So, it looks like Shrubusto's Friday rerun/lame attempt to foist some of the blame for Operation Desert Quagmire on the Democrats fell apart as rapidly as a 1988 Yugo...although that didn't stop the pundit class or the Dems themselves from conceding a central tenet from the latest set of GOP lies: that the 2002 vote in Congress was solely a "war" vote. Too bad for the GOP that such an assertion can be easily checked and too bad for the Dems that they seem to be afflicted with the same short-term memory loss as those on the other side of the aisle:
The resolution requires Bush to declare to Congress either before or within 48 hours after beginning military action that diplomatic efforts to enforce the U.N. resolutions have failed.
Bush also must certify that action against Iraq would not hinder efforts to pursue the al Qaeda terrorist network that attacked New York and Washington last year. And it requires the administration to report to Congress on the progress of any war with Iraq every 60 days.
"Enforcement of UN resolutions" is NOT the same as a blanket authorization to attack Iraq. And I think it's pretty clear that the war HAS hindered efforts to pursue al Qaeda affiliated terrorists.
Juan Cole has more on another aspect of Team Bush lying--the deliberate misrepresentation of intelligence, lies of commission and lies of omission (the latter goes a long way in explaining the wording of the 2002 resolution)--here's a sample:
This lie by omission was repeated over and over again by Bush and his cronies:
"Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda."
- Bush in January 2003 State of the Union address.
"Iraq has also provided Al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training."
- Bush in February 2003.
If he had said, "Khalid Shaikh Muhammad and Abu Zubaydah, the top al-Qaeda operatives in custody, deny that there was any operational cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaeda. But Ibn al-Shaikh al-Libi asserts that Saddam Hussein is training al-Qaeda in the use of chemical weapons. I asked our Defense Intelligence Agency about this, and they do not find al-Libi's allegations credible. I as president have tough choices to make. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, I am inclined to believe al-Libi on this."
Then he would not have been lying to the public. But the way he did it was a lie. Some are saying that the evaluation of al-Libi by the DIA did not reach Bush and Cheney. That is not the DIA's fault. That is incompetence on Bush's and Cheney's parts. Why spend $44 billion a year on intelligence and not seek it?
The United States military captured much of the archive of the Baath ministry of the interior, which it turned over to Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress. That is where any document would be that mentioned al-Qaeda. It does not exist, or we would have seen it by now.
It was all a tissue of lies.
And TPM weighs in with a multipronged critique:
Chronicling the full measure of the Bush administration's mendacity with regards to the war is a difficult task -- not because of a dearth of evidence for it but because of its so many layers, all its multidimensionality. It's almost like one of those Russian egg novelties in which each layer opened reveals another layer beneath it. Hard as it may be, in the interests of getting Mr. Bush past the phases of denial and anger, let's just hit on some of the main themes.
1. Longstanding effort to convince the American people that Iraq maintained ties to al Qaida and may have played a role in 9/11. This was always just a plain old lie...
2. Repeated efforts to jam purported evidence about an Iraqi nuclear weapons program (the Niger canard) into major presidential speeches despite the fact the CIA believed the claim was not credible and tried to prevent the president from doing so...
3. Consistent and longstanding effort to elide the distinction between chem-bio-weapons (which are terrible but no immediate threat to American security) and nuclear weapons (which are)...
4. The fact that the administration's push for war wasn't even about WMD in the first place...
Beneath these top-line points of dishonesty, there were second order ones, to be sure -- claims that the entire war would cost a mere $50 billion, insistence that the whole operation could be managed by only a fraction of the number of troops most experts believed it would take. Of course, these may be categorized as willful self-deceptions or gross irresponsibiity. And thus they are properly assigned to different sections of the Bush-Iraq Lies and Deceptions (BILD) bestiary than the cynical exploitation of lies and attempts to confuse proper.
In the president's new angle that his critics are trying to 'rewrite history', those critics might want to point out that his charge would be more timely after he stopped putting so much effort into obstructing any independent inquiry that could allow an accurate first draft of the history to be written. In any case, he must sense now that he's blowing into a fierce wind. The judgment of history hangs over this guy like a sharp, heavy knife. His desperation betrays him. He knows it too.
