The Iraq War: Some More Inconvenient Truths

I'll have more thoughts on this later. In the meantime, here's some related odds and ends...

The President held a press conference this morning to yell at the Democrats speak about the war while Congress is on vacation. There was nothing new in the speech... except another big, fat lie by ol' Bushie. He said, "And so I decided to, at the recommendation of military commanders, decided to send reinforcements."

This is not true (natch). In December, the Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously opposed the idea. His current military commanders in Iraq at the time-- Gen. George Casey and Gen. John Abizaid-- shared that assessment. They were removed, of course, and replaced with Generals who would support the President's escalation plans (which were, in turn, born out of neocon thinkthanks). This is/was Bush's plan, through and through.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post revisits the infamous sixteen words in the 2003 State of the Union address ('The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.') that pushed us further down the path to war. The article just has more confirmation-- but not a real surprise-- that they knew it was a fraud, but rolled with it anyway. They explore the history behind this.

Finally, the NY Times reports that, while we buy time in Iraq, Al Qaeda 2.0 is growing.