WMD Hunt Ends; Bush's Spin Goes On

From the Nation:

And then McClellan doled out the usual 9/11 boilerplate: "Remember, September 11th changed the equation about how we confront the threats that we face, and the president recognizes what his most important responsibility is, and that is to do everything in his power to protect the American people. And nothing has changed in terms of his views when it comes to Iraq, what he has previously stated and what you have previously heard. The president knows that by advancing freedom in a dangerous region, we are making the world a safer place."

But if Hussein had no WMDs, how much of a threat was he? Bush and McClellan--for obvious reasons--refuse to concede Bush hyped the threat to win popular support for the war. If Bush had argued before the war only that the United States needed to invade and occupy Iraq in order to promote freedom in the region because that would protect Americans at home, wouldn't the prewar debate have taken on a much different tone? And the war would have been a much tougher sell for Bush and his crew.

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I often wonder why so many Americans just don't seem to understand what's going on with this: Bush lied about Iraq's WMDs to get the US into an illegal quagmire of a war; therefore, he's a criminal of the highest order, a war criminal, even. My best guess is that Americans didn't really understand what was going on in the first place. Secular totalitarian Muslims, radical Islamo-fascists, Sunni, Shiite, Al-Qaeda, Taliban...it's all the same. Us and them, our team versus their team, however, is something that Americans have drilled into them from the earliest ages. In the end, it seems to me, most Americans see war as some kind of global football game. Like the Oklahoma Sooner and Texas Aggie fans of the 1980s, it doesn't matter if our team broke the law; what matters is getting a National Championship, by any means necessary.

Of course, in this game, people die, and it will probably be some years before most Americans realize exactly what it is they've been supporting. It's pretty frustrating that headline after headline proclaims that Iraq had no WMDs and it's all greeted with a collective yawn.

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