I think that Bush has so much contempt for the common man that they just threw out whatever explanation for the war that seemed to fit and then did what they wanted to do, regardless.

From what I've seen, Rumsfeld and to a lesser extent Powell are the real hawks -- and brains -- behind the whole war endeavor. Bush is their puppet.

I don’t know; I don’t think it’s contempt so much as paternalism. And I’m starting to get the idea that Bush really did have a road-to-Damascus experience and really does think he’s doing God’s work. (Now I wish I could remember who it was that defined a fanatic as someone who does what he thinks God would do if He were only in possession of all the facts.) It’s little things like that that make me think how ironic it would be if it were to turn out we really were living in the born-agains’d End Times after all.

I actually have some sympathy for Powell; I think we’d be in a lot better shape if Bush had actually followed through on his campaign promise to deal with any foreign policy crisis by taking Powell’s advice, instead of sidelining State in favor of Defense. (Just as I think we’d be in better shape if he’d followed through on his campaign promise to deal with an economic crisis by taking Greenspan’s advice.) The real problem is that he’s either too loyal or too politically ambitious to resign his post.

Though I suppose it could all be an elaborate game of Good Cop Bad Cop. (Though, to paraphrase Terry Pratchett, there are no cops, just an apparently endless supply of Donald Rumsfeld.)

I've been trying to find a voice with which to blog about this, but haven't been able to. I've been using being in crunch mode as an excuse not to, but that's not the real reason: U'm simply so flabbergasted and bewildered that I can't come up with anything to say that won't paint me as a raving lunatic.

In the debate leading up to the war it never even entered my mind that we might not find weapons of mass destruction. That there was something to find was more than just an article of faith; this administration had told me that, as had the preceding one, as had the preceding one; and I know they existed in 1988. But they're not there now, and there's no evidence that i've seen that they've been there recently (recently defined broadly as within the lifetime of my boyfriend's sister).

We were lied to. Maybe by Bush, maybe by the CIA, maybe by the entire military-industrial complex. Who knows by whom? And the thing that pisses me off, that outrages me even more, is that the administration isn't bringing the top down trying to figure out why - that suggests the lying came from the top, not from the bottom.

Sure, lying about the conduct of international relations is nothing new. But, damnit, we just went to war based on what appears to have been either a myth or a lie. War is without question the most important decision a nation can make; it carries with it the potential to completely unmake or remake society in a way nothing else can, and it puts the life of the nation at risk. Making that decision lightly is intolerable; so too is lying about the evidence used to make that decision.

I had thought the United States was better than this. I opposed the war; but once the war happened I hoped that my opposition would turn out to be wrong and the administration's case right. I hoped that because the alternative was worse. I am bitterly disappointed, angry, and outraged to find out that the alternative is most probably the truth.

One thing I really miss about Clinton was that, even while he was lying, he made you feel good about the situation. ;)

Yeah, and at least Bill only lied about his personal life.

I have to say that I'm not surprised. Bush has consistently displayed an arrogance and lack of understanding/respect for anything which counters his apparent belief of his own entitlement to power.

Please, Rachel, it’s “anything which gets in the way of his divine mission”.

Anyway, I actually don’t think most of the administration is evil, just dangerously wrong. My pet theory is, we’ve got a bunch of ex-oilmen who’ve all read Hubbert’s Peak and are trying to deal with it the only way they know how: by ensuring that when the next transformative oil crisis comes, the US will control as much of the world’s oil as possible. The starry-eyed neocons like Paul Wolfowitz are just allies of convenience for guys like Cheney — they see themselves as hard-nosed realists, and they’re doing what they do from the best patriotic “what’s good for GM is good for America” motives.

I admit I don’t have any facts to back this up. But if I was writing a novel proposal, I think that would make a more interesting story than Mad Yalie Runs Amok. :)

The sad thing with people who have vehemently held beliefs is that there is enough data out there that they will be able to find something to back those beliefs (regardless of how much other information must be discarded as "irrelevant").

Even worse is that a devotion to a paranoid world-view can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading to claims of "I told you so!" without understanding the irony that the poisonous climate was the result of one's own actions.