Oh what a tangled war-web we weave

I think, like many people, I was so fixated on the Chimperator's obvious bait & switch routine innacurately blaming Iraq for 9/11 that I missed the implication that he may have actively decided to try to kill two birds with a lot of dead American soldiers. The point that the Bush Administration may have be hoping to make Iraq a Mecca for terrorists to further justify his actions and establish himself as a great leader was not lost on David Marks and the readers of JABBS.

BUSH: We went to war because we were attacked, and we are at war today because there are still people out there who want to harm our country and hurt our citizens. Some may disagree with my decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but all of us can agree that the world's terrorists have now made Iraq a central front in the war on terror. ... The terrorists know they cannot defeat our troops, so they seek to weaken our nation's resolve. They know there is no room for them in a free and democratic Middle East, so the terrorists and insurgents are trying to get us to retreat.

Marks goes on to explain

It's a classic Bush text from the Karl Rove/Frank Luntz school of imagemaking. Bush doesn't want to spell out that we were attacked by Al Qaeda terrorists, nearly all of whom were Saudi, headed by Osama bin Laden, who is still at large, and apparently financed in part by Iran.

Bushspeak allows for bait-and-switch. Al Qaeda becomes morphed into the Iraqi insurgency. Why are we at war with Iraq? Because "the world's terrorists have now made Iraq a central front in the war on terror." It may be a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it's red meat for Bush's conservative following. Why should we support the Bush plan in Iraq? Not because Bush has a sound exit strategy, but because the terrorists "seek to weaken our nation's resolve."

The latter point is the crux of the conservative argument that anyone who disagrees with the Administration, especially if that person voices their dissent, is undermining the war effort and endangering not only the troops but our entire nation.

Tags: Iraq War; Bush Administration; Foreign Policy; BBA; Downing Street Memorandum; Patriotism; Honor; Rove; hypocrisy;conservatism

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