Tommy Spills The Beans

If not the pinballs. Tommy Franks, head honcho of the U.S. invasion, in defence of the invasion's timing, claims that the invasion happened when it did because, "We saw evidence that the regime was intending to destroy the southern oil fields, [and] had not been able to fully set conditions to be able to do that, so we sensed that we had an opportunity to get to these oil fields."

It's probably a lie. But either way, it contradicts the officially stated pretext for the timing of the invasion: that U.S. intelligence had determined that Saddam was not disarming, but that he was just playing his usual tricks, in trying to indefinitely stretch out the inspections process.

This pretext has in turn been contradicted by the inspectors themselves.

As usual, the problem isn't so much that the State Department and military apparatus is lying and contradicting itself -- that's their job. But it's not (or shouldn't be) the job of the media to repeat the lies and contradictions without comment.

Posted by Eddie Tews at March 31, 2003 03:41 PM