Okay, this is the first thread I’ve ever started, so be gentle. The case the Bush administration has consistently made to the world for the war in Iraq is that Iraq must be disarmed – that the combination of a rogue state, weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and shadowy terrorism represents such a danger to the world that it simply must be addressed, with world support or without. Bush expressed this as the primary motivation in his address to the UN:
“Above all, our principles and our security are challenged today by outlaw groups and regimes that accept no law of morality and have no limit to their violent ambitions. In the attacks on America a year ago, we saw the destructive intentions of our enemies. This threat hides within many nations, including my own. In cells and camps, terrorists are plotting further destruction, and building new bases for their war against civilization. And our greatest fear is that terrorists will find a shortcut to their mad ambitions when an outlaw regime supplies them with the technologies to kill on a massive scale. In one place – in one regime – we find all these dangers, in their most lethal and aggressive forms, exactly the kind of aggressive threat the United Nations was born to confront.”
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020912-1.html
Also, here’s the text of Bush’s Cincinnati speech in which he reiterated the threat. The speech dwells on WMP for most of its length.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html
Here too is the text of the Congressional authorization for use of force – note that it overwhelmingly references WMD as a justification.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021002-2.html
Okay, so now Bush and administration officials have admitted that weapons of mass destruction were only a pretext for war on Iraq, despite having explained it differently to the public.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/nightline/US/globalshow_030425.html
From the article:
“Officials now say they may not find hundreds of tons of mustard and nerve agents and maybe not thousands of liters of anthrax and other toxins. But U.S. forces will find some, they say. On Thursday, President Bush raised the possibility for the first time that any such Iraqi weapons were destroyed before or during the war.”
Clearly the administration is backing away from the whole issue of WMD, it seems to me. Here, then, are officials’ real reasons for war as given in the article:
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A chance to build democracy in Middle East and generally shake things up.
“The Bush administration felt that a new start was needed in the Middle East and that Iraq was the place to show that it is democracy — not terrorism — that offers hope.” -
to intimidate terrorists and rogue nations.
“The Bush administration wanted to make a statement about its determination to fight terrorism.”
The question I have is, did Bush mislead the world, and is this acceptable conduct from a democratic, representative government? To tell the American public, the Congress and the world that the overriding concern is disarmament, then to reveal that disarmament was only a pretext for war – that even Bush lacks confidence that WMD will be found? Is it as the officials claim, only a matter of emphasis and not a willful misleading of the public?
As an aside, I am a Democrat who supported the war, and I find this to be breathtakingly arrogant. I also shudder to think what a Republican reaction would be, were a Democratic president to make such a revelation. Any tips on how to do a better job of starting threads would be appreciated.
