We have all heard the claim before – the Bush administration rushed to war for political reasons based on “faulty” or “dubious” pre-war intelligence. This leads us to really the defining question of the entire War on Terror:
Is it better to be safe or sorry?
Granted, there is a lot of validity to the above position with reams of evidence to support it. However, we must keep in mind Cheney’s One Percent Doctrine, as described by Ron Suskind. The theory is that if there is even a one percent chance that the U.S. may be attacked, we must take action as if it were a 100% absolute certainty. Since 9/11, generally speaking, Democrats have been divided on this position, as evidenced by the vote in 2002 to authorize action against Iraq and the subsequent party policy muddiness that has followed, while Republicans were united in support of it.
While I am opposed to our presence in Iraq, I do agree with Cheney’s central premise. It is better to be safe than sorry. However, it would behoove the Bush administration (and concurrently, the national security of American citizens) to make a more concerted effort to persuade the world of this position with good faith communications – not the arrogant, secretive arm-twisting that we have all witnessed these past 6+ years.
The wordy ‘say nothing’ diatribe in the article on Feith is a waste of time. There has been information floating around for quite some time now that the ‘informant’ on whom these policy makers chiefly relied was ultimately found to be psychologically unstable. Everything he gave us was ultimately proved to be false.
The Bush/Cheney administration wants suzerainty in Iraq–they need a compliant vassal state in charge of its own internal affairs, but one whose foreign relations they can control.
Their crooked oil business cabal cares far more about the security of its options in the vast Iraqi oil fields than it does about the security of the American people.
They haven’t hesitated to use the terrorist threat as a red herring to distract the people of the U.S. from demanding an investigation of their criminal activities in Texas, Washington, and Iraq.
If Bush/Cheney escape justice in this corrupt world, I eagerly anticipate their trial and conviction in the next.
God save us all from these counterfeit Christians.
This is not simply a current administration issue. Western interests in Iraq have been motivated by the same agenda for the past 100 years, as has Russia’s
Any notion that this will cease to be the case once the torch has been passed would be naive to say the least.
The more things change, the more they remain the same