History washes away lies and the truth eventually comes out; the greater the secret, the greater the likelihood of its being revealed.  Whether one is a Democrat or a Republican, supports the war or opposes it, we all feel we’ve been lied to about the war in Iraq.  The truth comes out.

“States like these [Iraq, Iran, and North Korea], and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.  By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger.  They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred.  They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States.  In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.”
-President George W Bush, 1/29/02 State of the Union Speech

With those words, our President put three nations on notice that they are considered a threat, and that they will be addressed as threats.  He didn’t say, “I don’t like you so I’m going to use my brilliance to fool the nation and the world into invading your nations.” He said that this Union has three states that are threats to it, and the threat is that they might provide devastating weapons to the terrorists with whom America is at war.

It was not a threat to wage war on Iraq, Iran, or North Korea, and it was not the start of the anti-war movement in the United States.  That movement began on September 11th, 2001.  America and the world seemed united in the cause of fighting terrorism.  “We Are All Americans” read the French newspapers, but people forget that those same headlines were followed by anti-war rhetoric that effectively said the United States deserved to be attacked because of its arrogance and should refrain from retaliation as a means of preventing further attacks.  History loves irony-if not hypocrisy.

In the UK sympathetic Britain held candlelight vigils.  Within days it became apparent that Al Queda was responsible for the attacks, and the US was gearing up for one of its most focused act of revenge war ever.  The British government was sympathetic, and confirmed the intelligence reports that Al Queda was responsible, but when it came to offering military assistance to attack and invade the nation that had brought down their empire (Afghanistan) after two failed invasions of their own, the lion balked.  Her Parliament wavered.  Many resigned.  Tens of thousands protested in the streets, and for a while the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair seemed about to fall because of the protest against America’s realized war.

In the Palestinian territories there was great rejoicing and dancing in the streets.  That was ended as soon as possible though when Yasser Arafat realized that his terrorist enemy’s and the Al Queda alliance as well as its state sponsors were about to be engaged in all out war.  He realized that American and United Nations funding would be cut off if he openly allied with them, and so the obligatory letter of sympathy-filled with crocodile tears-was sent to the United States.

In Egypt, there were quieter smiles at the 911 attacks.  People were happy to see the US get hit by the same plague that had run rampant in the Middle East for millennia.  There was also disbelief that the attacks were waged by Muslims.  Despite the hundreds of suicide bombings that year all done in the name of Islam, they were in disbelief.  As America’s war with Afghanistan erupted, the quiet smiles turned to torches and Molotov cocktails thrown at the American embassy amidst riots in protest of America’s revenge war.  Similar post-911 grimaces were really quiet grins that turned into riots and protests with each new bomb dropped on the Taliban (Al Queda’s political arm, and hardly a representative of Islam’s peaceful nature).

In Pakistan hundreds of thousands rioted.  The government of General Musharaaf almost collapsed.  There were assassination attempts, bombings, and a level of Islamic civil disobedience that makes today’s insurgency in Iraq look like Disneyland.  When Osama Bin Laden fled to his mountain fortress of Tora Bora (a place that has been a successful refuge from military assault for thousands of years), Pakistani forces were supposed to prevent his escape.  Instead, it seems apparent now that local, low-level commanders were successfully bribed, and the man who authorized the 911 attacks was long gone before American forces even arrived in the region in force.

Even in the United States, there was grand discontent.  The very night that we all tried to sleep with visions of couples holding hands as they jumped from burning towers…there was division.  We seemed united, but half of America seemed to hear the message of John F Kennedy’s 1940 book, Why England Slept, and they declared, “911 changes everything.” The other half of the nation vowed to ignore the attacks, and they made a myriad of pledges, “If we stop going to the movies, if we stop traveling, if we start getting though with international rogues, if we start buying American instead of foreign, if we [change in any way] then the terrorists win.” Just as had happened in the Palestinian territories, in the UK, France, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan, as soon as American bombs fell on the Taliban in Afghanistan protesters took to the streets in the United States-15,000 in New York City.

That was the world at the end of 2001, and prior to President Bush’s 1/29/02 State of the Union Speech.  The apparent international unity was not unity at all, but revisionist history from campaigning politicians. 

