MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow recently aired an hour-long special about the Bush administration’s lies that got us into Iraq. For most of our readers, this will undoubtedly be review (especially if you’ve seen the PBS documentary Bush’s War, which is just a more detailed version of Maddow’s special). Her version isn’t perfect, but it’s notable at least that this was on prime time cable news.
See here for David Swanson’s context and review of the show.
While watching this, as I do whenever I reexamine the blatant lies the Bush administration told to get us into Iraq, all I can think is: “how have these gangsters not been put on trial?”
Update: David Corn, who co-wrote the book that Maddow’s special is based on, writes at Mother Jones about some of the show’s juicy parts:
One chilling moment in the film comes in an interview with retired General Anthony Zinni, a former commander in chief of US Central Command. In August 2002, the Bush-Cheney administration opened its propaganda campaign for war with a Cheney speech at the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars convention. The veep made a stark declaration: “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” No doubt, he proclaimed, Saddam was arming himself with WMD in preparation for attacking the United States.
Zinni was sitting on the stage during the speech, and in the documentary he recalls his reaction:
“It was a shock. It was a total shock. I couldn’t believe the vice president was saying this, you know? In doing work with the CIA on Iraq WMD, through all the briefings I heard at Langley, I never saw one piece of credible evidence that there was an ongoing program. And that’s when I began to believe they’re getting serious about this. They wanna go into Iraq.”
That Zinni quote should almost end the debate on whether the Bush-Cheney administration purposefully guided the nation into war with misinformation and disinformation.
