WHY LIE ?
The president and many of his top advisers have wanted to invade and overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein for a long time. But they knew they couldn't sell such a war against Iraq to a majority of Americans and a majority in both houses of Congress if they acknowledged just how pitifully weak and unthreatening Iraq really is. If, however, the administration could portray Iraq as an imminent, mortal threat to the United States - and even a shadowy accomplice in the terrorist attacks of 9-11 - then a majority of the population might come to see an invasion of Iraq not as unprovoked U.S. aggression but as a wholly justified response to what Iraq did to us.
That is precisely what the administration has done. In an October poll by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, "66 percent believed [Saddam] was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States." Yes, two-thirds of Americans had come to believe a horrible thing about Saddam that the Bush administration knew for a fact was false, even as it encouraged its lesser spokespeople to continue to promote the connection. According to a Knight-Ridder poll conducted in January
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/4911975.htm ,
41 percentof us believe Iraq has a nuclear weapon RIGHT NOW and another 35 percent are unsure or refused to answer the question. Only 24 percent know what
Bush knows for an absolute fact: Iraq has no nukes. And even many in that 24 percent might not realize that Iraq would still be several years away from developing a nuke even if we did the unthinkable and allowed it to import the vast array of high-tech equipment needed just to get started.
The president and many of his top advisers have wanted to invade and overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein for a long time. But they knew they couldn't sell such a war against Iraq to a majority of Americans and a majority in both houses of Congress if they acknowledged just how pitifully weak and unthreatening Iraq really is. If, however, the administration could portray Iraq as an imminent, mortal threat to the United States - and even a shadowy accomplice in the terrorist attacks of 9-11 - then a majority of the population might come to see an invasion of Iraq not as unprovoked U.S. aggression but as a wholly justified response to what Iraq did to us.
That is precisely what the administration has done. In an October poll by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, "66 percent believed [Saddam] was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States." Yes, two-thirds of Americans had come to believe a horrible thing about Saddam that the Bush administration knew for a fact was false, even as it encouraged its lesser spokespeople to continue to promote the connection. According to a Knight-Ridder poll conducted in January
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/4911975.htm ,
41 percentof us believe Iraq has a nuclear weapon RIGHT NOW and another 35 percent are unsure or refused to answer the question. Only 24 percent know what
Bush knows for an absolute fact: Iraq has no nukes. And even many in that 24 percent might not realize that Iraq would still be several years away from developing a nuke even if we did the unthinkable and allowed it to import the vast array of high-tech equipment needed just to get started.