Even one prominent career State Department official and notorious, embittered critic of President Bush’s foreign policy has noted that some of the hullabaloo surrounding the Downing Street Memo is overblown:
…on Thursday, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson admitted that “we all believed” Saddam had WMD.
“I believe the threat to the United States posed by Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction — which we all believed he had — could have been dealt with using something less violent than the invasion, conquest and occupation of Iraq,” Wilson said in a response to a question from Cybercast News Service following a Democrat-sponsored hearing on the matter.
Wilson’s comment, that “we all believed” Saddam had WMD, appeared to contradict the memo itself and whether “intelligence and facts” would need to be “fixed around the policy” of invading Iraq if the general consensus was that Saddam possessed WMD.
Of course, Wilson and his ilk have a lot more to be pessimistic and antagonistic about. But the “Bush Lied, People Died,” KoolAid-drinking, MoveOn.org true believers look that much sillier anyway.
The point isn’t that there weren’t WMD. The point is that these discussions took place at a time when Bush was telling the American people that war was not inevitable, when in fact, it was a preconceived notion.
Oh? And what does the memo really tell us that we didn’t know? Usually it’s best to have some key facts on hand…
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion/article/0,1299,DRMN_38_3867745,00.html
They tell us nothing those paying attention didn’t already know. They provide a useful reminder in a handy package from unimpeachable sources – for those that have seen fit to ignore the facts. Bush told us war was not inevitable when it plainly was. He told us he was exhausting all diplomatic options when he plainly had already decided to invade regardless of the diplomatic outcome. This is all well known.
The fact that many on the right seem willing to excuse this lying to the American public about war, but fly into paroxysms of rage at the idea of lying about a blowjob is very interesting to me.