"We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." 

   --- Don Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003, comments about Saddam's WMDs

We know through insider sources such as Paul O'Neill, former dubya Conflagration Treasury Secretary, that dubya had plans to attack Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein when he assumed office in 2000.  Many other sources say that key members of dubya's war policy team - Perle, Wolfowitz, and others - actually were formulating plans for this adventure in the late 1990s.  Conservative think tank Project For A New American Century (PNAC) has articles you can read online today speculating about what kind of a "Pearl Harbor" type event it would take to motivate the American people to get off their cans and start a war in the Middle East.

Against the backdrop of dubya's plan to attack Saddam before 9/11, before his first month in office, and probably a couple of years before the stolen election of 2000, the actions of his administration take on a sinister new dimension of cynicism.  He orchestrated a brilliant campaign of misstatements, leaks, and lies spoon fed to the corporation media who then fed it back to them as proof that the US was in dire danger from Iraq.  The New York Times recently engaged in a public self-flagellation for participating in this activity.

How did this work?  dubya's spinmeisters would cook up a lie based on trumped up "intelligence" (another subject in the glare of the spotlight since Tenet's sudden firing).  The lie would be leaked to the press by "a high level official" or "a White House spokesman speaking upon condition of anonymity."  The press would report the story, pundits would cluck and tongues would wag, the story would be blasted all over the web by Matt Drudge, Faux News crawlers would alarm us, and then the White House would simply repeat their own lies back to us citing press reports as the source.

We know from numerous insider sources that intelligence did not support the case that he either possessed or was trying to build/acquire WMDs to threaten the United States.  Since dubya couldn't build a case using legitimate intelligence, Rumsfeld formed his own unit inside the Pentagon.  These folks used ideological intelligence, where you start with the conclusion and then try to find the "facts" to support it.  This is well documented in an article called "The Lie Factory" in Mother Jones magazine. It's a long read, but if you can hang with it you will gain a new insight about just how devious and dangerous these people really are.

The public rationale spouted by dubya for attacking Iraq has been based on 3 distinct and odious lies.  The first lie was that Saddam was out to "get" the US with WMDs.  The second lie was that Saddam supported and was connected with the terrorists who attacked the US on 9/11.  The third lie is that dubya has a burning desire to export democracy and liberate oppressed peoples.  The first lie has been debunked by David Kay, Hans Blix, and the lack of even a trace of any WMDs or a vestige of a program or the infrastructure to make them.  The second lie was so totally absurd as to defy common sense: Saddam and Osama come from different ends of the religious and ideological spectrum and are truly enemies.  The third lie is the mask that Americans wear to the public ball; we want to think of ourselves as the "Good Guys". Our government encourages us to keep patching the mask as it supports "friendly" dictatorships and military adventures all over the world.

Something will have to give.  dubya is losing control over the situation as the facts in this tragedy become clear and the costs in human lives and dollars keep mounting.  The place to solve this problem is not Iraq, not the UN, it is at the ballot box in November.