For those with alternate memories about why George W. Bush went to war with Iraq, an actor from the past is back in the news to vindicate our beliefs. Yesterday, Rafid ahmed Alwan al-Janabi better known as Curveball admitted that he made up his information that Saddam Hussein had biological and chemical weapons. In the lead-up to the war, Han Blix and the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and IAEA inspectors were telling us that they could find no evidence of such, and there was an outcry from quite a few on the left of the political spectrum that we should wait and make sure before subjecting the nation to the most harrowing and horrendous pursuit - war. That the Bushies should take the word of one unreliable source belies their proclamations in the days before the start of the war that they would go into battle as a last resort. Bush had made up his mind for selfish reasons that he wanted to be the ‘war president,’ and 9-11 gave him an excuse to do just that. Curveball gave him the counterfeit evidence to go to war with the wrong country. Can you imagine the Republican second-guessing if President Obama undertook such an unreasoned response? But, we had been attacked and felt vulnerable, and the Bushies took full advantage to stoke our fears and war monger.
After Bush’s prosecution of the war did enormous damage to Iraq including turning Iraqi neighbor against neighbor, running the middle class out of the country, and killing and maiming countless others as well as sullied the reputation of the U.S. by countenancing atrocities at Abu Ghraib, mistreating prisoners at Gitmo, and lying to his own citizens, Bush had the effrontery to expect forgiveness or at least understanding when he said that the biggest regret of his presidency was the intelligence failure that led to the war. Colin Powell said that his United Nations testimony based on Curveball’s claims is a blot on his resume, and now, Donald Rumsfield has admitted that there were no weapons of mass destruction before the war. Yes, it’s true, Rumsfield, after all the protestations to the contrary has now disclosed that they lied us into a war rather than take the time to find out the truth.
That’s why I’m writing about the war again today – because we should not have short memories, and we should not let the former Bush administration and Republicans rewrite history.