[IP] [last time I looked the FT was not a notably liberal newspaper djf] Bush has misled Americans on Iraq (from the FT)
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Kobrin, Steve" <KobrinS@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 18, 2004 8:52:08 AM EDT
To: "'dave@xxxxxxxxxx'" <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Bush has misled Americans on Iraq (from the FT)
This editorial from today's Financial Times is strong and worth
reading, especially in light of both Bush and Cheney's
continued assertions that there are long standing and meaningful ties
between Iraq and al-Qaeda and Cheney's very chilling
assertion that the New York Times coverage of the Commission's report
was "outrageous." An assertion twice repeated,
according to the Times' coverage. This administrations appears to have
learned two lessons that are new -- at
least in their scope of application -- to American politics. 1. You
can continue to repeat misleading and false statements even after they
have been disproved without fear of serious contradiction and 2. you do
not have to fall on your sword after a disaster (the prisoner abuse
scandal, for example) but can push it aside and soldier on.
Steve
Bush has misled Americans on Iraq
Financial Times
Published: June 18 2004 5:00 | Last Updated: June 18 2004 5:00
<<...OLE_Obj...>>
The congressional commission investigating the September 11, 2001
attacks on the US has concluded that there is no evidence to support
the Bush administration's thesis that Saddam Hussein helped Osama bin
Laden's al-Qaeda organisation carry them out. This conclusion, emerging
from a strong tradition of congressional oversight, could be taken
further.
The evidence the administration produced to demonstrate the link was,
at best, spurious, at worst, fabricated. This is not a small matter,
especially in the context of the Bush team's case for its war of choice
against Iraq.
The first public justification for the war was that the Iraqi dictator
possessed weapons of mass destruction with which he could dominate his
neighbours and threaten the west. This was always an exaggeration.
There was some reason to believe he had residual chemical and
biological weapons, but none whatsoever to suggest he had reconstituted
a nuclear arms programme. As we now know, no WMD of any description
have been found; not one US assertion to the United Nations Security
Council by Colin Powell, secretary of state, in February last year, has
been substantiated.
The second public justification - which was wheeled on stage to
distract the audience from the embarrassing absence of WMD - was that
the war was about freeing Iraqis and, indeed, the Middle East from
tyranny. After Falluja and Abu Ghraib, however, 92 per cent of Iraqis
regard US troops as occupiers, while 2 per cent see them as liberators,
according to a Coalition Provisional Authority poll.
Yet there was nothing intrinsically absurd about the WMD fears, or
ignoble about opposition to Saddam's tyranny - however late Washington
developed this. The purported link between Baghdad and al-Qaeda, by
contrast, was never believed by anyone who knows Iraq and the region.
It was and is nonsense, the sort of "intelligence" true believers in
the Bush camp lapped up from clever charlatans they sponsored such as
the now disgraced Ahmad Chalabi. Yet, even this week, vice-president
Dick Cheney continues to assert Saddam had "long-established ties with
al-Qaeda".
No wonder that, until recently, polls regularly showed more than half
of Americans believed Iraq was behind the attack on New York's twin
towers.
Whether the Osama and Saddam thesis was more the result of
self-delusion or cynical manipulation, it - along with Washington's
mismanagement of the whole Iraqi adventure - has been enormously
damaging.
The Bush administration has misled the American people. It has isolated
the US, as American diplomats and commanders pointed out this week. And
its bungling in Iraq has given new and terrifying life to the cult of
death sponsored by Osama bin Laden. Above all, it inspires little
confidence it is capable of defeating the spreading al-Qaeda franchise,
which always was the clear and present danger.
<<...OLE_Obj...>>
<<...OLE_Obj...>>
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