"The terrorists see it, they absolutely love it. Because this played right into their plans."

What the terrorists loved was the US invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. The internal dissension is just a small bonus, since the dissension hasn't changed the war in Iraq yet, and won't change the fight aqainst terrorism. Remember that the world was with us when we went after bin Laden in Afghanistan. Where we started losing them was when we invaded Iraq. Yes, the US had almost 50 nations as part of the so-called Coalition of the Willing, but take a look at those nations, and what they sent.

Thereafter, the Bush administration briefly used the term "Coalition of the Willing" to refer to the countries who supported, militarily or verbally, the 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent military presence in post-invasion Iraq since 2003. The original list prepared in March 2003 included 49 members.[3] Of those 49, only four besides the U.S. contributed troops to the invasion force (the United Kingdom, Australia, Poland, and Denmark). 33 provided some number of troops to support the occupation after the invasion was complete. Six members have no military.

Costa Rica (which has no armed forces) requested in September 2004 to no longer be considered a member. Today, the official White House list of the coalition shows 48 member states (even though it still maintains the count at 49);[4] however, the relevance of placing several of these members on the list has been questioned.[5] Turkey remains on the list despite reneging on its support before the war began and denying U.S. forces passage to its border with Iraq during the invasion. - Wikipedia

Some of those 49 -

Portugal
Iceland
Estonia
Latvia
Lithuania
Czech Republic
Slovakia
Hungary
Albania
Macedonia
Romania
Bulgaria
Turkey
Croatia
Slovenia
Ukraine

Singapore
Philippines
Afghanistan
Azerbaijan
Uzbekistan
Georgia
Marshall Islands
Micronesia
Solomon Islands
Mongolia
Palau
Tonga

El Salvador
Colombia
Nicaragua
Costa Rica
Dominican Republic
Honduras

Kuwait

Africa:
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Uganda
Rwanda
Angola

Almost to a country, each received a quid pro quo for agreeing to join the coalition. Some of those in the coalition sent equipment; others sent a few men. Macedonia sent 35. (and got some Humvees that were armored better than some US troops had), and Turkey, who reneged on their part of the deal, still got the state-of-the-art body armor, while US troops had Vietnam era armor, which did not stop AK47 rounds, the terrorist' weapon of choice, and the most produced weapon in the world.

Only 7 countries sent over 1000 men. Ten countries sent under 100, and a total of 9 countries sent over 500. Many of the countries did not send combat troops, but supply people, administrative people, and the like.

Prior to invading Iraq, the world was almost universal in joining us in the fight against terrorism. But when it came to Iraq, we were able to buy cooperation of less than ¼ of the nations of the world. bush's war was the best thing to happen for terrorists, both in terms of publicity (negative for the US), and recruitment (positive for the terrorists). US State Department figures show that world-wide terrorism is up since we invaded Iraq.

All this, and bin Laden, despite claims here that he is dead, is still free, making tapes and videos. And I bet he is laughing his rear off at how things worked out for his aspirations. Not only did the US all but abandon the search for him in favor of invading Iraq but, by doing so, eliminated someone he (bin Laden) wanted to see eliminated, thus allowing formerly secular Iraq to be on its way to an Islamic government. All in all, a heck of a job by bush.

quote:

Prior to invading Iraq, the world was almost universal in joining us in the fight against terrorism...

'Country A actively helped the U.S. defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan and replace it with a pro-U.S. elected alliance of moderate Muslims...

...On 9/11, residents of Country A were among the very few in the Muslim world to hold spontaneous pro-U.S. demonstrations...' Not-So-Strange Bedfellow

The invasion of Iraq held the seeds of its own failure. Struggling to get back on topic, Rumsfeld infamously talked of going to the war with the army you have, not the one you want - as if the invasion were a war of necessity (as if it had to be that country right then) rather than, as is now obvious, a war of choice. The hubris of going in half-assed, because it was going to be a cake-walk,is at the root of much of the failure.

