Wishful Thinking Continues

Just this past week, VP Dick Cheney told Tim Russert that if the administration had to do it all over again, they'd still have invaded Iraq. This after yet another report, this from the Republican controlled Senate, linked previously, indicating there were, in fact, no WMD's. Yet another study showed the Bush rationale for war was flat out wrong. But...

Dick said, no worries. We'd have done it anyway. This is what Paul Wolfowitz said just after the invasion, but most didn't pay much attention when he said it was just an excuse to garner public support for the war. Now almost everyone has said it, no WMD's, from the UN to a Republican congress. But Dick says there were WMD's, even reconstituted nuclear weapons. Dick, W, Rummy and Paul and General Myers even said we'd be greeted as liberators. Paul has moved on to the World Bank (cushy gig for time well served). Rummy has flip flopped more than an opportunistic candidate Kerry in an election year on Iraq. But not Dick. True lies to the end. Can't be confused by the facts it seems.

Again, some lowlights from USA Today April 1, 2003:

Changing rhetoric of war

* Feb. 7, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to U.S. troops in Aviano, Italy: "It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."

* March 4, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a breakfast with reporters: "What you'd like to do is have it be a short, short conflict. . . . Iraq is much weaker than they were back in the '90s," when its forces were routed from Kuwait.

* March 11, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars: "The Iraqi people understand what this crisis is about. Like the people of France in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator."

* March 16, Vice President Cheney, on NBC's Meet the Press: "I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . (in) weeks rather than months." He predicted that regular Iraqi soldiers would not "put up such a struggle" and that even "significant elements of the Republican Guard . . . are likely to step aside."

The war begins

* March 20, President Bush, in an Oval Office speech to the nation: "A campaign on the harsh terrain of a nation as large as California could be longer and more difficult than some predict."

* March 21, Rumsfeld, at a Pentagon news briefing: "The confusion of Iraqi officials is growing. Their ability to see what is happening on the battlefield, to communicate with their forces and to control their country is slipping away. . . . The regime is starting to lose control of their country."

* March 27, Bush, at a news conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, when asked how long the war would take: "However long it takes. That's the answer to your question and that's what you've got to know. It isn't a matter of timetable, it's a matter of victory."

* March 30, Myers, on Meet the Press: "Nobody should have any illusions that this is going to be a quick and easy victory. This is going to be a tough war, a tough slog yet, and no responsible official I know has ever said anything different once this war has started."

* March 30, Rumsfeld, on Fox News Sunday, when asked whether Iraqis would "celebrate in the streets" when victory is won: "We'll see."

We'll see. Or we'll see what we want to see. So, over three years later, why are these folks not held accountable for their colossal bungling?

Not only was the WMD business and all the pre-war wishful thinking about cakewalk nonsense, so too were the incessant remarks drawing links between Iraq and 9/11, which never existed (someone, quickly, tell Dick). There are, however, other links found between Iraq and 9/11 that prove to be interesting. Not what the administration has in mind probably.

Meanwhile, while we drone on and politicize one tragedy after another, here and abroad, and proselytize the masses from on high endlessly, Iraqis die to the tune of a new 9/11 every couple months.

A great new study/book just released from the PR Watch folks has more on all this. It's follow up to their Weapons of Mass Deception work. Really a must read, both books, for getting a grip on the propaganda war waged on the public here at home.

We should try to pay attention to facts. They do, after all, matter. We might even learn something. As the Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore once said, "Truth comes as a conqueror only to those who have lost the art of receiving it as a friend." We really should try to make up with our old friend, the truth. Lives depend on it, on all sides of the aisle.