I'm crap at titles, how about: Bush and Aznar are dirty scheming liars and are not to be trusted
After the Downing Street memo there is further evidence about how the White House and friends were preparing for regime change in Iraq, regardless of what the weapons inspectors found (both repeatedly state without evidence that Saddam was not disarming) and regardless of a second UN resolution. A
transcript of a meeting between President Bush and ex-Spanish President José María Aznar in Crawford on 22 February 2003 reveals the following:
- Bush had decided he would go to war if China, France or Russia vetoed a second resolution authorising the use of force for Iraqi non-compliance with UN resolutions.
- Bush believed that American troops would be in Baghdad by the end of March that year.
- Bush believed the war would cost US $50 billion.
- Bush recognised that Iraq had a strong bureaucracy and civil society that could form the basis for a future state (despite the fact that one of the first CPA orders to was to indiscriminately sack all the Baathists -some 60,000, including 10,000 teachers- who would have had to have been occupying these positions, thus reducing it to rubble).
- Bush was getting frustrated by the weapons inspections process, describing it as "Chinese water torture" and that they have to put an end to it. The fact that the weapons inspectors could not find the weapons that he had decided were there bothered him.
- Bush was prepared to compromise a treaty on free trade with Chile, funds to Angola from the Millennium Account and improved relations with Russia if they did not bend to his will in the Security Council.
- That Saddam could have gone into exile in Egypt with a billion dollars and the secrets of his weapons and thus avert war. Early in the converstaion Bush says Saddam had indicated this to the Egyptian governement, and later states this is a possibility. It is hard to imagine what weapons information Saddam would be taking; according to the famous testimony of his escapee son in law, the programmes were closed on Saddam's orders in the early 1990s and the Iraqi government had since claimed that it had destroyed all its stockpiles. On the other hand, if Saddam vacated and another leader, no matter how democratic, stepped into Saddam's shoes, would the pro-war administrations have tolerated the possibility it had access to WMDs?
Throughout Bush displays the ridiculous optimism that became the hallmark of his administration before the war, prompting Aznar to say "the only thing that worries me is your optimism". Bush replies "I'm only optimistic because I believe I am in the right". It's a pity they only have the chance to impeach the bastard once. Now I'm the one being optimistic.
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