An excellent article, one I recommend to everyone, regardless of their position - I also ask those who favor hard line against Iran because they hate us to do some reading of Iran's history, especially since WWII. We put in power a man who became a brutal dictator and we not only helped keep him in power, but trained his secret police, who tortured dissidents, many of whom are still around. That, more than any other single reason, explains the Iran Hostage Crisis. Note that I said explains, not justifies. The action was not justified, but it was understandable. The overthrow of the legitimately and democratically-elected Prime Minister in 1953 was not justified, either, nor was supporting a brutal dictator.

Seems I've made quite a stir with my post of a couple of days ago. Not surpirsing. What the Democrat Party relies on it that the public has a short memory. There are those who lean Democrat who like to forget the facts of history and adopt the Democrat lies & election spin. I shall continue to maintain my position because history backs me up

I will start off with this site from snopes...

http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp

Here is one I don't know the source but it is a wealth of information...

http://www.stentorian.com/politics/iraq.html

Here is a story from the dreaded NewsMAX about former peace candidate Howard Dean.

http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/1/14/125158.shtml

Here is a letter from Sen. John Kerry to then President Clinton...

http://www.e-thepeople.org/article/30234/view?viewtype

Here is another dreaded NewsMAX article...

http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/2/9/115035.shtml

And I am sure there is more stuff out there to back up my position. It isn't hard to find. My point being that President Bush did not create the mess in Iraq. The groundwork was already in place before he was even in office.

Your position seems to be that, although Bush made a horrendous mistake, many agreed with him at the time (or agreed on some aspects at some point in the years leading up to the invasion). However, many also disagreed - and they were right.

That some Democrats agreed with the actual invasion of Iraq is, no doubt, something of an embarrassment to Democrats, but this thread is not about the narrow Republican versus Democrat soap opera in the US; it's about whether the Iraq war was one of necessity or choice.

It seems pretty clear that not only was it a war of choice, arguably illegal and immoral, but it was catastrophically mishandled, creating, as you say yourself a 'mess'. That "other people also thought it was a good idea at the time" is hardly a grown-up's response to such a murderous fiasco. Those other people should also have resigned in shame by now. However, Bush was the man who called it (in fact pushed for it, hyping and cherry-picking what evidence there was) - he ought to be man enough to face up to the consequences for himself.

The Democrats who voted in favor of the Iraq invasion, now lie about it.

The Republicans wimped out from all ofthe Democrat political spin & rhetoric, they were scared of losing the '06 elections. Which the lost any way.

President Bush is the one who has had to catch hell over it. If everyone involved had stood behind him, backed up our President in time of war, like they should have, the war would be over by now.

Firstly, if the war had been necessary, people probably would have stood behind the leader, as they did in World War Two for example.

Why should people be obliged to back an unecessary war (one which was catastrophically mismanaged to boot)? Actually, morally, they're more obliged to prosecute the people (of whatever party) responsible, aren't they?

Secondly, are you seriously suggesting that the insurgency in Iraq would have given up in the face of more solidarity on the part of the US opposition party? They've withstood being bombed and shelled - whatever else you might think of them, they seem to be made of sterner stuff.

"If everyone involved had stood behind him, backed up our President in time of war, like they should have, the war would be over by now."

How? Would there have been a larger, and therefor more intelligent, group of people to choose from when picking the generals to run the war and picking the people to run the provisional government? Gosh, smarter than the guys who got medals for how good they did!! WOW!

Or would that have cause more volunteers to join the military, thus giving us more boots on the ground?

Please explain how more support would have resulted in the war being over now. Please be as specific as possible. Would more support have caused less stress for bush, thus allowing him to make better decisions?

If what you say is true, why haven't we won in Afghanistan yet? bush not only had all the US support he could hope for there, but all the international support, too. Yet we are still there. What is the excuse reason we are still there (and why haven't we found bin Laden)?

By the way, no one voted for the Iraq invasion. The vote was to give bush the authority to use his own judgment. That's the mistake that everyone is running from.

From Wikipedia -

In October 2001, polls indicated that about 88% of Americans backed the war in Afghanistan versus 12% who disapproved.

A Gallup poll in August 2007 showed that 70% of Americans believed that the U.S. did not make a mistake in sending military forces to Afghanistan while 25% believed that it did.

