Carpe Datum

Bush Lied, Our Soldiers Died

It's funny to watch Bushco try to weasel out of this. Their behavior has been described in many circles as Clintonian, and that's fairly accurate (although Clinton just lied about sex, not justification for a pre-emptive strike policy and war, so I'd say there's a tiny bit of difference there in significance). Here's Cheney and Rice on TV saying, "Well, what Bush said was technically accurate."

Actually, to recap, there have been several different spins. Bushco first tried to blame it on the CIA, but that didn't wash. Not only did people from the CIA and State Department contradict the administration, people looked back at the record and found that references to the "uranium from Africa" story had been purposely deleted from speeches both before and after the State of the Union, so someone was aware of the intelligence. Yet someone there made a choice to put it in.

It's funny to watch Bushco use the passive voice. "It shouldn't have been left in," they say. Well, no, it shouldn't have been put in to start with, nor should several other claims (like the Iraq-Al Qaeda links, the huge quantities of nerve gas claim, the aluminum tubes claim, etc). Someone made a choice to put it in and chose misleading language to make (some of) it technically accurate. Remember Cargo Cult Science by Feynman? What a perfect backdrop with which to discuss Bushco.

Well, so the CIA-as-the-fall-guy didn't wash. Next they tried to claim that Bush was ignorant of everything, so how could he lie? The Media Horse has a really funny response to that, showing excerpts from the White House's own web site, showing Bush deeply involved in the construction of the speech, going over every detail, offering pointers, etc. So there's a lie somewhere in there.

Failing that, Bushco is now saying that it might be true in the end, that there might be other intelligence regarding other African countries that makes the claim true. That may turn out to be the case, of course, but that doesn't mean Bush has the right to make that claim when he did. At the time, the British had zero evidence supporting Bush's claim. Maybe there's something else *now*, who knows?

In between all of these spins has been Bushco emphatically trying to say "case closed". Yes, we consider this old news, so it is time to move on. For some reason, that has worked with the so-called liberal media time and time again (remember Florida?). But it isn't working this time. I guess there haven't been any snipers or young blond adolescents kidnapped lately, and no one can really get interested in the Robert Blake trial or whatever other legal trouble celebrities are getting into these days.

But it is only a matter of time until this is dropped. Conservatives are already trying other points to make Bushco critics look bad. They are trying to say it is "just 16 words" or that the case against Iraq was built on far more than just the uranium-from-Africa claim. Actually, I'll agree with the last bit. There were other stated reasons, but they all pretty much turned out to be bogus as well.

About the only legitimate reason to go in there would have been humanitarian reasons, and that's all great. But that wasn't among the reasons given in the first place, nor does it square with American foreign policy priorities in many, many other countries. And it is indeed arguable whether the humanitarian conditions in Iraq will improve much over the length of our occupation. What if we had instead lifted sanctions and continued inspections (with an occasional air strike or what have you if we saw them building a big uranium processor, etc)? Or what if we had just continued on course until Saddam died or was ousted?

In either case, there wouldn't be hundreds of troops dead or wounded. We wouldn't be spending on the order of $100 billion per year for the forseeable future. We wouldn't be fertilizing new ground for people to become terrorists. We wouldn't be the bad guy in the community of nations.

But no, Bush had to lie. Wolfowitz and friends thought they had it all figured out, even though people like me (and people a lot more prominent than me) were telling them they were nuts. Oh yeah, great job, guys. Iraq is a *real* model for middle east democracy and stability! After our favorite exile front-page unnamed source Ahmed Chalabi was handed his hat by the Iraqis who actually have lived in Iraq for the past couple of decades, the US has had no plan what to do.

Bush lied, our soldiers died. Bush continues to lie, our soldiers continue to die. By the hundreds. Wounded by the thousands. Not the mention the Iraqis, whom we are studiously not counting.

Posted by Observer at July 15, 2003 06:46 AM