I remember hearing, during the run-up to the Iraq war in 2002, the following argument: They can’t be serious about invading Iraq. We still have a war to finish and a nation to build in Afghanistan, and we still haven’t found bin Laden. Besides, they’re moving on two tracks, and diplomacy is sure to resolve the whole WMD mess before things get out of hand.
Of course, we also heard reports of military preparations and looming no-return deployment deadlines, we also accumulated evidence that the Bush administration was twisting intelligence for political ends, and we also witnessed a ferocious disinformation campaign that left 70 percent of Americans thinking that Saddam Hussein was response for the 9/11 attacks. So fears of war as fait accompli weren’t totally unfounded. And as we now know, the “Relax, they can’t be that crazy” contingent were, alas, the ones who were disconnected from reality. Colin Powell was used as a dupe, the American people were deceived, and we’re still paying the price.
Today, we’re experiencing a note-for-note replay of the events of 2002, with only a single-letter change, from “q” to “n.” Sanity suggests we can’t be headed down the same road with Iran that we barreled down with Iraq. That’s the don’t-worry message of Helene Cooper’s Sunday Times Week in Review piece — “It’s Just Like Iraq, Only Different”:
 | Was the administration again using public diplomacy for political cover while preparing to use military force? This time, all signs say no. |
But if you read the Cooper piece closely, you will indeed worry. The carelessness of its language and the slantedness of its assumptions suggest that some journalists still haven’t learned the lessons of Iraq. Cooper writes: “A connection between the Sept. 11 attacks and Saddam Hussein was never proved.” That’s like saying, “A connection between phlogiston and fire was never proved.” There never was any connection. Everyone in the Bush White House knew that by 2002. But the administration did a great job of blurring the truth to suit its political needs. And its propaganda is still paying dividends.
Then Cooper writes about “the botched intelligence on Iraq’s weapons program.” This parrots the administration line: “We got bad intelligence.” It’s an easy way to brush aside everything we’ve learned since 2002 about how Bush appointees cherry-picked the most extreme bits of intelligence, even when U.S. and allied experts reported they were likely untrustworthy or fraudulent.
The Bush team knew what answer they wanted to start a war, and they kept pushing until they got the intelligence that supported that answer. Calling that “botched intelligence” is a grotesque but convenient act of buck-passing. And Congress, which avidly investigated the intelligence failures surrounding Iraq and 9/11, has never completed its long-promised inquiry into the policy side of the failure.
Cooper concludes that, this time around, Bush is really serious about diplomacy: “If Iran gets closer to acquiring — or acquires — a bomb, policy makers could one day be tempted to think that a military clash is worth risking. But that point hasn’t been reached yet.”
No, it hasn’t. It hadn’t been reached with Iraq in summer of 2002, either, we were then told. But today the intelligence distortion about Iran is already beginning, with the axis of Cheney/Rumsfeld promoting the message that Iran is a terrorist state led by a Hitlerian madman — and even perhaps exaggerating the imminence of Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons.
Of course I don’t want to see a nuclear-armed Iran. But I don’t trust the Bush administration to assess the threat or be honest about the choice of response. Its record is too nightmarishly bad.
So every time you hear someone say, “They couldn’t be that crazy,” pinch yourself, remind yourself how crazy they’ve been already, and remember how reliably they have turned to international crises as circle-the-wagon moments to boost flagging poll numbers.
We aren’t supposed to say this, but it seems obvious to me: The easiest way for President Bush to transform the political environment domestically and kick over a chess board that’s now stacked against him would be to invade another country. That’s something for everyone to worry about.
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