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. -------------------------
This would explain Wolfowitz' oft quoted, but really somewhat cryptic remark, post invasion, that agreement on use of the WMD issue was merely a matter of "bureaucratic" convenience. IOW, an almost entirely mindless selection process.
------------------------- This really shouldn't be so surprising. If you believe that the US can remake the world, and similar dangerous fantasies, your level of resistance against other, related, ideological infections is obviously rather low. ----------------------
This is contingent on the veracity of the view that the US lacks the material means to bring this about, a view strongly held by the "two (E)(I)mmanuels", Wallerstein and Todd, of otherwise widely differing politics. And held by myself, though from a politics that differs from both (though somwhat closer to Wallerstein, though I attach it to the epoch of capitalist decay rather than cycles within a constant capitalism). But I'll admit it is more in the way of an educated wager that a thouroughly researched position.
------------------------- We must abandon the view that Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the whole, empire gang are savvy strategists who see the world clearly and are making their plans with clear, if sinister eyes.
They are dangerous dreamers of the lowest and worst
sort - the kind of grandiose idiots Dostoevsky
described so well. People with latter-day Napoleon
complexes. A read of "Crime and Punishment" or "Notes
> From Underground" will tell us more about these
miscreants than a thousand parsings of Bush's halting
speeches.
-------
Bravo! Well put!
---------- Because their power base is Washington, the supposed seat of some new empire (and a more Potemkin village like imperial capital is hard to imagine), and they have immense engines of techno-destruction at their command, we stand at attention and, even in opposition, listen to their speeches and read their sober position papers carefully.
This is the wrong attitude.
They are fools and have unleashed a process that we'll be contending with for many years to come.
Consider, on the domestic side of this crime family, Mr. Ashcroft. ------------
Or consider the classic "greater fool", Tony Blair, who, "following in Churchills' Footsteps" as CNBC spun and wrappered it, just recieved the adulation of our Reichstag while the Goebbels corporate media duly noted the exact number of standing ovations (18! Count'em, 18!). And no wonder, as Tony declared that "the US is destined to lead the world", a phrase surely lapped up by the society of self-flatterers that govern the USA, all the more so as it assuaged the cultural inferiority always felt by the American ruling class before the British lilt.
But indeed Tony follows Churchill a bit too closely, 55 years in arrears to be precisely. For it is more correct to say that the US _once was_ "destined to lead the world", precisely, 55 years ago, and that that destiny has now been lived out and we have now arrived at its end. And this appears to be the one fixed ideological point around which orbits the whole of the otherwise incomprehensible psychotic mess: going well beyond the looney 1980's tune of "It's Morning Again in America", now is Springtime Again For a Renewed US Hegemony. This fixed point defines the crux of the cognitive dissonance: The refusal to accept that It Is All Over. Clearly, this reality must be refused at all costs!
But 40 - 55 years ago, humanity also entered upon the Post-Empire Age. All present talk of "Empire" - _all_ of it - is profoundly retrograde and out of tune with the present development of human consciouness. There will be no going back.
-Brad Mayer