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Iraq War Refresher — UPDATED 6/16
Posted by tgirsch

Back in February, I put together an Iraq War Refresher Course, which I called a “handy list of Responses to Faulty and/or Post-Hoc Iraq War Justifications^tm.”

In the months since, little has changed in Iraq, except that things have gotten worse. Still, some additional information has come available, so I figured another update was in order. I’ve addressed an Al Gore quote that is being taken out of context, as well as the discovery of the sarin shell — which is not the slam dunk some on the far-right would have you believe. And it’s looking more and more like one of our biggest Iraqi intelligence sources was likely a spy for Iran, opening the question of whether or not the US was used as a tool to fulfill an Iranian agenda. UPDATE 5/28: Pointed out that Clinton’s quotes concerning WMDs from 1998 were justifying air strikes he ordered with the stated purpose of destroying WMD caches.
UPDATE 6/16: The bi-partisan, GOP-chaired 9/11 Commission found no credible evidence of a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda.

As before, feel free to link, excerpt, yada yada yada, the next time some neo-con comes along regurgitating the same old talking points.

Continue reading for the typical talking points and their rebuttals.

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WE WENT TO WAR WITH IRAQ TO FIGHT AL-QAEDAGoing back to the 2003 State of the Union Address, the President was already trumping up Iraq/Al-Qaeda ties:

Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda. Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own.

However, no major intelligence agency in the world (including our own) believed that there were any substantial ties between Saddam Hussein’s regime and al-Qaeda.

“There was no significant pattern of cooperation between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist operation,” former State Department intelligence official Greg Thielmann said this week.Intelligence agencies agreed on the “lack of a meaningful connection to al-Qaeda” and said so to the White House and Congress, said Thielmann, who left State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research last September.

Another former Bush administration intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, agreed there was no clear link between Saddam and al-Qaeda.

“The relationships that were plotted were episodic, not continuous,” the former official said.

…snip…

“Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaeda,” Bush said in his January State of the Union speech.

“Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own,” Bush said.

At the time, many terrorism experts criticized the claim. They noted that Saddam’s secular regime was just the kind of Arab government bin Laden’s Islamic extremists want to replace. Critics also pointed out the lack of hard evidence of links between Saddam and bin Laden.

The administration’s key evidence of a link was an operative named Abu Musab Zarqawi, who got medical care in Baghdad in May 2002 after being wounded in Afghanistan. In his Feb. 5 presentation to the United Nations, Powell called Zarqawi “an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda lieutenants.”

Current and former intelligence officials now say Zarqawi’s links to al-Qaeda are more tenuous � the CIA now says Zarqawi considers himself independent of al-Qaeda, for example. And while Zarqawi spent time in Iraq, it’s unclear whether Saddam’s regime simply allowed him to be there or actively tried to work with him.

“There was scant evidence there had been any other contacts between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden,” Graham said in an interview Friday.

…snip…

Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, said last week it’s still unclear how much support Zarqawi and his followers got from Saddam.

“That he (Saddam) was promoting al-Qaeda is absurd,” Cannistraro said. “That there was a tolerance for a Zarqawi network in Iraq seems clear.”

So their only evidence of a tie to al-Qaeda was a guy who isn’t actually al-Qaeda at all, and the intelligence community knew this at the time, and complained about it.

In fact, the best intelligence indicates that Iraq and al-Qaeda were enemies:

“Our conclusion was that Saddam would certainly not provide weapons of mass destruction or WMD knowledge to al Qaeda because they were mortal enemies,” said Greg Thielmann, who worked at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research on weapons intelligence until last fall. “Saddam would have seen al Qaeda as a threat, and al Qaeda would have opposed Saddam as the kind of secular government they hated.”

Rodger notes that after the war was already underway, Bush, Rice, and Rumsfeld did an about-face on the subject:

…President Bush said with no hint of shame, “We’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in September the 11th.” National Security adviser Condoleezza Rice said, “We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either . . . direction or control of 9/11.” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, “I’ve not seen any indication that would lead me to believe I could say” that Saddam Hussein was tied to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Colin Powell also backed off, but to a lesser extent:

�I have not seen smoking gun, concrete evidence about the connection, but I do believe the connections existed,� he said.Powell�s observation marked a turning point in administration arguments in support of the U.S. invasion of Iraq last spring. The assertion that Saddam and the terrorist network led by Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden were working in concert was a primary justification for the war.

