Lying, or Incompetence and the Justification for War in Iraq

[SkipNewarkDE]

Lying seems to be the thing these days in politics. Hell, Clinton was IMPEACHED for lying about a blow job in deposition in a civil lawsuit. Were these same standards of malfeasance applied to our current president, shouldn’t he be out of a job right now?

Let’s ignore the ever-permeable, sliding justifications presented in the media for why we went to war in Iraq. The fact that the administration can pull this type of bait and switch speaks volumes regarding the relatively short attention span, and deficit of long term memory of the American public and media.

Let’s go back and look at the reasons which were presented to the Congress, to the American Public, and to the U.N. to justify going to war in Iraq:

• The procurement by Iraq of uranium from Niger for use in a nuclear weapons program, • 26,000 liters of anthrax
• 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin
• 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agents -- 500 tons is one million pounds
• 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents
• Mobile biological weapons labs
• Connections between the Iraqi regime and Al Qaeda that led directly to the attacks of 9/11.


For those of you who don’t do metric, a 3.785 liters make up one gallon. So, let’s translate those volumes above into gallons:

• 26,000 liters of anthrax is 6869.221 GALLONS of the stuff!
• 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin is 10,038.63 GALLONS!

10,000 gallons would roughly fill a 16’ square swimming pool that is 5’ deep.

In case you think I am pulling these numbers out of my brown place, go to the White House’s own website, and read the article entitled “Disarm Saddam Hussein”, which can be found at http://www.whitehouse.gov/response/disarm.html.

So now that we have invaded Iraq, deposed the regime, killed who knows how many Iraqi soldiers, and wiped out civilians in the thousands, PLUS had over 250 American deaths (not casualties, DEATHS) what have we found?

Er, nothing.

The media crowed about mobile weapons labs being found. These turned out to be weather balloon platforms sold to Iraq by the British back in the 1980s. The media issued a very faint, kind of “foot-noted” never-mind.

It then comes out that the Niger uranium claim turns out to be intelligence based on a forgery, and whose credibility was in question even before the state of the union address that our president chose to make mention of it as a justification for this conflict.

The Iraq-Al Qaeda connection is not mentioned at ALL in the 9/11 report that was recently released.

So we have decimated a country, and now strapped ourselves with an ongoing rebuilding and maintenance problem to the tune of 4 billion dollars a month, lost a bunch of our kids, and murdered thousands (YES murdered, folks), for WHAT again? What was the justification we were given?

Two possibilities here:

The first is that our intelligence community and this administration are so completely incompetent, that gross negligence through ineptitude is the reason for this disconnect between the justification for war, and what we find in its aftermath. As I see in the news, they are trying to ditch Gray Davis for incompetence in managing the deepening economic crisis in California, of course ignoring (as the media has) that much of that problem was due to deregulation passed by his predecessor, and the ass-fucking handed to the state by the still unpunished Ken Lay (Kenny Boy, to George W.) of Enron. By the standard being set in California, it would seem appropriate, were incompetence the case, that this administration should be recalled.

The second possibility is that we were lied to. Exaggerated to, if you think lie is too strong a word. Congress saw fit to impeach a man lying in a civil case about letting a fat chick wrap her lips around the First Phallus (and also using her as a humidor, which should have landed him on the cover of CigarAfficionado ). For that lofty standard, one would think that misleading the American public, capitalizing on the aftermath of 9/11 and using fear of imminent could-happen-in-45-minutes attack as a way to get congress, the U.N. and the public to accept a regime change, and commit mass murder in the name of American security, would certain qualify as an impeachable offense.

[bryant69]

1. See, this is where we screwed up

If only we had taken President Bush to court about a thousand times and asked him under oath, than we could have nailed him. But it's not illegal to lie to the American people. It's only illegal to lie to grand juries (well and in otehr court room situations).

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[dennis4868]

2. it is illegal to lie to congress

nuff said!

[mike_c]

3. agreed, 100 percent....

I'm especially dismayed by the short attention span issue-- people will likely remember the summer of 2003 as the "Kobe Bryant summer", rather than as the summer that the bottom fell out of the administrations justifications for invading Iraq.

[NicRic]

4. To true !

A story that invovles sex lies and big $ is apprently more important then our young men or women dying needlessly in a war that never should have been .Can we not walk and chew gum art the same time .Do we need 1,000 reporters reporting the Coby story , and one reporter writing a small footnote about the lies of a President ,that cost hundreds of people their lives. How did a country like ours founded on such high principles , become a daily soap opera. Stories that effect the lives of many are small ,and a story that is about what happen between 2 people in a hotel room, rate higher in importance ! I can imagine the frustration of the parents of these inlisted sons and daughters and the sleepless nights they have worrying if their sibling will be the next one killed ! We really need to get our priorities straight in this country.

[papau]

5. Excellent writing - a great rant :-) n/t

n/t