In a December 2007 poll, 67% of Afghans supported NATO's mission in the country.[87]
----------
In a January 2003 CBS poll, 64% of Americans approved of military action against Iraq. 63% wanted President Bush to find a diplomatic solution rather than going to war with Iraq, and 62% believed the threat of terror would increase if war was waged with Iraq.[10]

According to a January 2007 BBC World Service poll of more than 26,000 people in 25 countries, 73% of the global population disapproves of the U.S. handling of the Iraq War.[292] A September 2007 poll conducted by the BBC found that 2/3rds of the world's population believed the U.S. should withdraw its forces from Iraq.[293] According to an April 2004 USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll, only a third of the Iraqi people believed that "the American-led occupation of their country is doing more good than harm, and a solid majority support an immediate military pullout even though they fear that could put them in greater danger."[294] Majorities in the UK and Canada believe the war in Iraq is "unjustified" and - in the UK - are critical of their government's support of U.S. policies in Iraq (Canada opposed the U.S.-led invasion force and has one observer blue helmet in Iraq).[295] According to polls conducted by The Arab American Institute, four years after the invasion of Iraq, 83% of Egyptians had a negative view of the U.S.'s role in Iraq; 68% of Saudi Arabians had a negative view; 96% of the Jordanian population had a negative view; 70% of the UAE and 76% of the Lebanese population also described their view as negative.[296] The Pew Global Attitudes Project reports that in 2006 majorities in the Netherlands, Germany, Jordan, France, Lebanon, China, Spain, Indonesia, Turkey, Pakistan, and Morocco believed the world was safer before the Iraq War and the toppling of Saddam Hussein. However, pluralities in the U.S. and India believe the world is safer without Saddam Hussein.[297]

The U.S. National Intelligence Council concluded in a January 2005 report that the war in Iraq had become a breeding ground for a new generation of terrorists; David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats, indicated that the report concluded that the war in Iraq provided terrorists with "a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills... There is even, under the best scenario, over time, the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed there will, in a sense, go home, wherever home is, and will therefore disperse to various other countries." The Council's Chairman Robert L. Hutchings said, "At the moment, Iraq is a magnet for international terrorist activity."[305] And the 2006 National Intelligence Estimate, which outlined the considered judgment of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, held that "The Iraq conflict has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."[306]

In October 2003, Osama bin Laden announced: "Be glad of the good news: America is mired in the swamps of the Tigris and Euphrates. Bush is, through Iraq and its oil, easy prey. Here is he now, thank God, in an embarrassing situation and here is America today being ruined before the eyes of the whole world."[313] Al-Qaeda commander Seif al-Adl gloated about the war in Iraq, indicating, "The Americans took the bait and fell into our trap."[314] A letter thought to be from al-Qaeda leader Atiyah Abd al-Rahman found in Iraq among the rubble where al-Zarqawi was killed and released by the U.S. military in October 2006, indicated that al-Qaeda perceived the war as beneficial to its goals: "The most important thing is that the jihad continues with steadfastness ... indeed, prolonging the war is in our interest."[315]

And yet, we are arguably doing better in Iraq than in Afghanistan. (Note that, if the US military is to be believed, al Qeada was glad that bush was re-elected and his policies continued. Read the last eight words of the quote immediately above.)

Wading through these results of the Congressional resolutions to give bush the authority to invade Iraq will show that by well over 2-1 majority in the House and over 3-1 majority in the Senate, the resolutions became public law. Obviously, support in Congress was more than adequate.

It seems that less support means better results; at the very least, one can accurately say that the numbers show that creased majority support does not seem to be factor in results. LR, your conclusions just doesn't stand up to scrutiny in the light of the above facts. bush, and you, need to look else to accurately place blame.

quote:

Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
LR, your conclusions just doesn't stand up to scrutiny in the light of the above facts. bush, and you, need to look else to accurately place blame.

Maybe that's what you think but you are sadly mistaken.

The Bush-bashers love watching the news seeing all the bad news coming out of Iraq. The Democrat Party is invested in defeat in Iraq. Their willing accomplices in the news media have done a quite a good job filtering out the good news and painting a big ugly picture for the past several years.