As recently as September, President Bush declared that there was �no question� that Saddam had ties to al-Qaida.

This might be excusable if all the pre-war evidence pointed to such connections, but as we’ve demonstrated, that was simply not the case. Even before the war, the intelligence indicated that al-Qaeda and Iraq were not then nor ever working together.

As an additional nail in the coffin, the bi-partisan, GOP-chaired 9/11 Commission found no credible evidence of a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda:

Bin Laden made overtures to Saddam for assistance, the commission said in the staff report, as he did with leaders in Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere as he sought to build an Islamic army.While Saddam dispatched a senior Iraqi intelligence official to Sudan to meet with bin Laden in 1994, the commission said it had not turned up evidence of a “collaborative relationship.'’

Even in the face of this, Bush continues to insist that there’s a link:

President Bush repeated his administration’s claim that Iraq was in league with al Qaeda under Saddam Hussein’s rule, saying Tuesday that fugitive Islamic militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi ties Saddam to the terrorist network.”Zarqawi’s the best evidence of a connection to al Qaeda affiliates and al Qaeda,” Bush told reporters at the White House. “He’s the person who’s still killing.”

So does Cheney:

ORLANDO, Fla. - Vice President Dick Cheney said Saddam Hussein had “long-established ties” with al Qaida, an assertion that has been repeatedly challenged by some policy experts and lawmakers.The vice president on Monday offered no details backing up his claim of a link between Saddam and al Qaida.

“He was a patron of terrorism,” Cheney said of Hussein during a speech before The James Madison Institute, a conservative think-tank based in Florida. “He had long established ties with al Qaida.”

Maybe if they repeat it enough times, it will eventually be true.

WE WENT TO WAR TO FIGHT TERROR

OK, so Iraq and al-Qaeda weren’t working together, but they did harbor terrorists like Abu Nidal, correct? Well, sort of. Nidal’s organization is thought to be inactive, and Nidal himself died in 2002, well before we invaded. Also, prominent people in the administration were arguing for war with Iraq as recently as 1998, as these letters to Congress and to then-President Clinton show. Abu Nidal’s organization had been a known entity since the 1980’s, and these 1998 letters make no mention of terrorism or Islamic fundamentalism. Note that Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Armitage (one letter), Perle, Kristol, and Bennett are all signers of the letters, and current Vice President Dick Cheney was a signer of the organization’s Statement of Principles.

Iraq had nothing to do with September 11, and neither did our motives for attacking Iraq, as conveniently spelled out by the people currently in power.

IRAQ HAS WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

Well, we now know how that one turned out. After a bomb containing Sarin was found, the debate was briefly re-energized, but the elephant in the room is that the sarin shells had been declared by Iraq, and that this shell was in all likelihood an old dud from a firing test years ago:

What gives away whether the shell had been fired is the base-bleed charge, which unlike the rest of the shell, will show evidence of being fired (or not). Iraq declared that it had produced 170 of these base-bleed sarin artillery shells as part of a research and development program that never led to production. Ten of these shells were tested using inert fill - oil and colored water. Ten others were tested in simulated firing using the sarin precursors. And 150 of these shells, filled with sarin precursors, were live-fired at an artillery range south of Baghdad. A 10 percent dud rate among artillery shells isn’t unheard of - and even greater percentages can occur. So there’s a good possibility that at least 15 of these sarin artillery shells failed and lie forgotten in the Iraq desert, waiting to be picked up by any unsuspecting insurgent looking for raw material from which to construct an IED.

Anyway, what often gets glossed over is that the Administration sold the war based not just on Iraq having “weapons of mass destruction,” but specifically on Iraq seeking nuclear weapons. So how did that turn out?

