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2003-03-15 - 1:49 p.m. Bush said, "If war is upon us because Saddam Hussein has made that choice." So Saddam is calling the shots now? Bush is trying to say that all Saddam has to do is disarm, but he is not adding, "and we'll go home." Bush has not given any signal that Saddam's disarmament is enough to avert war, and in fact, that disarmament and regime change were the only way to avoid war. Q Ari, two questions on Iraq. In response to an earlier question, you said the President still hopes to avoid war, and that Saddam Hussein could avoid it by completely and totally disarming, and by going into exile. I'm wondering, is that now the standard? Previously, you've obviously said disarmament. But is it now the combination of disarmament and exile? MR. FLEISCHER: I think the President made it perfectly plain yesterday in the Oval Office and he has said this repeatedly, it's disarmament and regime change. Q So even though the United Nations would sign on to the first part of that, and not to the second, when the President thinks about launching military action, he's going to think about the combination? MR. FLEISCHER: The President has made that plain. This is actually shameful. It's one thing to say we were attacked and so we had war thrust upon us, which I believe happened regarding al Qa'ida. But it's quite another to say, "Hm, there's a bit of unfinished business in the desert over there. You! do what we say or else we'll invade. No? Ah, now you've made us do something we don't want to do." Make no mistake, this is a war of choice, and it's not one that Saddam Hussein chose. This is a choice by the United States government; the very words used so often by the White House "preventive" show that. If he believes so strongly that this mission is just, say so. Don't try to shift the responsibility from the shoulders of the United States by implying that Iraq provoked America. Source: http://www.back-to-iraq.com/ *********************** As President Bush's vaunted "coalition of the willing" continues to shrivel -- who's left, Bulgaria, Latvia, and Tony Blair? -- the coalition of those Americans willing to challenge his obsession with invading Iraq continues to grow. ************************************* So the truth is out: George W. Bush lied when he claimed to be worried about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. Otherwise, Iraq's stepped-up cooperation with the U.N. on disarmament would be stunningly good news, obviating the need to rush to war.
The first lie, claimed outright, was that Iraq aided and abetted the Sept. 11 terrorists. There is no evidence at all for this claim. It is also interesting to note that not a single leading Al Qaeda operative has turned out to be Iraqi. The latest to be nabbed, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, was living in Pakistan, was raised in Kuwait and studied engineering -- and presumably the physics of explosives -- at a college in North Carolina. The second lie was that Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction represent an imminent threat to U.S. security. Despite the most hugely expensive but secret high-tech spy operation in human history -- estimated by most at well over $100 billion a year -- and a vast network of defectors and spies, we have not been able to find their supposed weapons. The third and most dangerous lie is that our mission now is to bring lasting peace to the Mideast by a devastating invasion of Iraq, which will end, as the president outlined last week, in U.S. dominance over the structure of government and politics throughout the region. After abandoning promising efforts by the previous administration to create peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the Bush team now claims that changing Muslim governments around the world will end the downward spiral of violence there. Which leads us to another lie: that this is all good for our ally, Israel -- the claim of the cabal of neoconservative ideologues running our Mideast policy. In fact, however, Israel will be placed in a terribly dangerous position, serving as a fig leaf for U.S. ambitions, further ensuring that it remain forever an isolated military garrison. This construction of a new world order comes from a naive and untraveled president, emboldened in his ignorance by advisors who have been plotting an aggressive Pax Americana ever since the Soviet bloc's collapse. Bush insiders Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld are all members of something called the Project for a New American Century that has been pushing for a U.S. redesign of the Mideast since 1997. After Sept. 11, they seized on our national tragedy as a way to enlist George W. in support of their grand design. Not only was this reckless scheme never mentioned by Bush during the election campaign, it was the sort of thing renounced as "nation-building," something he would never support. Yet another lie. Source: Robert Scheer L. A. Times � 
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