Here is an exerpt from this web-site that really tells it all...

The pro-occupation critics claim that there's not enough coverage of the rebuilt schools, for example, or the fact that hospitals in Iraq are open. Congressmember Jim Marshall (D.-Ga.) was perhaps the most blunt of them all, alleging in an opinion piece for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (9/22/03) that the media's "falsely bleak picture weakens our national resolve, discourages Iraqi cooperation and emboldens our enemy." Marshall concluded by lamenting "the harm done by our media. I'm afraid it is killing our troops."

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1840

And who can forget when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke with General David Patraeus back in April before he met with Congress...

“Don’t tell the truth - that thing are working in Iraq - but a lie than we want to hear.”...House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

If a Democrat had done the very same actions the the Bush Administration has done, there is no doubt in my mind the Democrats in Congress would stand behind their President.

nnn-In reading your link[URL=Going to war with Iraq was wrong, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd admits]Going to war with Iraq was wrong, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd admits[/URL]

What I see is someone who has lost sight of the original objectives, the reasons we went into Iraq. And many have forgotten, or conviently ignore what it was like for the Iraqi people under the oppressive Saddam Hussein regime. Since it was not an easy task, all ofa sudden after a few years, it was wrong??? Is that what he's saying??? Up & quitting doesn't solve anything. President Bush was right in staying the course.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Blotter/Story?id=4909213&page=1

In LR's own words -
"Here is an exerpt from this web-site that really tells it all..."

And then he proceeds to tell us something a bit less than the all that his link said. I'll help him out, since he was so eager for us to see and believe what that site says. Here are the paragraphs immediately following the little bit of information that LR gaves us:


MSNBC host Joe Scarborough (9/26/03) told viewers that "some of the most powerful media players in America don't want America to succeed in Iraq…. American soldiers have told me that the biggest morale challenge that they are facing is not Saddam and Osama's thugs, but, rather, it's dealing with the biased, slanted reports that they're getting from American news organizations."

But are these critics complaining about bad press, or simply bad news? As the Associated Press (10/17/03) explained: "The schools, for example, need rehabilitation in large part because of the chaotic looting touched off by the U.S. military's entry into Baghdad in April. And many schools have not been rehabilitated, particularly in poorer neighborhoods and the south."

Newsweek (10/27/03) pointed out that "reporters who covered the war say that some of the Coalition's achievements are less impressive than they sound. Paul (Jerry) Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, proudly announced the reopening of Iraq's schools this month, while White House officials point to the opening of Iraq's 240 hospitals. In fact, many schools were already open in May, once major combat ended, and no major hospital closed during the war."

Newsweek went on to note that journalists who might actually try to cover what these critics deem the "good" news are discouraged from doing so: "In Baghdad, official control over the news is getting tighter. Journalists used to walk freely into the city’s hospitals and the morgue to keep count of the day’s dead and wounded. Now the hospitals have been declared off-limits and morgue officials turn away reporters who aren’t accompanied by a Coalition escort." So while critics say journalists should be chastised for not reporting on hospitals, the occupation forces are making it more difficult for reporters to actually visit them.

The fact that reporters are kept away from hospitals suggests that it's risky to assume that more coverage of Iraqi reconstruction would yield "good" news. Consider New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins' description of the scene at an Iraqi hospital (NPR's On the Media, 10/3/03): "The hospitals are open. If you've been in a hospital in Iraq, however, the reality is far different. One should not picture a hospital in the United States. A typical hospital in Iraq is a nightmarish place where they don't have electricity yet. Where there's people sleeping on the floors; where the emergency rooms at night are flooded with people who have been shot and maimed in the chaos that breaks out after curfew."

But some reporters are still grappling with the criticism that their coverage has been too "negative." ABC's Baghdad correspondent Neal Karlinsky told Nightline (10/15/03) that "there's a lot of good news stories here that we are trying to get out. And, quite frankly, news events sometimes get in the way of that. It's hard to work on a feature story about life in Baghdad getting back to normal when there is suddenly a car bombing that kills a half dozen people nearby." Karlinsky seems to be complaining that breaking news keeps getting in the way of reporting the news. CNN's Bill Hemmer (10/14/03) wondered if life in Iraq could "also be better than what's being reported also. If you consider that these reporters, many of them tell us they want to go cover the new school opening, but they can't because there's another bombing or shooting and that prevents them from sending that story?"

