I've praised Steve Gilliard's Weblog before. And it's still consistently good on Iraq War news and analysis. And often the informality of language that the blog format allows more than in formal journalistic formats adds a lot to the commentary. I thought of that when I saw his "Uh, no, they really did lie" post of 11/29/03 (you have to scroll down).
He's responding to the suggestion that maybe Bush and his advisers really did believe their claims about "weapons of mass destruction" prior to the war because they were relying on bad intelligence. Gilliard doesn't deny that there were intelligent failures. But he doesn't buy the "self-deception" idea. He says (with slight editing for AOL's terms-of-service restrictions):
<< I'm sorry, but that's a bunch of h*******t. They lied. They lied like teenagers caught with a bottle of Jack and a half dressed girl between their thighs. They lied about Saddam's intentions, his capabilities and his agressive posture and we knew it at the time. Saddam didn't want war and didn't do anything, or much of anything to provoke it. He'd buried his air force and didn't trust his commanders to have chemical weapons. ...
<< Not liking Bush is one thing. Questioning his policies is quite another. Iraq just didn't make sense. The French, who were going to participate as late as January, even sent the Clemenceau towards the Gulf, realized what a mistake this policy was going to be. They didn't trust the follow-on planning. And said so. Resulting in drawing all the heat when in fact, the Germans had the far more dogmatic position [against the war].
<< Now, we have too few troops, declining morale, and a growing resistance movement and the best we get from Bush is his standard "we gonna get them terraist sum uh bitches" speech, one belied by his sneaking into Iraq in the dark, turning out the lights in Baghdad and running away two hours later. Which says everything you need to know about security in Iraq. >>
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