[Mb-civic] Bush Bombs in Cleveland by Robert Scheer

[Michael Butler]

Truthdig

Bush Bombs in Cleveland
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060321_bush_cleveland_wmd_lies/
Posted on Mar. 21, 2006

By Robert Scheer

On the third anniversary of the beginning of his Iraq catastrophe, President
Bush yet again dealt in denial, but this time the carefully screened
audience at the Cleveland City Club wasn¹t buying it.

Perhaps most on target was an elderly gentleman who cited what he said were
the three main reasons for going to war in Iraq ‹ WMD, Iraq¹s ties to the
Sept. 11 terrorists and the alleged purchase of nuclear material from Niger
‹ and then noted dryly that all three of these rationales turned out to be
false.

³How do we restore confidence that Americans may have in their leaders and
to be sure that the information they are getting now is correct?² he asked
the president.

How indeed? ³That¹s a great question,² began Bush by way of dissembling.
³First, just if I may correct a misperception. I don¹t think we ever said ‹
at least I know I didn¹t say ‹ that there was a direct connection between
Sept. 11 and Saddam Hussein.²

Really? So when he said in his May 1, 2003, ³Mission Accomplished² speech on
the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln that ³we have removed an
ally of Al Qaeda,² he meant a different gang with the same name as the one
blamed for the attack on the World Trade Center twin towers and Pentagon? It
is his way of finessing the firm conclusion of the bipartisan Sept. 11
commission that Hussein was an opponent of Al Qaeda and never its ally. Yet
that didn¹t stop Bush from again on Monday insisting that ³the central front
on the war on terror is Iraq.²

Meanwhile, the old ³central front,² woolly Afghanistan, is now all sewed up,
Bush reassures us. ³Twenty-five million people are now free, and Afghanistan
is no longer a safe haven for the terrorists.² Apparently the president
missed the director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael
Maples, giving testimony to Congress a few weeks ago that Taliban resurgence
now presents ³a greater threat to the Afghan central government¹s expansion
of authority than at any point since late 2001.²

To be sure, occupied Iraq is useful to Al Qaeda and its ilk ‹ as a
recruiting poster. In this and myriad other ways, the United States
military¹s continued heavy-handed presence in Iraq strengthens the hands of
extremists and demagogues who can appeal to latent Iraqi nationalism and
Muslim pride. Yet we seem to have forgotten that terrorists don¹t really
need Iraq as ³a safe haven for terrorists to plot new attacks against our
nation,² as Bush put it ‹ they are just as likely to be drawn from countries
that are nominally our allies, such as the 15 hijackers recruited under the
noses of the Bush family¹s sheik friends in Saudi Arabia.

Finally, for old times¹ sake, Bush trotted out his now hoary excuses for
those missing Iraqi WMD he so trumped up to get us psyched for a
³preemptive² war three years ago, again blaming the deception on everyone
except himself. ³Like you, I asked that very same question, ŒWhere did we go
wrong on intelligence?,¹ ² he plaintively responded to his questioner. ³The
truth of the matter is that the whole world thought that Saddam Hussein had
weapons of mass destruction.²

Not so. Most of the world thought it best to wait for the U.N. inspectors,
then on the ground in Iraq, to complete their work before answering that
question. Those inspectors had found no evidence of WMD and this president
knew full well that would probably be their final conclusion when he ordered
the preemptive invasion. Yet he justified it then by referring to the 9/11
attack, warning, ³We cannot wait for the final proof ‹ the smoking gun ‹
that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.²

On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that a treasure trove of
translations of audio tapes of top-level Iraqi meetings involving Hussein,
released at the request of U.S. Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the Republican chairman
of the House Intelligence Committee, show that Iraq had destroyed its WMD
program by 1992. Those tapes were obtained soon after the 2003 invasion, yet
the Bush administration kept them secret while continuing to assert that
Iraq had an active WMD program.

As opposed to ordinary people in this country and the world, Bush has access
to the same detailed information that the Sept. 11 commission used to
conclude that the terrorist acts of Sept. 11 and others conducted by Al
Qaeda bore no relation to Iraq. It is hardly an advertisement for American
democracy that he was able to operate before the war and as recently as this
week as if the truth will never be allowed to hold him accountable ‹ though
not in Cleveland, which is something to cheer about.

Bush Cleveland
AP/Mark Duncan

President Bush shades his eyes from the lights
as he takes questions at the City Club in
Cleveland, Monday, March 20. Bush
claimed success in stabilizing an insurgent
stronghold in northern Iraq, saying he has
³confidence in our strategy² and that critics
should look beyond the images of violence to
see clear signs of progress.
HOME|Digs|Uncovered|Ear to the Ground|Reports|Cartoons|A/V
Booth|Podcast|Bazaar|About Us|Contact Us|User Agreement|Privacy Policy
truthdig Subscribe with Bloglines Add to My Yahoo! Subscribe to my feed
Subscribe to my feed Subscribe to my feed See LiveJournal Feed
A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher,
Zuade Kaufman.
Copyright © 2006 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.