Posted by
Andrews on Sunday, October 12, 2008 1:49:51 PM
I was thinking about all the outrageous charges made against Bush, when I had something of a revelation. It really doesn't matter much now, as the left either is going to be rejoicing over an Obama victory or making up stories about stolen elections, but I still thought I should at least put my question out there.
Now, the story coming out of the left is that Bush and company, for whatever reason, to avenge his father, win jobs for Haliburton, steal Iraq's oil, appease the neocons behind the PNAC or start the new American Empire, forced
the intelligence agencies to falsify information and then presented this doctored information to the public to convince us to go to war.
My question is this: If the all powerful, sinister Bush administration and their lackeys were so willing to doctor up evidence to get us to go to war against a completely innocent and virtuous Saddam, then why didn't they plant a few weapons in Iraq? I mean once we were there, how hard would it have been to plant a nuke? Or at least some nerve gas? Even a vial of anthrax would have worked, and that is small enough it would have been easy to smuggle in.
Even if they didn't do that, couldn't they have forged some documents saying they smuggled the weapons into Syria? Not only would that have justified the war, but it would have given them cause to invade Syria as well.
You see, when you really start to think about it, the whole "
Bush lied" theory proves absurd. If Bush was arranging all this to fight a war he wanted, he could easily have then planted weapons or documents to justify himself, and avoided all the accusations of lying. The fact that we did not find any weapons actually shows that Bush was not involve din any conspiracy.
Of course, some truly paranoid types will probably argue that that was actually the plan. Bush failed to plant weapons precisely so people like me would make this argument. But that is drifting off into truly delusional territory.
The fact is, Bush believed there were probably weapons. Clinton did, much of the intelligence service did. MI6 did, and still does. Either Saddam was being deceived by his scientists and generals as some claim (though I doubt it), or the weapons were smuggled into Syria before the war. Or, even more likely, some went into Syria, some remain hidden in the largely unexplored desert, and
SOME HAVE BEEN FOUND, though either ignored by the media or miscategorized by agencies unwilling to concede that
Saddam really had WMDs.
But that doesn't matter. What does matter is that, were Bush interested in deceiving the public, he would have planted weapons. That it did not happen proves to my satisfaction there was no conspiracy, and the statements before the war
were sincere.
POSTSCRIPT
I ran across something interesting, and relevant, on IMDB. On
one of the chat boards there is a liberal who actually argues against paranoid conspiracy theories. Of course, it helps that he is British and not infected with America's Bush Derangement Syndrome, endemic to the Angry Left. Still, Europeans have shown a general susceptibility to crazy conspiracy theories, especially relating to 911 and Iraq, so I was a bit shocked to hear this bit of common sense.
POSTSCRIPT II
I have probably made similar arguments before, though not quite this clearly and in as concise a fashion. But I think it is important to keep this topic in the foreground. The left has repeatedly accused the right of misdeeds, and tried to blame them for everything under the sun. They have also been wrong every time. Since they are once again blaming the right, I think it is important for us to point out that in the past every other accusation was utter garbage, so that no one should believe the newest accusations.
So this is not "old news", simply background against which current events should be assessed.
POSTSCRIPT III
One additional argument, often ignored, is that Bush had
plenty of cause to go to war even without the WMDs, so why bother?