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Originally Posted by abaya
Meanwhile, from host's transcript of the Helen Thomas inquisition:
If you read along up to that point, he justifies the war using 9/11 and going into Afghanistan. He keeps talking about Afghanistan, the Taliban, etc. Helen Thomas reminds him that's not what she's asking about. So then all of a sudden: "I also saw a threat in Iraq." There is no real connection between Afghanistan and Iraq... he makes this total jump. The threat he saw had nothing to do with 9/11 or Afghanistan. What logic.
/lingers in Politics... this is kinda fun.  |
Glad you're here abaya - it's always nice to have different faces.
Well, to be fair he didn't JUST say "I also saw a threat in Iraq." There was some other stuff about weapons and resistance to international inspections that characterized the threat he thought he saw. And that's actually how I remember the run-up to the Iraq war. Lots of talk about 9/11, Afghanistan, and terrorism. Next to that, lots of talk about Iraq and the somewhat valid issue of non-compliance with security council resolutions. I heard lots of people arguing that the administration claimed Iraq was linked to 9/11, but I never actually heard that claim from the administration outside of speculative contexts. [I'm now preparing myself for an onslaught of transcripts from host. Host, if that's going to happen, let me know and let's have it in a thread devoted to that topic.]
And that brings me to the reason that I don't think Helen Thomas' question was actually all that insightful. All those things she mentions turning out to not be true doesn't mean they weren't the reason we invaded Iraq. It just means that they weren't true. I think President Bush really believed that there were WMDs in Iraq, and I think he may have held this belief in contradiction to the hard evidence (or that the evidence was already skewed before it reached him because people were telling him what they thought he wanted to hear). I think he really believed that Saddam Hussein was looking for ways to foment terrorism in the Middle East and abroad. I think Bush was really wrong on the first count and possibly wrong on the second. However, I'm still not conviced that those reasons were PRETEXTS for the real reasons.
Hell, people believe stuff everyday in the face of contradictory evidence. Happens all the time.