All the Presidents Men

I think that President Bush should not have mentioned the false C.I.A. report on the possibility of Iraq seeking nuclear capabilities. If fact I'd say Bush was dead wrong. The information itself was unreliable and things like the aluminum tubes could easily be used for other things besides the creation of nuclear weapons and it is even more strange that George J. Tenet, Director of the C.I.A., wasn't very convinced that the evidence pointed to Iraq's nuclear ambition, yet it made it into the speech. Dick Cheney only made me feel like the administration was purposely at fault for passing on information they might logically conclude is improbable and also from the ways in which he answered the question of pressuring investigators that there was a sense that the Bush administration wanted the reports to specifically show that Iraq was a threat. So essentially I think that was another case in which deception was used to scare people into believing in the myth about Iraq being any kind of a threat to the U.S. at a time when the public was already frightened. It gives me the feeling, just like the Iran-Contra affair, that if the President or his speech writers wanted to, they could have found out if the information they had was credible to put in the State of the Union or later the claims of WMDs as a cause to go to war. So the Bush administration was full of dirty little tricks to get the country involved in a pointless war, if only there was any repercussions...maybe next time...

Now I feel like its time to tackle the case of Richard Clarke which seems more important to look at because it seems that even people in the government who are considered to "tell it like it is" essentially become stooges when they are speaking for the current administration. The infamous press conference he gave really did make the Bush White House seem like it was doing much more then his book did and I think that's wrong. I feel that Bush and his administration were unfairly insulated by Clarke, who himself was far more critical of the handling of pre-September 11th terrorism, because one of Bush main reelection issues was how he handled terrorism after the fact not that is could have been avoidable in the first place. So I feel that the people's ability to choose a leader was hampered, similar to how Bok showed how LBJ deceived voters about Vietnam. I also think we have seen a pattern by officials to clean up the facts. Take Robert McNamara for example, he also was guilty of being a stooge when he was Secretary of Defense by telling people things were fine and to trust the administration when he had major doubts about it. Clarke should not have lied to the people and it is a problem when we always have to mistrust everything the government says because the American people get the trumped up version. Its ridiculous and undermines the very foundation of our government.