Susan, I was reading some time ago and read that during the first part of the war, BushCo did try to smuggle some WMD's in Iraq.  I just felt it was bru ha ha but when I read further into the article, it was Plame and her old company of Brewster-Jennings that found out and of course the CIA and stopped it from occurring.

I think they tried to plant some but was unsuccessful.  I do not know that to be the truth, but it was reported.

As far the the denial of the aids, that is very typical, IMHO.  I would not expect anything but denial.  That is how they would cope; otherwise, they would all be going out and finding other avenues of making a living.

This is just my opinion, but knowing this administration, anything is going to happen.  I really want to know the whole truth on things..no punches pulled.  I think America deserves this.  Maybe the whole world deserves this, but most of all we do.

Two things:

I read an piece on the web a few days ago about a attempted (pre-war) shipment of nerve gas, from Turkey to Iraq, that was discovered, and derailed, by the CIA front company that Plame worked for - and speculated that that was yet one more reason for the outing of Plame.  I'll look for the specifics.

Second, I think Bush et.al. really belived that our soldiers would be greeted with roses, and that after toppling Saddam and taking over the country, there'd be no more inquiry.

Off to look for links.

but extremely difficult to cover it up. One vial of anthrax would have provoked more questions than it precluded. The military would have had to do it, or at least know about it, and would have seen it as an extreme conflict with its ethical standards (however deeply those standards might differ from those held by civilians). Plus, there were troops there from other countries that, at best, might have used their knowledge of the scam as leverage, or at worst, blown the whistle then or later.

I think one lie they really did believe was that Iraqis would welcome the invasion. In the closed little faith-based hothouse they live and work in, this probably made sense -- as much sense as the belief that there was absolutely nothing they couldn't get away with at home.

As to launching or allowing another terror attack in the US, for one thing they might not be quite that bad, at least not every single one of them. Even assuming they ARE all that bad, an orchestrated attack might have helped them early on, but at that point they didn't think they needed it. Now, with Katrina and widespread recognition that the Iraq occupation is a disaster, another attack would only confirm the widespread perception of our "leaders"" incompetence and malevolence. They missed their window of opportunity.

They are dysfunctional because they have become a tight little cult feeding each other the same ol' round of delusions and lies, over and over again, and going lalalala whenever anyone not quite certifiable tries to let in some fresh air. It seems hard to believe that a whole administration and its acolytes could be insane, but folks like Hitler and Pol Pot -- as well as most of the crowned heads of Europe -- are among many who set a precedent.

FDR's response to progressive demands: "I agree. Now go out and make me do it."

My first comment here at the Trib, and it looks like it'll be right up near the top!

I've long wondered why nothing was ever planted.  Was it because of a fear of getting caught?  This seems out of character for this crew, but would have allowed them to maintain plausible deniability: we thought there were weapons, had to go fight, but it seems we were mistaken, but didn't do anything wrong....sound familiar?  Alternately, could it be that they really truly believed, in their hearts of hearts, that there would indeed be weapons there, that the inspections had been the failures that their propaganda had claimed and that something would have remained from the Gulf War era that they could prop up as exhibit A?

I seem to remember reading a bit of an essay a while back by a Princeton philosopher called On Bullshit.  Frankfurt's basic premise was that the difference between a liar and a bullshitter was that the liar has some regard for the truth: he knows what the truth is and is willfully attempting to deceive his interlocutors.  The bullshitter differs in that he doesn't particularly care one way or the other whether what he says is true or untrue, and this complete disregard for the truth is what makes bullshit so insiduous.  He's just bullshitting his way through the conversation and is not seeking to mislead so much as to simply make a statement that helps him to achieve some end result that is similarly detached from any question of truth.

We've all been talking a lot about how the Bush administration lied its way into Iraq.  I wonder: Were they really lying?  Or were they actually just full of shit?

jpol and I had the same discussion last night, and the planting of anthrax or some other infectious agent was out of the question because the different strains are easily identifiable and traceable, and would have led back home.

With larger WMDs, it was probably just too hard to pull off without a ton of US military having to see it and be in on it, and they didn't want to risk it.

Although the Brewster Jennings story Brenda mentioned made a lot of sense to me too.

