The Fog Of Phony War

[MSgt213]

When faced with the evidence of his lie, Bill Clinton finally told the truth—albeit too late. There's no such luck with George W. Bush, who continues to relay lines about faulty intelligence despite overwhelming evidence that everything he said in the runup to war in Iraq was a lie. David Corn is tired of it, and is equally tired of a media that refuses to call the president on his spin games.

There are weeks when I detest our political-media culture. And this is such a week. When Bill Clinton was faced with incontrovertible evidence that he had misled his family, his friends and the public about his bizarre affair with Monica Lewinsky—that is, semen stains on a blue dress—he had to face the music. He conceded he had acted improperly and had lied about his scandalous behavior. The shouting-heads on the left and the right then only had to argue over the consequences of Clinton's misconduct and the suitable punishment. When George W. Bush has been confronted with evidence that everything—yes, everything—he said before the war about Iraq's WMDs was absolutely false, he has refused to acknowledge that he peddled misinformation (or disinformation). He just keeps on dancing. And many in the media have enabled his sidestepping. While the debate over Bush's use—or abuse—of the WMD argument for war in Iraq should be over and done with, the White House and its allies in the media refuse to admit the undeniable. It's no surrender, no retreat. If they don't stop arguing the point, then they do not have to accept responsibility.

This has been going on ever since Bush's main rationale for war—that Iraq was a "direct" threat because it possessed WMDs and a revived nuclear weapons program—began unraveling after U.S. forces in Iraq found no signs of any of this. A few days ago, Bush's case for war received what should have been its death blow when The Washington Post reported that the Iraq Survey Group, the outfit in charge of the WMD hunt, had quietly closed up shop before Christmas. The Bush administration pulled the plug on the ISG for an obvious reasons: There was nothing to look for. But after this news leaked, Bush once more declined to concede that his prewar assertions had been distant from the truth.

In WMD Denial

In an interview with Bush, a Washington Post reporter asked him about the nonexistent WMDs: "We haven't found the weapons of mass destruction as predicted. The postwar process hasn't gone as well as some had hoped. Why hasn't anyone been held accountable, either through firings or demotions, for what some people see as mistakes or misjudgments?" This was not the same as pressing Bush to explain why he had repeatedly declared Iraq had WMDs, why he had overstated the CIA's overstated intelligence. Still, Bush ducked the issue of his prewar statements: "Well, we had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 election. And the American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me, for which I'm grateful." In other words, Hey, whatever works; as long as I am elected I need not be accountable. The Post reporter did not pose a follow-up question.

Bush was following the lead established by his chief denier of reality, Scott McClellan. At the daily White House press briefing on the day it was reported the WMD search was kaput, McClellan was grilled by reporters who asked if Bush owed the public an explanation for his pre-invasion statements. McClellan repeatedly noted that Saddam Hussein had "the intent and capability to produce weapons of mass destruction" and had been trying to undermine the sanctions imposed upon Iraq so he could then "begin his weapons programs once again." But—as we all know—before the war Bush declared many times that Hussein had real WMDs, not merely the desire to be a WMD bigshot. There was, Bush said back then, "no doubt" Iraq possessed WMDs. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, for one, put it rather bluntly: "There's no debate in the world as to whether they have those weapons…We all know that. A trained ape knows that." Well, there was a debate and Rumsfeld's trained ape, it turns out, was not so smart. Yet rather than say Bush blew it big time, his mouthpiece tossed out a phony argument.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/the_fog_of_phony_war.php

[highnooner]

1. There is no way that Congress would have approved the war because...

Saddam wanted to have WMD's or that he is a bad guy who needs to be deposed or we just want to spread democracy throughout that region starting there or....

[sorechasm]

2. Rumsfeld called his boss a 'trained ape'?

We just call him the chimp.