March, 2010:

Re: Spinning for Bush, Then Spinning the Spin | Mother Jones, By David Corn, Mon Mar. 15, 2010 3:00 AM PDT

Spinners gotta spin. And Brad Blakeman, a Republican strategist and commentator, is an expert at keeping his own gyrations turning.

On Tuesday, he and I appeared on MSNBC to discuss Karl Rove’s new book. The main issue at hand was Rove’s assertion that George W. Bush did not “lie us” into the Iraq war. I went first and explained how the Bush administration had overstated iffy intelligence regarding Iraq’s WMD capabilities to grease the way to the invasion. Defending Bush’s war, Blakeman, who had worked in the Bush White House’s scheduling office, noted that Saddam Hussein had used WMDs against the Kurds—without mentioning that this had happened 15 years before the Iraq war and that UN inspectors had subsequently reported destroying Iraq’s WMD facilities. He then asserted that another reason for the war was that Saddam “was preventing inspectors from coming in and inspecting the [suspected WMD] sites that the UN demanded be inspected.”

I interrupted, “Brad, that’s not true,” noting that UN inspectors had been inside Iraq for months prior to the war and had uncovered no evidence of existing WMD stockpiles. 

Revisionists gotta revise. And Brad Blakeman now joins the growing chorus of revisionists all singing songs of the innocuous behavior and the moral chastity and innocence of George W. Bush. Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove are all a conspiratorial clan of former Bush components who can make themselves seem cleaner by cleaning up Bush. “Bush didn’t lie!” Sadly, yet another lie.

“They were denied access,” Blakeman insisted.” And after I referred to two instances when Bush had made utterly false statements about Saddam’s relationship to al Qaeda and his nuclear weapons capabilities—statements not supported by the intelligence of the time—Blakeman argued that Bush had not lied. He repeated his claim that the reason for the war had been Saddam’s opposition to weapons inspections:

President Bush did not bring us into this war because of WMD. He brought us into the war because Saddam Hussein failed to allow inspections of the sites the UN demanded be inspected.

While Blakeman throws out lies David Corn lays out the facts. For all of us who weren’t in a coma during this time, the fall of 2002, and happened to pick up a newspaper, we recall that Saddam Hussein was really rather generous to the inspectors’ requests to inspect. I remember that the Iraqi officials went with the inspectors and opened the sites for them. One such site turned out to be a milk factory. Corn interjects some facts here from a “2003 Congressional Research Service report on the inspection process:”

* From late November 2002 to March 2003, U.N. inspectors combed Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

* The U.N. Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) conducted over 750 inspections at 550 sites. These inspections seemed to benefit from strengthened authorities under the new U.N. resolution, new technologies, a better relationship between UNMOVIC and the [International Atomic Energy Agency], and pressure from the threat of military strikes.

* On the eve of war, inspectors withdrew from Iraq.

* For the approximately three months of inspections, inspectors reported that the Iraq was cooperating on access, with a few minor delays. Dr. [Hans] Blix [the head of UNMOVIC] noted in his March 7 [2003] report that cooperation on process was better this time for UNMOVIC than it had been for UNSCOM [in the 1990s].

Thank you, David Corn, for getting the truth out there. These revisionists cannot be allowed to have their retelling of history to stand as the truth.

I like to read comments to these articles when they are allowed and now I want to post one comment I found that offered intelligent, if not somewhat apologetic, support for Brad Blakeman’s version of history. This comment by Jason Ray:

The issue of WMD and the inspectors was not as clear-cut as you make it seem. Hans Blix himself clearly stated that the Iraqis had been unhelpful in many areas. Indeed, Mr. El Baradei stated that, “What’s required is a dramatic change in spirit and sincerity,” on the subject of coorporation (sic). I think it’s safe to say that Blix and El Baradei are as non-partisan as it gets in the UN-community.

Also, wasn’t there concern that Iraq had launched SCUDs into Kuwait after the Coalition started targeting Saddam’s palaces and command centers? The main concern being that Iraq wasn’t supposed to have any of these SCUDs yet they were launching them.

I am no defender of George Bush or New Labour, but if there was no case for the invasion why did the UN pass a resolution threatening invasion unless Iraq fully cooperated? The UN backed out at the last minute when its members demanded yet another resolution and at this point the Compassionate Cowboy decided to invade Iraq.

My reply was this, which Mother Jones website wouldn’t let me post due to a technical glitch:

I said, “The UN would not have passed resolution 1441 that ‘threatened invasion’ were it not for the lies and falsification of intelligence surrounding the existence of WMDs in Iraq. In short, Bush lied the UN into war, with the help of a great presentation from Colin Powel, which was a monstrous lie. Bush was able to convince the UN that Saddam was keeping us from examining weapon sites, which he was not, that weren’t really weapon sites.

Bush also did some serious arm twisting in the Security Council. He told them to either act, or he would, by asking in 2002, “Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?” But the purpose of its founding was to maintain peace, not precipitate war.

The Bush Doctrine dangerously adopted the policy of preventive war, a violation in itself of UN Charter 2(4).”

Here is an excerpt of a reply by a commentator named leafsong1:

2) A UN authorized invasion would be authorized by the UN; the US is not empowered to guess what the UNSC might be thinking and unilaterally act to enforce their will.

George W. Bush bent over backwards to rub off the blame onto the UN for his illegal invasion. The UN Security Council would not take responsibility for this, and rightly so, no matter how much Bush tried to blame them and have the UN own the invasion. Although it may be argued that Iraq violated resolutions dating back to 1991, those resolutions are owned by the UN Security Council – all 15 members – not just the United States. The United States cannot unilaterally invade another country as if it were the will of the Security Council, which it was not. The UN’s response to the arm twisting was to send the inspectors back into Iraq, and Iraq did not deny them access as Blakeman has claimed.

The UN inspectors fled Iraq on their own, not booted out as Blakeman would have you believe. They did it for their own safety during the ramp-up to war.

Brad Blakeman is the former president and chief executive officer, as well as one of several prominent conservatives funding Freedom’s Watch, a  now defunct organization that promoted the Bush Doctrine through TV ad buys, and funded/promoted the swiftboating of Senator John Kerry.

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