Smoking Guns in Iraq

The thing is, that Downing Street memo is nothing special. It merely states someone's opinion that the Bush Administration was working backwards, twisting the facts to suit the theory rather than other way around, as Sherlock Holmes once observed of an adversary. It's a telling insider observation, but not a smoking gun. Similar observations have been made by Clinton and W's former terrorism czar Richard Clarke in his book Against All Enemies. Again, not quite a smoking gun, but Clarke does point in general terms to earlier "writings and speeches" by the likes of Cheney and Wolfowitz, and also to the fact that former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill also thought that these Administration insiders had been planning all along to attack Iraq (p. 264). The "writings and speeches" might provide a bit more of a smoking gun were someone to identify the key passages. Even without that, all the rest of the above, taken together with the cronyism evidenced by Bush's appointments (see my next posting) and by the administration's awarding no-bid contracts, in Iraq and now in Louisiana, to the likes of Halliburton, who apparently overcharges and in many people's opinion does a lousy job but still pays Dick Cheney a $194K annual honorarium, is enough circumstantial evidence to convict any ordinary defendant. And those things are all documented in the media, not speculative rumors. Bush is using his office, sending kids off to war and making a shambles of everything from the environment to foreign policy, for the profit of his inner circle.