Ilana Mercer chronicles her 13 years of writing about ‘WMD balderdash’
“If we knew what we know today, we would not have gone into Iraq”: This is as good an apology Republicans vying for the highest office are willing to offer, 12 years after launching a war that was immoral and unjust from the inception – as some of us pointed out from the inception – cost trillions in treasure, tens of thousands of lives (American and Iraqi) and flouted America’s national interests.
The big reveal began with Jeb Bush, who told anchor Megyn Kelly that knowing what we know now about Iraq, he would absolutely still have invaded Iraq. Broadcaster Laura Ingraham was having none of it. With the benefit of hindsight, she had arrived at the belated conclusion that the invasion was wrong. Ingraham suggested that Bush III was insane for sticking to his guns about Iraq.
Next to disgrace was Sen. Marco Rubio, also in the running. Six weeks back, Rubio had been unrepentant about the catastrophic invasion. After The Shaming of Jeb, Rubio changed his tune.
The title of Judith Chalabi Miller’s “rehab book tour” is, “If we knew what we now know …” Over the pages of the New York Times, Miller, the Gray Lady’s prized reporter, had shilled for the Iraq war like there was no tomorrow. In her reporting, she channeled Ahmad Chalabi, an Iraqi conman who fed the moronic Miller with misinformation and lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The other conman was Bush II, president at the time. His administration assisted Miller – a woman already prone to seeing faces in the clouds – to tune-out and become turned-on and hot for war (also the title of a January 2003 “Return To Reason” column). No tale was too tall for our Judith; no fabrication too fantastic.
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