Think Progress also pokes a big hole in another Team Bush trial balloon--the "but all the world thought so too"--while The Rude Pundit makes the case that "resistance is an agenda."
I bring all this up because over the next few weeks, if not through the mid-term elections, we'll be seeing more and more attacks on the part of the wingnuts. Most will be the same, days-old if not years-old, stale attempts to paint Democrats as "soft" on national security matters (Tim Russert did this yesterday while interviewing Howard Dean. I wish Dean would have reached over, ripped out Russert's still beating heart, handed it to him, and said something like, "Well, Tim, what do you think NOW?"). This morning on Air America I heard some anonymous 'nut make the same argument I've been hearing since 9/12/01--a mix of foolish bravado and incoherent paranoia: 9/11 changed everything, gotta get them before they get us, Saddam had us in his sites, etc. etc.
Sorry folks--9/11 changed NOTHING. We're STILL dangerously vulnerable to precisely the same sort of low-tech, below the radar suicide attack that happened on that day (indeed, we're just as vulnerable to the first POST-9/11 attack as before--hell, most people seem to have forgotten that there WAS an attack in the US after 9/11). Iraq, far from vindicating the ridiculous 'flypaper' theory, is now a mix and match of heavily armed local resistance and urban terrorist graduate school. Al Qaeda continues to exert its influence--or inspiration--depending on the location.
A REAL program to counter the 9/11 tragedy would first draw on some pre 9/11 SUCCESSES--like the fact that some FBI agents in the field had pieced together the outlines of a plot (at least one field agent even correctly surmised the target), like the fact that over the course of the summer, at least one PDB indicated the potential for attacks in the United States, like the fact that terrorists using planes as weapons was a subject of ONGOING consideration/concern, etc. etc. Unfortunately, the cabal in charge at the national level continues to put politics ahead of the national interest (hence, the outing of Valerie Plame, who was working to LIMIT THE SPREAD of unconventional weapons!). A REAL program to counter the 9/11 tragedy would look to DEFEND places like our ports (STILL a low-priority for Team Bush--perhaps they're HOPING for a repeat), a REAL program to counter the 9/11 tragedy would identify people abroad with whom we can work--the United States, for all its power, requires allies (e.g., that's WHY we deal with the otherwise odious Karimov...or Musharraf). A real program to counter the 9/11 tragedy would NOT publicize bogus terror alerts during a political campaign.
Blindly lashing out, which is the wingnut program, is worse than foolish. It's dangerous. When the 'nuts call for "getting the terrorists," it's important to note that THEY DON'T KNOW who the "terrorists" are, much less show any understanding of terrorism. To draw a rough analogy, it'd be like a doctor categorizing EVERYTHING as "sickness," drawing no distinction between a virus, a bacterial infection, cancer, pneumonia, or a broken bone. In the medical world, that kind of person would be called a "quack."
Demonizing Saddam Hussein wasn't exactly difficult: he IS a truly evil man. However, insisting on his overthrow in 2003 was about as useful as changing a car's air filter when the real problem is a serious oil leak. Team Bush and his minion of wingnuts can bark loud and long about the "threat" he posed--but they have NO evidence. There were NO weapons of mass destruction. The embargo ensured Iraq was unable to either purchase or manufacture chemical or biological agents--and on the ground inspections would have confirmed this--had the administration allowed them to continue. Instead, they insisted on the right to invade: because they put short-term political gain ahead of any long-term program for coming to grips with a very complicated part of the world. Now, neck deep--if not over their heads--in the shit, they're attempting to play more political games, while hoping no one notices the daily death toll overseas--and the total lack of any program here for dealing with things like the hurricane damage.
I for one will call them on their bullshit. And, while I'm not exactly enamored of the Democratic Party, I guess my attitude is sort of along the lines of "you support the alternative you have, not the one you want."
They can't be any worse than what we've got.
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