Juan Cole has an analysis of the latest explosive documents emerging from London. So far the silence in the mainstream media in the U.S. on this and the earlier revelations has been deafening. Of course, as I remarked before, all of this simply confirms what grown-ups knew in the first place:
When America descended into the theatre of the absurd in the Spring of 2002-- when a former U.S. ally and dictator of a devastated nation, half of whose population were children, suddenly became an imminent threat to the United States--most of the world recognized, of course, that U.S. claims about a military threat from Iraq were bogus, convenient rationales for policies that had other objectives and other origins.
But having raised the curtain on the first act of the absurdist drama, the play would not have been complete without lots of agonized hand-wringing--after the criminal and immoral war was launched--about how the "intelligence" could have been so wrong: there were no "weapons of mass destruction," no military threat, nothing. Again, no surprise to anyone who hadn't already fallen through the looking-glass, but still, within the mainstream culture in the United States (including most of the blogosphere, it bears emphasizing), it was necessary to figure out how it could be that the intelligence agencies had done so poorly. The obvious explanation--that the intelligence reports were a put-up job ordered by those intent on invading Iraq for other reasons--was barely mentioned.
In the U.S., it is still barely mentioned. How long will this cognitive dissonance--between official silence and clear evidence--be sustainable? If history is a guide, the answer may be: a very long time.
UPDATE: But maybe the blogosphere will do some good for a change?
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