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Bush, The Decider, Says He Was An Iraq War Dissenter
By
John Del Signore
Published Nov 8, 2010
Modified Nov 8, 2010
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By
John Del Signore
Published Nov 8, 2010
Modified Nov 8, 2010
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Mission Accomplished, all right
There's been a lot of confusion about George W. Bush's role in launching our $845 billion adventure in Iraq, but the misunderestistanding will finally be cleared up tonight, when NBC airs Matt Lauer's interview with the 43rd president, who's making an impressive publicity tour to promote his memoir Decision Points. In the interview, the former Commander-in-Chief clears the air once and for all about the ramp-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom. "I was a dissenting voice," explains Bush. "I didn't want to use force. I mean force is the last option for a President. And I think it's clear in the book that I gave diplomacy every chance to work."
The former commander in chief added, "I will also tell you the world's better off without somehow [sic] in power. And so are 25 million Iraqis." Bush's efforts to find a diplomatic solution may be obvious in Bush's book, but what does that pesky reality-based Book of Facts say? Not having read the memoir, which comes out tomorrow, one can only speculate about when exactly Bush dissented from the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz warmongering...because it must have happened sometime before:
- The fall of 2003, when the White House ordered the CIA to forge a letter "from" the head of Iraqi intelligence, Tahir Jalil Habbush, to Saddam Hussein, backdated to July 1st, 2001. Five years later Ron Suskind broke the story about this forged letter, which falsely asserted that Mohammed Atta trained in Iraq before the attacks and Saddam was buying yellow cake for Niger with help from a "small team from the al Qaeda organization."
- January 2003, when, as the Times reports, he kicked off that year by making "clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second [U.N.] resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons... The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein."
- 2002, when he revealed the personal family dynamics fueling his Hussein fetishism, telling reporters, "After all, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad."
- November 2001, when he ordered the Defense Department to develop an updated war plan for Iraq, an order which Rumsfeld was all too eager to obey.
Well, whenever Bush dissented, it wouldn't have made a difference anyway because the Commander-in-Chief could have just overruled him. In the end, you've got to feel for the guy: To be President is to be impotent!
Ultimately, only a narcissistic celebrity had the power to seriously wound Bush. Kanye West famously shocked the world by saying during a Hurricane Katrina fundraising telethon, "George Bush doesn't care about black people" and he's shocked the world once again by apparently being one of the lowest points of Bush's presidency. But now the rapper wants to help rehabilitate Dubya's legacy: West says he now sympathizes with how his criticism stung Bush at the time. "I really more connect with him just on a humanitarian level,"he told a Houston radio station last week. Clearly, Obama needs to send Kanye on a humanitarian mission to rescue Bush from the exclusive Dallas suburb where he ekes out a desperate, lonely existence.
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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