The High Price of Official Lies

William Norman Grigg writes:

"Speaking just days before he launched the invasion of Iraq, George W. Bush digested the rationale for war into a single question: 'Has the Iraqi regime fully and unconditionally disarmed, as required by [UN Security Council] Resolution 1441, or has it not?' After nearly two years, the loss of more than 1,300 U.S. military personnel, the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis, and the expenditure of roughly $150 billion, the Bush administration has tacitly acknowledged that Saddam had no stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction...

"Actually, the world would have been better off if Washington had not connived in Saddam’s rise to power, and supplied him with the material and economic means to stay in power for decades...

"It’s a remarkable turn of events when ending a useless, counterproductive foreign war is treated as an iconoclastic notion, rather than unassailable common sense...

"By abdicating its constitutional power to declare war against Iraq, Congress embarked on what could be called a 'faith-based' foreign policy endeavor. For its part, the Bush administration acted in manifest bad faith, barraging the public with artfully wrought falsehoods and conducting a shameless, multi-layer bait-and-switch deception..."

The High Price of Official Lies