Black Box Recorder

US changes story on Iraq, concocts new lies; poll finds Americans confused

Christ, talk about shameless. The US administration continues changing its story on the Iraq war. Now, there aren't tons and tons of horrible chemicals and deadly germs threatening western civilization; Iraq may have had information on paper on how to construct weapons. Rice now states that "U.S. officials never expected that 'we were going to open garages and find' weapons of mass destruction" [Rice's remarks inside single '' apostrophes].

But, as the article points out, this is a bald lie. It includes numerous public statements from Bush himself indicating that Iraq did have WMDs all ready to go:

In his March 17 speech giving Iraqi President Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave the country, Bush said: "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

Earlier, in a speech last Oct. 7, Bush said: "The Iraqi regime ... possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons.

"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas ... And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons."

And what about Rice herself? Has she forgotten the claims she made in her 23 January 2003 NY Times article, "Why We Know Iraq is Lying" [also, note the phrase next to the word "IRAQ" at the top of the page; right on the money, though not in the way that the White House intended]:

...Iraq has a high-level political commitment to maintain and conceal its weapons...the declaration fails to account for or explain Iraq's efforts to get uranium from abroad, its manufacture of specific fuel for ballistic missiles it claims not to have, and the gaps previously identified by the United Nations in Iraq's accounting for more than two tons of the raw materials needed to produce thousands of gallons of anthrax and other biological weapons...[Iraq's UN]declaration is intended to cloud and confuse the true picture of Iraq's arsenal...

In what is now a laughable moment, Rice accused Iraq of plagiarism:

Iraq's declaration even resorted to unabashed plagiarism, with lengthy passages of United Nations reports copied word-for-word (or edited to remove any criticism of Iraq) and presented as original text.

Yes, plagiarizing the UN is a terrible thing - much worse than plagiarizing a graduate student paper that was several years old to justify unprovoked aggression.

But none of this matters to the American public, bog bless them. A recent poll indicates that while 64 per cent are "aware" that no WMDs have been found so far, 41 per cent believe either that the Bush administration was "accurate" in its estimation of Iraqi WMDs or that it underestimated these stocks.

The poll also found that 56 per cent of Americans have adopted the Thomas Friedman, "it-doesn't-matter-that-the-government-lied-through-its-teeth" attitude and believe that the war will be "worth it", even if WMDs are never found.

All I can say is that anyone who thinks that it's not a big deal that their government lies to them needs to have their head examined.