How Their Big Lie Came to Be
Leave it to a Marine to be blunt. When Lt. Gen. James Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, was asked Friday why his Marines failed to encounter or uncover any of the weapons of mass destruction that U.S. intelligence had warned them about, his honesty put the White House to shame.
"We were simply wrong," Conway said. "It was a surprise to me then, it remains a surprise to me now, that we have not uncovered [nuclear, chemical or biological] weapons" in Iraq. And, he added, "believe me, it's not for lack of trying. We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwait border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there."
Now that the "imminent threat" posed by Iraqi chemical or biological weapons has turned out not to be so imminent, the question is: Did our gazillion-dollar spy operations blow the call, or was the dope they developed distorted or exaggerated by our political leaders?
Either way, heads should roll.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is feeling real political heat for arguing before the allied invasion that Saddam Hussein "has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes," a terrifying claim apparently now proved false.
Yet the White House seems to believe nobody cares that its war was based on the same distortions pushed by our president.
Paul Wolfowitz, one of the general's top civilian bosses in the Pentagon and a key proponent of invading Iraq, certainly seems unconcerned with the implications of making arguments for war based on convenience rather than facts. In a Vanity Fair interview released last week, the neoconservative Wolfowitz said, "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason."
He listed two others: to fight terrorism and Hussein's criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. However, Wolfowitz dismissed the last reason, saying "the third one, by itself
Of course, the marketing of policy -- spin -- is an established, albeit unfortunate, part of politics. However, it is unacceptable to misinform your troops going into battle or mislead your citizens about why you are putting their sons and daughters in harm's way.
