Another British internal document has been leaked that demonstrates the pre-determination of the Bush administration to go to war.
I recall that some here wanted to hand-wave away the last one because it was just one guy, like some unrelated bit of flotsam on the vast sea of the integrity of the Bush Administration. Here again it is clear that Bush and company just had to gin up some support, to trump up some circumstances to justify a pre-determination for war.
This is why nearly 1,700 Americans are dead. This is why we’ve taken a huge proportion of our resources away from the war on terror. It may be related to the fact that we have not yet caught Osama Bin Laden. It has left our military weakened and shamed.
The sad part is that everyone already knows this. This won’t make the news because the people who would care already care. The rest won’t bother to even think about it.
“Mere Bush-bashing from a Bush hater! BUSHLIEDBUSHLIEDBUSHLIED!! You believe the world would be a better place with Saddam, don’t you?!?”
Honestly, this stuff doesn’t surprise me at all anymore. I’ve become so cynical about politics and the politics of war that none of this Machiavellian e even lifts an eyebrow. I’m not outraged that this kind of manipulation happens because it’s not new at all. I repeat: IT’S NOT NEW AT ALL. What irks me is that this system was (IMHO) designed to check the dirty dealings of the leadership with two other acting bodies. The press should be digging all this stuff up and putting it alongside all the stuff that the politicos do right. Let us, the swinish multitudes, decide for ourselves who represents us to the world and whether or not the folks who get to decide whom to blow up are wise enough to have that power.
Alas. The press is cowed and three out of three branches of the government are controlled by one party. We’ve dug our own goddamn hole. As you reap, thus shall you sow.
It blows my mind that almost no one knows about this (I’m mainly talking about Downing Street 1 here) and the very few people who know don’t seem to care. Are the American media outlets deliberately ignoring this or are they just not printing it because they think people don’t care? Will a major news source pick this up on a slow news day and it will snowball from there, or has it already apexed on its slow fizzle into obscurity?
At a risk of dragging this towards GD, I wonder, why there was no whistleblower.
Plainly, we’re looking at a bare fraction of the evidence here. It was apparent and certain to thousands of insiders that the pre-War rhetoric was a conspiracy of deceit. How is it then, with this sort of smoking gun evidence available that not one got into the press?
Loyalty, perhaps. Alliance? Perhaps a true belief that there were WMD and this was the correct course of action?
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
The first document was a leak during Britain’s election season…this one is apparently another leak as well. So either someone has their finger in the dike, or someone is turning on the faucet very, very slowly.
We could have used the option of telling them to fuck off. I assume that we still have some sovereign rights when US bases are on British territory. I assume this, but who knows whether it is actually true. Not really an issue when it comes to Bush’s arselicker in chief, who is currently addministering the UK on George’s behalf…
What good would it have done? Even if we had certified video of GWB and Cheney on Election Night 2000 saying, “Woo-hoo! Let’s go kill us some brown people! Look the fuck out, Iraq!”, anyone pointing out that this might not be a wise move would have been dismissed as a liberal whiner.
Hell, even here at the left-skewing Internet headquarters of Ignorance Fighting, no one even bothered to start a thread about the oil guy in the White House who creatively edited the reports on global warming.
Nope. He’s resigned this week. It has nothing to do with his creative editing. Turns out he built up four weeks leave, and wants to spend the summer with his kids.
Remember when our last President actually got impeached for, lying about a personal matter in a civil case? Or did I dream that?
(Which makes me wonder – given the SCOTUS ruling about a sitting President having to respond to lawsuits, could there theoretically be a class-action wrongful death lawsuit against the current POTUS on the part of survivors of 1,700 dead military personnel?)
Once again, we are witness to the extraordinary devotion to family exhibited by our elected officials and dignitaries. It is a heartwarming spectacle, and a sternly admonishing lesson to the Party of license, corruption, and moral turpentine.