None Of This Happened

In 2003, the United States invaded a country that did not threaten us, did not attack us, and did not want war with us, to disarm it of weapons we have since discovered it did not have.  His war cabinet assured President Bush that weapons of mass destruction would be found, that U.S. forces would be welcomed with garlands of flowers, that democracy would flourish in Iraq and spread across the Middle East, that our triumph would convince Israelis and Palestinians to all sit down and make peace.
None of this happened.  Those of us who were called unpatriotic for opposing an invasion of Iraq and who warned we would inherit our own Lebanon of 25 million Iraqis were proven right.  Now our nation is tied down and our army is being daily bled in a war to create a democracy in a country where it has never before existed.
—    Patrick J. Buchanan
From his book:  “Where The Right Went Wrong“
[Two points:  First, what we “discovered” was not that the weapons did not exist;  what was discovered was that the Bush administration never knew the weapons existed and cherry picked the intelligence we did have to support their claims the weapons did exist because the administration wanted to invade and needed a justification to sell the war to the American public.  Second, Buchanan uses his writing to continue to subtly defend President Bush by shifting responsibility.  It was his “war cabinet” that had to “assure” him of these things.  NOT!  Bush and Cheney did not need assurance because their minds were already made up.  They were not looking for assurance, they were pushing for any evidence of their false claims in order to support the decision they had already made – probably (in my humble opinion) before being elected – that they would overthrow Saddam Hussein the first chance they got.    —    kmab]
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