Juan Cole on the Downing Street Memo

Salon.com News | The lies that led to war

Juan Cole takes us through the what the Downing Street memo reveals and why it is important, along with the path to war paved with denials that any decision to go to war had been planned.

We were all there, of course, when it was happening, and it was certainly clear in my eyes that Bush, et al. were committed to going to war in Iraq from the start.

None of this is particularly earth-shattering at this point, but it is important. The Downing Street memo is hard proof of the lie - the same lie that is always categorically denied by all of our wingnut friends and neighbors. We're told that George Bush didn't lie because he believed the misinformation he had been fed.

It is our job to keep rubbing wingnut noses in the Downing Street memo until it sinks in. Part of the definition of a loyal wingnut, apparently, is that wingnuts don't care if they are lied to.

Cole:

Why has there not been more outrage in the United States at these revelations? Many Americans may have chosen to overlook the lies and deceptions the Bush administration used to justify the war because they still believe the Iraq war might have made them at least somewhat safer. When they realize that this hope, too, is unfounded, and that in fact the war has greatly increased the threat of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, their wrath may be visited on the president and the political party that has brought America the biggest foreign-policy disaster since Vietnam.

Ryan adds: This passage, and especially the answer Cole gives to the question he asks, are well worth the read:

A good half of Americans, opinion polls show, now believe that the president actively lied to them about Iraq. In another, less cynical, flag-waving and intimidated age, this conclusion would provoke a scandal. The question would be, What did George W. Bush decide about Iraq, and when did he decide it?

To add to this, in another time, the President would have laid his political career on the line for a war that so many Americans perceived as one of choice. But it was never about prestige and honor; it was about ensuring eight long years of a Bush administration. If his "wimpy" father's failed reelection bid taught Junior anything, it was that war wins.

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