Lest We Forget

Monday in a speech in Cleveland, President Bush talked about how optimistic he is about Iraq. The day before, Ayad Allawi, the former Iraqi Prime Minister said, "We are losing each day an average of 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is". In his speech, Bush touted the success in the town of Tall Afar and the lessons learned over the past three years. Today’s Washington Post discussed how the insurgents are returning to Tall Afar and how killings of Shia and Sunni inhabitants are on the rise.

This is a difficult conundrum. Who do you believe? The President of the US or a former Iraqi official living in Iraq? Bush or the Post? While wrestling with this difficult decision, I heard a report on yesterday’s NPR Morning Edition by Mike Schuster. It consisted of a series of public statements made by administration officials during the 13 months prior to the Iraq invasion in March 2003 and one on an aircraft carrier two months after the start of the war. Thinking that these might help in resolving the above problem, they are printed below. For the record, these are actual quotes, not paraphrases.

States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world by seeking weapons of mass destruction. These regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They can provide these arms to terrorists giving them the means to match their hatred.
President Bush in the January 2002 State of the Union Address

There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use them against our friends, against our allies, and against us.
Vice President Cheney August 2002

We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
Condileeza Rice Summer 2002

We know he’s been absolutely devoted to try to acquire nuclear weapons and we believe he has in fact reconstituted nuclear weapons.
Cheney Summer 2002

Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
Bush Summer 2002

Saddam Hussein’s regime is a grave and gathering danger. To suggest otherwise is to hope against the evidence. To assume this regime’s good faith is to bet the lives of millions and the peace of the world in a reckless gamble.
Bush September 2002 Speech to UN

We’ve learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making, in poisons, in deadly gasses. We know that Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high level contacts that go back a decade. Some Al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one senior Al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year.
Bush October 2002 Prime-time speech

We clearly know that there were in the past and have been contacts between senior Iraqi officials and members of Al Qaeda going back for actually quite a long time. We know too that several of the detainees, in particular some high ranking detainees, have said that Iraq provided some training to Al Qaeda in chemical weapons development.
Rice Fall 2002

We do have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of Al Qaeda members including some that have been in Baghdad. We have what we consider to be very reliable reporting of senior level contacts going back a decade and of possible chemical and biological agent training.
Donald Rumsfeld Fall 2002

The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein has recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapon production. Saddam Hussein has not creditably explained these activities.
Bush January 2003 State of the Union address after UN inspectors had been in Iraq for three months without finding any WMD

My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources, These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions backed up by solid intelligence.
Colin Powell February 2003 Speech to UN

I don’t think it is likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe we will be greeted as liberators.
Cheney March 2003 on Meet the Press in response to a Russert question about what would happen if Iraqis saw us as conquerors

Your courage, your willingness to face danger for your country and for each other, made this day possible. Because of you our nation is more secure. Because of you the tyrant has fallen and Iraq is free.
Bush May 2005 Mission Accomplished speech

Finding that these quotations shed some light on whether any statement from this administration can be accepted at face value, and being in a quotation citing mood, I’ve turned to one of my favorite books The Oxford Book of Aphorisms for a few more apposite thoughts.

How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read.
Karl Kraus 1909

Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.
Machiavelli 1521-5

Stupidity does not consist in being without ideas. Such stupidity would be the sweet, blissful stupidity of animals, molluscs, and the gods. Human stupidity consists in having lots of ideas, but stupid ones. Stupid ideas with banners, hymns, loudspeakers and even tanks and flame-throwers as their instruments of persuasion, constitute the refined and only really terrifying form of Stupidity.
Henry de Montherlant 1930-44

People often manifest a diseased desire to express their will. A theory is adopted, not because the facts force it upon them, but because its adoption shows their power.
Mark Rutherford 1910

The province of philosophy is not so much to prevent calamities as to demonstrate that they are blessings when they have taken place.
Ernest Bramah 1928

The common excuse of those who bring misfortune on others is that they desire their good.
Vauvenargues 1746

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
James Thurber 1940