By Jerry Burke
Psychics are full of it. I know that in places that some people don't like to talk about, there is hope beyond hope that maybe Lady Malacia, divining from her goat-cheese-smelling basement "office," is speaking in earnest, and that we should leave our jobs and move to Guam.
But allow me to offer this query in response: If Lady Malacia or any one of the thousands of shysters looking to make a
quick buck off vague communications with the "other side" had any real power, why would they be working out of a basement apartment or buying time on the Sci-Fi network at 5 in the morning?
They wouldn't. They're charlatans. John Edward (the guy who talks to the dead, not the former Democratic VP candidate) is their king, and they lie through their teeth, selling false hope to anyone desperate enough to believe it.
And why not? Fifty-one percent of Americans voted for George Bush last November, thinking that the war in Iraq was a good idea, that the economy was still in the toilet because things were too good in the 1990s and that the war on terror was making us safer. There's one born every minute!
Let's look at Iraq today. With 57 percent of Americans, according to the most recent Gallup poll, believing that the war wasn't worth the cost (over 1,600 dead soldiers; an Army that missed its recruiting goal by over 40 percent in April; upward of 500 civilians dead in the last two weeks alone; $200 billion already sunk, and a request for $50 billion more not three days after the last $82 billion "emergency" spending bill was passed), it's looking like we might have been bamboozled.
Sure, they told us freedom was priority one once the real priorities (WMDs and that shadowy Al Qaeda link) didn't pan out. But it's good that we write stuff down before it falls down the memory hole, because otherwise we wouldn't know that in his address to the nation on March 17, 2003, laying out the reasons for war, Bush mentioned WMDs in 18 of the 27 paragraphs. Five of them raise the freedom issue, and surely the roses were already being trimmed to provide liberators with a carpet of petals on which to enter Baghdad.
Now comes a little memo, written by a British agent, that describes the positions of the key allies in (wait for it) July 2002. That's eight months before the war began, a scant 10 months before the "mission" was "accomplished."
And the Downing Street memo, which has not been discredited or denied by British or American leaders, clearly states that "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The [National Security Council] had no patience with the U.N. route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."
But that wasn't what we were hearing. We were told that if Saddam let inspectors back in, he'd be fine. He did let them in. It didn't matter one bit.
We were told the war would be done quickly and on the cheap. Ten billion dollars, tops. We had a great plan and would exit within a year.
We were told diplomacy had run its course. We were told the information was a "slam dunk." We were told Iraq would become center stage for the war on terror.
Well, that last one was sort of correct. Overall, the number of what the government considers "significant" terror attacks grew to about 655 last year, up from the previous record of around 175 in 2003. Terrorist incidents in Iraq shot up from 22 attacks to 198 - nine times the previous year's total.
But as long as we're safe, whatever, right? Tell that to the parents of the dead. Tell that to their kids. Tell them their father or mother, improperly trained in urban combat and lacking armor, died to promote democracy in a land that most experts now believe is on the verge, if not already in the middle, of civil war. No, their lives were not lost in vain, but those kids don't care either way. They want their dad or mom back, end of story.
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." Thank you, Mr. Bush, for restoring honesty and integrity to the office of the presidency of the United States. Now about those tax cuts stimulating the economy ...
