Lies and Democracy

America is getting ready to transfer sovereignty to Iraq. It has been a long journey to get to this point. However looking back; the question that comes to my mind is, has this adventure (or misadventure) been worth it. It seems to me that this whole thing started on a lie and since then it has only gotten bad. So lets see what these lies are:

1. WMD: It started off as a hunt for WMD (this 3-letter acronym has entered our lexicon thanks in part to this war). The Bush Administration scared the public stiff with the image of a mushroom cloud delivered from Baghdad. So far the hunt for these weapons has not turned up anything smoking (not even a gun). Somehow this issue has just got buried under tons of other issues like the prisoner issue etc. The press has not pursued this. And the administration spoiled it relations with the UN and world community over this.

2. Al Queda: Sometimes I feel that the administration was probably thankful for the 9/11 attacks because without this it would have been very difficult for them to justify this war. After reading Paul O Neil's and Joe Wilsons accounts it seems like the administration was looking for a reason for this war. In 9/11 it found it. It drummed the beat of the connection between Al Queda and Saddam, again without giving any substantial evidence. And when the WMD reason did not pan out the drum roll only got louder.

There has been a lot of talks about the neocons driving this war and the President being manipulated by them. But the more I think of this, I am starting to form the opinion that the President himself is a neocon who has surrounded himself with neocons and executes a neocon strategy. Why then would the war planning have started even before the 9/11 attacks.

A President who came to power based on the promise of building International coalitions has done the most damage to coalitions. He has gone about with a single minded objective of the war against Iraq and setout to achieve this objective as soon as he came into power. I beleive that if 9/11 had not taken place then he would have used a different reason to go to war.

All in all the administration's strategy is based on a set of lies it has told the public. It has disgraced American intelligence efforts (De Gaulle once told Dean Acheson that he believed the word of President Kennedy about the missiles in Cuba when offered to review evidence, can you imagine this today!) and reversed previous foreign policy strategies of the previous admistrations. America is now stuck in Iraq and needs to complete its mission no matter what administration comes to power. However I sincerely hope that that the people of America will see through an administration who has used lies and half baked truths to push its agenda and turn them out of power.