Someone lied, people died
I have recruited a special guest columnist today, to reply to recent remarks by actress Sharon Stone, as recounted in The Canada Press:
Hollywood icon Sharon Stone believes the Sept. 11, 2001 bombings of the United States should not have been used as a pretext to launch the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to comments published Monday in a Saudi-owned newspaper.
The actress said in an interview with the Al Hayat daily that she fails to understand how the American public supported those wars to start with, only to denounce their fallout later. She also bemoaned what she called America’s decision to ignore the deaths of so many Iraqis.
“I feel sad when I realize how much truth is being changed or obscured in the American media,” she said.
You and I both, Ms. Stone. Here to reply is today’s guest columnist, Al Gore, via You Tube.
Technical note. I took down the embedded You Tube video of Big Al, though you can still see it on You Tube. The embedded video worked fine on the Safari browser, but it totally broke my site on Firefox. If I can get to the bottom of that, I’ll bring Smiling Al back.
Posted on February 19th, 2008 by pwyll
Filed under: politics
Entries RSS
The wars Ms. Stone is commenting on are the current war in Iraq and the war in Afganistan, both started during our current president’s administration. The war (and geo-political situation) commented on by former Senator Al Gore in the YouTube clip above is the “first gulf war”, to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. begun during the presidency of our current president’s father, George H.W. Bush.
The point of juxtaposing commentary on wars as different G. H. W.’s war and G.W.’s wars eludes me.
Ms. Stone is a convenient device, nothing more. Her opinion matters less than nothing to me. I just thought it was a fun way to introduce Al Gore.
The speech takes place in Sept 1992. By then the Gulf War had been in a state of cease fire for months. Al Gore is hot on the campaign trail, a month before he and Mr. Clinton are elected. He is making the point that Bush 1 was too soft on known terrorist state Iraq.
Mr. Gore claims that Iraq was actively engaging in terrorism, had engaged in a direct attack against the American vessel USS Stark, was actively engaged in biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons programs, and had already used nerve gas to slaughter thousands of Kurds. He actually uses the magic phrase, “weapons of mass destruction”. Mr Gore calls Saddam a monster, and points out that it is beyond folly to believe that economic or political sanctions will work against him.
In particular, Mr Gore makes the very arguments routinely ascribed to Bush 2 as whole cloth lies concocted to justify action against Saddam’s Iraq. So I allow Mr Gore to present Mr Bush’s lying justifications for the war with Iraq, before Mr Bush ever uttered them, in answer to Ms. Stone.
The memory hole just ain’t what it used to be.
Let me take up two of your points:
Let me address two of your points.
First, to the best of my knowledge, it is generally acknowledged that Saddam used chemical weapons to slaughter thousands of Kurds. No one I’ve heard calls George II a liar for saying this.
Second, prior to the current war in Iraq, it is my understanding that all of the world’s best intelligence agencies thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. That intelligence turned out to be wrong, but George II, and Dick Cheney in particular, don’t seem to be willing to let go of the notion. That, in my view, is where the current administration gets itself in trouble — it tries to prop up it’s failed conduct of the war with false information as justification.
I’m confused. Aren’t chemical weapons considered weapons of mass destruction? I think the Kurds believe they are.
I have to agree with CCL: nerve gas is indeed a wmd.
Insofar as the intelligence proved to be wrong, that was not ascertained until well after the invasion. But don’t be so coy. Do you mean to say that if Cheney were to issue a statement, “Well, we were wrong about the whole wmd thing” you’d be on board? I find that hard to believe.
In any case, the claim that the invasion was justified solely on the basis of wmd’s is a myth that has been debunked over and over. But any stick is good enough for beating old George. For instance, did you know that under the Bush administration, AIDS intervention in Africa is completely unfunded? A lot of people don’t know that.
As for the “failed conduct of the war”, it must be some other war you’re talking about. The one in Iraq is going pretty well, especially considering that so many Americans were and are desperate to lose. Both Obama and Hillary are running on the promise of running.