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Who’s Accountable?
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0610-07.htm
For example, look at the way the administration rhetorically linked Saddam to
Sept. 11. As The Associated Press put it: “The implication from Bush on down was
that Saddam supported Osama bin Laden’s network. Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks
frequently were mentioned in the same sentence, even though officials have no
good evidence of such a link.” Not only was there no good evidence: according to
The New York Times, captured leaders of Al Qaeda explicitly told the C.I.A. that
they had not been working with Saddam.
Or look at the affair of the infamous “germ warfare” trailers. I don’t know
whether those trailers were intended to produce bioweapons or merely to inflate
balloons, as the Iraqis claim - a claim supported by a number of outside
experts. (According to the newspaper The Observer, Britain sold Iraq a similar
system back in 1987.) What is clear is that an initial report concluding that
they were weapons labs was, as one analyst told The Times, “a rushed job and
looks political.” President Bush had no business declaring “we have found the
weapons of mass destruction.”
We can guess how Mr. Bush came to make that statement. The first teams of
analysts told administration officials what they wanted to hear, doubts were
brushed aside, and officials then made public pronouncements greatly overstating
even what the analysts had said.
snip!
One last point: the Bush administration’s determination to see what it wanted to
see led not just to a gross exaggeration of the threat Iraq posed, but to a
severe underestimation of the problems of postwar occupation. When Gen. Eric
Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, warned that occupying Iraq might require
hundreds of thousands of soldiers for an extended period, Paul Wolfowitz said he
was “wildly off the mark” - and the secretary of the Army may have been fired
for backing up the general. Now a force of 150,000 is stretched thin, facing
increasingly frequent guerrilla attacks, and a senior officer told The
Washington Post that it might be two years before an Iraqi government takes
over. The Independent reports that British military chiefs are resisting calls
to send more forces, fearing being “sucked into a quagmire.”
I’ll tell you what’s outrageous. It’s not the fact that people are criticizing
the administration; it’s the fact that nobody is being held accountable for
misleading the nation into war.
Blair Could Be Bush’s First Fall Guy for Iraq
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0610-05.htm
Most of the blame for this cut-and- paste dossier has been placed on Blair’s
closest aide, a former tabloid journalist named Alastair Campbell, who believes
himself to be a master manipulator of public opinion. The calls for Campbell’s
dismissal are growing, and his departure would be a thunderous blow to Blair
himself.
Possibly the weapons of mass destruction will be found. If not, Blair will be in
very big trouble. He dragged an unwilling nation into war by convincing most
undecided voters that, on balance, it was necessary. If they become convinced
that he exaggerated the facts and bent the data in order to send young men to
their deaths in a pointless war, they will be deeply unwilling to believe him
again. Blair has always had a reputation of a high-wire walker with the truth.
If he topples now, there may be no safety net waiting.
-- Hop-Frog
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Accountability
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| In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Richard Marchetti wrote: <snip> (...) What I still don't get is that even *if* they find WoMD, as some here are banking on just so they can say "I told you so...", it still in no way justifies this war. Find Anthrax and (...) (21 years ago, 10-Jun-03, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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