Re-writing history

Was anybody else besides me seriously offended by the president's Veteran's Day speech yesterday? Well, Matthew Rothschild was as he explains in an article entitled, "Bush tries to gag critics in Veterans Day speech". Here's a sample:

In his Veterans Day speech, Bush took the low road.

Responding to critics who charge him with manipulating intelligence and hoodwinking the American people into war, Bush said: "It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how the war began."

And then he set about rewriting it.

He said, "Intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein."

But at the time Bush launched the war, many intelligence agencies had severe doubts.

Britain's did, as the Downing Street Memo of July 23, 2002, clearly illustrated. It noted that the Bush Administration had "already made up its mind" to overthrow Saddam and that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." The memo stated that "the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

Why then did Cheney say, on August 26, 2002, that Saddam Hussein was amassing weapons of mass destruction "to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us"?

Why then did Bush say, on March 17, 2003, that Saddam Hussein had "some of the most lethal weapons ever devised"?

Nor did the governments of France, Germany, China, and Russia buy Bush's arguments in February and March of 2003.

There's a good reason for that.

The United Nations weapons inspectors had reported back to the Security Council that they could find no weapons of mass destruction. And Mohamed ElBaradei, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency and is the current Nobel Peace Prize-winner, said in no uncertain terms that Saddam Hussein had not reconstituted his nuclear weapons program, much less the nuclear weapons themselves, as Dick Cheney falsely claimed just days before Bush launched the war.

Then Bush, in a desperate ploy, invoked John Kerry's words when the Senator supported the October 2002 authorization of force. Bush quoted Kerry as saying: "When I vote to give the President of the Untied States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat--and a grave threat--to our security."

That was an embarrassing and indefensible vote and statement by Kerry. But Kerry himself now admits that Bush cooked the intelligence."

This administration misled a nation into war by cherry-picking intelligence and stretching the truth beyond recognition," Kerry said after Bush's speech.

What REALLY annoyed me is that Bush claimed that the people we are fighting want to destroy our way of life. They want nothing of the sort. They want us to get out of their country. Sheesh!