The Bush, Blair Deception Summit - January, 2003

[understandinglife]

Steve Clemons contrasts Woodward, Meyer & Sands' accounts of the 31 January 2003 Bush, Blair summit. As he notes:

This meeting was one of the fundamental points in the history of the Iraq War as it became known as the "second resolution" meeting -- and it occurred five days before Secretary of State Colin Powell's 5 February 2003 speech at the UN titled "Iraq: Denial and Deception."

What is fascinating is that it is clear that the meeting was more facade of diplomacy about a needed second UN resolution than substance. Sands makes the case that Blair and Bush had decided to pursue war no matter the consequences of diplomatic efforts underway and despite the absence of empirical evidence that Iraq had WMDs. The fact that Bush kept proposing ways to get Iraq to react in such a way to put them in material breach of U.N. resolutions implies that government lawyers believed that Iraq's previous breaches were not compelling enough to justify war.

However, read for yourself these accounts.

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Link:

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001321.php

I urge you to read the excerpts. You may also want to listen to Steve Clemons interview of Philippe Sands at:

http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm?pg=event&EveID=550

Just how unnecessary and how illegal what Bush and Blair did, and continue to do, is obvious in Sands' assessment:

... the paucity of available information at the end of January and the limited prospects being held out for the impact of the presentation that was to be made just a few days later by Colin Powell at the Security Council. By the end of January there was a growing sense of desperation that was almost as palpable as the absence of evidence to support the view that Saddam held any WMD.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001321.php

They were desperate because they had totally failed to establish Saddam in material breach and totally failed to induce him into material breach, AND they knew he did not have WMD.

They waged war and continue to expand their military bases and control over vital resources (oil and water) in Iraq.

They own all the atrocities and all the crimes and no one will ever be able to revise that fact.


Peace.

[understandinglife]

1. Jane Smiley: "Bush does what he wants because you have let him."

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3. Bush does what he feels like doing and he deeply resents being told, even politely, that he ought to do anything else. This is called a "sense of entitlement". Bush is a man who has never been anywhere and never done anything, and yet he has been flattered and cajoled into being president of the United States through his connections, all of whom thought they could use him for their own purposes. He has a surface charm that appeals to a certain type of American man, and he has used that charm to claim all sorts of perks, and then to fail at everything he has ever done. He did not complete his flight training, he failed at oil investing, he was a front man and a glad-hander as a baseball owner. As the Governor of Texas, he originated one educational program that turned out to be a debacle; as the President of the US, his policies have constituted one screw-up after another. You have stuck with him through all of this, made excuses for him, bailed him out. From his point of view, he is perfectly entitled by his own experience to a sense of entitlement. Why would he ever feel the need to reciprocate? He's never had to before this.

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You have created an imperium, heedless of the most basic wisdom of the Founding Fathers -- that at the very least, no man is competent enough or far-seeing enough to rule imperially. Checks and balances were instituted by Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, and the rest of them not because of some abstract distrust of power, but because they had witnessed the screw-ups and idiocies of unchecked power. You yourselves have demonstrated the failures of unchecked power -- in an effort to achieve it, you have repeatedly contravened the expressed wishes of most Americans, who favor a moderate foreign policy, reasonable domestic programs, a government that works, environmental preservation, women's rights to contraception, abortion, and a level playing field. Somehow you thought you could mold the imperium to reflect your wishes, but guess what -- that's what an imperium is -- one man rule. If you fear the madness of King George, you have no recourse if you've given up the checks and balances that you inherited and that were meant to protect you.

Your ideas and your policies have promoted selfishness, greed, short-term solutions, bullying, and pain for others. You have looked in the faces of children and denied the existence of a "common good". You have disdained and denied the idea of "altruism". At one time, our bureaucracy was full of people who had gone into government service or scientific research for altruistic reasons -- I knew, because I knew some of them. You have driven them out and replaced them with vindictive ignoramuses. You have lied over and over about your motives, for example, making laws that hurt people and calling it "originalist interpretations of the Constitution" (conveniently ignoring the Ninth Amendment). You have increased the powers of corporations at the expense of every other sector in the nation and actively defied any sort of regulation that would require these corporations to treat our world with care and respect. You have made economic growth your deity, and in doing so, you have accelerated the power of the corporations to destroy the atmosphere, the oceans, the ice caps, the rainforests, and the climate. You have produced CEOs in charge of lots of resources and lots of people who have no more sense of reciprocity or connection or responsibility than George W. Bush.

Now you are fleeing him, but it's only because he's got the earmarks of a loser. Your problem is that you don't know why he's losing. You think he's made mistakes. But no. He's losing because the ideas that you taught him and demonstrated for him are bad ideas, self-destructive ideas, and even suicidal ideas. And they are immoral ideas. You should be ashamed of yourselves because not only have your ideas not worked to make the world a better place, they were inhumane and cruel to begin with, and they have served to cultivate and excuse the inhumane and cruel character traits of those who profess them.

Worth reading all of Notes for Converts:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/notes-for-converts_b_17662.html

And, as Jane Smiley concludes -- "6. As Bad as Bush is, Cheney is Worse."

They both must be removed from office and prosecuted, obviously.

I'm linking Jane Smiley's Notes for Converts to the Sands' assessment because the consequences of arrogance, avarice and unchecked imperium coalesced in January of 2003 when Bush and Blair catapulted fascism into the defining characteristic of the 21st Century US-UK axis.


Peace.


If You're pro-Bu$h, You're Anti-America

[understandinglife]

2. "Pentagon insider speaks: NeoCons LIED early and as often as possible."

Excellent blog on Col Kwiatkowski's CSPAN Q&A:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/4/3/16550/61573

Two quotes suffice fit well with the frustration and desperation at the Bush, Blair Deception Summit:

But, what it calls for is very much what George Bush has more overtly called for, which is America at the top of the world, a unilateral approach and that kind of thing. Very, very similar. ... The Project for New American Century brought many, many key leaders and key political appointees, people that were working on the Project for New American Century moved seamlessly into government, and that starts with Dick Cheney.

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The Office of Special Plans had one primary job, and that was to produce a set of talking points on the topic of Iraq, WMD and terrorism, and we were to use them in any document that we prepared exactly as they were written in their entirety. We were - all of us, myself included, very familiar with what the intelligence was saying about Iraq. But, the problem was, when you look at what was in these talking points, you could tell it was designed to convince the reader that Iraq and Saddam Hussein specifically constituted a major serious, terrible, evil threat to not just his neighbors but to the United States.

And, why?

I think, for guys like Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, a lot of the neo-conservatives, even George W. Bush and certainly Cheney, the vision is that we are not really a republic anymore. We're certainly not a limited state. We are the world's most important and all-powerful state, and that we have certain rights. Yes, we have certain responsibilities, but I think the rights are what drive them. And those rights include the right to do what we want, to get what we need, to have what we want to have. I think that's what it is and, you know, we've built very massive mega-bases, permanent. These are permanent military bases in Iraq. We've done that in other places, as well, in the Middle East, but certainly these - this construction project in Iraq, in fact most of the money has been for military construction of - for our use. I think that's a big part of it, shifting our footprint.

Imperial and Unbounded; the PNAC vision as reality.


If You're pro-Bu$h, You're Anti-America