The Daily Background

Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post makes a great point in his latest Washington Briefing:

President Bush dismissed reports that he is planning to attack Iran as “wild speculation” yesterday. But that’s a far cry from saying it flatly ain’t so.

And Bush — who, it is now abundantly clear, secretly decided to go to war in Iraq long before he admitted as much in public — lacks credibility on such issues.

Uh-huh. That’s a very good point, if you’ve been paying attention to those pre-Iraq-war memos that have been leaked to the press that revealed that the President’s 2003 plans to attack Iraq regardless of whether the intelligence panned out or not. In addition, the memos (which have been confirmed as real by the British government) reveal that the President was focused on falsely provoking Iraq into a first-move against the U.S., and that he even suggested that an American plane be painted with U.N. colors and flown over Iraq in an attempt to get it shot down– and the United Nations drawn into the fight.

This was in January of 2003. The President at that time said that diplomatic channels were still open. Meanwhile, in private, he pencilled in a plan to attack Iraq around March 10th on his calender. The bombing started March 17. Pretty close. Right now the President is saying in public that all diplomatic channels are still open. Who knows what he’s saying in private.

In addition, ThinkProgress has a post up called Rumsfeld on Iran Today = Rumsfeld on Iraq in 2002 which you might want to check out.

Filed under: Iran Related, Iraq Related, Z-TDB Blog