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Posted on 07/08/2003 5:36:41 AM PDT by spoiled goods
I've been reading Sidney Blumenthal's book, The Clinton Wars. I was struck by the similarities between the Starr Inquisition and the way the Bushies "investigated" weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Starr and his office clung to the belief that the Clintons were devious criminal conspirators. “I think it was consistent throughout the office,” Sam Dash said. “Ken ultimately believed it himself. They said, [the Clintons are] powerful, they can cover up, they’re pressuring people to lie. We’re going to stay on it until we get it. It was a hypothesis.” But Starr had no evidence that the Clintons were obstructing justice. “From time to time,” said Dash, “I would sit at a staff meeting, and a prosecutor would present all the evidence. I would get a copy of it before the meeting, and they were talking it up as through they had something of value. They had nothing. I said, ‘Zero plus zero plus zero equals zero.’ I was advising they didn’t have it. My view constantly was that if you don’t have it, it may not be there, and your job is over.” But Starr didn’t listen. …
From the beginning, Starr hurtled toward the President’s impeachment by using the grand jury to prosecute symbolic offenses. He was his own runaway train. He claimed to be throwing up caution signs while he was stoking the engine with coal. Starr believed that Susan McDougal was lying, Web Hubbell was lying, and Monica Lewinsky was lying. But he had no legal strategy beyond a hope that somehow, someone, somewhere, would materialize to prove his case against the President. He would subpoena witnesses, tell the story as he wished it to be told by leaks to the press, mobilize public disgust and anger at his target, drive his target into a corner, instigate the filing of articles of impeachment, and then hope there was a case. [Sidney Blumenthal, The Clinton Wars (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), pp. 390-391]
Fast forward to Bush II. Is it not obvious that the Bush Administration dealt with Iraq the same way Starr dealt with Clinton? They had a hypothesis -- Saddam Hussein was a danger to the United States because he supported al Qaeda and he had weapons of mass destruction. They sold this hypothesis to the press and the public as fact. They mobilized public disgust and anger at anyone who dared question the hypothesis. They instigated a war. And now they hope that they will find evidence to back up their hypothesis.
U.S. intelligence analysts lacked new, hard information about Saddam Hussein's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons after United Nations inspectors left Iraq in 1998, and so had to rely on data from the early and mid-1990s when they concluded in months leading up to the war that those programs continued into 2003, according to preliminary findings of a CIA internal review panel. [Walter Pincus, "Basis for Arms Claims Affirmed," The Washington Post, July 4, 2003]
In other words, they had a hypothesis. The Washington Post article quoted above suggests the hypothesis was reasonable: Iraq had chemical and biological weapons ten years ago; therefore, they must still have them.
The problem with this hypothesis is that chemical and biological weapons have limited shelf lives, and any such material made a decade ago would be seriously degraded by now. (For example, see Cliff Montgomery, "Lies About Iraq's Chemical Weapons Are Past Expiration Date," Alternet, May 8, 2003.) And in the years since Iraq was known to have chemical and biological weapons, there have been sanctions, inspections, bombing runs, and a couple of wars. Yet the Bushies proclaimed to the world that they were certain Saddam Hussein had deadly chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction that threatened the rest of the world.
The hypothsis was on even shakier ground regarding a nuclear threat. Bush said in the 2003 State of the Union address: "The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb." In the 1980s Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapons development program. Most of it was destroyed in the Gulf War, and as we've learned recently, for more than a decade the remains of that program were buried in a rose garden. And the IAEA had reported in 1997 that "there were no indications of Iraq having achieved its program goal of producing a nuclear weapon; nor were there any indications that there remained in Iraq any physical capability for the production of amounts of weapons-usable nuclear material of any practical significance." [Gary Dillon, Carnegie Endowment]
But the lack of proof did not deter the Bushies from believing fervently in their hypothesis. And, as Ken Starr attempted to ruin anyone who got in the way of his Clinton hypothesis, the Bushies did also to those (like France) who didn't buy into the Iraq hypothesis.
Consider what the Bushies did to Hans Blix:
Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, was so eager to see the United States launch a preemptive strike against Iraq in early 2002, that he ordered the CIA to investigate the past work of Hans Blix, the chief United Nations weapons inspector, who in February 2002, was asked to lead a team of U.N. weapons inspectors into Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction, in an attempt to undermine the scientist. [Jason Leopold, "Wolfowitz Had CIA Investigate Blix," Counterpunch, June 26, 2003]
Let's think about this. If the Bush Administration was concerned that Iraq posed a danger to the world but had no concrete evidence, why would they seek to undermine the weapons inspectors? Possible answers:
They're nuts.
The weapons of mass destruction were not the reason for the war in Iraq, but the excuse.
All of the above.
In a recent article, Arianna Huffington wrote that the Bushies exhibited all the symptoms of fanaticism. That covers the "nuts" part. And by now we've all heard about the Project for a New American Century and the neocon plan to take over Iraq to make the world safe for Coca-Cola (I oversimplify, but that's what it boils down to).
It can now be truly said that the lunatics are running the asylum. God help America.
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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It is in the breaking news sidebar! |
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Now, there's your problem. Relying on Sid "Swamp Thing" Blumenthal is akin to believing Slick Willie.
Don't go there.
Picture of the Troll, Spoiled Goods, running from the Viking Kitties *note* the Zot burns -
ZOT!!
And this passes for informed debate on DU?
I would ask for a rebate.
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