SALON: The revenge of Baghdad Bob

[BigBearJohn]

"Gawrsh, fooled 'em again, didn't we!?"

The sheer dishonesty of the Bush administration whenever it speaks about the situation in Iraq was on display again during Bush's Tuesday press conference with visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In recent weeks Bush has repeatedly expressed wild optimism, utterly unfounded in reality, about the political process in Iraq and about the ability of the new Iraqi government and army to win the guerrilla war. He has if anything been outdone in this rhetoric by Vice President Dick Cheney. This pie-in-the-sky attitude, which increasingly few believe, degrades our civic discourse, and it endangers the national security of the United States.

The two leaders were finally confronted by the press corps with the leaked Downing Street memo, which reported that Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of the British intelligence agency MI6, had returned from Washington in July 2002 convinced that Bush had already decided on war. The notes of his report to Blair and British Cabinet members say, "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Bush dealt with the memo by denying Dearlove's observations. "My conversations with the prime minister was how could we do this peacefully, what could we do. And this meeting, evidently it took place in London, happened before we even went to the United Nations -- or I went to the United Nations."

Bush is trying to give the impression that his going to the United Nations showed his administration's good faith in trying to disarm Saddam by peaceful means. It does nothing of the sort. In fact, the memo contains key evidence that the entire U.N. strategy was a ploy, dreamed up by the British, to justify a war that Bush had decided to wage long ago. It was the British who wanted Bush to go to the United Nations seeking an ultimatum that Saddam allow the weapons inspectors to return, in hopes that the Iraqi dictator would refuse. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw is quoted as saying at the July 2002, meeting, "We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force." (Emphasis added.) Among the main fears of the British Cabinet members was that a war against Iraq might be considered illegal by the Hague tribunal, leaving them open to war-crimes charges. They felt that going to the United Nations would provide a legal basis for the war if Saddam rejected the inspectors.

SOURCE: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2005/06/09/baghdad_bob/

[kentuck]

1. Remember? We want to search all of Saddam's palaces...?

Hoping that Saddam would say "no, not my home!" Then they had their justification. They think people have forgotten...

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. I like this part:

"We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force."

Saddam really fucked with them when he LET THEM IN. He allow the inspectors in, and they had greater access then they ever previously had. They were there, on the ground, doing the work when we went ahead anyway.

And all that Bush and Blair could do was LIE and say that Saddam was refusing to cooperate.

[me b zola]

3. I get so excited when I see or hear the words 'The Hague'