Because Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, and a gaggle of Republican consultants are incapable of articulating a defense of the Bush-43 administration’s prosecution of the Iraq War, an independent observer more schooled in the science of persuasive communication must intervene for the sake of the historical record. Here goes.  Contrary to revisionist history, the Iraq War was far from a discretionary “war of choice.” All the world’s major intelligence agencies agreed that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, an assessment ratified by Bill Clinton and his CIA Director (“slam dunk,” remember?). The 9/11 Commission later documented numerous contacts between Saddam and al-Qaeda.  But wait, wasn’t the message from the 9/11 report just the opposite, i.e., no collaboration between al-Qaeda and Saddam? That is the partisan canard, but the text of the report merely denies any “operational” or...(Read Full Article)