My ever-thoughtful reader and dissenter, Aakash, has raised some interesting things in response to my conflict of interest post.
While the point is made that Bush “should make clear that he did not know that the information that he was given was false,” I think too much credit is given to the “neo-con” propaganda out there.
Intelligence about Iraq came not only from the ranks of Americans, but also from the British and other foreign nations. They all corroborated speculation that Saddam might be striving for WMD capabilities–or might already have them–and with the way he was acting it was a mighty fair assumption.
After all, where’s the brilliance in attempting to pull one over on the entire world?
I think L.A. Times cartoonist Michael Ramirez put it best when he wrote in a caption under a drawing of the disposed Iraqi dictator, “I know… let’s just pretend to have weapons of mass destruction and refuse to give unrestricted access to U.N. inspectors so we can forfeit billions of dollars in revenue and quite possibly get ourselves killed.”
If no weapons of mass destruction turn up, Saddam did a hell of a job convincing the rest of the world he had them. And for what? We may never know.