McClellan tells one last lie for Bush: Iraq War for Democracy

Although Scott McClellan's book is unflattering toward the Bush administration in general and Bush in particular, he does Bush a gigantic favor by still telling a crucial lie: that the Iraq War was at least in part to spread democracy in the Middle East.

This would make Bush at worst an impractical idealist.

In reality, his actions and those of his administration show he had no intentions of spreading democracy to the Middle East--or even to Iraq.

As little as 1% of Iraqis feel safer because we are there and overwhelming majorities want us to leave.

But Bush stays.

He did eventually have elections in Iraq, but not until after his appointed colonial ruler, Paul Bremer privatized their economy and made other sweeping changes that the Iraqis are not allowed to tamper with.

When the Iraqi parliament chose a prime minister Bush didn't like, he told them to pick again.

When Iraqis wouldn't pass an oil law that gives up to 88% of their oil wealth to American big oil companies, Bush threatened to fire their prime minister if it didn't pass. Since that didn't do the trick, the oil companies offered each legislator up to $5 million to pass the law, they refused, choosing to represent the will of their people, but I don't remember reading about Bush protesting that attempt at corrupting their fledgling democracy.

Bush also continues to blame Iran and Syria for the violence in Iraq, ignoring statements from Iraq's prime minister to the contrary.

Bush has made even less effort to act on his democratic statements elsewhere in the Middle East.

He supported democracy in Lebanon and the occupied territories of Palestine, but only until he didn't like the outcome--it isn't democracy if the government doesn't obey Bush.

Before the Iraq War, when bribes wouldn't work on our democratic ally Turkey, neocon gargoyle Paul Wolfowitz said the military should have played a "strong leadership role" to make them join us. This not only offended the Turkish legislature, it offended the Turkish military, who had more respect for democracy than the Bushie Wolfowitz. In fairness, Wolfowitz showed a similar disregard for American democracy when he admitted on two separate occasion that the Iraq War was about oil and the talk of WMD was for "bureaucratic reasons." The only reason to lie was to keep the public from making a knowledgeable decision, which castrates democracy.

It's an understandable mistake on the Bushies part given how cozy they are with Pakistan's military dictator, Pervez Musharaf, who overthrew his country's democratically-elected civilian government. The Bushies didn't mind his cozy relationship with the Taliban and al Qaeda either. He helped both escape from Tora Bora, and Pakistani intelligence helped Daniel Pearl make his appointment with the terrorists who eventually beheaded him. One of the kidnappers' demands was for the delivery of several F-16 fighter jets bought by Pakistan from the US. That sounds like someone trying to do Musharaf a favor, rather than undermine him.

Bush's closest ally in the region Saudi Arabia, doesn't even make a pretense of democracy. It is a kingdom with no freedom of speech, assembly, or elected government. It also supported the 9/11 hijackers and sends more foreign fighters into Iraq than any other country. None of which seems to bother Bush.

In all, Bush's lies about spreading democracy should be considered as discredited as thoroughly as the ones about Saddam having WMD and planning to give them to bin Laden.

The press and Democrats in Congress fail to knock down this last lie because it might make citizens finally demand a discussion of the real reason for the war, control of tens of trillions of dollars worth of Iraq's oil, not for the good of the average American, but to pad the bottom lines of a handful of corporations, by letting them control the flow to set the price HIGH.

http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2008/06/mcclellan-tells-one-last-lie-for-bush.html|VERSION WITH SOURCES>

Oil and the power it gives the US over China and Russia.

Everything else is bullshit.

So yeah......McClelland is still lying.

the real danger is not that Iran will retaliate. That will cost handfuls of lives here and there.

The real danger is how China and Russia choose to retaliate. They will not allow us to monopolize so much of the worlds remaining oil reserves.

China has powerful economic weapons--they can simply stop buying our debt and crush our economy.

Russia only has blunter instruments--nukes.

