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See ya, Dubya

(June 2003)

Come November 2004, Dubya could be going the way of the Dodo. Out. Extinct. Or, it could happen sooner. Iraqgate, anyone?

Like springtime buds, inquisitive fingers are sticking up everywhere,
"But, respectfully, Mr. President, you said Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction. So, where are they? Please tell us Mr. President, that
you didn't lie to start a war." Coming out from the most unexpected
of places. Townhall.com, a right-wing Internet site, with William
F. Buckley who asks "How was intelligence information, presented as
conclusive, so apparently illusory?" in a piece titled "Who screwed
up?" Time magazine, which titles its investigation "Weapons Of Mass
Disappearance". Newsweek, which asks: "The message was plain: Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction made war unavoidable. So where are they?" CNN.com, which ponders the question in an article titled "Is lying about the reason for a war an impeachable offense?" In addition, many national newspapers have taken up the chorus, and in Britain where the press is far less restrained about holding their leader Tony Blair accountable, the Sunday Mirror has denounced Blair's WMD claims as "rubbish".

So, why are these stories suddenly coming out? Has mainstream media
suddenly grown a conscience? With reporters and editors defiantly
freeing themselves from the clutching tentacles of corporate oversight? Or is the truth less incredible, but no less dramatic? Is corporate America suddenly getting worried about George Bush's frequent raptures in the company of his cabal of neocons. Is it hankering for a business-friendly Democrat instead, with a not-so-radical foreign policy agenda?

Whatever the reasons, the media is getting more interesting these
days. Bush, under pressure to answer the swirling questions of the
missing WMD's has promised to "reveal the truth". Reveal? Has he
been hiding it all this time? Meanwhile his apologists say that that
the WMD's are there and that we need more time to find them. More
time! Did Bush give the U.N. inspectors more time? Did he not say, of
Saddam that "time is running out for him" to disarm? That he was "sick
and tired of games and deceptions." Well, time is running out for
Bush to level with us what the CIA really told him about Iraq's WMD
program. Is he claiming that his hands are clean and that there was an
intelligence failure on the CIA's part?

If so, how does that square up with CIA director George Tenet's
near-sanctimonious statement: "Our role is to call it like we see it;
to tell policymakers what we know, what we don't know, what we think and what we base it on. That's the code we live by and that is what policymakers expect from us. That is exactly what was done and
continues to be done on intelligence issues related to Iraq." Or with
a report by Reuters on Vince Cannistraro, a former chief of CIA
counterterrorist operations who said he knew of serving intelligence
officers who blame the Pentagon for playing up "fraudulent"
intelligence.

Could Bush wiggle out of this lasso? Sure, find him a patsy willing to
take the rap thereby saving the entire nation from a nasty scandal
(remember Ollie North), and he could claim amnesia. But that will
still cost him the election. Could he plant some WMD's, and in the
absence of U.N. inspectors, discover and quickly destroy them? In this
climate of suspicion, that could be a cover-up worse than Watergate,
just begging to be blown. Could he invent a new enemy, and distract
the public? The Pentagon is certainly skilled at marketing (according
to the BBC, Chicago Tribune and AP, the Jessica Lynch rescue was
"stage-managed", a scandal still unprobed by the majority of media),
but they're not that good, and they would need more time.

No, the time of reckoning is here, and Bush must be held accountable
for making illegal, preemptive wars part of U.S. foreign policy, then
invading a sovereign country on the pretext of its being a threat,
costing the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqis, hundreds of American
soldiers and burdening the U.S. taxpayers with a bill of hundreds of
billions of dollars for a long and difficult period of occupation and
nation building. All on the basis of lies.

Lies cost Jayson Blair his job on the New York Times. Why should Bush or Tony Blair's jobs be immune?