Posted on 05/07/2003 7:15:56 PM PDT by FairOpinion
After each war, historians sift through the record to discern its real causes. Invariably, they divide into two camps: the court historians who defend the war leaders and the revisionists who prosecute them before the bar of history.
After World War II, the evidence that FDR had steered us into war, while asserting he was doing his best to avert war, was so massive even his court historians admit he lied. Wrote Thomas A. Bailey in FDR's defense, "He was like the physician who must tell the patient lies for his own good."
Roosevelt had cut off Japan's oil, sent the Flying Tigers to China and sought to tempt Japan into attacking a line of picket ships. He had lied about German subs torpedoing U.S. destroyers and Nazi plans to conquer South America and replace the Christian cross with the swastika. This mattered in 1950. For, with Stalin triumphant in Europe and China, it appeared – in Churchill's phrase – that we "had killed the wrong pig."
But today, with the immense focus on the Holocaust, the question is no longer, "Did FDR lie?" But, "Why did we not declare war sooner?"
Vietnam was, in Reagan's phrase, "a noble cause." But because it was a lost cause, it is now said and believed we only went to war because LBJ had misled us about the Tonkin Gulf incident.
The war in Iraq is being portrayed by the president's men as a just and necessary war that removed a mortal peril. But if our victory turns to ashes in our mouths, and we discover that we have inherited our own West Bank in Mesopotamia, the White House will have to explain again why we went there.
In his speech from the deck of the Abraham Lincoln, President Bush told the nation, "With those attacks (of 9-11), the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got" – i.e., the invasion of Iraq was payback for the killers of Sept. 11.
But is this the truth? For this war on Iraq was not sold to the nation as retribution for 9-11. Indeed, the ties between Iraqi intelligence and the al-Qaida killers turned out to be bogus War Party propaganda.
We were told, rather, that Saddam had gas and germ weapons and was working on nuclear weapons. And once he had them, he would use them on us, or give them to Osama. "Do you want to wait for a nuclear 9-11?" Americans were asked.
Trusting the president, believing that he had information we did not, a majority of Americans approved of pre-emptive war. But where, now, are the thousands of artillery warheads and terror weapons the president and secretary of state told us Saddam had?
We have scoured Iraq for a month. No Scuds have been found. No chemical or biological weapons. No laboratories or production lines. No evidence that Iraq was building nukes or seeking fissile material.
"Every statement I make today is backed up by ... solid sources," Colin Powell told the United Nations. But since then, his case has crumbled. Were he a district attorney, Colin Powell would be under investigation today for prosecutorial incompetence or possible fraud. One British document he relied on turned out to be a 10-year-old term paper by a graduate student. The documents from Niger proving Iraq was seeking "yellowcake" for nuclear bombs turned out to be forgeries – and crude ones at that.
Who forged them? Why have we not been told? Does the secretary who put his integrity on the line not want to know?
If our occupation of Iraq turns sour and U.S. troops are being shot in the back, a year from now, Americans are going to demand to know. And President Bush could face the charge thrown up in the face of FDR by Clare Boothe Luce, that he "lied us into war."
Both the president and Powell are honorable men. If they misled us, surely it is because they themselves were misled. It is impossible to believe either man would deliberately state as fact what he knew to be false. But the president must find these weapons – or find the men who told him, with such certitude, that Iraq had them.
For there is something strange here. If Saddam had these weapons, why did he not surrender them to save himself? If he did not give them up because he intended to use them on us, why did he not use them on us? And if they were destroyed before the war, why did he not simply show us where, and thereby save himself, his family and his regime?
Last fall, Congress abdicated, surrendered its war-making power to a president who demanded that Congress yield it up. If Congress wishes to redeem itself, it should unearth the truth about why we went to war. Was the official explanation the truth, or was it political cover for an American imperial war?
The U.N. and inspectors and defectors confirmed (remember Blix got busted covering this up) that Saddam had many tractor trailor semi, bio chem/WMD rolling labs. So it is not a lie, yet, you and Buchanan are questioning what was answered a long time ago.
Why? How ludicrous, to question what has already been proven.
This administration has diminished the Constitution, increased the power of federal government, has a policy of attacking nations that have not attacked us and embraced deficit spending. Government employment is growing and private sector employment is shrinking. Not to mention the fact that the government supports importing hitech workers and exporting hitech jobs.
How is this conservative?
That's non-responsive so lacking grater specificity I'll just file you away as being part of the .4% of Americans on the lunatic fringe who voted for Pat Buchanan or one of his doppelgangers such as Harry Browne in the Y2K election.
By the way, why are you here on FR if you find the companionship so distasteful?
Boss, Boss! TPaine, TPaine!
they themselves were misled
it should unearth the truth about why we went to war
It was the Joos of course, that master race of deceivers. Why is Pat being so coy all of a sudden?
That's non-responsive so lacking grater specificity I'll just file you away
Fairs fair, as I dismissed you long ago as being quite demented.
By the way, why are you here on FR if you find the companionship so distasteful?
There are far more good people here than bad squid. Your associates give you a jaded view.
Sure, I argue overly much with those, like you, who only pay lip service to our constitution. It's just one of my many faults.
Holy sh*t...LOL!!!
I'm no big fan of Pat Buchanan, but I do know this -- if Bill Clinton had pursued military action against Iraq on the basis of Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction program," there would be a lot of people here on FR demanding an answer when these weapons were never found.
1. The issue was never just WMD's. We are not invading France, England, Israel, China, or Russia. Heck, we are not even invading Brazil, which is restarting a program. The issue is that we have an enemy regime with ties to terrorists creating WMDs.
2. That we have not found WMD's is not all that important to open-minded people. The circumstantial evidence was overwhelming and continues to accumulate.
3. We have found illegal weapons. He had the weapons in the past and used them.
Spain links suspect in 9/11 plot to BaghdadA history on how this has bend misreported through attributions to anonymous sources: http://edwardjayepstein.com/2002question/prague.htmIt also includes a new affirmation by the Czech government that Mohamed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 plotters, met an Iraqi intelligence officer, Ibrahim al-Ani, in Prague in April 2001. Some US officials have suggested this meeting did not happen. But in a signed statement dated 24 February, 2003, Hynek Kmonicek, the Czech ambassador to the UN, says his government 'can confirm that during the stay of Mohamed Atta ... there was contact with Mr al-Ani, who was on 22 April, 2001 expelled from the Czech Republic on the basis of activities not compatible with his diplomatic status [the usual euphemism for spying]'.
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