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Deception and Denial It becomes increasingly clear that George W. Bush is incapable of acknowledging a mistake. His sociopathic delusions very effectively lock out any facts that disagree with his messianic view of the world, very much like the secret service so neatly isolates our so-called president from any who might dare to openly protest his crazed policies. And apparently his disease is contagious, as Tony Blair's reason seems similarly incapacitated regarding Iraq. In a scathing [1]expose of this mania in The Guardian, former leader of the House of Commons Robin Cook devestatingly lays out how misguided pre-war statements were, and how amnesiacal current denials are. In neat parallel with the inflation of pre-war intelligence by the Bush administration, Blair's government chose to highlight worst-case scenarios, discard caveats and qualifications, and hide evolving intelligence analysis when it conflicted with their script. More disturbingly, Cook refers obliquely to a massive failure of the American press in those pre-war days. I am sure that many of you wondered, as I did, why it was that our intelligence was not assisting the UN in turning up weapons in Iraq. There was mention of information being turned over to Hans Blix and his team, and then eerie silence from the press. Clearly we would have chosen to share our most solid data with the UN to allow them to embarrass Saddam Hussein through public unveiling of his hidden caches of weapons. Yet every site to which we sent Blix was clean of WMDs. Had we not had power-mad lunatics at the heads of the US and British government, surely this fact would have led to a patient reexamining of the state of our intelligence, and the admission of the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Saddam really didn't have anything to hide. Instead we had a concerted effort by American conservatives, aided and abetted by the shameful kow-towing of an all too compliant press, to destroy the reputation of both Hans Blix and the UN. Were we seeing any sign from either Bush or Blair that they badly bungled in their rush to war, one might be inclined to accept that indeed they were acting out of some sincere, albeit twisted, belief. But their continued denials and evasions lead one to the darker conclusion that these madmen really believe that they can talk their way out of one of the most egregious violations of international war. Think about it. We invaded and overthrew the government of a sovereign state based on intelligence that was not only manipulated, but clearly suspect well before the first bombs fell. There was a simple experiment that was conducted: the turning over of data to the UN inspection team which was supposed to lead them straight to illegal caches of WMDs. Any rational process would have led to reconsideration of our position when that experiment turned up 100% negative results. Instead, Bush and Blair buried the bad results, much as American drug companies have been burying unfavorable clinical studies. None of this challenges the continued insistence by Bush and his supporters that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein. Of course it is. But the American people didn't sign on to fight this war to make the world a better place; we've never been big on that particular brand of altruism. No, people who supported the war did so because they believed it would make America safer. Since we now know that Hussein was incapable of posing a threat to the US, clearly his being deposed his not made us safer. At the same time we have rallied and re-invigorated the muslim extremists, thereby making us distinctly less safe. So while we are indeed better off with Saddam deposed, we will be safer only once George W. Bush follows him into political exile. References: 1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1259088,00.html