If you didn’t see Jon Stewart interview Douglas Fieth, watch it here. If you did see Jon Stewart interview Douglas Faith, watch it here [it includes parts that didn’t air]. The interview speaks for itself, but there’s one point I’d like to make about the interview.
Douglas Feith was trying to explain to Jon Stewart the President’s dilemma after 9/11. He said the usual, that after 9/11 the President had to think about more that the "law enforcement" model – punish the bad guys. He had to think about the next attack, and where it might come from ergo the other Hostile Arab States ergo Saddam Hussein. He implies the President Bush came up with this after a lot of thought. On the surface of things, that sounds reasonable. But it flies in the face of the facts. This Plan was crafted before there was a 9/11 – in fact, before Bush was even elected. You can read it right here, The Letter to President Clinton, in January 1998 from the Project for the New American Century – signed by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. If you want to sift through the papers of the American Enterprise Institute, you can find it in multiple writings [Laurie Mylroie, John Bolton, all of your favorites]. And you can find it in the writings of Paul O’Niell and Richard Clarke – writing about the pre-911 Bush Administration. Feith’s portrayal of Bush reaching his decision on Iraq after thoughtful debate and contemplation is ludicrous. Feith’s own boss, Donald Rumsfeld, was talking about getting Saddam Hussein on September 11th, 2001 [with my transcriptions added when it became public in early 2006]:
It also says, "Tasks Jim Haynes [DoD Legal Counsel] to talk with PW [Paul Wolfowitz] for additional support …?… connection with UBL [Osama bin Laden]." So at 2PM on September 11th, 2001, Rumsfeld is tasking his counsel to talk to Paul Wolfowitz [signer of the 1998 PNAC Letter along with Rumsfeld] to begin to build a case against Saddam Hussein and his connections with bin Laden. And who ultimately made those connections? Douglas Feith, the very guy that’s telling Jon Stewart that the Iraq invasion was a post-911 decision made by George Bush. And then there’s the unreleased Rumsfeld September 30, 2001 Memo that apparently list a number of targets.
Did you hear the part when Feith said that Saddam didn’t do what he needed to do to stop us from going to war in Iraq. Saddam gave the UN everything he had and that was thousands of records and no one can tell me that Bush or anybody else actually read through the paperwork. Saddam didn’t tell the UN weapons inspectors that were in Iraq to leave. Chief weapons inspector for the UN Hans Blix said that the inspectors were doing their job and they were told to leave Iraq because the United States was going to war. Does Feith think that people would believe his lies? Jon Stewart has quite a bit of control. I would have been out of control with his rubbish. Bush wanted to get his paycheck as president and go to Crawford and clear brush on his property. God help us with what Bush has destroyed with his malfeasance.