Thanks to the press
It is becoming more and more evident that President Bush and the Administration were predisposed to attack Iraq. This made them less than objective in assessing and evaluating evidence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Walter Pincus of the Washington Post writes this morning that:
"... a review of speeches and reports, plus interviews with present and former administration officials and intelligence analysts, suggests that between Oct. 7, when President Bush made a speech laying out the case for military action against Hussein, and Jan. 28, when he gave his State of the Union address, almost all the other evidence had either been undercut or disproved by U.N. inspectors in Iraq." Read the entire article.
The President had to find something dramatic that would stoke the fire of American public opinion in favor of attack. The uranium claim apparently fit the bill. Thus, it truly symbolizes the administration's effort to find evidence, no matter how tenuous, to bolster its predetermined conclusion.
The unfortunate thing in all this for the American public is that much of the "evidence" was based on classified intelligence information. The administration "for national security reasons" was not forthcoming about the sources, the countervailing interpretations and the ambiguities inherently involved. The American public was being asked to support a pre-emptive attack on another country based upon information they could not evaluate.
Where was Congress in all this? I would say they were a pretty wimpy bunch. They didn't even have the guts to stand up and declare war.
I believe we owe thanks to the press. Democracy and openness are prevailing now. Whatever the final outcome, we are beginning to get a much better understanding of how truly flimsy the "evidence" was. Americans should never abdicate their responsibility to demand the truth.
8:38:49 AM 
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