But investigators have found no support for the two main fears expressed in London and Washington before the war: that Iraq had a hidden arsenal of old weapons and built advanced programs for new ones. In public statements and unauthorized interviews, investigators said they have discovered no work on former germ-warfare agents such as anthrax bacteria, and no work on a new designer pathogen — combining pox virus and snake venom — that led U.S. scientists on a highly classified hunt for several months. The investigators assess that Iraq did not, as charged in London and Washington, resume production of its most lethal nerve agent, VX, or learn to make it last longer in storage. And they have found the former nuclear weapons program, described as a “grave and gathering danger” by President Bush and a “mortal threat” by Vice President Cheney, in much the same shattered state left by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s.A review of available evidence, including some not known to coalition investigators and some they have not made public, portrays a nonconventional arms establishment that was far less capable than U.S. analysts judged before the war. Leading figures in Iraqi science and industry, supported by observations on the ground, described factories and institutes that were thoroughly beaten down by 12 years of conflict, arms embargo and strangling economic sanctions. The remnants of Iraq’s biological, chemical and missile infrastructures were riven by internal strife, bled by schemes for personal gain and handicapped by deceit up and down lines of command. The broad picture emerging from the investigation to date suggests that, whatever its desire, Iraq did not possess the wherewithal to build a forbidden armory on anything like the scale it had before the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

The nuclear threat was referred to several times in the 2003 SOTU:

The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide….snip…

With nuclear arms or a full arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, Saddam Hussein could resume his ambitions of conquest in the Middle East and create deadly havoc in that region.

Meanwhile, North Korea openly admitted to actively seeking nuclear capability, and yet we saw no need to amassing of forces there.

THE DEMOCRATS ALSO THOUGHT SADDAM HAD WMDs

This one’s my favorite, because it is by far the most disingenuous post-hoc justification for war.

You’ll often have right-wingers cite the quotes on pages like this, but notice that the Clinton Administration didn’t feel the need to immediately rush to war with Iraq (and it turns out, they were right). Also notice that Iraq-as-dire-threat-to-the-US wasn’t even an issue in the 2000 election. It wasn’t even a blip on the radar, not even for the conservatives (at least not one they were going to campaign on — it’s been a back-pocket issue for years, as demonstrated above).

The point that’s missed here is that it’s true that virtually everyone (incorrectly, it turns out) believed Hussein to be in possession of WMDs (after all, the US gave him quite a few in the 1980’s). But not everyone believed that Hussein posed a “grave and gathering” threat that needed to be dealt with immediately by a unilateral US invasion. And almost without exception, the quotes given are taken wildly out of context.

Let’s look at some Clinton Administration quotes:

“One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line.”
- President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998″If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program.”
- President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998

“Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.”
- Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998

“He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983.”
- Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998

“[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.”
- Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others Oct. 9, 1998

“Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.”
- Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998

Wow, those are harsh words. Those Clintonites must really have thought Hussein had something. And in truth, they really did. So why didn’t that pantywaist Clinton do anything about it? Actually, he did. On December 16, 1998, Clinton ordered air strikes with the stated purpose of destroying those WMD caches — air strikes which were apparently quite effective.

Next is this Ted Kennedy quote:

“We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.”
- Sen. Ted “Swimmer” Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002

But viewed in context, it’s clear that Kennedy was arguing against war when he made his statement. To wit:

We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction. Our intelligence community is also deeply concerned about the acquisition of such weapons by Iran, North Korea, Libya, Syria and other nations. But information from the intelligence community over the past six months does not point to Iraq as an imminent threat to the United States or a major proliferator of weapons of mass destruction.

[Emphasis mine] Notice that this is Kennedy, in 2002, before we invaded, citing intelligence that says Iraq is neither an imminent threat, nor a proliferator of weapons. So much for “everyone thought he was a threat,” eh?

Another famous one is this Sept. 23, 2002 Gore quote:

We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country. Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.

Once again, Gore is quoted wildly out of context. Here’s the quote in context:

Nevertheless, Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq�s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power. Moreover, no international law can prevent the United States from taking actions to protect its vital interests, when it is manifestly clear that there is a choice to be made between law and survival. I believe, however, that such a choice is not presented in the case of Iraq. Indeed, should we decide to proceed, that action can be justified within the framework of international law rather than outside it. In fact, though a new UN resolution may be helpful in building international consensus, the existing resolutions from 1991 are sufficient from a legal standpoint.

We also need to look at the relationship between our national goal of regime change in Iraq and our goal of victory in the war against terror. In the case of Iraq, it would be more difficult for the United States to succeed alone, but still possible. By contrast, the war against terror manifestly requires broad and continuous international cooperation. Our ability to secure this kind of cooperation can be severely damaged by unilateral action against Iraq. If the Administration has reason to believe otherwise, it ought to share those reasons with the Congress � since it is asking Congress to endorse action that might well impair a more urgent task: continuing to disrupt and destroy the international terror network.

