Pentagon: There Was No Saddam/Al Qaeda Link

The obvious has been confirmed. So, if I may quote the absolutely necessary Juan Cole, “Now who will tell the US troops who marched into Iraq in 2003 with pictures of the World Trade Towers pinned to their backpacks? Ooops, guys, sorry.

You were had by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.” But, of course, it wasn’t just the troops who were had. Almost the entire American public, vociferously misinformed by a supposedly “liberal” but actually right-of-center media establishment, believed the administration’s obvious lies. The rest of the developed world, not anti-American but simply better informed, was not taken. Couple this non-revelation with Alan Greenspan’s admission, last fall, that “the Iraq war is largely about oil,” and we are at last enabled, by the most impeccable of conservative testimony, to discuss the war and the Bush Administration for what it really is. But, of course, neither of these stories has received or will receive more than a few lines, a few moments’ attention on the major networks and cable news shows, or in the campaign speeches of “realist” John McCain or “liberal” Clinton. We refuse to know what we know, so we can avoid the unpleasantness of admitting we’ve done what we’ve done…