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.)
Tag: Weaponsgate
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.