The "single question"

...One of the very few who broke ranks is Middle East specialist Augustus Richard Norton, who pointed out, I’m quoting him, “As fantasies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were unmasked, the Bush administration increasingly stressed the democratic transformation of Iraq, and scholars jumped on the democratization bandwagon.” Before the fantasies were unmaked, there was of course occasional invocation of the standard pieties…. …In the most extensive study of official jusitifications for the Iraq invasion, a thick volume by John Prados, you’ll have to look hard for terms like “decmocracy.” Nothing in the index, and I couldn’t find one. While they’re asking us to appreciate the sincerity of their eloquent orations about the sudden conversion to democratic transformation, US and British leaders are also informing us that they are among the most brazen liars in history. And we know that, because they drove their countries to war on the grounds of what they consistently called a “single question: will Saddam abandon his weapons destruction programs?” That was repeated stressed as the single question. By August 2003, when the tale was falling to pieces, the press reported, this is the New York Times, “as the search for illegal weapons in Iraq continues without success, the Bush administration has moved to emphasize a different rationale for the war against Saddam Hussein, using Iraq as the lynchpin to transform the Mideast and thereby reduce the terrorist threat to the United States.” More accurately, as the writer knew, to risk enhancing the terrorist threat, which happened, as was anticipated, and as their own intelligence agencies confirmed. This alone suffices to undermine the credibility of the different rationale, but that’s only the bare beginning. Nonetheless, the new rationale quickly became holy writ, North Korean style. … a Gallop poll in Baghad provided the opportunity for respondents to leap on the democratization bandwagon, but some failed to do so: 99 per cent. Asked why they thought the United States invaded Iraq, 1 per cent felt that the goal was to bring democracy, joining the chorus here, 5 per cent thought that the goal was to assist the Iraqi people, and the rest assumed that the goal was to take control of Iraq’s resources and to reorganize the Middle East in US and Israeli interests. That’s what’s called a conspiracy theory here. It’s derided by rational westerners, who understand that Washington and London would have been just as dedicated to the liberation of Iraq if its resources happened to be, say, lettuce and pickles, rather than petroleum. That’s what serious people understand.

“Washington's Messianic Mission.” Remarks by Noam Chomsky at Hampshire College, October 11, 2005.