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Iraq: Staying the Course with Lies, Arrogance and Stupidity

By Jack Hughes  Posted by Rob Kall (about the submitter)       (Page 1 of 2 pages)   No comments
Vice President Cheney's recent characterization of those questioning the Bush administration's truthfulness in its case for war with Iraq as "rewriting history" is ironic in that his diatribe against his Iraq war critics is itself an Orwellian attempt to rewrite history.

As the truth slowly trickles out, it has become apparent to a majority of Americans that Iraq posed no danger to the national security of the United States of America, had no weapons of mass destruction, had no relationship to Al Qaeda or the attacks of 9/11 and posed no threat to its neighbors.

Why then did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence to exaggerate the threat while hiding exculpatory evidence; minimize risk to US service personnel and US diplomatic isolation; and ignore the likelihood of Iraqi instability and of increasing Muslim sympathy to Islamist ideology? These were all very real risks that any competent analysis would have revealed.

The only explanation is that they wanted this war. The question is why.

In another irony of the Iraq war, Bush blew a chance for a Teddy Roosevelt "Big Stick" moment of presidential greatness. If there were serious concerns about Saddam Hussein's weapons capabilities in the aftermath of 9/11, Bush's resolute show of force to compel compliance with UN weapons inspections resolutions would have been considered a great success. With the buildup of US forces on Iraq's borders, UN inspectors were given free reign to examine anywhere in Iraq without harassment or hindrance.

If Bush had stopped after successfully forcing intrusive inspections -- neutralizing a potential threat to the region and to a traumatized post- 9/11 America -- he would have been considered a hero not just in America but all over the world.

But the Bush administration never wanted Hussein's compliance, and viewed the UN inspection teams' access as an obstacle to their war plan. Rather than guiding the inspectors to where the "suspected" weapons sites were located, Bush ordered them out of Iraq -- less they fall victim to the first wave of Shock and Awe.

Even still, the UN inspectors were able to confirm what we knew when Hussein's son-in-law defected: Iraq's WMDs and WMD programs were destroyed after the first Gulf War. If we knew there were no prohibited weapons in Iraq, and logic dictated that Saddam's secular Baathist regime was hostile to Islamist groups like Al Qaeda, we're again left with "Why did we invade Iraq?"

The answer is domestic politics, oil and stupidity (not necessarily in that order). One has to consider the timing of the 2002 mid-term elections as it related to the Iraq war. The Bush administration's case for war was treated as more of a political campaign than as a serious bi-partisan national security issue.

For the Republican masterminds in the Bush administration, the Iraq war was seen as a way to make the Democrats (who would presumably resist invading a country that did not threaten us) look "weak" on defense and the war on terror, and Republicanslook "strong" -- and thus provide GOP gains in Congress.

As shaky as Bush's case for war was at the time, a majority of congressional Democrats were shamefully manipulated into voting to give Bush the power to wage war (which the voters rewarded by sending fewer Democrats to Washington).

But surely Bush and the Republicans would not jeopardize the lives and limbs of US service personnel and countless Iraqi civilians -- not to mention hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars -- just for crass political advantage. Think again.

Consider this confession by author Micky Herskowitz, who was originally selected to ghost-write Bush's autobiography:

"He (Bush) was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999. It was on his mind. He said, 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He went on, 'If I have a chance to invade", if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency.'"

Bush's intent to invade Iraq long before 9/11 was also confirmed by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil. A member of the National Security Council, O'Neil was shocked to learn that deposing Hussein was the first order of business at the very first meeting of the NSC, eight months before 9/11. Oil concessions were even being discussed at that early date.

Bush's defenders -- those who insist the Bush administration was the victim of "bad intelligence" -- must willfully ignore these facts.

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Rob Kall Social Media Pages: Facebook Page       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect, connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune 500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful people on his Bottom Up Radio Show, and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, (more...)
 

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