Rove: Iraq Means NOT Having to say You're Sorry!

Bush's Crony Rove tell's 'em off

Bush's chief political adviser, Rove said in a speech Wednesday that "liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." Conservatives, he told the New York state Conservative Party just a few miles north of Ground Zero, "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war."

In a well-meaning, unified attempt to vilify Carl Rove, Bush puppeteer and number 1 in line for the ear of the president, the democrats have followed the parallel path of reality and missed the real target—the misbegotten Iraq War.

Rove made some demeaning remarks about liberals’ reaction to the events of 9/11 being inadequate vs. the rallying war cry of the right-wing Bush base. Democrats from hither and yon have come forth in a display of displeasure, asking for responses from mere retraction to Rove’s resignation.

The larger reality that’s been missed here is this: in an op-ed piece in today’s Los Angeles Times, The Real News in the Downing Street Memos, by Michael Smith, who writes on defense issues for the Sunday Times of London, the description of how Bush and Blair took the US and Britain willy-nilly to war in Iraq without popular authorization—that’s the issue of importance to attack, not presidential mouthpiece Carl Rove.

Describing his research into the various releases of the “Downing Street Memo,” Smith writes

But another part of the memo is arguably more important. It quotes British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon as saying that "the U.S. had already begun 'spikes of activity' to put pressure on the regime." This we now realize was Plan B.

Put simply, U.S. aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone were dropping a lot more bombs in the hope of provoking a reaction that would give the allies an excuse to carry out a full-scale bombing campaign, an air war, the first stage of the conflict.

British government figures for the number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq in 2002 show that although virtually none were used in March and April, an average of 10 tons a month were dropped between May and August.

But these initial "spikes of activity" didn't have the desired effect. The Iraqis didn't retaliate. They didn't provide the excuse Bush and Blair needed. So at the end of August, the allies dramatically intensified the bombing into what was effectively the initial air war.

The number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq by allied aircraft shot up to 54.6 tons in September alone, with the increased rates continuing into 2003.

In other words, Bush and Blair began their war not in March 2003, as everyone believed, but at the end of August 2002, six weeks before Congress approved military action against Iraq.

The way in which the intelligence was "fixed" to justify war is old news.

The real news is the shady April 2002 deal to go to war, the cynical use of the U.N. to provide an excuse, and the secret, illegal air war without the backing of Congress. [emphasis added]