Dan wrote:
Well, what was really known with any certainty before one of the
Curveball's handlers came public? Second hand stories, that ended up
being true. But, as Mike Wallace
Dan Rather, you mean.
can tell you, there are second hand stories
that are supported by forged documents and are aired to the great
embarassment of the news media.
Curveball's statements were not manufactured from whole cloth. They
were taken at face value when the handlers suggested that they should
not be. This can be
consistent with real bad judgement on the part of Bush et. al. People do
cherry pick reports to fit preconceived notion. This makes them
unreliable, but it is a different thing from saying you didn't have sex
with someone when there is physical evidence to prove it.
Dan, he went before the nation and told them that this stuff was true when
all his experts were saying it wasn't. He had the responsibility to vet
the information before he uses it to incite a war. It might not be a lie
on a technicality, but it was information that he knew was probably
wrong. Under the circumstances it was equivalent to lying, IMO and it
certianly had greater consequences than Clinton's lie or even Nixon's.
But, if you listen to Bush before and after 9-11, you will see evidence
of something akin to a conversion experience around 9-11. In the
campaign, he sneered (literally in one debate IIRC) at the US military
being engaged in nation building (which is what he's been trying for
almost three years now in Iraq). One of his anti-drug folks praised the
Taliban. He wanted to
get US soldiers out of Bosnia, if you recall. He seemed very much
against idealism in foreign policy.
Recalling the official statements of the US about Iraq after his
inaguration and before 9-11, I remember nothing that indicated that Bush
was thinking of invading Iraq. I knew that Clinton had thought of it,
but IIRC, the bombing runs in '98 were more extensive than any bombing
runs pre 9-11.
After 9-11, I think he bought the neocon arguement that US security was
dependant on us draining the swamp. He had a "revelation" that he was
called to bring democracy to the world, thus both helping all of God's
children and fulfilling his responsibility to protect the United States.
Richard Clarke on the Bush reaction to 911:
"The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut
the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he
never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in
absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report
that said Iraq did this.
"I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at
this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.'
"He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a
connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come
back with that answer. We wrote a report."
--
Doug
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