Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither, and lose both.
-- Benjamin Franklin

Why we invaded Iraq

From the interview with Richard Clarke on 60 minutes:

“The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, ‘I want you to find whether Iraq did this.’ Now he never said, ‘Make it up.’ But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.

“I said, ‘Mr. President. We’ve done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There’s no connection.’

“He came back at me and said, “Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there’s a connection.’ And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report.”

Clarke continued, “It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and found FBI and said, ‘Will you sign this report?’ They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, ‘Wrong answer. … Do it again.’

Gee, no…. Don’t tell me the administration has been wrong and pig-headed about this! Who would believe that? Thanks to the republicans in the administration for 580+ american dead, on the order of $10,000 Iraqi dead, $108 billion spent on an illegal war, a world less safe that it was before the invasion, and the hopeless squandering of any american prestige in the world. And that’s the best thing they can find to campaign on. Well, at least they didn’t do anything serious, like lie about their sex lives.

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