Not until late in the year did a sizable number of registered voters begin to question the honesty of the President’s declarations about why our country invaded Iraq. Inter Press News Agency reported the following November 13, 2003.
***
WASHINGTON, Nov 13 2003 (IPS) - Popular doubts about President George W. Bush’s credibility and his justification for going to war in Iraq are on the rise, according to a new survey conducted by the University of Maryland’s Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).
The survey of a random sample of more than 1,000 voters, which echoes the results of other recent national polls, found that 55 percent of respondents believed the administration went to war on the basis of incorrect assumptions, particularly the notion that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States or its allies.
And despite subsequent denials by senior administration officials, an overwhelming 87 percent of the public felt that the administration before the war portrayed Iraq as an imminent threat.
While 42 percent believed that the administration did have the evidence to justify such a depiction, a strong majority of 58 percent said that it did not.
This disparity, according to PIPA, which conducted the survey between Oct. 31 and Nov. 10, has translated into major questions about the president’s personal veracity and credibility.
Only 42 percent of those polled said they believed that Bush was ”honest and frank”, while 56 percent said they had doubts about the things he says.
Moreover, 72 percent (up from 63 percent in July) said that when the administration presented evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) – one of its two major pre-war reasons for attacking Iraq – it was either presenting evidence it knew was false (21 percent) or ”stretching the truth” (51 percent), according to the survey.
That represents a sharp rise in public scepticism about the war’s justifications from five months ago.
Last June, 39 percent of respondents said they thought the administration was being truthful in its pre-war assertions about the threat posed by Baghdad. That percentage has now fallen to 25 percent.
And the 21 percent who now believe the administration was, in effect, lying in its claims about Iraqi WMD is more than double the 10 percent who told pollsters that five months ago.
…
Significantly, most of the public in the latest survey believed that Bush was determined to go to war regardless of the actual evidence.
Sixty-three percent said the president would have attacked even if U.S. intelligence agencies had told him there was no reliable evidence that Iraq possessed or was building WMD or was providing substantial support to al-Qaeda.
Despite all of these findings, only 38 percent of those polled believed that going to war was the wrong thing to do. Forty-two percent said the war was the best thing for the United States and an additional 15 percent said they supported the war in order to support the president, though they were not certain that war was the best option.
Supporting these judgments was the belief that, while Iraq might not have posed an imminent threat on the order depicted by the administration, most of the public still believed it had a WMD programme (71 percent) and was providing support to al-Qaeda (67 percent), despite no evidence to support these conclusions.
”The majority’s views about the decision to go to war are nuanced," said [Steven] Kull [director of the University of Maryland's Program on International Polling Attitudes (PIPA)]. "It believes there were legitimate concerns that prompted the decision, while at the same time it believes the threat was not imminent and the decision was taken precipitously, without proper international support" (Lobe 1,3).
Work cited:
Lobe, Jim. POLITICS-U.S.: Doubts Rise over War Rationale, Bush Credibility.” Inter Press Service News Agency, November 13, 2003. Net. http://www.ipsnews.net/2003/11/politics-us-doubts-rise-over-war-rationale-bush-credibility/
***
I had had George W. Bush pegged as an inveterate liar before the 2000 Presidential election. What I had observed and read about him forewarned me that this man from Texas might become our worst President. My suspicions were similar to what David Hastings Dunn wrote in International Affairs in February 2003, that Bush’s motives were about “oil, revenge for the President’s father [whom Hussein had order to be assassinated], support for Israel, hegemonic control of the Middle East, even just the hubris of the macho Texas cowboy. Or, in the words of the [British] poet laureate [Andrew Motion] ‘elections, money, empire, oil and Dad’” (Dunn 1).
Work cited:
Dunn, David Hastings. “Myths, Motivations and ‘Misunderestimations’: the Bush Administration and Iraq.” International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), vol. 79, no. 2, 2003, pp. 279–297. Net. www.jstor.org/stable/3095821.
***
I felt compelled to speak out. Here is what I wrote, printed July 1.
***
Does it bother you that President Bush
Claimed that we as a nation were in immediate peril of Saddam Hussein’s WMD
when we were not?
Sent our soldiers off to war in the Middle East not to defend our nation but to do his and his neoconservative advisors’ business?
Decided, after the defeat of the Taliban and the disappearance of bin Laden,
that his mission of life was to rid the world of evildoers, not just Al Qaeda,
and look what has happened since?
Is a crony capitalist that does handsprings to give corporate America
everything it demands much to the detriment of the vast majority of us?
Has pushed through huge tax cuts that benefit only the rich and has the gall
to advertise them as growth, jobs creation measures?
Pursues a hard-right, survival-of-the-fittest domestic agenda that eliminates
revenue needed to preserve social security, Medicare, and Medicaid, yet still
passes himself off as a compassionate, every-man type leader?
Very much resembles Napoleon of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the majority of
us behaving like Manor Farm sheep swallowing whole his simplistic slogans,
taking as gospel truth hate-talk radio propaganda, accepting without
equivocation every assertion, every criticism, every utterance that passes from
his anointed lips?
Printed July 1, 2003, in the Eugene Register-Guard
***
I continued to participate in the weekly Saturday protest gatherings at the corners of Highways 101 and 126 in Florence. My next door neighbor, a staunch Republican, spotted me and mentioned it amicably. Several of the people I got to know at the corners were members of the Florence Area Democratic Club. The group met at a local restaurant the first Saturday of each month. I decided to see what they were about.
I was welcomed as a guest and listened quietly to resolutions stating opposition to the war being read to the club members for a discussion and vote of acceptance. When the members were asked to offer their opinions, I raised my hand and was called upon. My one-sentence statement was “I don’t think the resolutions are strong enough.” Then I apologized, saying I wasn’t a member.
“Why don’t you become one?” the chair of the club replied. “The dues are ten dollars.”
I plopped a ten dollar bill on the table in front of me. I have been a member to this day.
Amid like-minded individuals, emboldened, I became a frequent letter-writer.
I wrote the following letter for the readers of the Siuslaw News, the Florence newspaper.
***
If George Bush were a truth-teller, he would have to admit the following:
I’ve brought secrecy and hypocrisy to the White House.
I like photo-ops and speech lines that make me look, if not compassionate, heroic.
We stick it to our enemies, like allowing Enron to price gouge California.
I’m a crony capitalist. Ken Lay is an old family friend.
My tax cuts are designed to cut “socialist” programs off at the knees.
We give corporations everything they want. Get used to dirtier air, polluted water, toxic waste, and genetically altered food.
If the economy recovers, it won’t be my doing but I’ll take the credit.
We really used 9/11 to push our hard-right political and economic agenda.
You can get a lot that you want done if you get the public scared and act like you’re John Wayne.
Because we’re the world’s only superpower, we expect other countries to dance to our tune.
Waging war on “terror,” not just Al Qaeda, allows us to redo the Middle East to our liking.
We attacked Iraq because we wanted to, we could, Saddam was the perfect target, and Arabs needed a smack in the face.
Our propaganda machine really works. How about all those Americans believing that some of the 9/11 terrorists were Iraqis.
I’ve been hearing the name George Orwell. I don’t know him from Adam. If anybody does, it would be Karl Rove.
Disrespectful? Yes. Justified? Absolutely. We need a political debate to expose this administration’s intentions and conduct. Feel free to join in. The forthcoming election is much too important not to.
Printed August 23, 2003, in the Siuslaw News
No comments:
Post a Comment