Until oil is in the public debate, we can only assume that those in DC are all on board for the war train, and the rest of us are tied to the tracks.

which is why China and Hugo Chavez have partnered up.

It's gonna be ugly unless we get someone who understands that we can no longer be the "only" super power. The 90s are no longer with us. The 10 year PNAC projection window is now closed.

If we don't remove the oilygarchs who have controlled our government for the past 40 years, we're on the fast track to oblivion.
The American people need to understand, this administration made a huge geostrategic gamble....and lost. They went "all in" on a bluff...and got called. If we don't smarten up and recognize that any Republican administration is a continuation of their collective failed policies, we'll be past the point where we can recover.

for the fascist mindset that actually led to war with Iraq - the BFEE's New World Order.

they seem to play along with the wooly idealist cover too.

Kind of like saying a mugger is an idealist trying to teach people not to carry too much cash.

There should never have been a Bush2, a 9-11 event, or this invasion into Iraq.


http://consortiumnews.com/2006/111106.html

And you won't see the mediawhores DARE to mention about how that Bush-Clinton alliance REALLY panned out for this country. They had a Dog and Pony show to sell to both parties - and they succeeded.

I actually believe McClellan's story and I believe that Bush was and is such a dim bulb as to believe that you can impose "democracy" at the barrel of a gun. I also agree that McClellan's overall thesis is that Bush was an impractical idealist. But I believe that he was this at the direct cost of American lives and our safety; I think that's the case McClellan is trying to make. I don't see it as some excusatory missive but instead a damning indictment of Bush's overly idealistic approach to the world which has now cost us so dearly.

None of that makes what Bush did any better. In fact it makes it worse because it shows that Bush was willing to trust his gut over any and all intelligence on the subject, thus subjecting the country to the vagaries of reality irrespective of his gut; he was willing to gamble based on his gut as opposed to learning and recognizing the facts. And he was willing to steamroll any opposition irrespective of how well informed or knowledgeable that opposition was because his gut told him to, and because his approach would shore up his political position. He did it because he was too stupid to understand anything else than that which he was capable of (his gut), and because it might yield some political benefits.

I think McClellan's story is perhaps the worst thing that could've been said about Bush because it proves him to be a guy who has no use for or understanding of anything other than his own first inclination. And judging by how Iraq has played out in terms of the phoniness of Bush's vision of "democracy," it's pretty clear that if he planned on "installing democracy" in Iraq that he planned on a sick, perverted version of it in which his business allies would get rich while he'd install a puppet from which we could make demands. So you not only have naivety, but you also have a war profiteer.

If it were true that Bush invaded Iraq purely to extract the oil then that would be a horrible abomination, but one you could at least make even a bad argument for. But in my estimation you've got something even potentially worse: A "president" who isn't even capable of such a Machiavellian scheme, instead acting on his own gut for some ill-fated folly which went against every conceivable fact and was only supported by his opinion. I'm not saying the oil-based Machiavellian scheme would be preferable or justifiable. I'm saying that at least it has some grounding (however bad) in at least a form of logic. The gut bullshit has no grounding whatsoever in any facts or logic. That's what I'm saying.

google the Iraq Hydrocarbon Law, read Greg Palast, Antonia Juhasz, or the handful of other reporters who have bothered to do research on this.

Also, look at everything else Bush has done from Enron to No Child Left Behind, to the Katrina response to how he handled rebuilding and security contracts in Iraq--the bottom line has not been ideology buy enriching cronies.

If he will screw taxpayers and kill Americans and Iraqis to give some cronies millions and billions, why wouldn't he do it to give oil companies TRILLIONS?

The financial elite in America would let a tard go off on a wild goose chase and back him to the hilt if they weren't going to profit.

it's circumstantial innuendo. You're putting me in a position to defend this asshole and I don't wanna. I just don't think Bush is smart enough to figure out all of the intricacies of invading a country for their oil and then covering it up with something else. What's far more likely is that he invaded for what he thought were noble goals but was too fucking stupid to realize how inane and irrational his goals were.

