Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

"This isn't about a lie or a conspiracy or a deceit or a deception.  It's a decision.  And the decision I had to take, given Saddam's history, given his chemical weapons, given over one million people whose deaths he had caused, given 10 years of breaking U.N. resolutions, could we take the risk of this man reconstituting his weapons program or is that a risk it is responsible to take?"

The Blair comment falls into the category that in legal circles is called a "parade of horribles" and a reference to the past with foreboding fear of what the future might hold.  It is particularly interesting that Blair mentioned the United Nations in that this was the international body investigating claims of Saddam's present weapons capability.  

Rather than allow the teams of weapons inspectors led by Sweden's Hans Blix to finish its work, Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld instead opted for war.  

When French President Jacques Chirac urged restraint and waiting until the inspection could be completed, the Fox-Limbaugh propaganda machine distributed the necessary propaganda stream to stir up their submissive followers by changing the name of French fries to freedom fries and smearing France and Sweden by referring to both as nations of "wimps."

Blair engaged in what is termed "moving the goal posts" in evaluating his aforementioned statement.  Blair shifted the topic from the nuclear weapons that were alleged to presently threaten the United States to Saddam's future capability to launch war.  

In his reference to the past what Blair neglected to mention was that the deathly deeds occurred while his dictatorship existed as a de facto U.S. ally for oil procuring purposes after his Bath Party surged its bloody way to power with Central Intelligence Agency assistance.

Blair indicated Saddam's possession of chemical weapons.  Yes, Mr. Blair, and where did he obtain some of the scientific knowledge necessary to develop them?  From U.S. sources no less, a point you naturally failed to mention.

As for those fears of Saddam enhancing his future weapons capability, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter wrote knowledgeably as a firsthand observer of inspections within Iraq.  He asserted, and other knowledgeable sources confirmed this, that Saddam's capability had been severely diminished by UN sanctions and aerial bombardment forays into Iraq.

Ritter's thanks for providing vital information that, had it been heeded, would have avoided tremendous death and destruction, was to be lambasted in some circles as a "traitor" or approaching it while CNN "foreign policy analyst" Paul Zahn opined following an interview of the former UN weapons inspector that he had been "drinking Saddam Hussein Kool Aid."

Here are the facts that tragically go unreported for the most part in the world's media for Blair and others to ponder.  According to the highly respected British medical journal The Lancet the Iraqi death toll currently stands at 1,366,350.  

Some 600,000 deaths were inflicted as a result of the invasion of July 2006 and the remainder since then.  There is also the huge refugee total resulting from the war along with a massive injury toll and destruction of property,

Meanwhile George W. Bush flaunts his Saddam Hussein gun souvenir that he proudly shows visitors to his Dallas mansion.  

Bush has not even had to go before a board of inquiry as Blair has done, nor have his partners in war Dick Cheney or former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.