We Told You So

Just in time for "The Progressive Perspective" to come back on the air from our new world headquarters on the East Coast, comes the final crumbling of President Bush's excuses for invading and occupying Iraq without provocation.

Way back in 2002 and early 2003, Hans Blix, the United Nations’ head weapons inspector, said Saddam Hussein’s Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction.

After the fall of Baghdad, David Kay, the White House’s handpicked weapons-hunter, reported that “we were all wrong” and said there were no weapons.

And now Charles Duelfer, Kay’s replacement, has made his report to Congress. In it, he reports that -- guess what? -- Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction.

Specifically, that were no such weapons when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, having all been destroyed after the first Gulf War in 1991. That while Saddam did retain the capacity to rebuild a WMD arsenal, it was never maintained. That any remaining programs were at best dormant. And that no attempts to restart weapons programs were conducted after the UN inspectors left in 1998.

When President Bush and his White House cadre of neoconservatives launched their propaganda campaign back in 2002 to scare the American people into backing an invasion, Reason #1 was Saddam's supposed WMD arsenal. We were terrified with tales of unmanned aerial drones spraying anthrax over our cities. We were horrified by scenarios of Saddam gift-wrapping a nuclear weapon and presenting it to Osama bin Laden. And we were cowed into silence by the constant drumbeat of statements telling us we were either with the President or we were with "the evildoers."

We were so frightened by the what-ifs, the coulds, the possiblies, that we stampeded to wave the flag and to tell the Administration, "Yes! Get him before he can get us!"

Of course, he couldn't "get us." It became apparent within days of Baghdad's fall, when people started to realize that no WMD had been found or even used. And as the weeks and months rolled on, when nothing at all was found, the true believers began to panic. "You obviously want Saddam back in power!" they said when the straightforward was pointed out to them, evidently forgetting that the ends do not justify the means.

With this final debunking of the prime invasion rationale, one might expect President Bush to acknowledge it, if only by a little bit.

Of course not.

"There was a risk -- a real risk -- that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks," Bush said at a Pennsylvania rally. "In the world after September 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take."

We now know what was said all along -- that these weapons did not exist.

Indeed, there is a far greater risk that such weapons would be given to terrorist groups by Iran or North Korea, or built with nuclear material smuggled out of Russia. But we see no moves whatsoever to confront Tehran or Pyongyang with the same ferocity that was used against Baghdad. And in a truly idiotic move, the Bush Administration has actually cut spending on helping Russia secure nuclear material and keeping it out of the wrong hands.

In his debate with John Kerry last week, Bush came off as confused and defensive when asked why he did not subject Iran or North Korea to the same "shock and awe" treatment he lavished on Iraq. "The IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] is involved," he said. "There's a special protocol recently been passed that allows for instant inspections."

This after publicly sneering at the IAEA and whole concept of inspections when it pointed out before the Iraq invasion that Saddam did not possess nuclear weapons.

But it was never really about 9/11 at all. Months ago, it was revealed by various Administration insiders that Bush had demanded the invasion of Iraq long before 9/11, that he had used the terrorist attacks to scare us into supporting his plans no matter what.

George W. Bush and his inner circle wanted to invade Iraq. They had a variety of reasons, from getting the oil to "finishing the job" to revenge against the man who "tried to kill [Bush's] daddy." They didn't care whether their reasons were good or even rational.

We now see the price we have paid. Our national credibility is shattered. We have rapidly gone from being the most respected nation in the world to being one of the most hated and feared. We have poured well over $100 billion into the Iraq quagmire, and more than 1,000 Americans have given their lives to -- what?

Did they die defending America from a raving madman? No, because according to Duelfer, Saddam had no intention of taking on the United States and had nothing to do it with anyway.

Did they die to spread democracy in the Middle East? Not likely, with handpicked Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi saying that elections, if held at all, will be held in only part of the country, and with Washington backing him up.

Did they die to liberate the Iraqi people from a dictator? Yes, but our welcome was rapidly worn out and this was never realized back at the White House.

Bush has finally been reduced to saying that Saddam was an "evildoer," a bad man. Sorry, but that just isn't a good reason for throwing away lives, money and our national reputation.

At this point, with less than a month before the election and the Bush campaign still unable to come up with a compelling reason, I guess we'll never hear one.