The big forgotten lie - by William Blum

Lots of accusations going on, and counter accusations, congressional investigations, demands for more investigations ... Who said what? When did they say it? How did it contribute to the buildup for war? ... intelligence failures, the administration should have known, we were misled, they lied, but the Democrats believed it also, voted for it ... round and round it goes, back and forth, what passes for serious parliamentary debate in the US of A, 21st century ...

It's time once again to remind ourselves of the big lie, the biggest lie of all, the lie that makes this whole current controversy rather irrelevant. For it didn't matter if Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, it didn’t matter if the intelligence was right or wrong, or whether the Bush administration lied about the weapons, or who believed the lies and who didn't.

All that mattered was the Bush administration's claim that Iraq was a threat to use the weapons against the United States, an imminent threat to wreak great havoc upon America. ("Increasingly we believe the United States will become the target of those [Iraqi nuclear] activities," said Vice-President Cheney six months before the invasion, as but one example.)
{ Associated Press, September 8, 2002}

Think about that. What possible reason could Saddam Hussein have had for attacking the United States other than an irresistible desire for mass national suicide? "Oh," some people might argue, "he was so crazy who knew what he might have done?" But when it became obvious in late 2002 that the US was intent upon invading Iraq, Saddam opened up the country to the UN weapons inspectors much more than ever before, with virtually full cooperation. This was not the behavior of a crazy person; this was the behavior of a survivalist. He didn't even use those weapons when he was invaded in 1991 when he certainly had some of them. Moreover, we now know that Iraq had put out peace feelers in early 2003 hoping to prevent the war. They were not crazy at all.

No, the United States didn't invade Iraq because of any threat of an attack using WMD. Nor can it be argued that mere possession of such weapons -- or the belief of same -- was reason enough to take action, for then the United States would have to invade Russia, France, Israel, et al.

I wrote much of the above in the December 2003 edition of this report. I'm afraid that I and other commentators will have to be repeating this observation for years to come.