<<Why do you accept the notion that President Bush spoke deceptively about the WMD in Iraq?>>
Well, basically, it's the people around Bush. Bush himself is a mental pygmy who probably couldn't have found Iraq on a map, let alone figured out a need to invade it. But he was influenced by people whom he depended on for knowledge and experience, many of whom had been associated with PNAC (Project for a New American Century,) a Zionist-influenced movement which had laid out a strategy for America to pursue after the fall of Communism in the U.S.S.R. and the advent of a unipolar world.
PNAC's plan had called for America to seize the oilfields of at least one Middle East country, and named Iraq as the top candidate. During Clinton's administration, PNAC officers had actually presented Clinton with the PNAC plan for the invasion and lobbied intensively for its adoption. Clinton was smart enough to show them the gate. Common sense alone would tell you that what they lobbied Clinton for, they would similarly lobby Bush, with far greater chances of success. Clinton, after all, was a Rhodes scholar with deep knowledge and experience of foreign policy, who can do his own thinking on the subject, whereas Bush is much more dependent on the counsel of his advisers, including the numerous PNAC heavyweights on board.
Published insider accounts attest to the fact that from the first weeks of the administration, Bush was looking for excuses to invade Iraq. This would obviously be the result of PNAC lobbying. What was lacking was the excuse. Sept. 11 provided that excuse, or rather, it granted Bush a window of opportunity during which ANY critique of any aggressive action taken anywhere would be practically immune from public criticism, a window of opportunity when everyone would scramble to be seen rallying to the support of the administration and nobody would want to seem to oppose it. Again, published insider reports attest to the fact that almost from the beginning, post-Sept. 11 planning was focused on the need to hit Iraq, still without any public justification agreed upon.
At some point, WMD became the reason of choice. Suddenly we began to hear about the immediate threat posed by Iraq and its WMD. Despite the absurdity of Iraq attacking the U.S.A. - - and it can never be stressed enough how absolutely absurd the idea was - - the administration and its stooges like Judith Miller of the New York Times began to flood the MSM with reports of the Iraqi "threat" - - this was a campaign. The "President" began to receive warnings from various sources, all of which, as it turned out, could be traced back to Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, obviously a party with a vested interest in having America invade Iraq and overthrow its dictator.
If an idea makes no sense at all, and is completely at odds not only with common sense but with the previous history of this one dictator's past performance - - then the idea is obvious bullshit regardless of the source. Regardless of the number of sources. Here you had what was effectively a single-source idea from an interested party with an agenda, and we are expected to believe that the "President" - - a known liar, BTW, even before he became President - - sincerely believed this obviously outrageous bullshit which just happened - - conveniently - - to justify the agenda-driven program of his PNAC advisers. Because it came from his own intelligence services. Despite the fact that officers of those same intelligence services have told how they were pressured to abandon any conclusions which did not serve the PNAC goals and look only for evidence and conclusions that matched those goals.
Effectively, we could say that we have two choices - - believe the President, despite his earlier decisions to invade Iraq when WMD weren't even being advanced as the reason; despite the obvious absurdity of Iraq being able to threaten the U.S.; despite the evidence that someone was pressuring the intelligence services to come up with evidence of Iraqi "threat"; despite the single-source nature of all the WMD evidence - - somehow sincerely came upon the "evidence" of the threat and honestly believed in it. This conclusion would appeal to me for one reason only - - because it would indicate monumental stupidity and incompetence on the part of George W. Bush. But little as I think of Bush's brainpower, I have to say, it is impossible to believe that even he could be THAT stupid. Even if he were, his advisers aren't and they wouldn't let him get away with it.
It is much easier to believe - - much more consistent with common sense and the real world - - to believe that Bush and his advisers knew this WMD business was pure bullshit, but believed that it provided enough of a fig-leaf, a pretence, for the invasion. They would invade, instal a puppet government, and pull out, leaving the puppets in control. At that point, with a "success" behind, minimal loss of American life and most if not all of the troops back home, nobody would give a shit if the WMD theory had been a lie or not. THAT was their major miscalculation.
