:: The Rational Radical Blog ::

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Bush Clearly Lies About Iraq

In case any Bushians start lying about how "Saddam wouldn't let the inspectors back in so we had to remove him," here are the facts:

In November 2002, Hussein let UN inspectors back into Iraq where they searched dozens of sites – including some suggested by U.S. intelligence – but found no WMD.

The Bush administration reacted to the negative WMD findings by instigating war hysteria inside the United States. The UN inspectors were ridiculed as incompetent; Bush’s domestic critics were called traitors; European allies urging patience were denounced as the “axis of weasels”; French wine was poured into gutters; and “French fries” were renamed “Freedom fries” in flag-waving diners across America.

As Bush’s followers were lusting for war in March 2003, however, UN inspectors were citing good cooperation from the Iraqis as the search for WMD continued. The inspectors’ greater obstacle soon became Bush’s insistence on an invasion.

“Although the inspection organization was now operating at full strength and Iraq seemed determined to give it prompt access everywhere, the United States appeared as determined to replace our inspection force with an invasion army,” the UN’s chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, wrote in his memoir, Disarming Iraq.

Despite the UN inspectors’ negative WMD findings and Bush’s failure to win a war resolution from the UN Security Council, Bush launched the invasion on March 19, 2003. After three weeks of fighting, U.S.-led forces toppled Hussein’s government and Bush’s popularity ratings soared.

For weeks, the U.S. triumphalism from the Iraq victory trumped any lingering questions about the invasion. But as Iraq slid into chaos and insurgents began to kill American soldiers, Bush started reconstructing the war’s history to justify his actions.

On July 14, 2003, Bush said about Hussein, “we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power.”

In the following months, Bush repeated this claim in slightly varied forms. On Jan. 27, 2004, Bush said, “We went to the United Nations, of course, and got an overwhelming resolution – 1441 – unanimous resolution, that said to Saddam, you must disclose and destroy your weapons programs, which obviously meant the world felt he had such programs. He chose defiance. It was his choice to make, and he did not let us in.”

Blind Journalists

Though the U.S. national press corps had witnessed Blix’s UN inspections of Iraq and certainly knew that Bush’s historical revisionism was false, American reporters failed, repeatedly, to challenge Bush’s account.

Indeed, as Randi Rhodes always points out, the U.N. was actually in the process of destroying some of Saddam's missiles which exceeded (by a few miles!) their allowable range when the U.S. told the inspectors to get out, we're going to attack.

Jack Clark 9:38 PM [+]   
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