account
when he warns that Iraq’s mobile labs can brew enough weapons-grade
microbes “in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of
people.” Curveball has been doubted for some time by intelligence
agencies at home and abroad. In fact, the senior German intelligence
officer who supervised Curveball’s case later tells the Los Angeles
Times that when his colleagues hear Powell cite Curveball, “We were
shocked. Mein Gott! We had always told them it was not proven.”Powell also says that Saddam’s son Qusay has ordered WMD removed
from palace complexes; that key WMD files are being driven around Iraq
by intelligence agents; that bioweapons warheads have been distributed
to the Iraqi military; that a water truck at an Iraqi military
installation is a “decontamination vehicle” for chemical weapons; that
Iraq has drones it can use for bioweapons attacks; and that WMD experts
have been corralled into one of Saddam’s guest houses. Every one of those claims has been flagged by an congressional intelligence assessment of the speech as “WEAK.”
And, of course, days later Curveball lived up to his name.
February 8, 2003
The Los Angeles Times reports in 2005: “Three days after Powell’s speech, the U.N.’s Team Bravo conducted the first search of Curveball’s former work site. The raid by the American-led biological weapons experts lasted 3 1/2 hours. It was long enough to prove Curveball had lied.”
But even a quick look at the top ten lies
shows that the president and members of his administration went about
making statements that had been discredited before they were even
spoken; from Bush’s October 7, 2007
statement that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program (of
which an intelligence agent who was part of the investigation said at
the time, “That’s just a lie.”) to Bush’s June, 5 2003 statement that “we found a biological laboratory in Iraq” (which was later declared untrue).
In 2005 Powell correctly called the U.N. fiasco a “blot” on his record.
Even former Bush strategist Karl Rove got in on the revision fun.
In what was a remarkable admission that contradicted —
to a large extent — the past statements from his onetime boss, former
Bush strategist Karl Rove said on Tuesday evening that had the
President known Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction, the
United States would not have gone to war.“In the aftermath of 9/11 the concern was about a tyrant accused of
enormous human rights abuses,” but who also possessed weapons of mass
destruction, said Rove. “Absent that, I suspect that the
administration’s course of action would have been to work to find more
creative ways to constrain him like in the 90s.”The remarks, delivered at a debate in New York on Bush’s legacy,
came amidst a vigorous defense by Rove on behalf of the war’s purpose
and outcome. Later he argued that Saddam Hussein was supporting
terrorism, poised a grave threat to the region, and had systematically
duped the international community into assuming he was armed.…And yet, his remarks stand in contrast to those offered by the
president himself, both recently and in the past. In an interview that
aired last night with ABC’s Charlie Gibson, Bush declared that the
greatest regret of his presidency was “the intelligence failure in
Iraq.” But he claimed it was “hard… to speculate” as to whether or not
he would make the same decision to invade with the correct information.Back in December 2005, however, Bush did just that, declaring the
WMD issue effectively irrelevant when he said that, “knowing what I
know today, I would have still made that decision.”“So, if you had had this — if the weapons had been out of the
equation because the intelligence did not conclude that he had them, it
was still the right call?” Fox News’ Brit Hume asked.“Absolutely,” replied Bush.
This kind of dissembling is to be expected from a president and an administrating with years of practice hiding from the truth, whether it’s the lack of WMDs or the lack of a Saddam/al Qaeda connection.
Maybe delusion should be classified as a weapon of mass destruction, based on our collective observations since March 2003.
