Hey everyone. My first diary in a long while. Something I've been mulling for years and just never seen articulated quite in this way. So here goes, and I'll try to keep it short.
All this recent focus on the build-up to the Iraq War and whether it was criminally negligent or criminally criminal has dredged up my first-person memory from that time. And the single thing that's stuck with me ever since is this: That the explanation at the time for why we are going to war with Iraq, and then why we're continuing to be in this war with IraqKEPT CHANGING.
And this fact alone should settle the debate. Were they stupid or just lying? They were lying.
I remember the days after 9/11. I'm a NYC resident (I was out of town on that fateful day and was only able to return about a week later, due to flight cancellations), and those first couple weeks in late September and early November are kindof a fog. But one thing I'll NEVER forget is watching President Bush and his cronies on TV telling us we're gonna get whoever did this to us. So, REASON NUMBER ONE for going to war with Iraq was to find, punish, and hopefully eradicate whoever was responsible.
So we went to war. But then the story started to morph: The direct link between Iraq and 9/11 wasn't materializing so then the story became Saddam is in league with Al Qaida. Mohammed Atta met an Iraqi official in Prague! But believe me, this one didn't hang on for long, so after a few weeks of this farcical, untenable claim, the rationale softened into the more general Saddam may or may not be in league with al Qaida but Iraq is soon to be a fertile training ground for anti-American extremism. This is REASON NUMBER TWO.
But then, as the link between Saddam and al Qaida wasn't panning out, the narrative changed AGAIN. All of a sudden, we were hearing Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. I mean, that poor sap Colin Powell crowed about it from the podium at the UN! And for those of you too young to remember, the new term "WMD" was bandied about more frequently than Grumpycat is today. That's REASON NUMBER THREE.
But Hans Blix stepped in and told us that there weren't any WMDs and the whole Niger yellowcake fiction didn't pan out, and so then Cheney and Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld and that horrible useless waste of space and air Bill Kristol just threw up their hands and said well isn't the world better without Saddam Hussein?REASON NUMBER FOUR. You see? All along we were doing God's work, ridding the world of its most horrible despots one by one! -- as if this was always the objective.
And sure enough, anyone who wasn't paying attention or who had the attention span/memory of a hamster bought it hook, line, and sinker. Which, just btw, perfectly describes US media outlets -- they just kept parroting what these evil, evil men said until it was appearing in Jay Leno's monologue. And before you knew it, they'd achieved a circular-logic mobius strip that rationalized itself. "So why ARE we in a war with Iraq?"Because we are in a war with Iraq, you anti-American treasonous Commie! Support the troops! And at the time, I kept thinking: "These guys are lying. That's not what they said yesterday. They're making it up as they go along."
Now ... I'm sure someone smarter than I with more time on their hands has gone through all the press conferences and newspaper reports and empty-headed punditry from Wolf Blitzer and his camera-loving comrades and put together a more definitive timetable. But I've never seen it. I'd love for someone to publish a month-by-month diagram of the actual Call to Arms at the time. I bet it would dovetail frighteningly with what I've outlined above.
Just my recollection. Have at it, Kossacks.