LIE BY LIE, or THIS WAR IS OLDER THAN MY SON

I've been doing battle on the forums today, so I'll post something from there. I can't let the 4th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war go by without comment, so here is one of my posts from today in response to a poster who said that Democrats also said Iraq was a threat:

"Bush pulled a fast one on the Congress and on America--he kept saying that Saddam must disarm while UNMOVIC was simultaneously demonstrating that Saddam had in fact disarmed.

The Blix report on March 7, 2003 contained these statements (interestingly enough, that was also the day that the head of the IAEA announced that the documents alleging Iraq's dealing with Niger were forgeries and that no Iraqi nuclear weapons or program had been found):

"No evidence of proscribed activities have so far been found." (This was in reference to the accusation that WMD were moved around on trucks.)

"No underground facilities for chemical or biological production or storage were found so far."

"There is a significant Iraqi effort underway to clarify a major source of uncertainty as to the quantities of biological and chemical weapons, which were unilaterally destroyed in 1991."

"In this [verifying the destruction of chem/bio weapons], as in other matters, inspection work is moving on and may yield results."

And the part Bush least wanted to hear:

"While cooperation can and is to be immediate, disarmament and at any rate the verification of it cannot be instant. Even with a proactive Iraqi attitude, induced by continued outside pressure, it would still take some time to verify sites and items, analyse documents, interview relevant persons, and draw conclusions. It would not take years, nor weeks, but months."

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So Blix was saying that the Iraqis were cooperating, the inspectors weren't finding anything, and that they'd need more time to actually verify disarmament (inspections had only restarted on 11/27/02).

And that's what Bush didn't want to happen--after all, he'd already cooked up the war, put the troops in place, put his con job over on the Congress and the public--the last thing he wanted was for UNMOVIC to confirm what Kay and Duelfer later found, which was that Iraq had in fact disarmed after the Gulf War and had no WMD or programs to produce them.

HOWEVER, even as late as March 16, 2003, Bush was still suggesting that military action against Iraq was not a given when asked point-blank, "Aren't we going to war?":

"Tomorrow is the day that we will determine whether or not diplomacy can work."

And the 17th was the day that the US, UK and Spain abandoned the attempt to get the UN to ratify the war. It was, surely by sheer coincidence, also the day that Bush announced that Saddam had 48 hours to leave Iraq.

Bush pulled a fast one, implying to the very end that war wasn't inevitable. Very good Iraq war timeline called "Lie By Lie" here."