FLAIT

Originally Posted: June 2005

The GOP must be scared because their spin machine is running overtime against the Downing St. Memo. And they should be scared because their spin is as credible as Bush saying Iraq had WMDs.

Spin No. 1 - "Since this memo was written by someone that heard everything second hand, it's not reliable."

That's not true (but look who's talking about "reliability" all of a sudden. Does Africa's "yellowcake," Ahmad Chalibi, and "Curveball" ring any bells?).

The memo was written by a British national-security aide, based on minutes HE took while at the meeting.

And Tony Blair has not denied the content of the memo!

Spin No. 2 - "Even Clinton thought there were WMDs in Iraq."

Gee, that's funny. For eight years Republicans and their mindless and gullible base said that Bill Clinton was a pathological liar who couldn't tell the truth to save his life. All of a sudden they're are using Clinton's words to support their spin? Give me a break!

Besides, Clinton didn't lie, exaggerate and mislead Congress and the country into invading Iraq. So that's a big difference (with IQ's in the single digits, it's not surprising that Republicans would overlook an obvious detail like that).

Spin No. 3 - "Commissions investigated this and they didn't find any evidence to support that Bush lied about Iraq's WMD."

Of course they didn't. That's because the scope of these "investigations" were severely limited and they didn't have the authority to determine WHY we went to war on the basis of such unreliable intelligence (how convenient).

And the minutes to these British meetings weren't available at the time these "investigations" took place, obviously.

Bottom line is that one of two things happened. Either Bush lied about the WMD or he got wrong information.

Well, if he got wrong information, why isn't he angry that he started a war that was totally unnecessary...which has turned into a colossal disaster?

Why is he spinning himself into knots trying to justify the war? Why didn't he fire anyone? Why did he give George Tenet a medal? And why did he bend over backwards to avoid legitimate investigations to see why HE was given information that couldn't have been more wrong (I could ask the same questions about Bush failing to prevent the 9/11 attacks because of sloppy intelligence. Anyone see a pattern here?)?

What's ironic is that this memo doesn't confirm that Bush lied. It's that, since Bush couldn't have been more wrong on everything he said, his actions CONFIRM the memo!

There's no question that Bush could be impeached for deliberately misleading the country into a war. Heck, it should have been done a long time ago.

But Iraq is such a colossal disaster, that we'll be paying a dear price for it in a number of ways for decades to come. So Bush could be impeached for incompetence alone!