Although Scott McClellan's book is unflattering toward the Bush administration in general and Bush in particular, he does Bush a gigantic favor by still telling a crucial lie: that the Iraq War was at least in part to spread democracy in the Middle East.
This would make Bush at worst an impractical idealist.
In reality, his actions and those of his administration show he had no intentions of spreading democracy to the Middle East--or even to Iraq.
As little as 1% of Iraqis feel safer because we are there and overwhelming majorities want us to leave.
But Bush stays.
He did eventually have elections in Iraq, but not until after his appointed colonial ruler, Paul Bremer privatized their economy and made other sweeping changes that the Iraqis are not allowed to tamper with.
When the Iraqi parliament chose a prime minister Bush didn't like, he told them to pick again.
When Iraqis wouldn't pass an oil law that gives up to 88% of their oil wealth to American big oil companies, Bush threatened to fire their prime minister if it didn't pass. Since that didn't do the trick, the oil companies offered each legislator up to $5 million to pass the law, they refused, choosing to represent the will of their people, but I don't remember reading about Bush protesting that attempt at corrupting their fledgling democracy.
Bush also continues to blame Iran and Syria for the violence in Iraq, ignoring statements from Iraq's prime minister to the contrary.
Bush has made even less effort to act on his democratic statements elsewhere in the Middle East.
He supported democracy in Lebanon and the occupied territories of Palestine, but only until he didn't like the outcome--it isn't democracy if the government doesn't obey Bush.
Before the Iraq War, when bribes wouldn't work on our democratic ally Turkey, neocon gargoyle Paul Wolfowitz said the military should have played a "strong leadership role" to make them join us. This not only offended the Turkish legislature, it offended the Turkish military, who had more respect for democracy than the Bushie Wolfowitz. In fairness, Wolfowitz showed a similar disregard for American democracy when he admitted on two separate occasion that the Iraq War was about oil and the talk of WMD was for "bureaucratic reasons." The only reason to lie was to keep the public from making a knowledgeable decision, which castrates democracy.
It's an understandable mistake on the Bushies part given how cozy they are with Pakistan's military dictator, Pervez Musharaf, who overthrew his country's democratically-elected civilian government. The Bushies didn't mind his cozy relationship with the Taliban and al Qaeda either. He helped both escape from Tora Bora, and Pakistani intelligence helped Daniel Pearl make his appointment with the terrorists who eventually beheaded him. One of the kidnappers' demands was for the delivery of several F-16 fighter jets bought by Pakistan from the US. That sounds like someone trying to do Musharaf a favor, rather than undermine him.
Bush's closest ally in the region Saudi Arabia, doesn't even make a pretense of democracy. It is a kingdom with no freedom of speech, assembly, or elected government. It also supported the 9/11 hijackers and sends more foreign fighters into Iraq than any other country. None of which seems to bother Bush.
In all, Bush's lies about spreading democracy should be considered as discredited as thoroughly as the ones about Saddam having WMD and planning to give them to bin Laden.
The press and Democrats in Congress fail to knock down this last lie because it might make citizens finally demand a discussion of the real reason for the war, control of tens of trillions of dollars worth of Iraq's oil, not for the good of the average American, but to pad the bottom lines of a handful of corporations, by letting them control the flow to set the price HIGH.
OIL THEFT MOTIVE FOR IRAQ WAR RESOURCES
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