Ed Williams, NYT editorial writer, in
today's Charlotte
Observer hits the nail right dead smack on the head:
Quote:
Let me talk briefly about what we now know about the decision to invade Iraq, then focus on why it matters.
The administration has prevented any official inquiry into whether it hyped the case for war. But there's plenty of circumstantial evidence that it did.
And then there's the Downing Street Memo -- the minutes of a prime minister's meeting in July 2002 -- in which the chief of British overseas intelligence briefed his colleagues about his recent trip to Washington.
"Bush wanted to remove Saddam," says the memo, "through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." It doesn't get much clearer than that.
Many in the U.S. news media ignored the memo for five weeks after it was released in The Times of London. Then some said it was "old news" that Bush wanted war in the summer of 2002 and that WMD were just an excuse. No, it isn't. Media insiders may have suspected as much, but they didn't inform their readers, viewers and listeners. They have never held Bush accountable for his repeated declarations that he viewed war as a last resort.
Some of my colleagues insist that we should let bygones be bygones. The question, they say, is what we do now. They're wrong: It's crucial that those responsible for the war be held to account.
Let me explain. The United States will soon have to start reducing force levels in Iraq or risk seeing the volunteer Army collapse. Yet the administration and its supporters have effectively prevented any adult discussion of the need to get out.
On one side, the people who sold this war, unable to face the fact that their fantasies of a splendid little war have led to disaster, are still peddling illusions: The insurgency is in its "last throes," says Dick Cheney. On the other, they still have moderates and even liberals intimidated: Anyone who suggests the U.S. will have to settle for something that falls far short of victory is accused of being unpatriotic.
We need to deprive these people of their ability to mislead and intimidate. The best way to do that is to make it clear that the people who led us to war on false pretenses have no credibility and no right to lecture the rest of us about patriotism.
The good news is that the public seems ready to hear that message -- readier than the news media are to deliver it. Major media organizations still act as if only a small, left-wing fringe believes we were misled into war.
In a Gallup poll in early April -- before the release of the Downing Street Memo -- 50 percent of those polled agreed that the administration "deliberately misled the American public" about Iraq's WMD. In a new Rasmussen poll, 49 percent said Bush was more responsible for the war than Saddam Hussein, versus 44 percent who blamed Saddam.
Once the media catch up with the public, we'll be able to start talking seriously about how to get out of Iraq.
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what he is saying is that recent polls indicate at least half of the public is ready to face the truth. this is actually an amazing number, considering there has been little media support or any kind of organized groundswell. americans are arriving at this conclusion all on their own.
Karl Rove can keep on giving speeches that liberals are pussies and dissent is unpatriotic, but his attempts to deflect attention from the real issues are pitifully transparent. as chief architect of administration policy, there isn't a thing he can say to mitigate the inherent duplicity and gross incompetence of the Bush administration.