Bush Defends His Decision to Invade Iraq

Former President George W. Bush, in an upcoming interview he gave with Today Show host Matt Lauer to tout his new presidential memoirs Decision Points, defended his decision to invade and occupy Iraq, all the while claiming that he was a "dissenting voice" against the war establishment's push for the invasion and occupation of that homeland.

MATT LAUER:
Not everybody thought you should go to war, though. There were dissenters.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
Of course there were.

MATT LAUER:
You know, there were questions at the Pentagon. Colin Powell had questions. Brent Scowcroft, your father's former National Security Advisor, and dear friend, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, I'm paraphrasing here, saying, "It's not a good idea to go to war in Iraq." So there were dissenting voices.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
I was a dissenting voice. I didn't want to use force. I mean force is the last option for a President. And I think it's clear in the book that I gave diplomacy every chance to work. And I will also tell you the world's better off without somehow [or someone?] in power. And so are 25 million Iraqis.

Funny enough, he ends up contradicting himself, as evidenced in this following exchange with Lauer:

MATT LAUER:
You know the question. If you knew then what you know now--

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
That's right.

MATT LAUER:
--you would still go to war in Iraq?

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
I-- first of all, didn't have that luxury. You just don't have the luxury when you're President. That's a very hypothetical question. I will say definitely the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power, as are 25 million people who now have a chance to live in freedom.

History judges you on the decisions you make. Sometimes history doesn't judge you on the absence of a decision. And I believe Saddam Hussein in the Middle East today, if he were there in power he would be enriched, he'd be emboldened. He would still have the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction, whether we found the vats of weapons of mass destruction. And I believe it's likely you'd be seeing a nuclear arms race between Iran and Iraq. And the world would be much more unstable. And America would be-- less secure.

MATT LAUER:
Your words. "No one was more sickened or angry than I was when we didn't find weapons of mass destruction." You still have a sickening feeling when you think about it.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
I do.

MATT LAUER:
Was there ever any consideration of apologizing to the American people?

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
I mean apologizing would basically say the decision was a wrong decision. And I don't believe it was the wrong decision. I thought the best way to handle this was to find out why. And what went wrong. And to remedy it. And that's why we had the Silverman Robb Commission.

So let me get this straight: Bush was a "dissenting voice" in moving the U.S. into a war with Iraq, yet he doesn't "believe it was the wrong decision"?

After what's been leaked out thus far, I'm voting for the latter. According to Iraq Body Count, the number of deaths have now reached between 98,585 and 107,594 civilian casualties from 2003 to 2010, which he and President Obama combined now both have blood on their hands.

This claim that he had tried to employ diplomacy is a baldfaced lie. There is no evidence of any kind that he used this tactic to avoid launching his invasion and occupation. This is evidenced by the fact that Bush, his pro-war cronies, and their American allies claimed that Hussein was producing "weapons of mass destruction" (WMDs) that purportedly jeopardized the national-security state of the U.S. Bush and former VP Cheney alleged in 2002 and 2003 that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) claimed in an alleged report asserting that Hussein was manufacturing "chemical and biological weapons" -- a document that the IAEA subsequently denied in the first place. In other words, that "report" was an outright fraud upon the American people, and Bush and Co. knew it the entire time. Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter has been on record stating that, while it is true that Hussein and his regime failed to abide by the United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for WMD disarmament, there were no WMDS found in his possession. Even if there had been, the stockpile would have been virtually useless because of years of deterioration and had become harmless.

[*Note: See Jim Bovard's piece "Bush's WMD Flimflam," which is an excellent piece that goes into great detail about the lies of the Bush administration and its flimflam that he and his ilk perpetrated on the American people.]

After all has been said and done, what kind of fools does Bush truly take us for?