The Political President and WMD

Scott McClellan's book on Bush's political presidency is shocking, but should not be a surprise. What is a surprise is that the Bushies thought they could keep their shenanigans secret.

In response, and in defence of the handling of pre-war intelligence, Condoleezza Rice asks "You can agree or disagree about the decision to liberate Iraq in 2003, but I would really ask that if you ... believe [Saddam] was not a threat to the international community, then why in the world were you allowing the Iraqi people to suffer under the terms of oil-for-food."

The argument at the time (at least the persuasive one) was that he had a documented history of pursuing (and using!) WMD and such countries must submit to inspections. This is simply common sense. It was more than the current justification for sanctioning Iran. Is she saying we should not be doing that?

I recall watching Powell present his argument for war to the security council. Most of the evidence was satellite images of buildings. This one is a chemical weapons factory... that one is a bio lab... etc. At the time I wondered how they knew these things. They just looked like buildings to me. But there was a long history of analysts figuring out fuzzy pictures like that. Cuban missile crisis, etc. So maybe they knew something that was not obvious to most people. I assumed they must have secret information that they could not reveal. Why did I assume that?

1. Everyone in the White House had access to whatever additional secret information they had.
2. No rational person would trust the presented evidence alone as indicating anything.
3. If there was a war, all buildings would be identified, and everyone would know the truth.
4. Every country that trusted us, would never trust us again.
5. 200 years of hard earned political capital would be spent on a single security council vote.
6. The Bush legacy would consist of ruining the good faith and credit of the United States of America.
7. No one in their right mind would want that legacy. What gain could possibly be worth that?

My point is that McClellan's description of a political administration run amok is not just credible, but is the inescapable conclusion once we found out the prewar intelligence was more or less manufactured. His book is no surprise at all. By assuming insiders would stay loyal, Bush failed to realize that at least one of the operatives surrounding him was an honest public servant with conservative principles and a belief in good government.

At least Nixon was rational. Someone at Newsweek came up with the right term for our current administration: 'idiocracy', rule by the stupid.