I was one of the few Democrats in the U.S. Senate who supported the war resolution in 1991. And I felt betrayed by the first Bush administration�s hasty departure from the battlefield, even as Saddam began to renew his persecution of the Kurds of the North and the Shiites of the South � groups we had encouraged to rise up against Saddam. It is worth noting, however, that the conditions in 1991 when that resolution was debated in Congress were very different from the conditions this year as Congress prepares to debate a new resolution. Then, Saddam had sent his armies across an international border to invade Kuwait and annex its territory. This year, 11 years later, there is no such invasion; instead we are prepared to cross an international border to change the government of Iraq. However justified our proposed action may be, this change in role nevertheless has consequences for world opinion and can affect the war against terrorism if we proceed unilaterally.

[Emphasis mine] Clearly, Gore wasn’t saying what they want you to believe he was saying.

Or take Byrd’s quote in context:

The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retained some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capability. Intelligence reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons, but has not yet achieved nuclear capability. It is now October of 2002. Four years have gone by in which neither this administration nor the previous one felt compelled to invade Iraq to protect against the imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction. Until today. Until 33 days until election day. Now we are being told that we must act immediately, before adjournment and before the elections. Why the rush?Yes, we had September 11. But we must not make the mistake of looking at the resolution before us as just another offshoot of the war on terror. We know who was behind the September 11 attacks on the United States. We know it was Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network. We have dealt with al Qaeda and with the Taliban government that sheltered it � we have routed them from Afghanistan and we are continuing to pursue them in hiding.

So where does Iraq enter the equation? No one in the Administration has been able to produce any solid evidence linking Iraq to the September 11 attack. Iraq had biological and chemical weapons long before September 11. We knew it then, and we know it now. Iraq has been an enemy of the United States for more than a decade. If Saddam Hussein is such an imminent threat to the United States, why hasn’t he attacked us already? The fact that Osama bin Laden attacked the United States does not, de facto, mean that Saddam Hussein is now in a lock and load position and is readying an attack on the United States. In truth, there is nothing in the deluge of Administration rhetoric over Iraq that is of such moment that it would preclude the Senate from setting its own timetable and taking the time for a thorough and informed discussion of this crucial issue.

[Emphasis mine]

Or look at the Wesley Clark quote in context:

But it was a signal warning about Saddam Hussein: he is not only malevolent and violent, but also unpredictable. He retains his chemical and biological warfare capabilities and is actively pursuing nuclear capabilities. Were he to acquire such capabilities, we and our friends in the region would face greatly increased risks. Saddam might use such weapons as a deterrent while launching attacks against Israel or his neighbors, he might threaten American forces in the region, he might strike directly against Israel, or Israel, weighing the possibilities of nuclear blackmail or aggression, might feel compelled to strike Iraq first….snip…

Our President has emphasized the urgency of eliminating these weapons and weapons programs. I strongly support his efforts to encourage the United Nations to act on this problem. And in taking this to the United Nations, the President�s clear determination to act if the United Nations can�t provides strong leverage undergirding further diplomatic efforts.

But the problem of Iraq is only an element of the broader security challenges facing our country. We have an unfinished, world-wide war against Al Qaeda, a war that has to be won in conjunction with friends and allies, and that ultimately be won by persuasion as much as by force, when we turn off the Al Qaeda recruiting machine.

Some three thousand deaths on September 11th testify to the real danger from Al Qaeda, and as all acknowledge, Al Qaeda has not yet been defeated. Thus far, substantial evidence has not been made available to link Saddam�s regime to the Al Qaeda network. And while such linkages may emerge, winning the war against Al Qaeda may well require different actions than ending the weapons programs in Iraq.

The critical issue facing the Unites States now is how to force action against Saddam Hussein and his weapons programs without detracting from our focus on Al Qaeda or efforts to deal with other immediate, mid and long-term security problems.

[Emphasis mine]. He was clearly arguing against unilateral action. It’s not the only place he publicly argued against unilateral action:

It’s still not too late to enlist NATO in the fight against terrorism–to handle peacekeeping duties in an increasingly chaotic Afghanistan, to deepen its involvement in the fight against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and to host the harmonization of judicial and law-enforcement activities. If there is to be a military operation against Iraq, then certainly NATO participation should be sought. Involving NATO more directly and deeply would give European leaders a personal political stake in the war. In particular, bringing NATO into an expanded peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan would go a long way toward convincing the Europeans that the United States is serious about stability in post-war Iraq or other post-conflict situations. That NATO framework can be expanded at the military level to encompass countries that do not belong to NATO, just as we did in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Those are just the few quotes that I could find in full context (rather than excerpted out of context, as on the above-linked talking-point page). The Left Coaster has a few more. I’m sure that with some additional research, even more of those quotes can be dubunked.

