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"But the main Downing Street document does not introduce us to any hidden, arcane or occult knowledge, and it explains no mystery. On a visit to Washington before the Iraq war, some senior British officials formed the strong and correct impression that the Bush administration was bent upon an intervention. Their junior note-taker committed the literary and political solecism of saying that intelligence findings and "facts" were being "fixed" around this policy.
Well, if that doesn't prove it, I don't know what does. We apparently have an administration that can, on the word of a British clerk, "fix" not just findings but also "facts." Never mind for now that the English employ the word "fix" in a slightly different way – a better term might have been "organized."
Who is there who does not know that the Bush administration decided after September 2001 to change the balance of power in the region and to enforce the Iraq Liberation Act, passed unanimously by the Senate in 1998, which made it overt American policy to change the government of Iraq? This was a fairly open conspiracy and an open secret. Given that everyone from Hans Blix to Jacques Chirac believed that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons, it made legal sense to advance this case under the banner of international law and to treat the Iraqi dictator "as if" (and how else?) his strategy of concealment and deception were prima facie proof.
The British attorney general – who has no jurisdiction in these 50 states – was worried that "regime change" alone would not be a sufficient legal basis. One appreciates his concern. But the existence of the Hussein regime was itself a defiance of all known international laws, and we had before us the consequences of previous failures to act, in Bosnia and Rwanda, where action would have been another word for "regime change."
Many in the British Foreign Office, like many in the State Department and the CIA, felt more comfortable with the status quo as they knew it. But theirs is only one opinion among many. How odd that the American left, when it is not busy swallowing the unpunctuated words of the CIA, follows this with another helping of wisdom from the most reactionary institution of the British state.
If such a left is not careful, it will end up consoling itself in futile bitterness and resentment in the way the Old Right used to do: by brooding on the hellish manner in which Franklin Roosevelt told the Japanese to "bring it on" at Pearl Harbor. I favor taking such theories at face value, as a thought experiment, to see how they pan out. It is clear that Roosevelt hoped the Japanese empire would make a mistake and furnish a pretext for war: The plain evidence of this hope is what keeps the conspiracy theory alive.
I rather doubt he would have wanted to start such a war with the loss of the Pacific Fleet, but still, he did think a confrontation was inevitable, as indeed it was. And William Casey may have seen the chance for a double coup: taking credit for the release of the Iranian hostages and discrediting Jimmy Carter in the bargain.
But if it had all come out at the time, and been proved, would this change my attitude to Japanese imperialism or to Iranian hostage-taking theocracy? Certainly not. The demand would be to impeach those responsible in Washington and to form a national bipartisan alliance to fight even harder against our enemies and in defense of our friends.
Full circle, then: The outrage about the Downing Street memo has led Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., to demand that we tell the al-Qaeda forces in Iraq exactly when we intend to give up. Mr. Jones is the right-wing bigmouth who once wanted to rename french fries "freedom fries." He was a moral and political cretin when he did that, and he has been unable to stop being a moral and political cretin since. "
=SNIP=======
This is from Christopher Hitchens, a man who has written a book attacking Sister Teresa, and who argued
against making her a Saint at the Vatican...
Read what he says and consider the source I say!