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February 9, 2008
wmds, lies and evidence
"To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed . . ."
-George Orwell, 1984
There's an old saying that if you tell a lie repeatedly, people will begin to believe it. The Conspiracy Theory is an iteration of the repeated lie that becomes conventional wisdom and is commonly disseminated as truth.
Now, less than seven years after 9-11, there is a growing Conspiracy Theory movement that the fall of the World Trade Center was an inside job perpetrated by our government. Though it seems fairly innocuous now, this mirrors the progression of the Kennedy assassination Conspiracy Theory.
In the years immediately following the assassination, the majority of Americans believed Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. However, after years of continual insistence by left wing fringe groups that there was a conspiracy involving the U.S. government and the shadowy military-industrial complex, the majority of Americans discarded the mounds of evidence implicating Oswald for the wild-eyed rantings of the lunatic fringe.
Why? Because the media, which already leans left, and loves a good story to boot, ate it up, and placed enough doubt in the public's mind that what was a lie somehow became truth to the masses. This is propoganda at its finest, and its most insidious.
I would not be surprised to find ten years hence that the majority of Americans believe there was a government conspiracy to topple the towers. All that's needed is a sensationalist media sympathetic to the anti-government leanings of the theorists and a gullible public, and the lie becomes truth.
In much the same way, America's amnesiacs have conveniently forgotten the lead-up to the war in Iraq. So much so, that many have accepted the Code Pink mantra that "Bush Lied, Kids Died!"
But did Bush really lie? Was the case to put Saddam Hussein out of business built on a house of cards meant to bring profit to Haliburton and other Bush crony profiteers? Apparantly, at the time, not only did the American public believe in the Bush administration's case, but so did the members of our esteemed Congress who had access to the same intelligence Bush relied on to make his case.
According to Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack, which has been used by both sides to bolster their cases for and against the war in Iraq, the administration was convinced that Saddam Hussein's regime represented a "clear and present" danger. American policy under Clinton had been regime change, and 911 was the clarion call to actually do it.
Whether or not regime change was the right thing to do at the right time is certainly debatable. What is indisputable, particularly when one bothers to go back and review the actual record, is that the administration did not lie when it made its case. Bush may have cherry-picked intelligence and exagerrated the threat, but (at least according to inside sources at the time) he believed Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a serious threat.
If you bother to recall the mood of the country at the time, you might remember that there was a palpable mixture of fear and anger. The possibility that a rogue regime like Hussein's might surrepticiously pass off some nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons to terrorists was, at least perceptionally, a very real and scary possibility. You must remember that Americans were spooked after 911 and the incidents that followed, such as the anthrax letters and the Beltway snipers.
One could argue that the Bush administration played upon the fears of the American people in order to avenge the attempted assassination of Bush 41 in Kuwait years earlier; that Bush 43 had a personal vendetta and now the means and hysteria by which to finally remove the man from power, whatever the cost.
A lawyer would object to this as inadmissable since it speaks to motives which cannot be properly and concretely discerned. Regardless of the motive, the fact is that the majority of Americans wanted Saddam Hussein removed from power, and the Bush administration was happy to oblige.
Once again, if one bothers to check the actual record of events, one will find that Bush 43 went through the same mechanisms Bush 41 did in order to build a coalition against Saddam Hussein, and was authorized to use force in order to actually enforce the innumerable resolutions against Iraq. It should also be noted that the U.S. government's official policy, which was also the Clinton administration's policy, was regime change in Iraq.
The logic of and the authority to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein is laid out in the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq, which the Congress voted to approve. Again, one can disagree with the reasoning, the strategy, and the relative uselfulness (or uselessness) of invading Iraq, but one cannot say with any certainty that Bush lied.
I have yet to find a statement or assertion Bush made in the lead-up to the war that was a lie. If you can find one, and prove that it was a lie, I'm all ears. But if the best you can do is point to inaccurate and faulty intelligence and call it a lie, the best I can do is suggest a remedial vocabulary course which explains the difference between the words "lie" and "mistake".
Still, a cabal of opportunistic politicians, conspiracy theory fringe groups, and Bush-hating traditional media and celebrities have successfully twisted the record so that normally level-headed people repeat the "Bush lied" mantra like so many zombies. Then again, if Jon Stewart thinks Bush lied, I should probably believe him.
Posted by clubsoda at February 9, 2008 5:17 PM
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