I'd be willing to concede that it's probably that his Svengali advisers told him it would be all about "democracy" instead of making clear their goals of "liberating" the oil. But I truly don't give him enough credit to believe that he's "smart" enough to plan and execute a mission to invade a foreign country for oil and cover it up with something as noble-sounding as "spreading democracy." It seems to be giving him too much credit.

In my view Bush is a marionette being played by Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rummy, and the rest of that group. That doesn't mean I think he's innocent though. That he's stupid enough to buy into some shit the rest of us figured out immediately makes him as dumb as a sack of rocks, one willing to allow others to convince him to do things that literally make no sense. And the guy purposely avoided any intelligence on the matter which contradicted his own opinion, so he's not only a malleable idiot, but he's also a steel-trap moron who's too fucking dumb to realize that his grand vision is only "realistic" in dreams. And all of this cost thousands and thousands of people their lives; his willingness to stick with some ridiculous vision in the face of evidence cost people their lives.

I'm not saying Bush is a good guy. I'm not even saying that his vision was noble. Noble visions are only truly noble if they have an actual shot in hell of becoming reality. And if you're pursuing what you think is a noble vision but come across evidence that suggests you're misguided and you still continue down that path while risking others' lives, you're a criminal ideologue deserving of a criminal incarceration at the nearest mental facility. Hopefully they build a padded cell at the Bush Presidential Library; that's all this sick fucker deserves.

this guy didn't come from the Peace Corps.

He wrote a letter to Yale telling them how to set up an Enron type scam.

He is an incurious person of average intelligence who saw a chance to get in on the big con because he had the name recognition to front for more talented but obscure con men.

I'm phrasing what I'm saying poorly but I don't mean to suggest that he's an idealist. I think he had the ideological goals of showing off American military power to "scare" people AND, through that, to promote "democracy" (at least his sick, twisted brand of it) because in his dim eyes people would be "scared into" becoming democrats (small "d"). But I think his side goal was probably that - since he thought he'd be doing something that was mostly "noble" (in his view) - that it would be ok to also have his friends make a little money from it.

about it, and let him be sold as an executive instead of a dirty trickster political strategist who worked along with Rove on every dirty maneuver they came up with over the 3 decades they worked together.

He was a political person interested only in the GAME of politics and not the governance. You can be sure he was in on every deceitful move made to CAMPAIGN for the government actions sold to him by Cheney and the powerful elite involved with the BFEE and its agenda.

there are some dots left to be filled in for sure, but people have been convicted of murder on far less.

the point is that neither one of us has proof of what was in his head. I feel one way based on my read of the process and outcome, you view it another way based on your views. I can't prove you're wrong, but you can't prove I'm wrong.

What's funny though is we're arguing about which version of our views Bush actually is. One version is an egomaniac ideologue who is too stupid to know what's what and killed people because of that stupidity, the other is him as a guy who killed people as a result of his corporate greed. We shouldn't be arguing; we agree about most things (at least the most important part about him being a criminal). He's still a criminal no matter which of us is actually right.

guilty.

He laughed and said there was 100 times as much evidence against as they typically have for a slam dunk conviction, and he cited a case where someone had been killed by a sniper and the only actual evidence was one shell matching the bullet (with no fingerprints on it) and a cigarette butt with the saliva of the guy they convicted nearby.

Bugliosi himself got Charles Manson convicted with less, which was impressive given that Manson didn't kill anyone.

I don't. I know he's an asshole. I know he's a criminal. We're on the same side here.

rightwingnuts don't use the dictionary to define "fdemocracy". They use "do as we say, give us everything we want, and be grateful doing it, or we will use force" as their definition of "democracy".

McClellan is indeed still lying. K&R

Spreading democracy & securing the Oil.