The recent report from the U.S. Congress outlining how the Bush administration lied its way into the Iraq war was on the front pages for a day or two, but it will fade into the darkness soon enough as the national Attention Decifit Disorder plunges into the next crisis, be it gas prices or unemployment. We may wring our hands over the inattention that this report is receiving, but it actually makes sense that this news is short-lived. The mentality that ignores the disgraceful march to war in Iraq is the same mentality that re-elected George W. Bush in 2004.

We knew damned well that the Iraq war was a mistake and that the President and his cronies pulled out all stops for war. Unprovoked war based on misinformation and lies is bad enough. It's even worse when that war loots the national treasury and distracts us from the real effort to destroy the people who actually attacked us on 9/11. The Democrats did not want the presidency badly enough. Had they wanted it as badly as the Republicans did, John Kerry would have attacked Bush each and every day for the unlawful war which has done far more harm than good.

The American public wanted to be lied to. After September 11, Americans wanted war, against anyone. It was easy to blame Saddam Hussein for the 9/11 attacks. After all, he hates us, we hate him, and he's a terrorist. The Bush administration encouraged the American people to believe that Saddam had a relationship with bin Ladin and that they would share weapons, even nuclear weapons, in their united front against us. This and other falsehoods were enough to cause over 70 percent of the American people when the war started to believe that Saddam had something to do with 9/11. The Bush administration manipulated public fears and ignorance, and now over 4,000 American soldiers are dead and many thounsands of them are wounded for life.

So I blame Bush and the criminal enterprise that occupies the White House and the American people for this war. The government knows how to manipulate public opinion just as the advertising industry knows how to make us buy products that we don't really need. The interconnected propaganda schemes that drive American capitalism also work in the context of war, which is as profitable to private corporations as any miracle drug or electronic gadget. We wanted war, we wanted to be lied to, and we got both.

Here is a summary of the report which exposes the run-up to war as the propaganda effort that it was:

The 170-page report accuses Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top officials of repeatedly overstating the Iraqi threat in the emotional aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Its findings were endorsed by all eight committee Democrats and two Republicans, Senators Olympia Snowe of Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

In a statement accompanying the report, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said: “The president and his advisers undertook a relentless public campaign in the aftermath of the attacks to use the war against Al Qaeda as a justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein.”

. . .

The report was especially critical of statements by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney that linked Iraq to Al Qaeda and raised the possibility that Mr. Hussein might supply the terrorist group with weapons of mass destruction. “Representing to the American people that the two had an operational partnership and posed a single, indistinguishable threat was fundamentally misleading and led the nation to war on false premises,” Mr. Rockefeller wrote.

Here is the official summary from the report:

--Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.

--Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.

--Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.

--Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq's chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community's uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.

--The Secretary of Defense's statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.

--The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.

All of this is very depressing. The news makers may think this is old news; after all, we all knew that Bush lied, right? Except that few news makers are focusing on the true implications of this report. Keith Olbermann at MSNBC interviewed Richard Clarke, himself a Bush whistleblower whose book in 2002-03 was among the first to expose Bush as an incompetent man-child overly focused on Iraq instead of the real enemy. This report vindicates Clarke, and he has some choice words for his former employer. Click below and enjoy.