The other day
I discussed Gary Kamiya's hard hitting commentary
Why Bush hasn't been impeached. He made the following observation.
The unpleasant truth is that Bush did what a lot of Americans wanted him to. And when it became clear after the fact that Bush had lied about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, it made no sense for those Americans to turn on him. Truth was never their major concern anyway -- revenge was. And if we took revenge on the wrong person, well, better a misplaced revenge than none at all.
Today shrill Republican Paul Craig Roberts makes the same point in
Will Republicans Destroy Themselves Before They Destroy America?.
There is no longer any question whatsoever, not a single sliver of doubt, that Americans were deceived into this disastrous war. The President of the United States lied to the American people, as did the Vice President, the National Security Advisor, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Undersecretary of Defense, as did every neoconservative in the Bush administration, think tanks, and media.
The fact that the American people were lied to and deceived does not absolve them from blame. The lie was transparent, the logic nonexistent, the true facts available and easy to discover.
America failed, because the American people failed. The American people failed, because their self-righteousness and their hubris made them easy saps for deception.
While most of what the administration told congress and the American people was a lie I believe the administration truly believed it would be a "cake walk". They knew that the lies would eventually see the day of light but after they "won" it really wouldn't matter. They of course were correct. A majority of the American people don't dislike war, they dislike losing a war.
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