So God made a factory farmer

And that ultimately begat shameless pandering to 1950s-era heartland values.

Hubris

In about an hour you'll be able to watch the premiere on MSNBC.

A decade ago, on March 19, 2003, President George W. Bush launched the invasion of Iraq that would lead to a nine-year war resulting in 4,486 dead American troops, 32,226 service members wounded, and over 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians. The tab for the war topped $3 trillion. Bush did succeed in removing Saddam Hussein, but it turned out there were no weapons of mass destruction and no significant operational ties between Saddam's regime and Al Qaeda. That is, the two main assertions used by Bush and his crew to justify the war were not true. Three years after the war began, Michael Isikoff, then an investigative reporter for Newsweek (he's since moved to NBC News), and I published Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, a behind-the-scenes account of how Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and their lieutenants deployed false claims, iffy intelligence, and unsupported hyperbole to win popular backing for the invasion.

Since we still have Republican senators demanding information on 'coverups' that aren't, it is important to point out that when an actual con job happened right before their eyes, they swallowed it. Hook, line, sinker.

One chilling moment in the film comes in an interview with retired General Anthony Zinni, a former commander in chief of US Central Command. In August 2002, the Bush-Cheney administration opened its propaganda campaign for war with a Cheney speech at the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars convention. The veep made a stark declaration: "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." No doubt, he proclaimed, Saddam was arming himself with WMD in preparation for attacking the United States.

Zinni was sitting on the stage during the speech, and in the documentary he recalls his reaction:

It was a shock. It was a total shock. I couldn't believe the vice president was saying this, you know? In doing work with the CIA on Iraq WMD, through all the briefings I heard at Langley, I never saw one piece of credible evidence that there was an ongoing program. And that's when I began to believe they're getting serious about this. They wanna go into Iraq.

That Zinni quote should almost end the debate on whether the Bush-Cheney administration purposefully guided the nation into war with misinformation and disinformation.

Yeah. But no.

The film highlights a Pentagon document declassified two years ago. This memo notes that in November 2001—shortly after the 9/11 attacks—Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met with General Tommy Franks to review plans for the "decapitation" of the Iraqi government. The two men reviewed how a war against Saddam could be triggered; that list included a "dispute over WMD inspections." It's evidence that the administration was seeking a pretense for war.

The yellowcake uranium supposedly bought by Saddam in Niger, the aluminum tubes supposedly used to process uranium into weapons-grade material, the supposed connection between Saddam and Osama bin Laden—the documentary features intelligence analysts and experts who at the time were saying and warning that the intelligence on these topics was wrong or uncertain. Yet administration officials kept using lousy and inconclusive intelligence to push the case for war.

There has already been one excellent film on that subtopic: Fair Game. To this day the only person who demonstrates any remorse for the whole scandal is Colin Powell.

Through the months-long run-up to the invasion, Colin Powell, then the secretary of state, would become the administration's No. 1 pitchman for the war with a high-profile speech at the UN, which contained numerous false statements about Iraq and WMD. But, the documentary notes, he was hiding from the public his deep skepticism. In the film, Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell's chief of staff at the time, recalls the day Congress passed a resolution authorizing Bush to attack Iraq:

Powell walked into my office and without so much as a fare-thee-well, he walked over to the window and he said, "I wonder what'll happen when we put 500,000 troops into Iraq and comb the country from one end to the other and find nothing?" And he turned around and walked back in his office. And I—I wrote that down on my calendar—as close for—to verbatim as I could, because I thought that was a profound statement coming from the secretary of state, former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

Wilkerson also notes that Powell had no idea about the veracity of the intelligence he cited during that UN speech: "Though neither Powell nor anyone else from the State Department team intentionally lied, we did participate in a hoax."

Yes.

