The Lie That Cost Thousands Of Lives

Within days of 9-11, the Bush-Cheney Assministration was seeking ways to tie the regime of Saddam Hussein to the attack, despite no evidence of it.  Then, for the next year and a half, there were constant claims by Dumbya and The Dick that Saddam Hussein's secular Baathist Iraq regime had ties to the religiously fanatic al Qaeda, which Dumbya eventually had to disavow.  Then, in 2003, with the deadly lie that sealed the false case for invasion, and the fate of many, many thousands, The Dick claimed on national TV: 

"We know he [Saddam Hussein] has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." (emphasis added)

Rethuglicans have long asserted that it was "faulty intelligence" that led Dumbya and The Dick astray, but former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell said yesterday on MSNBC that The Dick's claim that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons wasn't supported by any intelligence from the CIA.  The Dick lied, and Dumbya didn't have the curiosity or candlepower to question it (and anyway, he was happy to grasp any excuse because, as he memorably put it, Saddam "tried to kill my dad.")  Another question begs an answer: not that The Dick and the neocons needed help, but were other self-serving governments /intelligence services (Israel's, Saudi Arabia's, even Iran's?) involved in feeding the false claims?

Torture and The War

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell and a long-time military man, has some choice comments on the unfolding torture story in the Washington Note. Among the nuggets:

-- The Cheney/Bushit Assministration authorized torture techniques well before the memo from the Justice Department providing legal cover;

-- Some of the torture was aimed not at finding out al Qaeda's plans, but at trying to coerce false confessions about a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, which later proved to be false, but which were important to Dumbya's rationale for war against Iraq, along with the false intelligence about WMD.

As this story develops, it's going to lead eventually to an examination of the last Administration's push to go to war against Iraq, and the half-truths and lies it used.

Quote of the Day

"Instead of saving us from 'another 9/11,' torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House's illegality." -- the awesome Frank Rich, writing in today's New York Times. Read the whole op-ed column.

"So What?"

If Dumbya wouldn't feel the need to pop up on TV doing his "legacy tour," we wouldn't feel the need to whack him. Here he is being interviewed on ABC by Martha Raddatz about Iraq:

Dumbya: . . .One of the major theaters against al Qaeda turns out to have been Iraq. This is where al Qaeda said they were going to take their stand. This is where al Qaeda was hoping to take. . .

Raddatz: But not until after the U.S. invaded.

Dumbya: Yeah, that's right. So what?

There you have in simple terms the arrogance, stupidity, and recklessness that characterized Dumbya's misadventure in Iraq. As the rationales for invading -- WMD, Saddam-al Qaeda connection, spreading freedom, etc. -- fell by the wayside one by one, Dumbya would trot out a new one. Saddam Hussein never would have tolerated another power such as al Qaeda within the borders of Iraq; instead, after we invaded Iraq, al Qaeda used it as a recruiting poster in the Muslim world. Recent National Intelligence Estimates have said that al Qaeda is stronger now.

So this is what Dumbya's true legacy is all about, but he lacks the courage and honesty to face it.