A government as good as its people

Before the US invaded Iraq, President Bush said he had intelligence evidence that "Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda." Vice President Cheney said Iraq was the heart of "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11." After the invasion (not after the war since it looks like it will last forever) Bush and Cheney continue to conflate and outright lie about the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda as it existed before the war.

Just last month on April 6, Vice President Cheney continued to claim a link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein telling, who else, Rush Limbaugh, "remember Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist, al Qaeda affiliate; ran a training camp in Afghanistan for al Qaeda, then migrated -- after we went into Afghanistan and shut him down there, he went to Baghdad, took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq; organized the al Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene, and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June.... This is al Qaeda operating in Iraq. And as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq." Of course this is lie layered on lie as Zarqawi was not even a member of al Qaeda until he pledged his support in 2004 - after the U.S. invasion. Before the 2003 invasion Zarqawi was in the northern Kurdish portion of Iraq, outside of Saddam Hussein's control and in an area hostile to Saddam's regime, not Baghdad and there's no evidence of collusion between Zarqawi and Hussein. But no matter it sounds good doesn't it?

Looking back at polls before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq as many as 70% of America thought there was a connection between Saddam Hussein/Iraq and the attacks of September 11. Mission accomplished indeed. And the "confusion" or the lie that there was some operational connection between the two (al Qaeda and Iraq that is, not the operational connection between Iraq and the U.S. - that was in the 1980s when Donald Rumsfeld was Saddam's cabana boy) continues to this day. "There are too many ifs, too many things going on - I don't know the whole story." says a potential juror in the Jose Padilla terrorism-support case who isn't sure who directed the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. "I'm oblivious to that stuff," one prospective juror said. And it wasn't President Bush who said, "I don't watch the news much. I try to avoid it." but he could have. No, it was a juror candidate who is as qualified to be on the Padilla jury as she is to be President of the United States.

A government as good as its people or a people as good as its government? Doesn't matter. If ignorance is bliss then this is the happiest country on Earth.