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Political conflict intensifies over Bush’s Iraq war lies
The political conflict within US ruling circles over the debacle resulting from the American intervention in Iraq intensified sharply this week. Vice President Dick Cheney denounced Bush’s critics as “reprehensible,” saying they were “playing politics in the middle of a war,” while a leading Democratic war hawk, Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania, startled official Washington on Thursday by calling for the immediate withdrawal of US troops in Iraq.
Republican congressmen responded to Murtha’s statement with furious denunciations, accusing the congressman of cowardice and all but branding the Democrats as allies of terrorists and traitors. Leading Democrats reacted either by distancing themselves from his remarks, disavowing them, or refusing to comment.
Speaking Wednesday night at a dinner sponsored by the right-wing Frontiers of Freedom Institute, Cheney had escalated the attack on critics of the war begun by Bush in his Veterans Day address in Pennsylvania. Cheney declared that “the suggestion that’s been made by some US senators that the president of the United States or any member of this administration purposely misled the American people on pre-war intelligence is one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city.”
Cheney reiterated Bush’s argument that in voting to authorize the war in October 2002, leading congressional Democrats “arrived at the same judgment about Iraq’s capabilities and intentions [as] that made by this administration and by the previous administration.... There was broad-based, bipartisan agreement that Saddam Hussein was a threat, that he had violated UN Security Council Resolutions.”
“What we’re hearing now is some politicians contradicting their own statements and making a play for political advantage in the middle of a war,” Cheney continued. “The saddest part is that our people in uniform have been subjected to these cynical and pernicious falsehoods day in and day out.”
The duplicity of the vice president’s last comment can hardly be overstated. It is true that the US soldiers in Iraq are being subjected to “cynical and pernicious falsehoods day in and day out,” but the lies are emanating from the Bush administration, not from opponents of the war. Saddam’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, a Baghdad role in the September 11 terrorist attacks, Iraqis welcoming US soldiers as liberators—these and similar lies have been spread endlessly by the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon and the US media. Within the Bush administration, Cheney himself has played the leading role in their dissemination.
Read More
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/nov2005/bush-n19.shtml
Speaking Wednesday night at a dinner sponsored by the right-wing Frontiers of Freedom Institute, Cheney had escalated the attack on critics of the war begun by Bush in his Veterans Day address in Pennsylvania. Cheney declared that “the suggestion that’s been made by some US senators that the president of the United States or any member of this administration purposely misled the American people on pre-war intelligence is one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city.”
Cheney reiterated Bush’s argument that in voting to authorize the war in October 2002, leading congressional Democrats “arrived at the same judgment about Iraq’s capabilities and intentions [as] that made by this administration and by the previous administration.... There was broad-based, bipartisan agreement that Saddam Hussein was a threat, that he had violated UN Security Council Resolutions.”
“What we’re hearing now is some politicians contradicting their own statements and making a play for political advantage in the middle of a war,” Cheney continued. “The saddest part is that our people in uniform have been subjected to these cynical and pernicious falsehoods day in and day out.”
The duplicity of the vice president’s last comment can hardly be overstated. It is true that the US soldiers in Iraq are being subjected to “cynical and pernicious falsehoods day in and day out,” but the lies are emanating from the Bush administration, not from opponents of the war. Saddam’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, a Baghdad role in the September 11 terrorist attacks, Iraqis welcoming US soldiers as liberators—these and similar lies have been spread endlessly by the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon and the US media. Within the Bush administration, Cheney himself has played the leading role in their dissemination.
Read More
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/nov2005/bush-n19.shtml
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