"Little people are very stuff-intensive."

Seriously. The religious right backers of President Bush subscribe to the evangelical doctrine which has Jesus his own self showing up any day now to rule over the world from Jerusalem.

So whatever the consequences of Bush's decision, he must stay the course, because Jesus is coming back and he's going to make everything all right. God is on their side, they have to be right.

The cabal is actually quite small; neo-cons and true believers. Planting Weaponized Nerve Gas or Anthrax involves working with federal civil servants since they are the only ones that can make it besides terrorists or Russia. The cabal was quite effective at scaring the shit out of the bureaucracy to keep them quiet and go along with the Iraq Invasion but it is another thing to get them to participate in planting WMD.

Even at this late date, the NY Daily News published All disquiet on West Wing front. This indicates that the Bush White House can't figure out why their polls have tanked and expect a new media blitz to pull them out of the pits. There is one term to describe this; Magical Thinking.

The only reason that there hasn't been a major terrorist attack in America is plain luck and the work of civil servants who aren't delusional.

The war in Iraq isn't about WMDs.  It never was.  Oh, sure, the Bushies used it to spur fear and to legitimize an attack on a sovereign nation. But that was just the smokescreen for their real reason for going to war in Iraq, which is this neo-conservative utopian view of the United States as the democracy missionary to the world. WMDs can be found and destroyed and that's the end of the engagement. This whole concept of spreading democracy is a long-term - ie, permanent - commitment.

The threat of WMDs was the bait.  The neo-conservative democracy crusade was the switch.  See, it's one of the oldest tricks in the book, the old bait and switch. And everyone fell for it, hook, line and sinker.  

http://www.drewlbucket.blogspot.com

The denial of reality that we keep hearing about in the West Wing (cf. Seymour Hersh's interview on CNN today, if you want to read something alarming) is disturbingly reminiscent of the atmosphere of the Hitlerbunker in the last days of WW II.

It's a no-brainer that they considered it, and wished they could get away with it.  The obvious reason why they didn't do it is that they would have to murder the persons who did the planting, to ensure they would not be blackmailed.  Though I am persuaded that Cheney would have been more than willing to do this, I doubt Tenet would subscribe to it, and I don't think Bush would have approved, as he undoubtedly believed they were there.

You do something like that and you give a hostage to fortune.  It's too dangerous. It guarantees impeachment or blackmail.  Think about how Iran could have blackmailed the President if Allawi had been in on the plot.  It doesn't make sense, and even someone as dense as Bush could be made to see that it didn't.

Knut

Because they are at war with the faction in the government that is most able to pull off such covert stunts. Old money Intel actually UNCOVERED whatever lame attempts they mounted because the BushCo Boys are so incompetent that they are totally able to run an op like that.

Or run much of anything else past vote fraud and media manipulation, as has been all too plainly illustrated over the past 6 years.

This generalized incompetence is WHY they are being opposed by establishment intel people.

You didn't think it was about "morality", did you?

No.

It is just mainstream practical politics on a covert level.

The neo-cons are bad for business, and the intel people were smart enough to know it early on. (That's why they call it "intelligence".) Intel fucked up in letting them get their foot in the door in the first place, and have been backpedaling like crazy as they try close the door that they inadvertently left open during the Clinton era.

Washington is a writhing pit of poisonous snakes, all competing for the most efficient way to down their prey.

Darwinian in its complexity.

May the best snakes win.

That's all we have left now.

May the best snakes win.

SSSSSS$$$$$$$$ssssssss........

AG

Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.-Mae West

The last thing I am worried about is what fatal flaw keeps them from saving themselves.  Don't claim to know, don't care what it is as long as we can turn this thing around.  That is what I care about.

We need to push for Progressive change, now more than ever.

I've thought about this a lot, too, and one piece of the puzzle that doesn't quite add up is David Kay, former UN chief weapons inspector.  He is the only vocal critic of the Bush administration that was not aggressively and immediately smeared.  He came out swinging in testimony to congress and appearing on news shows, but they never really came after him.  He gave an excuse about improper funding for his reason for leaving, but perhaps there's more to it than that.

The penalty good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves. -- Plato