Bush's war exercise: the backpedal

[reprehensor]

http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpbak173710244mar17,0,4052811.story

Anniversaries are a time of remembrance. We look back at an event and recall what was. Or, in the case of the invasion of Iraq, which began one year ago, we look back at what wasn't.

What wasn't turns out to be almost anything George W. Bush and his associates said was. First, there were "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, then there weren't. First, Saddam Hussein was a "grave and growing danger," then the war was really about "regime change." First, we were going to go it alone in postwar Iraq, without UN help; now we aren't. First, the United States opposed real elections in Iraq; now it doesn't.

In an October 2002 speech in Cincinnati, Bush declared: "Tonight I want to take a few minutes to discuss a grave threat to peace and America's determination to lead the world in confronting that threat. . . . It arises directly from the Iraqi regime's own actions, its history of aggression and its drive toward an arsenal of terror."

The truth was Hussein at that time posed absolutely no threat, and the Iraqi history of aggression and its onetime possession of biochemical weapons had a lot to do with encouragement and assistance from the United States, including from people who are now senior officials of the Bush administration.

more at link.