E-M:/ Finally, an admission -- the war was because OUR oil was under THEIR soil

[jmgear <jmgear@acd.net>]

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Enviro-Mich message from jmgear <jmgear@acd.net>
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... and we can't have that, nossir ...
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http://mediamatters.org/items/200512010003

Appearing on the November 28 edition of MSNBC's Imus in the Morning, 
Newsweek chief political correspondent Howard Fineman declared that the 
Bush administration was not "fully candid" about the war in Iraq because 
the "honest" argument for going to war seemed too "complicated and 
convoluted" for the American people and the world. "[W]hat they did was 
underestimate the intelligence of the American people,"
Fineman said, adding that the proper case for war "was that we can't let 
this madman ... Saddam Hussein, sit on top of the largest or 
second-largest pool of oil in the world and siphon off billions of 
dollars to pay protection money, essentially, to the Osama bin Ladens of 
the world."

> From the November 28 edition of MSNBC's Imus in the Morning:

FINEMAN: Looking back on it, I think there was a case to be made for the 
war in Iraq that would have allowed them [the Bush administration] to be 
fully --

DON IMUS (host): Honest.

FINEMAN: -- candid and on point with the American people. The problem is 
it was too convoluted for their purposes, and I think what they did was 
underestimate the intelligence of the American people, and as [Newsweek 
managing editor] Jon [Meacham] said, that way lies catastrophe for any 
president. And the case was that we can't let this madman who you saw on 
TV a little earlier, Saddam Hussein, sit on top of the largest or 
second-largest pool of oil in the world and siphon off billions of 
dollars to pay protection money, essentially, to the Osama bin Ladens of 
the world. That's a complicated and convoluted case that would have been 
difficult not only to sell to the American people, but to the United 
Nations and the Vatican and every other place where public approval 
would have been sought, because it really would have been pre-emptive 
war, it really would have been like the Department of Pre-Crime, if you 
happen to remember the movie Minority Report, and that would have been 
hard to sell. But had we gone in on that basis, which I think is the 
honest basis to have gone in, then there would have been more public 
support. But we didn't, and instead they reduced it to a cartoon of a 
mushroom cloud and a handshake between Saddam and Osama that never 
happened, and that's why, having created that cartoon, they're in such 
political trouble now.

* A.S.

Posted to the web on Wednesday November 30, 2005 at 7:59 PM EST




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