The decision itself had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction or with the bogus claim that Saddam was somehow involved in the tragedy. A decision happened, and you can’t say when or how.”īut we know exactly who made the decision to go to war, and we certainly know when and why that decision was made. Fisher quoted Richard Haass, a senior official at the Department of State at the time of the invasion, who currently heads the Council on Foreign Relations, concluding inscrutably that the decision to go to war “was not made. Max Fisher’s essay in the Times on March 19 was particularly obtuse because it dwelt on the inability to determine U.S. Neither newspaper mentioned the long series of intelligence lies and distortions that marked the run-up to the war nor did they refer to the obvious war crimes that were committed with the support of the White House, the Department of Justice, and the Central Intelligence Agency. But the New York Times and the Washington Post would have you believe that the lack of “planning and staffing” was central to our failure. president in history, and the worst intelligence scandal as well. rush to war against Iraq 20 years ago marked the worst strategic decision of any U.S.

“But for those who say that we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they’re wrong, we found them.” Art Fleischer, White House press spokesman, December 4, 2002. “The President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true, and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it.”

CIA director George Tenet’s response to President Bush’s demand for intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction to provide to the American people, December 21, 2002. Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

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