Talk About a Real "Curveball," Even Though We Should Have Seen it Coming

At this point, I don't think I will be surprised by anything that is revealed about the lead up to the Iraq War.  I disagreed with the premises offered for going to war back then.  I remember talking with a student of mine, a self professed conservative freshman, who was surprised by my admission that I had no problem with the idea of assassinating Saddam Hussein (he really was a bad guy); I felt that that was really what President Bush wanted to do, but he knew that saying that was politically untenable, if not illegal.  I did, however, tell my student that I felt that the official reasons we were being told that we needed to go to war were bullshit.  I reminded him, even then, that there was no evidence linking Saddam and 9/11, or Saddam and bin Laden.  And I was pissed at the time that we were taking our eyes off the bin Laden prize.  But there was nothing I could do to stop anything, and I resigned myself to that, and we went to war.

So, of course I wasn't surprised to hear that one of the main individuals we used to bolster our central reasons for going to war was a total and complete liar.  Of course the Bush administration sought someone who would provide them with a rationale it wanted to do what it did (any administration will do that).  Of course the lies that Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, aka "Curveball," told us would end being presented to the United Nations, though not by our UN Ambassador, but instead by our then Secretary of State Colin Powell.  Here is an interesting interview with Powell's then Chief of Staff, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson.

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And of course, I am not surprised that this is not major news being discussed in full detail in our media, because our media, for all intents and purposes, were cheerleaders and water bearers for the Bush administration during the run up to the Iraq War. Of course, the vast majority of Americans, particularly supporters of President Bush, simply do not care about what really happened, and why we really went to war.  Remember, it was unpatriotic to question the veracity of the claims by the Bush administration at the time. And of course, nothing will come of this as revelation after memoir after revelation emerges regarding that period.

Sometimes, I really can understand why folks retreat into pure cynicism.