A hoax. That's what it was. Yet Bush and Cheney went on to win reelection, and many of their accomplices in this swindle never were fully held accountable. In the years after the WMD scam became apparent, there certainly was a rise in public skepticism and media scrutiny of government claims. Still, could something like this happen again? (Rachel) Maddow remarks, "If what we went through 10 years ago did not change us as a nation—if we do not understand what happened and adapt to resist it—then history says we are doomed to repeat it."

The history is, of course, already being repeated... in the financial crisis. Refusing to hold our country's leaders -- the elected ones as well as the corporate ones -- to a legal reckoning when they tell lies and break laws is nothing but a grave mistake for the future of this once-great nation.

Update: Here are your links to watch it online.

The Weekly Wrangle

The words "pitchers and catchers report" has always made the Texas Progressive Alliance happy as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff looks at the partisan shifts in Texas House districts from 2008 to 2012.

We have enough money in Texas to fund our public education needs and expand Medicaid, as well as transportation and water infrastructure projects. But our current leaders don't see it that way. WCNews at Eye on Williamson shows that their adherence to ideology over what's best for Texas is the problem, in Transportation funding, the state budget, and ideology.

Two issues in the Texas Lege last week -- one of them the regulation of payday lending operators -- show bright potential for bipartisan legislation. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs is encouraged by the news.  

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants you to know that Lamar Smith is a dim bulb advancing the same old Republican 'ideas' on immigration.

At TexasKaos, Libby Shaw poses the same question to Ted Cruz that was asked of Joe McCarthy almost 60 years ago.



Unfortunately, the answer is no. Read all about it here: Senator Ted Cruz: Have You No Decency?

Neil at Texas Liberal wrote about Houston mayoral candidate Ben Hall. Neil is still posting at TxLib every few days; however he is mostly working on a new website going up in April. That site will feature a photo essay focusing on the value of the things that are around us each day, a metaphorical history of the universe and the Earth, some poems, and a new blog on 2013 City of Houston election politics.

Sunday Funnies

Cloture on Hagel nomination fails, 58-40

1 present.

So it's official: Thanks to a handful of Democratic senators who blocked filibuster reform, Senate Republicans have successfully blocked the Senate from voting on the confirmation of Sen. Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense, at least for the time being.

Fifty-eight senators voted to move forward with the nomination process, short of the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster. Four Republicans joined 54 Democrats on the losing side.

The four GOP were Mike Johanns of Nebraska (Hagel's home state), Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, and Thad Cochran of Mississippi. Orrin Hatch voted 'present'.

John Cornyn is on C-Span repeatedly saying that it wasn't a filibuster even as I type this.

I agree with those who say that Harry Reid looks like a chump.

The whole thing is something of a dark comedy. Last month, a handful of Senate Democrats blocked efforts to reform the filibuster. If they hadn't blocked reform, Republicans would have been required to actually speak on the floor to continue their filibuster. Instead, they settled on a handshake agreement between Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. And now, to nobody's surprise, McConnell is stabbing Reid in the back.

And John Walker at Firedoglake speaks for me.

At some point you need to stop blaming the Republicans for their filibusters. If someone decides to give a known arsonist matches and gasoline, they now bear most of the responsibility when he burns their house down.

Update: More from MaddowBlog.

(S)everal GOP senators who said they'd allow an up-or-down vote changed their minds in recent days.

Indeed, as recently as Monday of this week, for example, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said, "Never before has a defense secretary nominee required 60 votes on the floor to overcome a filibuster threat." He added a filibuster, if it were to occur, "sets a wrong precedent."

And then, today, McCain voted against cloture on Hagel anyway.

It was Mitch McConnell and Jeff Sessions, along with Cornyn, who repeatedly mouthed that "up-or-down-vote" line during the Bush years about judicial nominees. Media Matters has a post from last month in regard to that hypocrisy on the part of Senate Republicans.

This boil could have been lanced by Harry Reid, also in January, but he refused to exert caucus discipline. This failure lies as much at his feet as it does the GOP's.