But other critics note that "good news" is hardly the only thing missing from Iraq coverage. Seth Porges writes in Editor & Publisher (10/23/03) that coverage of injured and wounded U.S. soldiers gets very little media attention. "For months, the press has barely mentioned non-fatal casualties or the severity of their wounds," writes Porges. "Few newspapers routinely report injuries in Iraq, beyond references to specific incidents. Since the war began in March, 1,927 soldiers have been wounded in Iraq, many quite severely."

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, on the same day the Editor & Publisher piece was published, wrote that "we've had 900 wounded or maimed" in Iraq. Perhaps the fact that the Times so rarely publishes figures for wounded soldiers makes Friedman's error somewhat unsurprising; FAIR was able to find just one reference to the total number of wounded soldiers in the Times during the month of October. The paper did, however, run an editorial (10/5/03) that mentioned the "mournful daily roll call of additional dead and wounded soldiers." Ironically, that roll call of the wounded is rarely published in the New York Times.

It is not unexpected for any administration to put forward its interpretation of news events. But the White House's aggressive pursuit of favorable news coverage threatens to squelch reporting on the actual human costs of the occupation. For example, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank reported on October 21 that the White House is "banning news coverage and photography of dead soldiers' homecomings on all military bases."

Whether they are based in Baghdad or in Washington, journalists are obliged to report the news on the ground, not as "good" or "bad" but as news, regardless of how it fits with the vision the administration would like Americans to see.

Well, again, we agree, LR. I, too, think the site tells us what is happening. Or rather, tells us what was happening. You see, something else that LR left out ws the date of the article. It is dated 10/28/03, 4½ years ago.

LR, there seems to hope for your political understanding yet. However, your research skills may need some brushing up. (While we're talking about research, could you provide us with a source for that Pelosi quote?)

What Pelosi said to Petraeus in April:

'House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) warned Army Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on Thursday not to "put a shine on recent events” in Iraq when they testify before Congress next week.

“I hope we don’t hear any glorification of what happened in Basra,” said Pelosi, referring to a recent military offensive against Shiite militants in the city led by the Iraqi government and supported by U.S. forces.

Although powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr agreed to a ceasefire after six days of fighting, Pelosi wondered why the U.S. was caught off guard by the offensive and questioned how the ceasefire was achieved, saying the terms were "probably dictated from Iran.”

“We have to know the real ground truths of what is happening there, not put a shine on events because of a resolution that looks less violent when in fact it has been dictated by al-Sadr, who can grant or withhold that call for violence,” Pelosi said.' Pelosi warns Petraeus on Iraq testimony

Well, Iran did have a hand in the ceasefire, and it seems Sadr can - to some extent - switch the violence on and off independently of what the US army would like to happen. And the administration was trying to build the ceasefire up "as an example of the Iraqi government standing up and further proof that President Bush’s troop surge is working".

I don't know how Lighteningrodd's source got “Don’t tell the truth - that thing are working in Iraq - but a lie than we want to hear.” out of what Pelosi said. A touch of spin there, maybe?

quote:

What I see is someone who has lost sight of the original objectives, the reasons we went into Iraq. And many have forgotten, or conviently ignore what it was like for the Iraqi people under the oppressive Saddam Hussein regime...

The original objective was to save the world from a threatening arsenal of Iraqi WMD, backed by a very questionable interpretation of UN resolutions on Hussein's disarming (along with vague but often repeated implications that this was all somehow connected to 9/11). The arsenal turned out not to exist.

Regime change was absolutely never given as one of the original objectives of the war. That would have made the war explicitly illegal, as opposed to just probably illegal. Moreover, war is not the best option to bring about regime change, as the bloody chaos in Iraq has demonstrated. Actually, talk of how good it is to have removed Hussein is a convenient forgetting of what reasons Bush gave initially for the invasion, as well as inadequate mitigation for the carnage brought about in the wake of the invasion.

