Orwelling It
So now the Bush Gang are trying to do an Orwell on recent history.
The fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in. And therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region.
This is staggering. Hoping that their presence might deter aggression, Iraq absolutely begged the UN team to stay in the country, even going so far as to destroy their best missile system on the eve of invasion in accordance with a UN mandate. As the current occupying power in Iraq, the US has been instrumental in forbidding the UN inspections regime to recommence and denying the UN inspectors entry visas. Mainstream US media is amazingly reticent about challenging incumbent Presidents’ lies – unless it’s about blowjobs. This is about as far as they go:
The president’s assertion that the war began because Iraq did not admit inspectors appeared to contradict the events leading up to war this spring: Hussein had, in fact, admitted the inspectors and Bush had opposed extending their work because he did not believe them effective.