George Uses a Big Word

George Bush must have a word for the day calendar in the Oval Office for he has elected to use a word that is both larger and more sophisticated than his usual fare. The word is "revisionist" and he used it the other day to lambaste war critics for engaging in revisionist history. He seems to have had in mind attacking members of Congress, cowardly dummies that they were, who approved it and now oppose it. Bush said, "It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began."

Of course, the genuinely irresponsible revisionist is Bushilla himself. Why did we go to war? George and/or his minions (usually Cheney or Powell, who must be extremely embarrassed at himself) said that (1) Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and that (2) Saddam was negotiating with Niger for nuclear materials and that (3) Saddam had close ties to Al Queda and that (4) Saddam had mobile chemical labs built into truck trailers so he could hide his dirty deeds from the eyes of UN inspectors and that (5) Saddam is a danger to his neighbors. That's just off the top of my head.

Item 1. We have learned that Saddam had absolutely no weapons of mass destruction. Now, we knew he once had chemical weapons because we gave them to him and Saddam's mandatory account to the UN did not provide chapter and verse about how those not used on Iran and the Kurds in his own country were destroyed so there was credible evidence that Saddam still had chemical weapons. The problem is that chemical weapons are not weapons of mass destruction, if we take nuclear weapons as the paradigm case of a weapon of mass destruction. Chemical weapons are best used locally. I have so far learned of no biological weapons that have the capacity to wipe out thousands of people at a time though I suppose that is possible. But Saddam didn't have any anyway. Nor did he have nuclear weapons. So the kindest thing one can say about Bushilla is that he engaged in massive hyperbole in regard to the charge that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

Item 2. We know that Saddam did not negotiate with Niger for nuclear materials. Bush knew that for the CIA told him -- or Powell or Rumsfield -- this but that didn't stop Bush from making the claim. He knows no shame.

Item 3. Saddam enjoyed no relationship to al Queda of any concern to us. Recall that al Queda is engaged in a holy war against us. Saddam was an agnostic or atheist or lapsed Muslim for his regime was secular. Indeed, we were safer with him in power than with the Shiite theocracy that is almost certain to come about in what is left of Iraq after the Kurds, for all intents and purposes, secede. But in a display of the sort of deception that has marked Bushilla's regime, when he is not engaged in overt lying, Bush and Cheney (especially) hinted around enough about a possible involvement of Saddam's regime in the 9/11 disaster to get some 40% of Americans to believe it was true at one time. (I am going by memory on that percentage.) This Mr. Bush is "deeply irresponsible," to use his language.

Item 4. Saddam did not have mobile truck trailers with chemical weapons labs in them. That was a total fabrication by Bushilla's Administration and Colin Powell will live in infamy for making the representation that he did have them before the UN.

Item 5. Saddam was not a danger to anyone but the people in his own country and those in the north and south were in little danger because of the two "no fly" zones. His military was wrecked by Desert Storm and it was not rebuilt. None of this information was top secret. You all should have known it.

None of Bush's original arguments for going to war in Iraq have held true. That makes Bush himself the Great Revisionist as he puts forth "new and improved" reasons for going to war. There were other reasons for going to war in Iraq but these went unmentioned. Perhaps the most important Wolfowitz's utopian fantasy (cf. Brent Scowcroft's remarks on this) that if we created a democracy in Iraq it would trickle sideways into neighboring countries making Israel, the US, and Iraq's neighbors all safer. Bush and his minions did not make this argument though I knew about it, as did many others. Why? We just cant go around the world invading countries to replace their regimes with democratic ones. We don't have the power and we would become even greater pariahs in the world that Bushilla has already caused us to become. That is also why Bushilla didn't push the "Saddam is evil" card because we cannot go around invading countries because we don't like their leaders. I think Bush may have hinted once that God told him to go to war in Iraq but he didn't push that reason.

Thanks to the fact that Bush didn't prepare for the post-war situation (meaning the war against Saddam's army) because everyone in the Administration was operating as if "the best case scenario" for Iraq would obtain, Wolfowitz's utopian fantasy was made difficult if not impossible to attain. The Kurds are going to be a part of Iraq in name only and they will use their significant military assets and trained soldiers to keep the angry Sunnis at bay. They don't live particularly close to the Shiites so there may not be hosilities between Kurds and Shiites unless one or the other develops a lust for oil. Second, the Sunnis will never quit fighting the Shiites so long as they fear a Shiite-dominated government. The Sunnis had been in power a very long time (including before Saddam came to power, of course) and they did a lot of bad things to Sunnis (and Kurds, of course). They know that they will become second class citizens at best. The current combined forces of the US, UK, and Iraq are, at best, in a stalemate with the insurgents. My guess is that they will be able to fight as long as they want to.

Tags: Iraq War, Bush's lies, post-war errors