Full quote:
Analysts in several other countries broadly
opposed to the war said the shifting
U.S. rhetoric would reinforce doubts about
Bush's real motives in Iraq.
"Whether it's terrorism, or weapons of mass destruction
or liberating Iraq and ousting Saddam,
the excuses have been changing constantly,"
said Li Jianying, vicepresident of the Chinese
People's Institute of Foreign Affairs.
"I think the basic reasoning behind the policy,
as far as most people around the world
are concerned, is for oil and control of
the Gulf region," Li said.
As the article details, the Pentagon gave
a list of its 8 highest priorities in Iraq 10 days ago
by Rumsfeld, and more recently by Pentagon
spokesman Tori Clarke. Destroying Saddam's
weapons of mass destruction, disarming
him, has dropped to the Pentagon's 5th priority.
It was Bush's mantra, his very causus
belli, and now he mentions it as much as the name
of bin Laden. Somehow, now the discussion
is over the liberation of the Iraqi people,
guaranteeing 28 million of them free health
care (!!!), and finding and developing information
on terrorism support in Iraq (the Pentagon's
new number 2 and 3 priorities). This looks like
the Pentagon is being used to support a
political propaganda line being desperately spun out
to avoid a severe public relations nightmare
brewing for the Bush administration.
For that would be the terrorism support
that our intelligence agencies gave Iraq a clean bill
of health on for the past 12 years. Sparing
no scrutiny as an enemy state, still, they were not
listed among state sponsors of terrorism
by any of our law enforcement/intel agencies for
that time. Recently, CIA analysts told
the NY Times that they were considering resigning in
protest over the pressure brought to bear
to alter reports to assert terrorism connections that
they didn't believe were there. Even Bush
in his televised war address, otherwise not noted
for modesty of claims, claimed Iraqi
support for 'al-Qaeda like' terrorism, a rhetorical trick
meant to leave an impression without having
actually said it. So now the military is tasked to
prove this terrorist connection claim,
even above finding and destroying WMDs. It is peculiar,
and not even something the military is
well suited to do.
Why the shift in emphasis? Maybe no WMDs
will be found, so the whole war will have to
be sold as a humanitarian human rights
mission? They're talking that line up, and somehow,
another one of those coincidences, got
the zeitgeist echo chamber emphasizing the same thing,
when that was plainly not the point of
the necessity of war. We gave training, aid and military
support to Central and South American dictators
doing the same slaughter of their citizenry,
all through the '80s, and Saddam when he
was (gasp) gassing his own people [sic, it was a
nerve agent only the Iranians had]. This
choreographed Greek chorus of change the subject
is brilliant media legerdemain, and it
will be powerfully boosted when I believe the Iraqi people
will indeed dance in the streets at the
fall of Saddam's reign, freed of the threat of death
from his killers if they do so now.
But this will not be enough. No WMDs would
be a major disgrace for Bush & Co., and would
discredit the war's chief argument. That
is why they have so blatantly put this propaganda into
the Pentagon plans, and it reeks of desperation.
Bush needs the terrorism connection to keep the
legitimacy of his war if there are no WMDs.
But the rub is that among all the false claims they
have made, this is the one that fewest
buy, and most agree the Iraq war is instead a distraction
and hindrance to the war on terror,
per se.