The March To International Crime

I continue to be amazed by Bush's audacity. Here he is in New Mexico yesterday:

[O]n your TV screens you saw the words "Marching to War." I don't know if you remember that or not. As we were trying to get Saddam to disarm peacefully through the United Nations, and the collective will of the world, you see "March to War," that's hard if you're a business person. It's hard to risk capital or expand your business when the country is marching to war. It's not a good thought.

Or if you're a consumer, maybe thinking about buying a house, if you look on your TV screens that say "March to War," you're not so sure you want to buy the house then, because you're not sure what the consequences of marching to war will be.

Once again, the "not my fault" excuse--the media kept pushing this war thing, and that hurt the economy. Wonder why we saw "March to War" on our teevees all the time? A few quotes from Bush:

• July 30, 2002: The crisis between the United States and Iraq that led to the declaration of a national emergency on August 2, 1990, has not been resolved. The Government of Iraq continues to engage in activities inimical to stability in the Middle East and hostile to U.S. interests. Such Iraqi actions pose a continuing unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. For these reasons, I have determined that it is necessary to continue the national emergency declared with respect to Iraq...


• August 10, 2002: [Saddam's] an enemy until proven otherwise.


• September 13, 2002: [Saddam's] a threat that we must deal with as quickly as possible.


• November 7, 2002: [If Saddam's] not going to disarm, we'll disarm him.


• January 14, 2003: Time is running out on Saddam Hussein.


• February 6, 2003: The game is over...Saddam Hussein will be stopped.


• March 1, 2003: America is determined to enforce the demands of the United Nations Security Council by confronting the grave and growing danger of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.

And remember the basis for our march to war? July 14, 2003:

[T]he intelligence I get is darn good intelligence.

That wouldn't be the same intelligence that didn't detect an imminent attack on the US in 2001, would it? No, it's the stuff that came from our man in Baghdad, Ahmed Chalabi:

A June 26, 2002, letter from the Iraqi National Congress to the Senate Appropriations Committee listed 108 articles based on information provided by the INC's Information Collection Program, a U.S.-funded effort to collect intelligence in Iraq.

The assertions in the articles reinforced President Bush's claims that Saddam Hussein should be ousted because he was in league with Osama bin Laden, was developing nuclear weapons and was hiding biological and chemical weapons.

Feeding the information to the news media, as well as to selected administration officials and members of Congress, helped foster an impression that there were multiple sources of intelligence on Iraq's illicit weapons programs and links to bin Laden.

In fact, many of the allegations came from the same half-dozen defectors, weren't confirmed by other intelligence and were hotly disputed by intelligence professionals at the CIA, the Defense Department and the State Department.

(via Kevin at Washington Monthly)

Perhaps a reminder about intelligence from someone who knew a hell of a lot more about war than our "war president" is in order. Clausewitz wrote:

It is much worse for the inexperienced when accident does not render him [a certain balance of probability], but one report supports another, confirms it, magnifies it, finishes off the picture with fresh touches of colour, until necessity in urgent haste forces from us a resolution which will soon be discovered to be folly, all those reports having been lies, exaggerations, errors, &c., &c. In a few words, most reports are false...

Yup, that about sums up the intelligence capabilities of BushCo. And all of this bad intel formed the foundation of their oft-repeated lies used to justify their march to war. Apparently BushCo is really good at the repetition thing:

''This business of saying the same thing over and over and over again -- which to a lot of Washington insiders and pundits is boring -- works,'' [Reagan PR man, Michael Deaver] said. ''That was sort of what we figured out in the Reagan White House. And I think [the Bush] people do it very, very well.''

Hmm...where I have I heard of this technique before? Ah yes, Mein Kampf, Volume I, Chapter VI:

[T]he most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unfiagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.

In the end, I don't care if it was "darn good" or "freaking impeccable" intelligence. I don't care if BushCo simply got hoodwinked by Chalabi. I don't even care if they knew Saddam had no WMD. For me it all comes down to what Justice Jackson said about the Nuremberg War Trials on August 12, 1945:

[W]e must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war, for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy.

I therefore want to make clear to the American people that we have taken an important step forward in this instrument in fixing individual responsibility of war-mongering, among whatever peoples, as an international crime.

The war-mongering Bush is not a miserable failure: he's an international war criminal. No amount of repeating the "march to war" propaganda and blaming the media is going to change that fact.

ntodd  ¶ 5:52 PM