I read today the
following statement by President George W. Bush:
Bush told Walters, "I felt like we'd find weapons of mass destruction -- like many here in the United States, many around the world. The United Nations thought he had weapons of mass destruction. So, therefore: one, we need to find out what went wrong in the intelligence gathering. ... Saddam was dangerous and the world is safer without him in power."
Now, call me crazy, but that doesn't seem quite right...
Did the United Nation think there were WMD in Iraq? How would one know what the United Nations is thinking in at any given moment? Even if the UN were of one mind on all things, at the very least we know that the UN was doing what any reasonable person does when they want to find something out: they were looking for evidence.
I looked for a quote from the United Nations, something like:
We think Saddam has WMD...signed, The United Nations.
but I couldn't find one. So I looked at resolution 1441, which was taken just before Bush and his coalition of the cowed and threatened decided to go to war. I read it pretty throughly and nowhere does it say Iraq has WMDs, only that Iraq has not complied with previous resolutions demanding it comply with inspections and account for all WMD programmes.
I'm sure Bush would have liked it if 1441 had simply read "We know you have WMD so hand 'em over or we're gonna kick your ass (failing to mention, of course, that we were also going to kill 100k civilians, raze large parts of the country to the ground, destroy it's civil society and wreak havoc on an already weak reputation in the Arab world), but the rest of the UN members wouldn't go along with that, would they?
So, really, what 1441 says is "we still don't know if saddam has WMD or not, so let the inspectors back in and we'll find out."
I then thought maybe some UN spokespeople or people in the know had said the Iraq had WMD. Let's see...hmmmm. Who was in the know at the time? Not the CIA, that's for sure. Dummies got it totally wrong.
"One must not jump to the conclusion that they exist. However, that possibility is also not excluded." - Hans Blix, UNMOVIC Chair - Feb, 2003
There it is. Blix is saying "let's go find out if the last remaining sites have WMD" and the vast majority of the world nodded its collective head.
Who else was there and might know what was going on?
"It is smoke and mirrors. It has nothing to do with reality. It was plain wrong," - Scott Ritter, former Iraq Weapons Inspector
Anyway, this is just too easy a target. My main point in posting this is to say to Bush: PLEASE STOP FUCKING WITH REALITY. You were wrong. More likely, you LIED. Don't try to throw the past down the memory hole to make yourself look better.
Sadly I wonder how many people, upon hearing Bush say this, will just accept it. Down the memory hole it goes.
Sigh.
