Reopening the Debate about Rationale for Going to War with Iraq

Compare this with Chalmers Johnson written November 2003

The McCllelan Anti-Climactic Exposé

The McCllelan book and the barrage of spin and spurious debate tactics

from the Whitehouse and its renegade, neo-con supporters

and weak-minded, sycophant Whitehouse press corps and major TV channel media toadies.

By Edwin L. Young, PhD
April 24, 2009

            The argument about whether Bush and Company believed that there were WMDs or ever whether the invasion of Iraq was necessary or justified on any grounds based on their being a threat to the US is a spurious debate tactic.  Clinton had bombed the air force and anti-aircraft weapons into near oblivion, Hans Blix and all of the WMD inspectors were loudly proclaiming that they had found no signs of WMDs and the UN’s council members had said the US was prematurely precluding their search.  The Iraqi people were starving and demoralized due to the sanctions placed on them.  Iraq clearly had no capacity to bomb the US with nuclear weapons, use biological or chemical WMDs on US citizens, or send nuclear warhead missiles to bomb the US.

            It was clear to me as early as February of 2003 that Saddam was sending mixed messages about WMDs merely to stave off an inevitable invasion by the US.  He insisted he did not have WMDs to remove our pretext for invading and hinted that he did to make us fear invading Iraq.  If he had had them and if he were capable of using them, especially biological and chemical WMDs, on us as he did on the Kurds, then Bush would have been exposing our troops to almost certain death.  Ted Kennedy had made it very clear that invading Iraq would be a disaster on a massive scale for all.  I seem to remember that Tom Friedman made the same arguments at the time but later said that he had not said that.

            At any rate, if I could figure that out, then the Bush Agencies most certainly had to have figured that out long before I did.  Dick Clark and a host of others who left the Bush Administration after the invasion are on record as having clearly reported their contrarian, well-documented information.  You did not even need the Downing Street Memo to know that Bush was fabricating bald-faced lies to justify his rationale for invading Iraq to the American citizens and our illustrious, courage, objective investigative reporters.  Ironically, it was left to the journalists in foreign nations to assume what was the moral and professional obligation of our own journalists.