It’s difficult to argue at this point that president George W. Bush was a long way off the mark when he told the American people, and the world in general, that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biochemical weapons of mass destruction - that’s without even mentioning the supposed development of nuclear weapons we were also told about.

In the selling of the war we were told about mobile chemical labs, attempts to acquire nuclear material, airborne drones for spreading WMD gasses (of various natures), and (according to PM Tony Blair) Iraq’s ability to launch an attack within 45 minutes of Hussein giving the order - so why is neither either Bush nor Blair backing down substantially from these claims and saying “We were wrong”?

The Bush administration has gone part way, there’s a big difference between earlier comments of we will find the WMD’s and the current we might find evidence of WMD’s, but that does not address the fact that the administration was wrong in it’s assessment of Iraq’s capabilities.

Tony Blair, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, continues to say they will be found - mind you he makes that statement less and less these days, but he has not changed it. The Kay report indicates things like the intelligence the U.S. used to lead the war on Iraq was faulty, and blames the intelligence community - one news report I saw referenced on another blog noted Kay went as far as to say that the intelligence community owed Bush an explanation for this failure… that is of course countered by numerous reports from both sides of the ocean that there was considerable political pressure exerted on that same intelligence community to report that Iraq did pose a clear and credible threat to the Middle East, the world in general, and the United States specifically, in order to justify a war.

It would seem obvious that the answer to the big question is, of course, that the current United States president and administration fear (at the very least) that if they admit that they were wrong about the WMD they will lose further credibility on the world stage - - a valid concern given the number of people and countries that consider their current credibility levels to be at an all time low - - and, just possibly, at the worst, questions of a criminal nature…… regardless of either outcome, anyone giving the matter any thought at all knows that ignoring the situation isn’t going to help anything.

Unfortunately for Bush and Blair it will not, as I’m sure they hope, just go away. Any admission of wrongness will lead to investigations (at some point) into just exactly how they could have been so wrong, investigations that could in fact turn up evidence/proof that political pressure was brought to bear on the intelligence community to report what the political arm of government wanted to see. They don’t want this. As a matter of fact, if levels of Whitehouse co-operation with the 9/11 commission are any indicator, they want no significant questions asked at all.

Any admission of wrongness will lead to the inevitable questions about the thousands upon thousands of unnecessary civilian deaths, questions about the thousands upon thousands of civilians who were maimed and injured during the bombings, questions about the millions upon millions of dollars of private property that was destroyed, and last, but far from least, the amount of hatred towards the United States (and Great Britain) that has been generated by the war, its aftermath, and how people perceive the U.S. has conducted itself.

These questions have already been a thorn in their sides, and increases in the levels of questioning resulting from an admission that they were wrong about the basic premise of the war will not help Bush get re-elected in November. And that is the primary mission right now, admissions of “mistakes”, if they ever come, will be after the November elections, admissions of wrongness, if they ever come, will happen during the investigations the next Democratic president calls for.

(The content of this post came from an older pMachine incarnation of stageleft with a different hosting company - comments, if any, didn’t make it into the rebuild)