Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution)
Saddam wants and/or has weapons of mass destruction
Before, during and after Operation Iraqi Freedom the Bush Administration threw up a lot of arguments for the action. It seemed obvious that they were just looking for a reason that would sell the war to whoever the intended audience was, and the reason they settled on was the threat of Saddam's current weapons of mass destruction and programs for such weapons, including the possibility of Saddam getting nuclear weapons. "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," President George W. Bush said in his State of the Union speech this past January. The unnamed country was supposed to be Niger and in fact a State Department document from the previous December 19 said Iraq had engaged in "efforts to procure uranium from Niger" without qualification.
"The CIA warned the US Government that claims about Iraq's nuclear ambitions were not true months before President Bush used them to make his case for war, the BBC has learned," the BBC writes in a story tonight. It is perhaps something of an understatement to say this is big news. Although Team Bush's case for war was never one-dimensional, if they could lie about this, it is worth trying to figure out what else, if anything, they lied about. It is also worth demanding an answer from them as to why they did lie about the claim that Iraq had attempted to get enriched uranium from Niger.
Congressional Democrats are reportedly up in arms about this and demanding an investigation. There should no doubt be one, although this call and even such an investigation is an insufficient response to the situation. As explained in "Channeling Cavuto" and "Musing on the 'Shanes' of this world," much of what the Bush Administration says about the "war on terror" does not appear to be intended to be taken literally but rather as the equivalent of macho jock posturing. The Bush Administration's "war on terror" is pro-active on the military level and that will appeal to a lot of people in a country where the mainstream political discourse is filled with people like Arizona Republican Congressman J.D. Hayworth who believe that not actively seeking out war with country's that the Bush says the U.S. should go to war with even though those countries are not a threat to the U.S. is "appeasement." The facts are there for a serious critique of the "war on terror" but to popularize this critique it will most likely be necessary to wrap this critique to a narrative that is as popular as Bush's boastful statements. In other words, it is necessary to convince people that they should feel good about opposing the "war on terror." I wish I knew of a narrative that could be that popular. posted by micah holmquist at 7/08/2003 11:58:00 PM
