Weaponsgate update: While Dubya rails against “revisionist historians” (what, then, was he doing in Poland?), the British parliamentary inquiry into WMDs heats up. I’m going to be supremely annoyed if Blair goes down for this and Dubya doesn’t.
Tag: War in Iraq
Preemptive Looting.
Thanks to some clever and courageous antiquarians on staff (and no thanks to the Pentagon), it turns out the Baghdad museum was not as irretrievably looted as earlier feared (although keep an eye out on Ebay for the Warka face and vase.) That’s great news for ancient historians and archivists the world over. (By way of A Small Victory.)
What did the President not know, and when did he not know it?
Whether or not WMDs are ever found in Iraq at this point, it has become increasingly clear that the Bushies were contradicting their own intelligence last September and overstating the WMD capabilities of Iraq to the UN, the international community, and the American people. Lying to America? Falsifying intelligence? As John Dean points out for CNN, we’re now entering Nixon territory. (Second two links via Pigs and Fishes and Medley.)
The “Browbeaters.”
Is Paul Wolfowitz in a 12-step program? A week after confiding to America about the “bureaucratic” thinking that motivated the WMD casus belli, Wolfowitz opens up to an audience in Singapore, telling them “we had no choice” in our Iraq policy because “the country swims on a sea of oil.” (Via High Industrial.) And now it turns out Cheney and co. were leaning hard on the CIA to come up with the “right” intelligence about Iraq’s WMD capabilities (and an Iraq-Al Qaeda connection.) Hmm…looks like it’s getting grim at WMD Search Central. Update: Jake Tapper of Salon points out that Wolfowitz’s alleged Singapore statement is based on a misquote – Wolfowitz was talking about the efficacy of sanctions, not the reasons for war.
Dropping the Other Shoe.
In a strange moment of candor, Wolfowitz tells Vanity Fair that the WMD argument for overthrowing Saddam was chosen “for bureaucratic reasons,” since “it was the one reason everyone could agree on.” (He also lends credence to the argument advanced in this Fred Kaplan article that removing troops from Saudi Arabia was one of the central purposes of the Iraq war.) Meanwhile, in the same AP story, the head of US Marines in Iraq says of the WMDs, “they’re simply not there.” Looks like the Bushies have some explaining to do…If they follow the usual pattern, I suspect they’ll answer any tough question with a flurry of 9/11-esque horror stories.
Primary Colors.
In a cover story for TIME, Joe Klein gives his take on the Democratic field. I don’t agree with everything he has to say (for example, giving Dubya a pass on Iraq), but it’s worth reading nonetheless.
Pick your Poison.
Via Cheesedip and the Daily Show, President Dubya debates Governor Dubya on Iraq. Hmm…never thought I’d agree with Dubya on this issue, but there you have it. A must-watch.
Slider, you stink.
Apparently, Bush gave a campaign speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln yesterday, but I couldn’t hear it over all the saber-rattling. Something to do with Iraq being about September 11 or somesuch. At any rate, you have to wonder if any of the officers on the Lincoln wondered when they saw Dubya show up in aviator gear if he was coming to make up for the year he spent AWOL and on the lam from military drug tests. The election of 2004 will be won or lost on the Bush record, but nevertheless – push the Mr. Military campaign tack too far and people might just start taking a closer look at Dubya’s year-long holiday.
Hedging their Bets.
In the wake of Dubya’s embrace of preemption, historian Joyce Appleby wonders whatever happened to Congress as a center of foreign policy. As James Madison put it, “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Govts demonstrates, that the Ex. is the branch of power most interested in war, & most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legisl. But the Doctrines lately advanced strike at the root of all these provisions, and will deposit the peace of the Country in that Department which the Constitution distrusts as most ready without cause to renounce it.” Looks like recent experience has proven him right.
Francophobia.
Utilizing a technique he learned in his fratboy hazing days, Dubya decides to freeze France out for her opposition to the war in Iraq. Along the same lines, Bushies are now trying to deride Kerry by saying he looks French. (Why not tell the American people he’s got cooties, while you’re at it?) Yes, folks, these people run the country.