JoB
NewResident..
you remember all of that talk because that was what was leaked to the press.. any intelligence that even vaguely supported a war in Iraq regardless of the agreement in the intelligence community as to the validity of the information.
And the press looked no further.. they actively promoted this war.
Unfortunately.. this same information was what was shown to our congress…
thus.. years later you have an astounding number of Americans who still believe that Saddam had something to do with 911.
That is a direct result of feeding the American public misinformation… (the Administration generally didn’t tell total untruths when releasing information… somewhere there was something which substantiated the information they leaked) … but they didn’t tell the truth either. They withheld information by intent.. which makes it a lie. and then, once the press had begun to publish the lie. they repeated it… and kept repeating it long after the evidence proved them wrong.
And.. even then.. not EVERYBODY thought we should be invading Iraq.
I didn’t and i know a lot of people like me who just plain didn’t buy it.
There was a demonstration against the war on the plaza in Washington that was attended by 100s of thousands of people. Of course, you didn’t hear about that because the press didn’t cover it… and when they did.. they grossly underestimated the number of people who attended.
As for our politicians… whether they thought it was a popular train wreck that was going to happen no matter what they did and they worried about re-election… or they thought it was justified with the information they were given.. or whether they just plain thought putting Saddam out of business was a good idea.. most of them signed on.
But again.. not everybody.
The most ludicrous idea presented was the idea that we would be in and out of there in a heartbeat.. with the Iraqi people cheering and settling into Western Style democracy.. so grateful they handed oil leases over to American companies and granted long term leases on bases like they were party favors.
Dick Cheney knew it wasn’t so. He explained why in some detail when Bush Sr withdrew from the mess that is Iraq after punishing Saddam for his invasion of Kuwait.
The situation hadn’t changed.. but the stakes had… better payoff for the gamble with Egypt and Saudi Arabia finding American bases a political liability and no longer willing to pump out more oil faster to keep global prices down in the face of record oil company profits.
The Bush White House threw the dice in spite of top military advice that it was a bad gamble. These guys who had never gone to war overrode the best advice of those who wage war…
As individuals, when we refuse to accept any plan or information which does not support our own theories.. we set ourself up for catastrophe…
When the administration does so (as they did as recently as this last year with the EPA) the stakes just amplify and what would be a catastrophe for an individual is a disaster for a nation.
Yes, i blame the Bush White House for that.
I also blame my Senators and Congresspeople for governing by popularity polls and not making the kinds of tough decisions we pay them to make…
And i blame the press who were so busy playing cheerleader to the Administration that they forgot what a free press is supposed to do.. report objectively.
Oh.. and i also blame all of those people who wanted to get even and didn’t care who they got even with…
This war has been one of the most obvious examples of vigilante justice gone wrong that i have ever had the dubious privilege to witness in my lifetime.. and i honestly thought i had already seen the worst.. having lived through the demonstrations and riots of the 60s and 70s.
I just don’t think there is any way to sugarcoat this.
And i don’t think we should. Because if we do, we lose sight of the lessons that we need to learn here.
Ask yourself what you want form your nation.. world leadership or world domination.
World leadership is a path towards continued prosperity and peace.
World domination is a path towards individual economic collapse and terrorism on American soil.\
We are well on our way down the path to the second.. and i would like to remind you how well that worked out for the romans, the dutch, the spanish, the french and the english.
we should never forget that our nation was a result of rebellion to the policy we are now pursuing.