Quote:
Originally Posted by Grasshopper
Condi said nothing to address McClellan's statements. She illustrates that the one thing she's certain of is that it wasn't wrong to liberate the Iraqi people. Then she goes on to claim that the entire world thought Saddam had WMDs. But there are problems with this. Yes, the world suspected Saddam of having anthrax and poison gasses...but the Administration used terms like "mushroom cloud", "drones", "nuclear weapons", etc. McClellan never claims the world didn't suspect Iraq of having WMD's...he accuses the Administration of exaggerating and fabricating the level of danger to sell the war to the American people...and that appears to be what they have done. When the Administration started making statements about nuclear material and nuclear weapons in Iraq, CIA officials warned that evidence was lacking. The IAEA warned that that Iraq wasn't capable of producing nuclear weapons. Powell even showed satalite images of what was believed to be a weapons lab that proved false. The issue is that the Bush Administration exaggerated the dangers about Iraq with implying that they might have nuclear weapons or be on the brink of developing them to terrify us into supporting the war.
Now McClellan's book does say some things that I thought was interesting that may show that he has some inside knowledge and is telling the truth. You see the Democrats claimed Bush did this to liberate oil from Saddam's control and place it under a probusiness American puppet for the benefit of American oil companies. McClellan doesn't claim that. He claims that the Bush Administration believed that they could revolutionize the Middle East by advancing democracy in Iraq. McClellan calls this an idealistic vision that proved to be a strategic blunder. Notice...McClellan doesn't repeat the Democratic mantra of Bush being greedy and launching a war for oil....McClellan claims the Administration had a false idealism that lead them to sincerely think that by establishing democracy in Iraq they could revolutionize the Middle East. In other words McClellan claims would imply that the Bush Administration felt it would be in the world's best interests to establish democracy in Iraq...but couldn't get support for an invasion based on anthrax or nerve gas...so they trumped up the charges to include presence or imminent development of nuclear WMD's.
McClellan's accusations if true would prove one thing...the war wasn't about oil...it was about an idealistic vision of changing the Middle East by invading a country and establishing democracy. But the issue is, not only was this vision too idealistic, it was a strategic blunder that was sold to the people by presenting distortions, deceptions, and exaggerations of danger to the American people.
If McClellan was just another Democratic hack...he wouldn't let the Administration off the hook about invading for oil so easily.
I think McClellan's telling the truth. We were lied to because the Bush Administration thought a war in Iraq would be in the best interests of the Middle East and the world abroad...so they lied to us to get the war they wanted. The only problem is...things haven't turned out the way they expected them to turn out. So now we got a mess based on lies.
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Saddam Hussein proved he had weapons of mass destruction when he gassed thousands of his own people. Anyone who would be willing to use those types of weapons on his own people would not hesitate to use them on others. He admitted before his death that he tried to make it look to the rest of the world that he was up to no good in developing other ways of using WMDs, even though he wasn't. Hussein played a game with the rest of the world and his cost him his life.