He obviously learned from the very best
The Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister explains why the “total absent” of WMDs in Iraq really doesn’t mean very much:
Saddam Hussein was evil. Saddam Hussein was himself a weapon of mass destruction.
Now please follow the logic show offered by our friendly Deputy PM: there is no evidence that Iraq had any WMD, but the reason going to war against Iraq was correct is that:
Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh backed Blair’s remarks, pointing to evidence that Saddam was diverting money from the U.N. food-for-oil humanitarian program to buy new weapons.
There’s evidence that Saddam was diverting money to buy weapons of which there is no evidence. Japan is also undisturbed:
The Japanese government concludes that the nonexistent of facilities would not question the responsibility of our government, and we believe other governments reached the same conclusion,” Hosoda told reporters.
As for Bush — well that’s his story and he’s sticking to it:
“There was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks, and in the world after September the 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take,” Bush said.
It’s a pretty long trip from “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud” (1) to “Saddam could pass information to terrorists.” What information was he going to pass on? The address of the best Starbucks in Baghdad? (PS: They’re all good.)
(Thanks to Blair for the link.)
“There was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks…”
Who is Bush talking about here — Saddam Hussein, or David fucking Copperfield? “Pass weapons”?! How can you pass what you don’t have?
Here, try for yourself. Cook beans, corn and chicken for dinner tonight. Then ask your wife to “Please pass the filet mignon.” See what kind of look you get.
Probably the same kind of look we should all be giving W right about now…
My head hurts. Someone call the logic police!
Hmmm. Bush felt it necessary to specify that the risk was “a real risk” so that some of us wouldn’t be tempted to insert adjectives of our own choosing, like “imagined,” “fabricated,” “nonexistent,” etc.
They were “gaming the system.” Dammit, that’s Halliburton’s job! Plus Rumsfeld likes Iraq, ‘cos stuff there “blows up real good!”
“When the World’s Back Was Turned”–International Affairs as sung by the two Johns (not Kerry & Edwards, but They Might Be Giants).
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This is just typical Bush. Not really a lie if you read it right, but to read it “right” makes it sound insane. He didn’t say that Saddam would pass WMDs, but simply weapons… like a box cutter or a rifle. It was just a coincidence that he said it while talking about WMDs. (And of course he said there was only a “risk” that he’d pass on those deadly brass knuckles or whatever so the fact that he had absolutely no operational ties to terrorists and that the intelligence indicated that he was unlikely to give them any weapons doesn’t matter either. It’s just a risk.)
So, when you read it the way he meant it – the way that’s not an actual lie – he said, “It’s possible that at some time in the future Saddam might have given a knife to a terrorist so we had to invade Iraq, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis and over a thousand Americans so far. It was so worth it!”
Good to see we are sharing our talking points with foreign leaders. Type “Hussein was a weapon of mass destruction” (in the quotes) into Google. Yeesh!
I’m sorry, but isn’t this the Chewbacca Defence?
Lookit the monkey. Lookit the silly monkey!
If Saddam was a threat to pass weapons knowledge to terrorists, it’s interesting, ’cause he didn’t have the knowledge. His employees did, but now those employees and their scary knoweldge are safely — dead? locked up? or running around a country in such termoil that it’s dead easy to pass such knowledge to anyone who wants it, through borders no longer guarded by the Iraqi army (we destroyed it) in a world gone mad.
Way to go. You don’t get rid of hornets by kicking the nest!
Ed