There are those who think that life has nothing left to chance
A host of holy horrors to direct our aimless dance

A planet of play things
We dance on the strings
Of powers we cannot perceive
‘The stars aren’t aligned
Or the gods are malign…’
Blame is better to give than receive

You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that’s clear
I will choose freewill
Rush ~ Freewill

A tautology for the ages from the master of Teh Stupid:

A lot of poor commentary has framed the Iraq war as a conflict of “choice” rather than of “necessity.” In fact, President George W. Bush chose to remove Saddam Hussein from power because he concluded that doing so was necessary.

Heh. Nice word play. Lemme see if I can do as well.

How about this: “In fact, President George W. Bush chose to conclude that it was necessary to remove Saddam Hussein from power.” See? Easy and I used fewer words too!

After all this time, they’re still offering up bullcrap arguments to justify the worst decision in American history. This ain’t flying at all, and BooMan does an admirable job of explaining why.

Feith pushes a false narrative on us, but it’s a familiar one. We had no reliable intelligence in 2001 that suggested that Saddam Hussein was reconstituting his biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons programs. His armed forces were weak, disloyal, ill-paid, ill-equipped, and totally unable to project force towards any of his neighbors. Insofar as the Intelligence Community worked on the issue of Iraq, they were mainly concerned with an international disinformation campaign to heighten the threat from Saddam in order to maintain support for a crumbling sanctions regime. Belief in Iraq’s WMD’s was nothing more than a convenient case of believing our own hype. How many times did the Bush administration point to misinformation put out by the Clinton administration to bolster their case for war (and to justify their decision after the fact)?

But there is a key difference between the lies of the Clinton administration and the lies of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) of Douglas Feith. Clinton administration lies were intended to keep Saddam Hussein from rearming and/or slaughtering internal dissidents. Bush administration lies were intended to justify actions that have now cost over 4,000 American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis their lives, created over 2 million refugees, and cost a trillion dollars.

That was a choice that George W. Bush made. He chose to lie in the service of a policy that created all this tragedy and waste. And to think that Feith would quote Rumsfeld’s concern about the loss of a single pilot as justification for the necessity of doing this! No wonder General Tommy Franks said of Feith, “I have to deal with the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth almost every day.”

As for Karl “The Math” Rove, well . . . other than still being worshiped by the likes of one of the most self-deluded bloggers in Reich Wing Blogistan, he not only fails completely of offer any analysis in his long-winded and tiresome essay other than how McCain and Obama are spending their money — cuz it’s all about the cash of course — he can’t even get the simple facts right about who’s spending what, when.

Honestly I don’t know if this is a deliberate fake-out, willfully ignoring the dynamic shifts in the electorate as a direct backlash against the dismal failures of Rove’s former boss’s administration because of their complete politicalization of public policy due mainly to Rove’s own advice and advancement within the White House.

That or maybe Rove is just stupid too.