IRAQ IS AN IMMINENT AND/OR GRAVE AND GATHERING THREAT

As we now know, without any Weapons of Mass Destruction, and without any substantial links to anti-US terror organizations, that clearly was not the case. Most Bush apologists are quick to point out that he never actually said the words “imminent threat,” but the fact remains that he was arguing for immediate military action. In the 2003 State of the Union Address:

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.

In other words, we need to act now, before it’s too late. Then there’s the now-famous “smoking gun/mushroom cloud” speech, which certainly would lead one to believe that the threat is imminent:

Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

This was no slip of the tongue, as it was something previously uttered by Condoleeza Rice:

“The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

Note also the specificity with which Dr. Rice talks about Iraq’s nuclear program:

“We know that he has the infrastructure, nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon,” she told me. “And we know that when the inspectors assessed this after the Gulf War, he was far, far closer to a crude nuclear device than anybody thought — maybe six months from a crude nuclear device.”

“We know.” “Six months.” Clearly, the message was being sent by the administration that Iraq was close to obtaining nuclear weapons (which certainly would be an imminent threat). This is how the war was sold, and we now know that the entire nuclear angle was either a trumped-up lie, or a grave error. Dishonesty or incompetence. Take your pick.

Rodger points out that both Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice were on the record as saying we didn’t have any pressing need to deal with Iraq. Quoth Powell:

I think it’s important to point out that for the last 10 years, the policy that the United Nations, the United States has been following, has succeeded in keeping Iraq from rebuilding to the level that it was before. It’s an army that’s only one-third its original size. And even though they may be pursuing weapons of mass destruction of all kinds, it is not clear how successful they have been. So to some extent, I think we ought to declare this a success. We have kept him contained, kept him in his box. [Emphasis added.]…snip…

The difference now is that the UN regime keeps a lot of that money from being spent on weapons the way it was ten years ago, and so I think we need to turn the debate onto his actions as opposed to our actions. He is the one who is not providing for his people with the money that the oil for food program and his smuggling is providing. [Emphasis added.]

True, these statements were made prior to September 11, but we have already establsihed that our attack on Iraq had nothing to do with September 11.

Quoth Rice:

As history marches toward markets and democracy, some states have been left by the side of the road. The United States must approach rogue regimes like North Korea and Iraq resolutely and decisively. The Clinton administration has failed here, sometimes threatening to use force and then backing down. These regimes are living on borrowed time, so there need be no sense of panic about them. Rather, the first line of defense should be a clear and classical statement of deterrence�if they do acquire weapons of mass destruction, their weapons will be unusable because any attempt to use them will bring national obliteration. [Emphasis added.]

Same pre-9/11 objections apply here. (It’s also noticed that in context, Rice was arguing not for improved anti-terror measures, but for Bush’s pet missile defense system.)

WE RID THE WORLD OF A TYRANNICAL LEADER
or
WE WENT TO WAR FOR HUMANITARIAN REASONS

Well, probably so. It remains to be seen whether we finish the job or simply allow Iraq to fall into the control of another, different tyrannical leader. But was this ever given as a primary reason why we were going to war before the war? Do the ends justify the means here? After all, we cozied up with Uzbekistan (a member of the “coalition of the willing”), even though they boil dissidents alive. We seem to be mighty selective about which despots need to go.

Rodger points out that Bush admitted as much (being selective about despot removal) in his second debate against Gore.

WE’RE SPREADING DEMOCRACY

Only where it suits us. When democracy results in the election of an anti-US leader, we subvert that democracy and assist in a military coup. This is a much larger issue, one that could probably stand to have its own post, but I’ll let one of the Kevins handle that duty.

So much for not engaging in “nation building,” eh?

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So there you have it. Did I miss anything? Was any of the evidence I presented demonstrably false? If so, please demonstrate. Feedback, as always, is appreciated.

June 16th, 2004 Iraq, Terrorism | 14 comments