Many will say that 15,000 protesters in NYC is not a big deal-not a signifigant anti-war movement.  I agree.  Those 15,000 people who protested the bombing of the Taliban, and the subsurface division that was present in all Americans on the night of September 11th, 2001 were not at all similar to the anti-war movement of today.  It remained small in number, power, and press coverage even in the wake of President Bush’s Axis of Evil comment in January 2002. 

Using opinion polls as a measure of the anti-war movement’s strength, popularity, and thus lucrativeness to pandering politicians, we can see that today’s anti-war movement didn’t explode until May/June 2002.  This follows immediately the Democratic Leadership Conference of June 2002 where politicians testing the Presidential campaign waters tried out their talking points.  The clear leader was Gov Howard Dean.  Not long after the conference, he emerged from his previous role as America’s Maple Syrup Czar and Gov. of Vermont, and he leapt on to the national stage.

How?  Why?  Who was that sticky, syrup-masked man?  It’s Dr. Howard Dean-the first politician to come out and pander to the American people the idea that had previously been whispered under the breath of so many people.  He hit the mass media circuit and freely, openly declared that the President was rushing America to war on Iraq.  Doctor, Governor, Maple Syrup Guru, and apparently international, geopolitical genius as well as intelligence analystisimo…this man claimed to know more than the President, his advisors, all the intelligence community leaders of the day, previous presidents, foreign presidents in the region, the United Nations, and even his own party brethren.  TIME, US News, Newsweek, NYT, LAT, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, everyone had him on TV.  Why?  Not because this man of maple syrup and medical genius knew more than everyone, but simply because he was saying what millions of Americans wanted to hear.

In June 2002, there was almost no evidence of how decayed Iraq’s infrastructure had become.  There was overwhelming evidence (left over from the Clinton Administration’s Desert Fox attack on Iraq) that Saddam still had WMD.  There was overwhelming evidence (mostly from the mainstream media and leftover from the Clinton Administration’s 12/98 strike on Iraq) that Saddam had close ties to Al Queda leadership.  And while Gov Dean raced around the country from media outlet to media outlet from 6/02-9/02, the anti-war movement grew.  His Presidential campaign coffers grew past an estimated $30 million dollars, and the President remained virtually silent on Iraq.

It wasn’t until three months AFTER Gov. Dean fed the anti-war movement on baseless, pandered propaganda that President Bush went to the United Nations and began the diplomatic, rhetorical, and the huge military buildup to either resolution or war on Iraq.  He went to the United Nations on September 12th, 2002 and started a “rush to war” that would last over half a year.  History will not wonder how the anti-war movement started before the movement towards war.

Gov. Dean told Americans that the war wasn’t necessary.  He said negotiations would work [later the Bush Admin tried this, but US negotiations and UN negotiations failed].  He said sanctions would work [the Bush Administration had tried this immediately prior to the 911 attacks, after the 911 attacks, and proposed ‘smart sanctions’ to the UN-all failed].  As other potential Presidential candidates saw that Gov. Dean was raking in the campaign money, they tried to find a middle ground between the hawkish positions most had held through the Clinton years and the dovish anti-war message that had money raining into the Dean campaign.

On October 2, 2002 (four months after Gov. Dean spoke out against the war, and 1 month after the President began the diplomatic runup to war) the Intelligence Community presented a National Intelligence Estimate on the threat posed by Iraq.  This report was classified because it held details on how the spies and intelligence agencies got their information as well as how it was analyzed.  As a classified report, members of Congress had to view it in a special classified room, and they were required to sign a log confirming that they had seen it.  According to the Washington Post, only a handful of the 535 members of Congress bothered to read the intelligence report.

The next day, leaders of the intelligence community personally met with both Democrat and Republican House and Senate leaders in their intelligence oversight committees.  The members of Congress asked them how solid the intelligence was, and they were told-as was the President when he asked, “It’s as good as it can possibly be” “It’s a slam dunk.” Independent and international thinktanks agreed.  Janes’ Defence, the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the Federation of American Scientists, even UNMOVIC would agree and republish the WMD claims in their 3/6/03 Unresolved Disarmament Issues Report.  CENTCOM’s commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, was personal friends with the King of Jordan and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarrak as well as had a close working relationship with all the intelligence agencies of the dozen or so countries in the region-all of which said Saddam had WMD and ties to Al Queda.

