Perhaps you remember the PNAC statement on the need for a disaster in America so they can attack Iraq. Or may be you remember the reports of how they wanted to attack Iraq even before Afghanistan. Exactly how much time and effort was put into analyzing the relationship between Iraq and Sept-11?
Half the time you complain that Saddam was falsely charged with 9/11, the other half you complain that the PNAC crowd wanted to attack Iraq even before 9/11. This is contradictory, and is based on the premise that the US doesn't have the right to consider anybody a threat unless 9/11 can be laid at his doorstep. I consider this a false and dangerous premise.
Of course the PNAC crowd wanted to attack Iraq since 1998 when it became clear containment was failing - because they sincerely and legitimately imo considered Iraq a threat to the region and US interests. I think their reasons were credible have been solidly presented by Ken Pollack. I therefore do not think that they should be charged with "lying" or "deception" when they repeated said that they thought that Saddam Hussein was a serious threat.
One can very well "believe" what he is saying and still be guilty of deception, if one never took the time to fully develop his opinions and present the premises those opinions were based on
You can accuse the neocons of many things, but not developing & presenting their arguments is not one of them. Cheney, Perle, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, how many speeches? how many papers? In fact, the reason they rose to ascendance in policy-making post 9/11 was the fact that their ideas were better formed to deal with the crisis, more articulate, better thought out. And how not? Since they were the ones who had been most expecting a terrorist attack. Certainly the Arabists at State, whose lets-be-friends-with-Saudi-Arabia policy had just been blown out of the water, didn't have many convincing ideas to present.
Exactly how much effort would it have taken Bush to place a team in charge of disqualifying what evidence is put in front him. He did not see the contrary evidence because he did not want to.
And if the CIA had been trusted, he still would have seen false evidence, just slanted another way. We are not talking "good" CIA vs "bad" neocons here - the CIA track record was godawful; the neocon track record is still somewhat better as far as I can see. |
