It’s no surprise that this “independent” commission will deliver a report exonerating the White House and Pentagon from charges they applied political pressure on agencies to create intelligence that would persuade citisens of this country and elsewhere there was an urgent need to pre-emptively strike a defenceless, sovereign nation or that it suggests as a solution this same administration should now create “a new interagency center on proliferation, to assess efforts by other countries, terror groups and traffickers.”
Not as predictable was Walter Pincus, appearing this morning on C-Span’s Washington Journal, implying that this outrage has been sanctioned by the American people since they re-elected George Bush. Pincus and Dana Priest turned out some of the best reporting available on the scandalous depth of White House and Pentagon involvement as it was discovered. How would it have impugned his journalistic integrity to add that these same voters were assailed by a relentless continuum of denial and deliberate disinformation that saturated every aspect of the media throughout the campaign?
I don’t expect the Republicans to address this and I lost hope long ago the Democrats will do anything but enable their cover-ups and assist them in the promotion of the idea we should move on. If Ralph Nader is the apex of opposition to the creation of yet another propaganda mill through which North Korean and Iranian intelligence will be processed then I expect America will be moving on to more of the same.
There are no harmless political lies about a war. The more such lies citizens tolerate, the more wars they are likely to get. Every lie that is tolerated about one war becomes an engraved invitation to launch another war. Because Americans acquiesced to Bush’s blarney about his invasion of Afghanistan, Bush faced less resistance to invading Iraq. And every Bush lie about Iraq that is now tolerated by the American people increases the odds of Bush going to war against Iran if he were re-elected.
Will Bush be permitted to lie his way to four more years of power over Americans? It is almost inconceivable that the average American would trust a used car dealer who had engaged in the type of stunts that Bush has pulled to deceive us on both 9/11 and Iraq.