Governor Dean apparently had better information via the Vermont Intelligence Agency, and those who believed war was not necessary chose to believe him instead of all the experts in the world.  Why?  It was too ugly to believe that Saddam had become a threat, and it was not appealing at all to believe that all other options had been tried except invasion.  Of course, through all the opposition that he tossed out during his Presidential campaign, no one ever saw him publish a plan for Iraq.

They had been tried though.  Over a hundred assassination attempts were set upon Saddam, and all failed.  500,000 Iraqis rose up in rebellion demanding democracy, but failed.  International sanctions were imposed, but he was not removed or defanged.  Dozens of coups were attempted.  No fly zones, three massive missile attacks, three full out air wars, three aborted invasions, and at least four CIA-backed uprisings…all failed.

Governor Dean countered the real experts by cherry-picking dissenting caveats from intelligence and national security appointees leftover from the Clinton Administration and political partisans who were either covering their butts, hedging their bets, or just voicing opposition to the Bush Administration as so many millions of others were doing.  The partisan divide created by vestigial grousing over Vietnam, Watergate, The Iran-Hostage Crisis, dozens of investigations into the Clinton Administration, the Lewinsky Affair, and the 2000 election debacle was and is powerful.  Those events combine their flavors into a tasty bit of popular partisan divide where even an amateur political chef from tiny Vermont can make a meal out of sizzle without a bit of steak on the plate.  The man never had a plan.

Throughout the longest and most-expensive Presidential campaign in American history (the 2002-2004 Presidential campaign), there were two core themes: Iraq and ABB (“Anybody But Bush”).  These themes were reflexive.  Some could oppose the Iraq War as a means of opposing President Bush.  Some could oppose President Bush because of the Iraq War.  There’s a limitless list of smaller themes and other reasons for opposing the President, but the fact of the matter is that in 2004 he was re-elected.  The American people had been given a chance to hold him accountable for 911, for the shortcomings since then, and they could even hold him accountable for what was marketed as a bad decision-the invasion of Iraq.  Americans chose to keep him in office.

Since then, the anti-war movement has grown.  It was never just Governor Dean, but he is the one credited with taking a mere 15,000 people on the streets of New York City into a movement.  Whether it’s Governor Dean, Michael Moore, Senator Kerry, Congressman Kucinich, or whoever, the movement got its momentum and legitimacy from Governor Dean (albeit a full 3 months before the movement FOR war began).  Today, 60-70% of Americans disapprove of the Iraq War in one way or another.  President Bush says we have to stay in Iraq until it’s safe and secure so that we don’t have to invade a third time.  Leaders of the anti-war movement pander to their followers with a theme that effectively says, “American can just walk away, and everything will be ok.  Everything will even be better than it is now.”

Gov. Dean pandered to the anti-war movement, threw gasoline on it, and now it is out of his control.  He still panders to it, still fuels it, still tells those that there is another way, but as in the past he offers no examples of the other way.

There is no other way.

He campaigned in 2002, 2004, and now 2006 pretending that there was another way besides war; his latest example being labeled, “A New Direction In Iraq.” On election night 2006, he revealed to Chris Matthews that there never was a plan for A New Direction In Iraq-not even a committee to form one, and not even a brainstorm list of ideas.

http://newsbusters.org/node/8944

This is planet Earth.  While there are examples of civility in varying degrees, it remains largely an uncivilized planet where human anomalies are occasionally born and/or bred to remove their “being” aspects and become humans only in species.  People like Dhamer, Stalin, Hitler, Manson, Amin, and Hussein exist.  As long as they exist, they will need to be confronted-too often by war.

Gov. Howard Dean mislead voters to get his political party in power.  So too did many of their members.  Just ask them what their plan is for “A New Direction In Iraq?” Even though they campaigned again and again that they would change the nature of the Iraq War, today’s talking point is that it’s the President’s responsibility-not theirs.

“Will the Democrats do what they promised to do in the campaign or will they let the voters down again and not stop this war?”

-Chris Matthews, Democratic Party pawn and host of MSNBC’s “Hardball” 7/4/07
http://newsbusters.org/node/9974#comment-254600

Scott Malensek