> Luke wrote:
>
>
> You think the Bushies could confidently and
> competently conceal the fact that they secretly
> believed _all_ the WMD charges were rubish? That
> would be a conspiracy of epic proportions, and, if
> they were capable of such a heroic conspiracy, you'd
> think they would've planted CBWs after the war while
> they were at it.
>
> ****************************
>
>
> I think that the truth of the matter is staring us
> right in the face: the Bush Administration believed
> that the Iraqi military possessed large stockpiles of
> banned weapons, along with elaborate, clandestine
> facilities for manufacturing more.
>
> All of the deception, the manipulation of reports, the
> relentless effort to "sex-up" intelligence, was the
> work of people who had convinced themselves that this
> was so and viewed all evidence to the contrary as
> inconvenience to be finessed out of sight or massaged
> into proper form.
>
> This does not mean that they believed Iraq to be a
> threat to the US, let alone the world. I'm certain
> that the thought never crossed their fever-damaged
> minds. But they were certain that the stuff and the
> infrastructure were there.
>
> <snip>
this has been more or less my own feeling about things for some time, now. stuff like the niger uranium evidence or the tube evidence, if it turned out to be "wrong" didn't matter because it would only be framing a guilty man, in their view.
j