Frank Rich excavates March 2003 and shows us -- in print-clips -- just how idiotic unheeding duped complacent many Americans were.
A revisionist history of the White House’s rush to war, much of it written by its initial cheerleaders, has already taken hold. In this exonerating fictionalization of the story, nearly every politician and pundit in Washington was duped by the same “bad intelligence” before the war, and few imagined that the administration would so botch the invasion’s aftermath or that the occupation would go on so long. “If only I had known then what I know now ...” has been the persistent refrain of the war supporters who subsequently disowned the fiasco. But the embarrassing reality is that much of the damning truth about the administration’s case for war and its hubristic expectations for a cakewalk were publicly available before the war, hiding in plain sight, to be seen by anyone who wanted to look.
In fact, many of us saw what was going on, and I mean many. This blog hadn't started yet, but lots of bloggers were already noticing and speaking up. In the online discussions groups, half or more or the members dissected current events and came up with evidence of malfeasance which enraged the other half of us. The right was sure we were wrong and -- worse -- traitors.
Rich takes us back over that ground. Not that we'll be much wiser in the future, but there isn't a hope in hell for us if the warmongers are made to think about their versions of "freedom" and "patriotism" and the thousands upon thousands of lives their "truth" cost.
Here's a selection from Rich's long and often bitterly funny, often startling list.
By the time the ides of March arrived in March 2003, [the] warning signs were visible on a nearly daily basis. So were the signs that Americans were completely ill prepared for the costs ahead. Iraq was largely anticipated as a distant, mildly disruptive geopolitical video game that would be over in a flash. And here are some of the 2003 perceptions and misperceptions seen with March 2007 eyes.
March 6, 2003
President Bush holds his last prewar news conference. The New York Observer writes that he interchanged Iraq with the attacks of 9/11 eight times, “and eight times he was unchallenged.” The ABC News White House correspondent, Terry Moran, says the Washington press corps was left “looking like zombies.”
March 7, 2003
Appearing before the United Nations Security Council on the same day that the United States and three allies (Britain, Spain and Bulgaria) put forth their resolution demanding that Iraq disarm by March 17, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, reports there is “no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq.”. He adds that documents “which formed the basis for the report of recent uranium transaction between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic.” None of the three broadcast networks’ evening newscasts mention his findings. [In 2005 ElBaradei was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.]
March 12, 2003
A senior military planner tells The Daily News “an attack on Iraq could last as few as seven days.” “Isn’t it more likely that antipathy toward the United States in the Islamic world might diminish amid the demonstrations of jubilant Iraqis celebrating the end of a regime that has few equals in its ruthlessness?” — John McCain, writing for the Op-Ed page of The New York Times. “The Pentagon still has not given a name to the Iraqi war. Somehow ‘Operation Re-elect Bush’ doesn’t seem to be popular.” — Jay Leno, “The Tonight Show.”
March 14, 2003
Senator John D. Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia, asks the F.B.I. to investigate the forged documents cited a week earlier by ElBaradei and alleging an Iraq-Niger uranium transaction: “There is a possibility that the fabrication of these documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq.”
March 18, 2003
Barbara Bush tells Diane Sawyer on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that she will not watch televised coverage of the war: “Why should we hear about body bags and deaths, and how many, what day it’s going to happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it’s, it’s not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?”
March 19, 2003
President Bush declares war from the Oval Office in a national address: “Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly, yet our purpose is sure.”
Price of a share of Halliburton stock: $20.50 [Value of that Halliburton share on March 16, 2007, adjusted for a split in 2006: $64.12.]
