SeattleTimes: A war sold on deception

"Two crucial rationales used by President Bush to justify a pre-emptive strike against Saddam Hussein have crumbled. Now it falls to the American people to judge whether the war was sold on falsehoods or wishful exaggerations.
One goes to the credibility and veracity of the White House and the other to fundamental competence to manage the might of a superpower.
None of the justifications invoked by the administration before and after the war, and as recently as this week by Vice President Cheney, has survived bipartisan scrutiny.
On Wednesday, the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks said it had found no credible evidence of cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaida in the specific assault, or broader collaboration between Saddam Hussein and terrorist networks.
The finding was presented without partisan equivocation by commission members, and endorsed by senior officials of the Central Intelligence Agency and the FBI.
Yet as recently as Monday, Cheney told an audience of Saddam's long-established ties with al-Qaida. In February 2003, the president talked of Saddam's longstanding, direct and continuing ties to terrorist networks. That has been the pattern.
Bush pressed for Saddam's removal with a case built on imminent danger, lethal capacity and a willingness to supply terrifying weapons to enemies of the United States and its allies. Doubters were ignored and international relationships — those forged in world war and nurtured for half a century — were sacrificed. Iraq has been turned inside out, but no weapons of mass destruction have yet been found. Saddam may have indeed destroyed them as ordered by the United Nations. Something may yet turn up, but a device buried deep in a cave does not suggest imminent danger to the U.S.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, who argued persuasively before the United Nations General Assembly about mobile production of chemical and biological weapons, said last January he does not now believe they exist.
Bush gave his war cause immediacy and psychological impact by linking Saddam to al-Qaida, whose demonstrated hatred of America was well-established. The White House and civilian leadership of the Pentagon said they had evidence of terrifying weapons and ties to groups that wanted to use them against us.
The arguments represented a powerful, one-two punch for opponents to overcome in their own minds, let alone convince a shell-shocked public of their improbability.
Yesterday, in the face of substantial findings by the 9-11 commission, the White House was trying to parse words about Saddam and terrorists. The public relations, or self-deception, are part of the history of this war.
President Bush has an extraordinary burden to assure Americans that intelligence was not skewed to sell the war on Iraq. As the national election approaches it is all the more important."