(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Dear NYT: Call On Me! I Know! I Know! [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-03-19 "THERE IS NO DOUBT that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction Apparently, the New York Times is...well, mystified! “20 Years On, A Question Lingers About Iraq: Why Did the U.S. Invade? Read the text! “The question remains...a matter of deep uncertainty”...”the debate rages on.” “I will go to my grave not knowing that. I can’t answer it,” Richard Haass, a senior State Department official at the time of the invasion, said in 2004 when asked why it had happened.” Then comes this nugget: “The world may never get a definitive answer.” No, there is a definitive answer. I know! I was sentient when all this was going down! Here’s why we invaded Iraq: We invaded Iraq because Karl Rove decided that starting a war was the Republicans’ best chance to win the 2002 mid-terms. See? That wasn’t hard! And you know what? He was right! Let’s go back to 9/10/2001. George W. Bush lost the popular vote in the 2000 election. Everything he’d done so far was revealing the awful truth: he was in over his head. He was, in the words of Bill Clinton, “an empty suit with a mean streak.” His popularity was right around 40% and plummeting. Then came 9/11, and, in the words of the Guardian, “Rumsfeld and Cheney, together with Rumsfeld’s deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, emerged as radical warmongers driven by fear of worst-case scenarios with little or no basis in reality - in particular the idea that Saddam was allied with al-Qaida, had chemical and biological weapons, and was on the brink of building nuclear warheads. I can well remember my rage and helplessness as Bush, Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz took a once-in-a-hundred-year chance to bring the country together and, instead, used it as a blackjack to mug any Democrat who wasn’t on board with the Iraq invasion. Can I quote the great Paul Krugman, NYT’s own columnist? Of all the pundits, Krugman was the only one who called BULLSHIT on the war from day one. He never wavered. He never blinked. He’s quoted in a (great) article in the Atlantic saying: “The Iraq war wasn’t an innocent mistake, a venture undertaken on the basis of intelligence that turned out to be wrong. America invaded Iraq because the Bush administration wanted a war. The public justifications for the invasion were nothing but pretexts, and falsified pretexts at that.” Here’s an example I’ll never forget. In the 2002 midterms, took-a-pass-on-the-Vietnam-War Saxby Chambliss ran a TV ad in the Georgia Senate race against disabled-by-a-grenade-in-Vietnam-decorated-war-vet Max Cleland. The ad featured Cleland’s face morphing into Osama bin Laden. Why? Because, in the debate about creating the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Cleland wanted the workers to be able to unionize. That made him bin Laden. And Chambliss beat Cleland, sending Cleland into a suicidal depression. I mean, WTF New York Times?? Here’s what Rumsfeld would call the “Known Knowns” Rove knew that bum-rushing the country into war would send Bush’s stock through the roof in the initial ‘Boo-Yah shock and awe’ phase. He could spin Republicans as brawny, stalwart warrior-patriots, and brand any Democrat who opposed them as traitorous wimps. Cheney knew that he could ‘stovepipe’ the intel they needed to justify the war from the CIA. After we were committed, who cared? And if the Iraqis didn’t cooperate, he would authorize...oh gee, what did they call it? Oh, yeah: “enhanced coercive interrogation techniques" The Bush/Rove/Cheney/Rumsfeld gang clearly didn’t give a shit about the WMD issue. They just needed it to stampede us into this war, which they knew would win them the 2002 midterms. Once they were in, they knew it wouldn’t matter: they’d just say that anyone who opposed them was “objectively pro-Saddam.” The reason the New York Times still can’t admit this after twenty years is that they would have to acknowledge the staggering, nihilistic, calamitous cynicism of the move by Cheney/Rove/Bush. And they just can’t go there. I mean, there are social events to be held with these people! Access that must be had! Polite power luncheons! So a “war of choice” that cost 300,000 Iraqi lives, 4,600 American lives, and 815 BILLION dollars (all NYT figures) must be forever a mystery! NO WAY could all this have happened just to prevent the Republicans from losing the House and Senate in 2002! No matter how much evidence is staring them in the face. George Orwell famously said, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” Can we tell the truth? Finally? After 20 years? And can we take the advice of the great Charles Pierce and sentence Dick Cheney to a lifetime of cleaning bedpans at a VA Hospital? [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/19/2159155/-Dear-NYT-Call-On-Me-I-Know-I-Know Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/