I Googled the exact words the LR quoted, and found only one (1) hit, to a Right Wing blog, who offers a link to what Pelosi said, but what she said was not what it claimed. Maybe LR will help us out here.

Result of the Google search

The Blog
From the blog, with the "quote" and the link to (I assume) Pelosi actually said that - Madam of the House Pelosi (hurrrrmpt!) warns General Patraeus, “Don’t tell the truth - that thing are working in Iraq - but a lie than we want to hear.”

The only Pelosi quote on that page -

"We have to know the real ground truths of what is happening there, not put a shine on events because of a resolution [of the situation in Basra] that looks less violent when it has in fact been dictated by someone [Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada] al-Sadr who can grant or withhold that call for violence or not," said Nancy Pelosi.

More on what people really said. LR posted a link to a Newsmax article that is headlined "Blix Backed Bush on WMD". It begins, 'U.N. chief Iraq arms inspector Dr. Hans Blix believed that Baghdad may have been hiding as much as 10,000 liters of deadly anthrax before the U.S.- and British-led coalition invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

According to experts, if properly weaponized, that amount of anthrax could neutralize a city the size of New York.

The admission by Blix...'

(The article's tagged 'exclusive' but much the same thing is all over the net.)

Blix actually said that the anthrax was unaccounted for and so could possibly exist, or could possibly have been destroyed, as the Iraqis claimed (it turns out their claims were true, although they had stupidly, and illegally, destroyed it without UN inspectors present).

'Because they were unaccounted for, and they might exist, and the difference between us and some of the countries on the Security Council was that they were pretty sure they did exist. I did not presume either that they exist or that they didn't exist.' Blix

That's not the kind of thing you go to war over. There seems to be an effort to suggest that, at the time, everyone believed ("felt" to use Bush's oddly weak choice of word) there was strong enough evidence of threatening WMD in Iraq to justify the war. This is just nonsense. Of course many did feel that way, but there were also strong and informed voices making the case that war was the wrong way to go. To ignore that fact, cherry-picking comments and personalities that suggest the consensus was pro-war, is to attempt a rewriting of history.

A Vietnam vet speaks about the ethical basis of the invasion and continuing occupation: Whether to Achieve Victory in Iraq or "Surrender".

nnn-If you are suggesting, I am "cherry-picking" for the purpose of re-writing history, that is total nonsense. I bring out little known facts that you & many others prefer to ignore, in order to help complete about what has happened.

The fact we are winning in Iraq is being ignored. General Petraeus has caught hell from the Democrats because they do not want the U.S. to win. He has caught abuse by the Democrats, had to put up with out-right lies from moveon.org.

I see what you mean about bringing out facts that this thread hasn't included so far - I withdraw the charge of cherry-picking. (You might want to make it a practice to double-check some of those quotes, though.)

What does it mean to say 'we are winning in Iraq'? According to those who support the war, the US has been winning in Iraq, turning corners and making breakthroughs, for the last five years.

At the moment, the US seems to be backing Maliki against Sadr (while quietly allowing Kurdistan to separate, and paying off the Sunnis). Militarily, Maliki's side might be winning (who can tell in a guerilla war?), but that doesn't really count when it comes to whose views (accepting an indefinite US presence or not, privatising oil or not) ultimately prevail among Iraqis.

Meanwhile, back at the big, well-known facts:

Senate Finds Pre-War Bush Claims Exaggerated, False

'"In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent," the Committee chairman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, said on releasing the 172-page report. "As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed."

"There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence," he added. "But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate."...

...The new reports also tend to bolster the charges made in a new book by former White House spokesman Scott McClellan, a long-time Bush aide who was considered part of the president's inner circle during the same period.

"Bush and his advisers knew that the American people would almost certainly not support a war launched primarily for the ambitious purpose of transforming the Middle East," according to McClellan's memoir, 'What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception'.

"Over that summer of 2002, top Bush aides had outlined a strategy for carefully orchestrating the coming campaign to aggressively sell the war" in part through "innuendo and implication" and "intentional ignoring of intelligence" that contradicted or cast doubt on their justifications for going to war, McClellan wrote.'