[Politics]

[holzman_tweed]

As we reach the point that even Rumsfeld and Bush get shown up for the punks they are and go asking the UN for help in Iraq, I just thought I'd mention...

...STILL no WMDs. (Remember Alice?)

And I said on my program, if, if the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he had nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again. -- Bill O'Reily, FOX News, March 18, 2003

Not that I'm holding my breath.

Comments

[fifthconundrum.livejournal.com]

Hrm...perhaps Mr. O'Reily has forgotten his promise and needs a friendly reminder? :-)

[eberg.livejournal.com]

I've been somewhat startled that anyone is surprised that the arguments for the war were bullshit. But, then, I was suprised at the time that anybody appeared to be buying them. Maybe it's just because I'm cynical, but the fact that they'd decided on the war and were trying to rationalize it to the nation and the war (badly, I might add) was glaringly obvious to me.

Hell, when we ignore a nation who openly claims to have nuclear weapons, the capability to hit us with them, and tells us that if we fuck with them they'll bomb us to concentrate our efforts on a country which has trouble hitting its immediate neighbors with decades old hardware, it isn't hard to guess that national security isn't really what's driving things.

Eric Christian Berg

[holzman.livejournal.com]

It wasn't hard to believe statements that Hussein had WMDs -- after all, my childhood friend spent a year or so over there dismantling some of them (Sarge? According to the serial numbers, this here crate of gas was 'Made in Wisconsin'), so I've heard a first hand account.

What's hard to believe is that they would have claimed so strongly, abandoned so much plausable deniability, in making claims that they had to know were going to turn up false eventually.

[eberg.livejournal.com]

Certainly, their use of such was well documented. The exaggeration of the established facts and the outright fabrications on top of that were just hopelessly transparent. Plus, of course, the misrepresentation of Hussein's motives and allies. I lost all respect for any mass media source during the whole affair.

The current administration doesn't appear to be concerned with plausibility as much as providing enough for those who are inclined to support them to rationalize doing so. They seem to care not a whit about swaying their detractors or people with actual concerns. I'd say that their PR machine was terrible, but folks seem to eat it up, so who am I to say? The groundswell of support when we went to war was just sickening. I just can't comprehend the whole 'support our troops' nonsense. It is like 'save the children', just a way to silence opposition to something wrong.