Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Bush voices regret for macho rhetoric in run-up to Iraq war

The moron has come to Europe for his final visit. And he's trying so very hard to convince us that we have all got him wrong and that he was "a man of peace" all along.

George Bush has expressed regret that his rhetoric in the run-up to the war in Iraq may have created the impression that he was a warmonger.

"I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric," Bush told the Times as he flew across the Atlantic on Air Force One.

The phrases he used to win support for the war such as "bring 'em on" and "dead or alive" he said, "indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace."

But that impression, he insisted, was far from the truth.

"One of the untold stories of Iraq is that we explored the diplomacy a lot," he said. "We all wanted to solve this 'disclose, disarm, or face serious consequences' in a diplomatic fashion. After all, I went to the United Nations security council."

I love the way that Bush holds up the fact that he even deigned to go to the Security Council as proof that he entertained the notion of a diplomatic solution to the Iraq dilemma.

Firstly, Blair had to bend his arm to get him to the UN as Dick Cheney was insisting that the UN was defunct and that the US did not need " a permission slip" to go to war with anyone. Secondly, what Bush actually asked of the UN was that it declare war on Saddam or he was going to do it without them.

So this great diplomatic rush to the UN was actually nothing of the sort. Bush went to the UN to ask for permission to invade, and when he didn't get it, he decided to invade anyway. Those are simply the facts. Bush now seeks Brownie points for even consulting the UN in the first place, despite the fact that he approached it only for permission to invade.

The consequences of his actions, regarding how America is viewed around the world, are indisputable; with every opinion poll pointing to a dramatic surge of disapproval for the US's actions.

Bush, however, disputes even this fact.

Bush, who met the German chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday on a tour that will take in Rome, Paris and London, also disputed the notion that the war had harmed the image of the US abroad.

"I don't buy into that theory," he said. "America is a force for good. America is a force for liberty. America is a force to fight disease. We've got the largest HIV/Aids initiative in the history of the world. We've got a malaria initiative that's saving babies."

What does one say about a President who won't accept that the Iraq war has damaged the image of his nation across the globe? He can, rightly, raise his Aids initiative and his malaria campaign as signs of the positive things his regime has done, but this is far outweighed by the hundreds of thousands of people killed and the millions displaced by a war which was fought for a lie.

It is only because of the horrendous timidity of the Democratic Party that Bush and Cheney have not been impeached, as they are far more deserving of it than even Nixon ever was.

Nixon covered up a petty crime, Bush and Cheney misled their nation into war, causing misery for millions of people.

So he is wasting his time trying to convince Europe that we have misunderstood him and that he was a "man of peace" all along. He's a war criminal as far as I am concerned, and my greatest regret is that the fact he is an American president will prevent from ever having to account for what he did at the Hague.

For in any world where international law truly held sway, that is where he would belong.

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