February 29, 2004
THE LEFT--THE LAST FOLKS WITH FAITH IN THE CIA'S CAPABILITIES:
A Legacy of Lies: President Bush misled the nation about the threat Iraq posed. But he wasn't the first to do so. (Seth Ackerman, January/February 2004, Mother Jones)
"It turns out we were all wrong and that is most disturbing," Kay declared.But who exactly got it wrong? Intelligence agencies obviously exaggerated Iraq's WMD potential, and it's well known that they were egged on by their political masters in the Bush administration. But that's not the whole story. In fact, Bush's manipulation of Iraq intelligence was built on a foundation established during the late 1990's, when Bill Clinton was in the White House.
Faced with the need to justify an economically devastating and internationally unpopular embargo of Iraq, the Clinton administration engaged in a pattern of stretching and distorting weapons data to bolster their claim that Saddam Hussein was still hiding an illicit arsenal. The Clinton White House never used that "intelligence" to push for an invasion of Iraq, as Bush so effectively did. But in its desperate quest to salvage a crumbling Iraq policy, the Clinton White House laid the groundwork for the deceptions of their successors.
And George Bush, Sr.? And Tony Blair? And John Major? And Margaret Thatcher? And so on and so forth?
Yet we conveniently ignored Muammar Qaddafi's more advanced nuclear program?
Isn't the more likely explanation that our intelligence just isn't very good and that we have no idea what weapons our enemies have, only that they are our enemies and need to be dealt with one way or another...
Posted by Orrin Judd at February 29, 2004 11:27 PMWhat economically devistating embargo?
Oil-for-Palaces is just warming up.
Posted by: Sandy P. at March 1, 2004 12:40 AMExactly.
But you know, keep repeating the lies and they become true. It's proven. And it works. At least until the whole edifice crumbles.
(Though for some, there's a lifetime guarantee.)
Posted by: Barry Meislin at March 1, 2004 2:09 AMThe embargo was horribly devastating for the common person in Iraq. The UN estimates that over 350,000 people died from deprivations of one sort or another, whilst Saddam continued to enrich himself.
"[I]nternationally unpopular embargo..." Thus, the war.
If the embargo HAD been popular, and there had been no "food"-for-oil, then Iraq eventually would have had to deal.
Fewer people would have died, most of them Iraqis.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at March 1, 2004 7:27 AMMichael -- The embargo was bad policy for lots of reasons, but look at the difference between the embargo's effects in Kurdistan v. Iraq. In Kurdistan, where the money went to humanitarian aide, there was much less suffering.
Also, the UN death toll in Iraq is basically meaningless because of the way the Baathist's gamed the system. I'm not suggesting that it wasn't devastating, just that there's no way of recreating what the actual effect was or seperating it out from effect of the regime's other policies.
Posted by: David Cohen at March 1, 2004 6:58 PM