Be it the outing of a covert CIA agent, secret torture prisons in Eastern Europe, or the firing of federal prosecutors for political reasons, pretense is the norm for the Bush administration. Scandal after scandal has built a mountain of political lies, all of which have created a distraction from the biggest lie of them all — the necessity of invading Iraq.
The evidence that President Bush deliberately misled the nation into war is too abundant to fit into this 800-word column, so highlights of only the most damning facts will have to suffice. The Downing Street Memo, a confidential document containing the minutes of a July 23, 2002 meeting of top British officials, reveals crucial information about U.S. and British policy on Iraq. According to the document, "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." President Bush, then, was determined to go to war and molded the justifications for it in a way that made Saddam Hussein look like a combination of Osama Bin Laden and Kim Jong-il.
The threat that Iraq posed to the West, according to the Bush administration, was twofold. It had amassed (and was amassing) a stockpile of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and provided support for Islamic terrorists. The former justification is easily proven false by the simple fact that no such weapons have been found in Iraq. According to the BBC, on March 18, 2003, Prime Minister Tony Blair said, "We are asked to accept Saddam decided to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd." Really.
The British and American accusations go beyond generalities; countless statements from countless officials indicate an utter surety of specific weapons in specific places. Thus, on March 20, 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said, "We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad." Statements like this have yet to receive a direct response from top Bush or Blair administration officials.
The other bulletproof indictment was that Saddam Hussein aided and abetted terrorism. Administration officials had a harder time asserting this claim with a straight face, since al-Qaida and other Muslim extremist groups had publicly condemned the secular Baath Party of Iraq. Nonetheless, the Bush administration went ahead with this transparently ridiculous claim, although no link between Iraq and any anti-Western terrorist attack was ever uncovered. President Bush's own intelligence agencies provided little support for the Saddam-terrorism link, but the American public gobbled it up. A September 2003 Associated Press poll found that 70 percent of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Admittedly, the Bush administration never explicitly stated that there was such a link, but used language that made it seem likely. Such misinformation was crucial in obtaining the support of the American public.
The justifications for war, then, were false. It's important to note that the Bush administration didn't simply misjudge the intelligence; it deliberately misled the nation into war. This line is often blurred by the mainstream media. The facts, however, speak for themselves.
President Bush and his top officials had been itching for an Iraqi invasion since the Persian Gulf War. Former Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, for example, wrote a paper in 1992, "Defense Planning Guidance," in support of U.S. hegemony and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The other neoconservatives in the Bush administration shared Wolfowitz's salivation for Iraq. Then 9/11 happened.
With Americans bemoaning the loss of their compatriots and the Bush administration enjoying skyrocketing approval ratings, the time was right for Uncle Sam to stretch his legs in the most oil-rich region in the world. As Downing Street and numerous other documents demonstrate, the Bush administration cherry-picked the evidence in order to make its case for war. The American public bought it, and the "coalition of the willing" invaded in March of 2003.
Many will argue that the above analysis is irrelevant, as we invaded Iraq more than four years ago. To them, the focus should be on the here and now, whether you agreed with the initial invasion or not. This sentiment is understandable, but it is necessary to remind readers that this vile war is being managed by the same vile men who first brought it about. For the good of the American and Iraqi people, then, it's time for the situation to be removed from such men's hands. It's time to bring the troops home.
Kyle Szarzynski ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in Spanish and history.
