Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen uses WikiLeaks as a jumping off point to talk about George W. Bush’s new book and the run-up to the Iraq War (11/30/10):
As my colleague, the indefatigably indefatigable Walter Pincus, has pointed out, Bush manages to bollix up both the chronology and the importance of the various inspections of Iraq’s weapons systems so as to suggest that any other president given the same set of facts would have gone to war. “I had tried to address the threat from Saddam Hussein without war,” he writes. On that score, he is simply not credible.
The accumulating evidence at the time showed that Iraq lacked a nuclear weapons program and did not have biological weapons either. As for its chemical weapons program, while harder to ferret out, it not only no longer existed, but even if it had, it was insufficient reason to go to war. Poison gas has been around since the Second Battle of Ypres. That was 1915. “The absence of WMD stockpiles did not change the fact that Saddam was a threat,” Bush writes. Heads he wins, tails you lose.
The late 2010 version of Richard Cohen is certainly up to speed on the pre-war Iraq intelligence. Unfortunately, the 2003 Richard Cohen wasn’t, as he most memorably wrote about Colin Powell’s UN presentation (2/6/03):
The evidence he presented to the United Nations—some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail—had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn’t accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool—or possibly a Frenchman—could conclude otherwise.
In that column, Cohen acknowledged the nuclear evidence was weak, but the chemical/biological weapons case was “so strong—so convincing—it hardly mattered that nukes may be years away, and thank God for that.”
He also wrote that at the UN presentation,”when the by-now hoary charge was made that a link existed between Al-Qaeda and Baghdad, it was Powell who made it—and it hit with force.” So a hoary charge sounded convincing coming from Colin Powell. Is the idea that Powell’s just a better liar than Bush?
Mr. Cohen seems to be suffering from Gabriel’s Syndrome:
http://www.sing365.com/music/Lyric.nsf/I-Don't-Remember-lyrics-Peter-Gabriel/4A8AC835EA38875A482568E400046FE0
It’s a common complaint among the corpress, innit?
There’s lots more wrong with the column. For example: “The Arab world’s alarm at the imminence of an Iranian bomb is on full display in the leaked documents.” First of all, the documents don’t show any alarm in the “Arab world”, what they show is alarm by Arab MONARCHS ( http://lefti.blogspot.com/2010/11/arabs-alarmed-by-iran.html ). Secondly, they prove nothing about the “imminence of an Iranian bomb,” only that the U.S. and Arab Monarchs want to use that ALLEGED threat to take out a country that they don’t like for various reasons. Cohen himself admits that when he writes “The (Sunni) Arab world loathes and fears Iran on sectarian grounds and also because it espouses a revolutionary doctrine of the sort that kings and dictators find disquieting.” Somehow, I doubt that the “Arab world” fears getting rid of kings and dictators. Just a very small segment of that world, namely, the kings and dictators and their factotums.
Cohen also writes of “the revelation that North Korea has sold Iran missiles capable of reaching, say, Tel Aviv or, a minute or so later, Cairo.” No, this is an ALLEGATION in the cables (one that FAIR dealt with quite nicely: https://fair.org/blog/2010/11/29/nyt-oversells-wikileaksiranian-missiles-story/ ), not a “revelation.”
Cohen suggests that Bush should read the Wikileaks documents. I suggest he do the same.
I am always searching online for articles that can benefit me. Thank you!