Revisionist Iraq history from White House (Palm Beach Editorial)

[UpInArms]

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/auto/epaper/editions/today/opinion_f351dc6c85f4a0d000d7.html

It wasn't only 16 words in the State of the Union address. Iraq's nuclear threat sounded whenever President Bush, his spokesman Ari Fleischer, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or national security adviser Condoleezza Rice beat the war drum.

"We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," for example. Ms. Rice said that on CNN's Late Edition Sept. 8. In Mr. Bush's Oct. 7 Cincinnati speech -- the one from which he removed a reference to nuclear material from Niger, according to CIA Director George Tenet -- the president said, "The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program." The only top official who didn't pound on nukes was Secretary of State Colin Powell, who omitted any reference from his Feb. 5 United Nations presentation.

<snip>

The clear and present danger that would have justified preemptive war last spring, if there was one, would have been Saddam Hussein on the verge of having nuclear weapons. Was he? British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he could be in "45 minutes." But that comment is now inoperative.

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[caledesi]

1. Excellent article. Says it all..

"Why war now?" and the answer was, "Nukes any minute." Americans died for that proposition and still are dying. It's no "little flaw."