Why, oh why, do people still act like Bush is more than he is?

Conason writes: Yet even now, President Bush persists in blatantly falsifying the war's origins -- perhaps because, even now, he still gets away with it.

Perhaps because he still gets away with it? This weak-minded President-In-Name-Only believes everything he says, when he says it. He believes what he is told to believe. He is far too simple to be lying all the time. He is a tool of his "advisors", as he has been all his "adult" life.

Think about the following prossible scenario:

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Bush has made exactly one decision in his entire presidency. He picked Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court. He was encouraged to his face by Rove and Cheney and whomever else. But behind his back they led the Republican revolt against Miers. And then the heat got too hot, and it became clear that she couldn't be successfully confirmed. She asked for her name to be withdrawn. Rove and Cheney and Co. say to Bush, "See what happens when you make the decisions? Now, really, let us decide for you, like we always do."

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Do I think that is what really happened? Maybe it is. It certainly wouldn't surprise me.

But what would definitely surprise me is if Bush himself is really behind all these decisions that come out of his office.

There is nothing in his background to suggest that he is a decision-maker. And everything to suggest that he isn't.

Let's just quit pretending, shall we?

For the last time, Saddam had WMD because he used them against both the Iranians and the Kurds. He admitted to having them at the end of the Gulf War in 1991, and he never offered definitive proof to the UN that he had destroyed them.

We have also recently heard on ABC News (hardly a tool of the Bush administration) tapes of Saddam and his advisors talking about how to fool the weapons inspectors. Finally, remember that every major intelligence service, including the French, Germans and Russians, also believed Saddam had WMD.

Saddam was an incipient Hitler who had twice invaded his neighbors and was only waiting for the UN sanctions to collapse so that he could reconstitute his WMD program. The utterly corrupt UN was all to eager to give up, too.

Everyone asks what would have happend in the '30s if the English and French had stood up to Hitler. We'll never know. Finally, someone stood up to today's Hitler and forestalled a potentially ruinous war. As we translate and release more of the captured documents from Saddam's Iraq, history will judge that Bush did the correct thing.

Too bad people like Joe Conason is so blinded by irrational hatred that he refuses to see this.

Thank you Mr. Conason. It is certainly time someone comes out and speaks truth. I was a witness to the original Bush lie about Saddam "not letting in" the UN inspectors, which as been part of his talking points ever since. I was watching CNN and saw the entire press conference with Kofi Annan live after Bush's Africa trip. Poor Mr. Annan, as you say, maintained his diplomatic cool and didn't fall off his chair, but there must have been an internal struggle in the face of this bald-faced lie. Next day I eagerly scanned the US mainstream press for a headline on this. Nothing. As you mentioned, the only reference was a mild rather apologetic reference to it buried in the Washington Post. Nothing in the NYT. Nothing in any other main paper. So much for the traditional duty of the press, to act as watchdog for the public. But it's negation of this duty (apart from poor maligned Helen Thomas) is the theme song of the current Bush administration, isn't it? Or perhaps it is the policy of the (few) new corporate owners of most of the US press, where the bottom line is sacred and everything else, including in-depth reporting, is expendable.

The recent reiteration of the "inspectors were kicked out by Saddam" theme was similar to another double take I experienced very shortly after 9/11, when everyone knew who the perps of that atrocity were: again on CNN, there was a short interview with Wolfowitz who suggested invading...Iraq. Huh? There were no Iraqis involved and it was known that Saddam, a secular dictator, couldn't stomach Bin Laden and the feeling was mutual. I thought it quite off the wall at the time, and the admin must have hushed Mr. Wolfowitz (bad timing) because the tune smartly changed to Afghanistan and no more was heard about Iraq until some time later. But perhaps this was an early warning of the subsequent direction and policy of the admin, already set in stone even before 9/11 which served as an excuse.

cheers,

ncm

I found it interesting that Conason chose to compare media treatment of Bush's lie about weapons inspectors in Iraq with media treatment of Clinton's lie about Lewinsky. Such a comparison does indeed reveal a remarkable contrast. But what happens if we substitute press treatment of a different Clinton lie: say, about weapons inspectors in Iraq? In at least one instance (and probably more if my memory is correct), a 2004 interview with the BBC, Clinton asserted that in 1998, "Saddam kicked the inspectors out to try to force us to lift the sanctions." In fact, the weapons inspectors were withdrawn in anticipation of US bombing. So what do we get if compare press treatment of this lie with those of Bush? In that case we find a remarkable similarity! The Washington Post and many other papers have repeated this canard time and time again. Such a comparison perhaps leads to more useful lessons about the bipartisan nature of US foreign policy and the media's enabling of it than the comparison made by Mr. Conason.

Correspondent "Gene" writes, "For the last time, Saddam had WMD because he used them against both the Iranians and the Kurds. He admitted to having them at the end of the Gulf War in 1991, and he never offered definitive proof to the UN that he had destroyed them."

We all know Hussein had WMD at one time, as he was our ally during the period he used them. That is not the issue, which is: did he STILL have them or had he reconstituted them? All evidence both prior to and subsequent to our attack on Iraq tells us NO. To the extent there was any belief by us or other world intelligence agencies that he might still possess any remnants of his stockpiles, or that he was rebuilding them, this was based on out of date (or unreliable current) intelligence. Despite the Bush team's repeated mantra, there was hardly uniform belief about this matter, and little to no certainty. This is what Bush and company lied about: their CERTAINTY that Hussein possessed WMD, that they had ABSOLUTE PROOF of their nature, amount, and location. I think they probably BELIEVED he had WMD, and they proceeded on their BELIEF. However, they did not tell the world they merely "believed," but that they KNEW. This implies they possessed unimpeachable evidence proving the existence of Hussein's WMD, and there was no such evidence.

And, I suggest you read Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector for 8 years, on the question of Hussein's past and present weapons stockpiles.

But, writer "Gene," you ignore the point of Mr. Conason's article, which you cannot dispute: Bush has lied repeatedly AFTER the fact about whether Hussein allowed UN inspectors in PRIOR to our invasion. This can hardly be a mistake on his part, for why would his staff not have corrected him after the first time he made this assertion? How could he not have remembered it to begin with? That Mr. Conason would point out the fact of Bush's repeated lies on this point is hardly indicative of partisan "hatred" on Mr. Conason's part.

"Saddam was an incipient Hitler who had twice invaded his neighbors and was only waiting for the UN sanctions to collapse so that he could reconstitute his WMD program."

Hussein was a weak ruler of a third rate country, and no threat even to his neighbors any longer, much less to America. (See Colin Powell's and Condi Rice's pre-9/11 statements to that effect for confirmation of the administration's own views on that); even at his most powerful, he was no incipient Hitler, an inflammatory comparison made by Bush's father, also a liar who used war against Iraq for his own purposes. The UN sanctions program was hardly about to collapse, and had successfully contained Hussein for a dozen years, albeit at the expense of the health and lives of many Iraqi children and sickly elderly people.