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Revising So Soon?
by Sudhama Ranganathan •
Sunday, Dec. 28, 2008 at 6:54 PM
uconnharassment@gmail.com
Recently certain members of the Bush administration have been spending time giving exit interviews in record breaking amounts. All the focus seems to be on putting final spins on their record and trying to alter perceptions with regards to what happened and what didn’t during their time in the oval office. President Bush has admitted some regrets while Vice President Cheney conversely spent much of his time defending their actions and expressing no regrets. They both have been paying particular attention to that oh so contentious aspect of their legacy the War in Iraq.
On December 1st President Bush gave an interview to ABC News stating he had regrets about “intelligence failures in Iraq.” That of course is a very non specific admission, especially considering the cost to our nation of the invasion. He could have pointed to numerous specific instances of such failures but did not. He simply went on as if by saying this the world would forget. As if a fog would be magically lifted from our eyes and we would see anew.
But we remember, lest he forget the last two elections. Bush claimed many leaders read the same intelligence reports he did and voted for the war. That also is not true. In fact only five members of Congress read the whole report. That list includes Rep. Nancy Pelosi and then Sen. Bob Graham who among others and despite overwhelming pressure were courageous enough to vote against the invasion.
The nation watched as the administration presented their case for war. We were told there was substantial evidence Saddam Hussein had not only weapons of mass destruction but was actively pursuing nuclear weapons capabilities. President Bush told the nation in his state of the union address that Saddam Hussein attempted to purchase uranium from Niger, an assertion even US officials challenged.
In an interview with Robert Scheer former Secretary of State Colin Powel admitted he also had misgivings. He claimed President Bush followed the misguided advice of vice president Dick Cheney and others. Powell admits he never believed Iraq posed a nuclear threat. The fact is while the president and vice president were giving us certain evidence they left out reports from the Department of Energy and the State Department which stated a lack of credibility regarding those assertions.
What was also ignored were reports from inspectors which, unlike much of the evidence handed to us by the Bush administration, had been corroborated. Inspectors both from the International Atomic Agency and the UN who were actually on the ground found nothing. They asked the Bush administration to hand over any evidence proving WMD so they could go and corroborate it. The administration instead chose to send our men and women of the armed services into war based on scraps of uncorroborated evidence.
Retired General Powell admitted his mistakes in terms of his role in this travesty of a war. Why can’t President Bush or at least vice president Cheney at least have the graciousness to do the same? President Bush’s saying he regrets intelligence failures is not just non-specific it dumps the blame on someone else. But with executive decisions especially regarding war the buck stops with the Oval Office. For the sake of the country I hope he will be more forthright in his admissions as time wears on.
To read about my inspiration for this article go to www.lawsuitagainstuconn.com.