OK, that's not really the only possibility. Given that nothing we were told prior to invasion was true, another possibility is that everyone in the Bush administration at the time was an incompetent boob and believed what they said. Personally, I'd accept the possibility that there's a high percentage of boobs in the administration, but universal executive boobery seems pretty unlikely. Just playing the odds, I have to assume we were lied to.
There's a lot of reason to disbelieve the hype about Iran, then. Not the least of which is that the things the administration have been saying don't line up with the facts. For example, asked about Iran's influence on violence in Iraq, White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley played idiot.
White House Transcript, courtesy of Editor & Publisher:
Q Steve, in 2002 and 2003, in the run-up to the Iraq war, the administration made statements that were obviously not borne by facts subsequently. And it later came out that caveats from the intelligence community, caveats from Energy Department analysts, those were left out of public statements of Vice President Cheney, the President, others in the administration. Now when it comes to Iran, you've been saying for months that Iran is a key driver of violence in Iraq. You've said there is evidence tying Iran to attacks in Iraq. You've said that you'd make that evidence public. That supposed to be made public on the 31st.
MR. HADLEY: Right.
Q It wasn't.
MR. HADLEY: That's correct.
Q Now you have this report saying it contributes in some way, so does Syria, so do other factors, but it is not, in and of itself, causing the violence, nor would the violence stop if Iranian influence stopped.
MR. HADLEY: I didn't read it that way.
He didn't read it that way? He's talking about the National Intelligence Estimate, which says exactly that. Luckily, I just posted about it saturday, so I have the exact language handy:
Iraq's neighbors influence, and are influenced by, events within Iraq, but the involvement of these outside actors is not likely to be a major driver of violence or the prospects for stability because of the self-sustaining character of Iraq's internal sectarian dynamics...
Violence in Iraq is almost entirely sectarian iraqi. You'd have to have some learning disability to read it any other way.
There's evidence that the administration may be trying to build a case for war with Iran. And their reasons are as bad as the reasons for going into Iraq...
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Tags: news | politics | war | Iraq | Iran | nuclear | elections | 2008 | Bush | republican | propaganda
