69 lines
4.6 KiB
Plaintext
69 lines
4.6 KiB
Plaintext
The “Bush Lied” lie
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<p>Today’s entry in the <a href='http://www.belgraviadispatch.com/archives/004689.html'>Belgravia Dispatch</a><br />
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does an excellent job of demolishing the “Bush lied, people died!”<br />
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canard so popular among the anti-war left — Greg Djerejian<br />
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echoes my own conclusions when he writes: “But if you dig into the<br />
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weeds of the investigations that have taken place — one must<br />
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judiciously conclude that he didn’t.”</p>
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<p>But let’s suppose that George W. Bush had in fact lied about Iraqi<br />
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WMD during that State of the Union address. I long ago concluded that<br />
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I would not care if he had lied. To see why, let’s try looking at this from<br />
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George Bush’s (simulated) point of view…</p>
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<p><span id="more-198"></span></p>
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<blockquote>
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<p>Imagine you are the President of the United States in 2002. You<br />
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know that the country with the world’s fourth-largest army is sitting<br />
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within theater-missile range of every oilfield in the Mideast, and<br />
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it’s run by psychopathic thug who nerve-gassed his own people in 1980<br />
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and has been shipping money and guns to anti-American terrorist groups<br />
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ever since. The thug has stated his intention to destroy the U.S. and<br />
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tried to assassinate a U.S. president. Even without the reports that<br />
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officers of his Mukhbarat have been training Al-Qaeda affiliates in<br />
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chemical-weapons techniques, you have to take him out because he is a<br />
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serious threat to the U.S.’s national interests.</p>
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<p>Unfortunately, you have a problem. A lot of elite opinion in your<br />
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country is allergic to the notion that the U.S. <em>has</em> national<br />
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interests. For example, you used to be in the oil business; you know<br />
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that if there is any serious interruption of Mideast oil supplies the<br />
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U.S. economy will crash hard enough to make the Great Depression look<br />
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like a Sunday-school picnic. But American politics has become so<br />
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detached from reality that it is impossible for you to speak the plain<br />
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truth — that the U.S., must, as a consequence, be prepared to go<br />
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to war to keep the oil flowing. If you say this, you will be<br />
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pilloried as a neo-imperialist by many of the people most likely to<br />
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freeze or starve or die in riots if you don’t stave off an oil<br />
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crash. And <em>they</em> call <em>you</em> an idiot!</p>
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<p>You’re not actually planning to go to war over the oil, though that<br />
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remains the long-term reason that keeping murderous anti-American<br />
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nutballs out of power in the region is important. You’re much more<br />
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concerned about Hussein forging closer links to the international<br />
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terror network — you know it’s been looking for a new patron<br />
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ever since the Soviet Union folded up, and occasional Iraqi<br />
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collaboration with al-Qaeda could turn into a full-blown alliance at<br />
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any time. You have to take out either Hussein’s regime or al-Qaeda<br />
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before that happens, and Iraq is the more visible target.</p>
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<p>Your options are limited by the intensity with which the Democrats<br />
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are pursuing a vendetta against you (they never got over their failure<br />
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to steal the 2000 presidential election). Bill Clinton may have been a<br />
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pathological liar with a unhealthy yen for overweight interns, but he<br />
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grasped the danger and was willing to say so in public. His<br />
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successors have tossed everything that he and they used to know about<br />
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the Iraq/terrorism connection down the memory hole. You think they’re<br />
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contemptible frauds, throwing over the security of the U.S. in order<br />
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to score partisan points — but they have so many willing<br />
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water-carriers in the national media that you can’t sell<br />
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anti-terrorism as a casus belli any more than you could sell<br />
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protecting our oil supply.</p>
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<p>You need a casus belli that the American people will buy. Your<br />
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domestic opponents, by repeatedly and loudly lying through their<br />
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teeth, have managed to turn any talk of the two soundest reasons for<br />
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going to war into a political non-starter. What are you going to<br />
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do?</p>
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</blockquote>
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<p>Under those circumstances, I’d say a fib or two about African<br />
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uranium would have been pretty forgivable. But I don’t think it was<br />
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Bush that played games with the truth. Rather it’s his opponents who<br />
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have been relentlessly promulgating a series of Big Lies — and<br />
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that they never knew of or believed in an Iraq/al-Qaeda connection is<br />
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the least of them.</p>
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