So there never was any evidence linking Saddam to Al-Qaeda prior to the 2003 invasion, according to a 2005 CIA report released by the Senate today. Did anyone really believe that there was? That suggestion was always in the same category as the Niger yellow cake claims. The war has been a fraud that has cost the lives of more than 2,500 service personnel, while earning billions for companies such as Halliburton through reconstruction contracts that have brought little benefit to the Iraqi people. Removing Saddam from power may have been laudable, but failing to plan for what happened next was inexcusable.
Despite no link between Iraq and Al-Q, however, in May 2002 Bush told his press aide Ari Fleischer that his intention towards Saddam was "to kick his sorry motherf*cking ass all over the Mid East". Shortly afterwards the CIA activated a plan codenamed Anabasis to recruit exiled Iraqi fighters and train them to sieze an Iraqi airbase. It was hoped that this would provoke Saddam into violating the no-fly zone and create the pretext for invasion. But implementing the final stages of the plan was eventually rejected by Gen Tommy Franks, who led the 2003 invasion. The CIA spent over $400 million on the operation, at a time when we now know there was no evidence linking Saddam to Al-Q -- and Bin Laden was, as he still is, at large.
Meanwhile, Bush has announced the transfer of 14 prisoners from secret CIA jails to Guantanamo. These include obvious villains and the move is clearly intended to justify Guantanamo's continued existence, reneging on the promise that Bush made to EU leaders that it would be closed down (though he never gave a timeframe for that anyway). Those transferred have also been guaranteed Geneva convention rights, again a move to legitimise Guantanamo, and the Bush administration is pushing that they be tried by military commissions. This is a blatant attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court ruling in Hamdan vs Rumsfeld (see earlier posts) that such commissions are not lawful.
C'mon people -- given these shenanigans, it's high time GW was removed from office. In fact, surely it's time to "kick his sorry motherf*cking ass all over the" East Coast, to borrow from his own eruditely expressed policy goal.
