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The unbearable murkiness of Paul Wolfowitz

by Mark Gisleson

Paul Wolfowitz needs to be put under oath and forced to testify before the appropriate Congressional committees, and then, when he says crap like the following, he should be slapped with contempt of Congress and arrested for perjury.

Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has directly linked the war on Iraq to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, signalling another shift in Washington's defence of a conflict that continues to claim American lives.

Wolfowitz, in a series of interviews on U.S. television networks yesterday, appeared to ignore intelligence reports, which have discredited links between Iraq and Al Qaeda and the war on terrorism.

He sought to defend President George W. Bush's administration against charges that it had misled Americans on the threat posed by deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, saying the government cannot wait for "murky" intelligence to crystallize because it may be too late.

"The battle to secure the peace in Iraq is now the central battle on the war on terrorism," Wolfowitz said on Meet the Press.

"Stop and think, if in 2001, or in 2000, or in 1999, we had gone to war in Afghanistan to deal with Osama bin Laden, and we had tried to say it's because he's planning to kill 3,000 people in New York, people would have said, you don't have any proof of that," he said.

"I think the lesson of Sept. 11 is that you can't wait until proof after the fact.

''It surprises me sometimes that people have forgotten so soon what Sept. 11, I think, should have taught us about terrorism," he added.

"And that's what this is all about," he said.

[more from the Toronto Star]

If that's not sufficiently ahistorical, check out Wolfie's closing statements:

"This is a war that's going to be won not by smothering the country with individual guard posts, it's going to be won by better and better intelligence, and the intelligence was improving even before the killings, and I think it's improved since then," Wolfowitz told Fox News Sunday

Wolfowitz did not respond directly when asked if he was specifically linking the Iraqi invasion to the war against Al Qaeda.

"I think the lesson of 9/11 is that if you're not prepared to act on the basis of murky intelligence, then you're going to have to act after the fact, and after the fact now means after horrendous things have happened to this country," he said.

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Maybe it's just me, but I'm often amazed at how damn near impossible it is to get anyone to 'fess up to the obvious truth anymore. Patrick Dennehy is a good example. Texas investigators have now positively identified his body after only a couple of days. ??? Patrick Dennehy was six foot ten inches tall. I don't know about you, but if I found a corpse that size I'd jump to some conclusions pretty damn quick.

Steve Perry's still working on this week's cover story on Bush's lies. Our president's habit of lying is the six foot ten inch corpse of American politics, but no one seems willing to say the obvious yet. Stay tuned, Steve's not only going to state the obvious, he's got documentation. Bush's re-election hopes are deader than Bob Hope.

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Sorry if you couldn't access Bush Wars over the weekend. More about that here.

Posted by Steve Perry at July 28, 2003 9:19 AM

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