Author: Jonathan Schwarz

The New York Times has confirmed the so-called “White House Memo” of January 31, 2003 is genuine. The memo, first reported several months ago, records a meeting at the White House between Blair, Bush and key advisors. Among the key points:

1. Bush had decided on war no matter what, even if UNMOVIC found nothing and they failed to get a second U.N. resolution.
2. Bush suggested creating a pretext for the war by painting a U.S. spy plane in the colors of the United Nations, in hopes Iraq would try to shoot it down.
3. Bush thought it was “unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups.”

So, how to deal with this embarrassing information? An unnamed “senior British official” tries this gambit:

“In all of this discussion during the run-up to the Iraq war, it is obvious that viewing a snapshot at a certain point in time gives only a partial view of the decision-making process.”

Huh, that sounds familiar. Where have I heard it before? Oh, right—it’s exactly what Tony Blair said about the Downing Street Memo:

“The trouble with having a political discussion on the basis of things that are leaked is that they are always taken right out of context. Everything else is omitted from the discussion and you end up focusing on a specific document.”

UK Defense Secretary John Reid also said this about the Downing Street Memo (via Nexis):

“You can produce one out of a thousand of memos that were flying about, which represented one person’s view about one particular issue.”

So now we have TWO British memos shamefully ripped out context. Or rather, eight memos ripped out of context, counting the six other documents related to the Downing Street Memo. Wait, I’m sorry—nine memos, when you add in the one Paul O’Neill revealed showing the Bush administration already planning for “Post-Saddam Iraq” on January 31, 2001. Or actually, ten memos, counting the NSA memo about spying on the U.N. Well, to be fair—eleven memos, given the one Blair aide John Sawer wrote in May, 2003 about the lack of post-war planning.

Okay: we have eleven internal memos ripped horribly out of context. And in a bizarre coincidence, they tell exactly the same story as a gigantic amount of public information.

But that’s irrelevant. What’s important is we know if we had access to all the relevant government documents, they would tell a completely different story. If only Tony Blair and George Bush had the authority to declassify them!

Sadly, of course, this is impossible. Blair and Bush are completely powerless in this matter. All they can do is tell us how they would be completely vindicated if only we knew things we aren’t allowed to know.

Greg and Mr. Tomorrow have produced pictures of George Bush looking quite peculiar.

Nevertheless, I believe my Bush photograph below trumps them all.

Still, I’m not displaying this to denigrate Bush; just the opposite. As I said some time ago on my own site:

I don’t like the “look at this picture of [someone I disagree with] looking stupid!” school of commentary. If you take enough pictures of any person, they will look stupid in a least a few of them. Thus, all you’re proving when you do this is that the person you disagree with is a person. What an achievement.

So that’s not what I’m getting at with this picture. On the contrary: it reminds me of George Bush’s berserk humanity. Nothing, not even the power of the presidency, can protect human beings from the silliness within us all.

ALSO: When you saw this picture, did you try to make this face yourself? Be honest.

Via Under the Same Sun, here’s more important information about our overwhelming love and concern for the Iraqi people:

Two Iraqi women whose husbands and children were killed by US troops during the Iraq war have been refused entry into the United States for a speaking tour. The women were invited to the US for peace events surrounding international women’s by the human rights group Global Exchange and the women’s peace group CODEPINK.

In a piece of painful irony, the reason given for the rejection was that the women don’t have enough family in Iraq to prove that they’ll return to the country.

I’ve been reading a book from 1986 called Sacred Rage: The Wrath of Militant Islam. It’s by Robin Wright, who now works for the Washington Post and is one of the better reporters around on the Mideast. Here’s an excerpt:

After the 1979 Iranian revolution, the Middle East had begun witnessing a virulent new strain of terrorism that spread like an infectious virus…

The early targets were not Western. Many incidents were spectacular and well publicized: the 1981 plot to overthrow the government of Bahrain and install an Islamic republic; sabotage and assassination attempts over an extended period against the President of Iraq; the 1979 seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, and uprisings that year and the next in the oil fields of Saudi Arabia; the assassination Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981.

Did you notice that sentence in the middle?

…sabotage and assassination attempts over an extended period against the President of Iraq

I hope you did, because we’ve put Saddam Hussein on trail and will almost certainly execute him for his response to this “virulent terrorism”—specifically, ordering the executions of 148 people after a 1982 assassination attempt against him in the Iraqi town of Dujail.

And Sacred Rage is par for the course. From 1982-90, the New York Times mentioned Dujail exactly zero times, while very occasionally saying things like “[Saddam] has survived a number of assassination attempts.” (Don’t even ask about U.S. television.)

By contrast, Nexis shows 386 references to Dujail on TV and radio since we invaded Iraq. Paula Zahn did a segment on the hideous treatment of one woman from Dujail.

So:

BEFORE SADDAM DISOBEYS ORDERS: Not only does the U.S. media maintain total silence about Saddam’s ghastly deeds in Dujail, on occasion they actually adopt his perspective—i.e., that he’s dealing with “virulent terrorism.”

AFTER SADDAM DISOBEYS ORDERS: Great wailing and gnashing of teeth about his hideous crimes in Dujail, filled with details about the suffering of people whose lives (all of a sudden) have some value.

You can understand why Saddam may be a little bitter about this.

Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard, in 2004:

Should national unity prevail, Iraq’s chances of becoming a stable democracy will improve dramatically. I’d like to see one other thing in Iraq, an outbreak of gratitude for the greatest act of benevolence one country has ever done for another.

David Lawrence, editor of US News & World Report, in 1966:

What the United States is doing in Vietnam is the most significant example of philanthropy extended by one people to another that we have witnessed in our times.

(Barnes quotes thanks to Roger of Limited, Inc..)