The Smell Test and Iraq

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

It seems to me that the administration's varying arguments about the rationale for the Iraq invasion/occupation just don't pass the "smell" test of common sense.

In arguing/debating about the Bush administration's Iraq conquest, it's always amazing to me that as many people have "bought" the deceitful propaganda campaign at every turn. Obviously, they WANT to buy it, and the media has helped them to believe. There has been SO MUCH information that has either been flat out debunked, or info of questionable veracity that was sneakily leaked into the public domain, then disavowed or shown to be of little or no significance when closely examined. Here's a really quick whirlwind list.


Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence officers in Prague.
Saddam tried to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger. (Bush SOTU)
Mobile trailers were biological weapons lab/platforms (Bush "We have found the WMD!")
Aluminum tubes could only be for a nuclear program.
Centrifuge parts were buried in a garden years ago.
Saddam wouldn't let UN inspectors in (Bush's own words).
WMD available at 45 min notice for deployment.
"Case closed!" Leaked Feith memo with all kinds of "raw intelligence" alleging to prove the links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Reliability of this "raw intelligence" immediately disavowed by DOD, and no comment since.
Argument then shifted to despotic nature of Saddam regime.
Argument shifts to "regime change was Clinton's policy too", as if being against a regime like Iraq (or say, Cuba or China) was identical to conquest and occupation!
The difference between "imminent threat" and "grave and gathering danger"

This just a cursory list off the top of my head sitting here 10 min! If you caught your spouse doing what looked like cheating and they made up this many different stories about what was happening, could you believe anything they said? My question is, what is the simplest way to phrase these arguments to show something that to my mind is very evident--these kind of evasions and twists and turns are not characteristic of an honest person/administration!

Why are there not more people, Op/ed writers (reporters are supposed to be more objective), who just make a plain statement like this?

"It appears that there has been a concerted attempt to influence American opinion in favor of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. There has been a massive campaign of what can only be described as propaganda to point towards Iraqi WMDs programs that have not been shown to exist. The true motivation behind the military campaign is not clear, but at best guess would appear to be:
1) Strike at an enemy , Arab regime in the Middle East even if not involved with 9/11 to demonstrate our willingness to use force and intimidate our enemies
2) Establish a military foothold in a strategic country in the ME from which attacks into Syria, Iran, etc. could be made
3) Control the massive oil reserves of Iraq thereby securing the oil supply of the US
4) Influence domestic politics in favor of the administration both with midterm and presidential elections by playing on post 9/11 fears (at the time the propaganda campaign was initiated in earnest the economy was dismal and corporate malfeasance embodied by Enron threatened to seriously besmirch the administration)

The obvious conclusion is that President Bush wanted to wage this war for one or all of the above reasons, independent of any considerations of WMD, and WMD was the propaganda hammer used to push the war agenda. All of the rather flimsy "evidence" with respect to WMD was either distorted or manufactured in this propaganda effort, with the specially created Office of Special Plans within DOD intelligence (Feith and co.) designed to support this propaganda message."

Ted Kennedy has basically said all these things in his excellent speech and Washington Post Editorial, and especially emphasized the domestic political motives behind the war and its timing. Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal Constitution has been essentially making this case for a long time, documenting in particular the PNAC background of Wolfowitz during the war runup. Paul Krugman of the NYT is essentially saying these things. But I'm not sure if I've seen a single person on television news phrase things in terms of the administration having these non WMD, non humanitarian motives and simply producing a concerted propaganda campaign to achieve their ends. It has always been phrased in terms of "was our intelligence wrong?" and was Bush fooled by wrong intelligence instead of the really obvious conclusion.

What can we do to get this message out?

[StClone]

1. Alibis and crime stories

When they seem to change the suspect has a real credibility problem...

Re:

"It seems to me that the administration's varying arguments about the rationale for the Iraq invasion/occupation just don't pass the "smell" test of common sense."

Does it smell? Like a dead mouse in the wall!

[feed_bush_snackfoods]

2. what still bothers me is...

paul o'neil, *'s former secretary of treasury, comes out and says "hey, bush has been trying to find a way to launch a full scale war w/ iraq since 9 days after he took office", even releasing a white house memo dated march '01, divvying up iraqi oil assets. to me, that should have blown up like watergate, but neither the media nor the average joe really seemed to care. bush offhandedly dismisses it by saying something like "i was just following clinton's lead"...

um, yeah, how many other clinton policies has he followed?

[kentuck]

3. And why isn't Tenet coming forth with the truth ?

Shouldn't he be fired for that reason alone.
He shouldn't get paid to sit silent and let
Bush get away with his lies.