Inevitable

by digby

Doug Feith makes a “Clean Break” with the Bush administration. Sort of:

In the first insider account of Pentagon decision-making on Iraq, one of the key architects of the war blasts former secretary of state Colin Powell, the CIA, retired Gen. Tommy R. Franks and former Iraq occupation chief L. Paul Bremer for mishandling the run-up to the invasion and the subsequent occupation of the country.

Douglas J. Feith, in a massive score-settling work, portrays an intelligence community and a State Department that repeatedly undermined plans he developed as undersecretary of defense for policy and conspired to undercut President Bush’s policies.

Among the disclosures made by Feith in “War and Decision,” scheduled for release next month by HarperCollins, is Bush’s declaration, at a Dec. 18, 2002, National Security Council meeting, that “war is inevitable.” The statement came weeks before U.N. weapons inspectors reported their initial findings on Iraq and months before Bush delivered an ultimatum to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Feith, who says he took notes at the meeting, registered it as a “momentous comment.”

Oh boy. I sense another round of hissing and spitting among the ex-Bush advisors don’t you?

If that last is true, the Codpiece went out and lied repeatedly after he made that momentous statement. Why just a few days later, he said this:

Again, I hope this Iraq situation will be resolved peacefully. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to work to deal with these situations in a way so that they’re resolved peacefully. But thus far, it appears that, first look, that Saddam Hussein hasn’t heard the message.

And a few days after that there was this:

Q If we do have to go to war and —

THE PRESIDENT: With which country?

Q With Iraq. And if — and with our economy stagnating, what makes you confident that we can afford —

THE PRESIDENT: First of all, you know, I’m hopeful we won’t have to go war, and let’s leave it at that.

Q: excuse me Mr President? Your pants seem to be on fire.

Ok, I made that last question up. No journalist would have dreamed of noticing such a thing.

Not that this is really news. Bush privately said the previous spring “fuck Saddam, we’re takin’ im out,” so Feith isn’t exactly letting the cat out of the bag.[And yes, the Downing Street memo bears this out as well. — d] Still, it’s necessary for historical purposes to ensure that it’s well documented that President George W. Bush was a lying sack of shit who invaded a country on false pretenses for reasons that remain obscure to this day. Every instance makes it more difficult for them to airbrush the truth.

Grab some popcorn and read the whole article. Feith is taking on the State Department, the CIA, Paul Bremer and the generals, blaming everyone but himself, Bush and Cheney for everything that went wrong. And yes, it does sound as if it was written by the “stupidest fucking guy on the planet:” he’s still pushing the ridiculous line that everything would have worked out swimmingly if only they’d given Chalabi and his pals a piece of the action.

What’s most depressing is that the administration has continued to get away with this stuff for the last six years and they will continue to do it until January 19, 2009. Just last week they advanced the ridiculous notion that they have the right under the AUMF to enter into long term treaties with the government of Iraq without Senate approval. As Bush reportedly said privately back in 2000, “fuck the constitution, we’re taking it out.”

Update: And speaking of Chalabi, guess which Maverick Flyboy was one of his strongest backers (and vice versa) going all the way back to 1991?

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