Stretching the truth will usually come back to haunt you. And when the white lie snowballs into a massive avalanche of interconnected lies, it's hard to dig yourself out. Especially when those lies stretch around the globe.ÿ
President Bush has sold himself into a vast web of lies about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (or clear lack thereof) that has tangled and trapped most of the nation and many parts of the globe. Sure, everyone knows Saddam is a brutal dictator and a mean guy, but that wasn't the stated reason for invading his country. Bush had to sell the nation on the idea that Iraq was a threat to our security, a big, bad voodoo doll waiting to stick us with shiny, pointy pins. Yet those pins were never found, and even the faith and patience of staunch conservatives and Bush supporters are growing thin. When Fox News starts to question Bush, you know he's in real trouble.ÿ
David Kay, the former chief weapons inspector for this country, is starting to pull back the warm, cozy wool that shields and blinds the eyes of the nation. Nobody has found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and nobody will in the future-because there aren't any. It's hard to believe that 1,400 people comprising the Iraq Survey Group, of which Kay was the head, somehow missed a large repository of secret weapons when U.S. troops somehow found Saddam lurking in an underground spiderhole. Nuclear, biological and chemical weapons cannot simply be eliminated very quickly without a trace. Yet the esteemed members of the U.S. intelligence community, the same people who allowed 9-11 to occur, earned their title of ineptitude again when they claimed Iraq had WMDs. Or maybe they were pressured by Bush and his cronies to create the evidence early on with the hopes of vindicating their fabrications later in the war. So far the Bush lie has cost the nation over 500 dedicated men and women, who were shipped to a strange land with the false assurance that they were thwarting a threat to the nation.ÿ
Bush has finally agreed to an independent investigation of U.S. intelligence that "discovered" WMDs in Iraq. He was reluctant to do so because he already knows what the outcome will be, and it won't be pretty for him. Hopefully this will be the impetus to freeze his re-election campaign and clear the way for whomever gets nominated by the Democrats. Like Nixon and Clinton before him, Bush is about to be dipped head-first into a boiling pot of tar that could cost him the upcoming election and maybe more. The difference with Bush is that his lie killed hundreds of his own citizens. ÿ
It is true that the war with Iraq was not only for oil, but it does seem suspicious that Bush would target Saddam first out of all the multiple brutal dictators on this earth. Perhaps he wanted to finish the job that his father started, and perhaps he was worried about the possible strength of radical Islam in the country, but one thing is clear: Iraq was not a security threat to the United States when this war started. If Bush continues his imperialistic path to conquest, the U.S. will eventually over-extend itself and lose all credibility with the United Nations and the international community, the latter of which it is dangerously close to doing. ÿ
I don't hate the United States, but Bush's abuse of power has made me hate what it stands for right now-dishonesty, vigilantism, and greed. During all the talk about mythical WMDs in Iraq, no one has ever mentioned the fact that this country has thousands of WMDs of its own. We'd like to believe that we are on the moral high ground and that we would never stoop to using such weapons, but if that's true, why is Bush allowing a new generation of nukes to be constructed? Who are we so afraid of, and why? Maybe the U.S. intelligence community should try to figure that one out.
