A reminder: still a crime

The Iraq war may seem tired old news to people in the United States -- though I am sure it doesn't to Iraqis still living in (or outside) the wreckage. And the shadow of that unjustified and unjustifiable war of choice still hangs over us in this election season: just this week, Atlantic political correspondent Marc Ambinder thought the way to pigeonhole Florida Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson's place in our political spectrum was to recall his car sported a "Bush Lied; People Died" bumper sticker.

So it is not a negligible thing that Thomas Ricks, Washington Post military correspondent from 2000-2008 and a current foreign policy blogger, highlights the following snippets from former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Hugh Shelton's memoir.

Shelton also writes that there was no reason to go war against Iraq. "The fact is that we had Iraq contained and they were not a threat." (419) Also, "There was absolutely no link between him [Saddam] and 9/11." (474) No big revelations, but I was glad to see this stated so flatly by a former high official.

His bottom line: "President Bush and his team got us enmeshed in Iraq based on extraordinarily poor intelligence and a series of lies purporting that we had to protect American from Saddam's evil empire because it posed such a threat to our national security." (474-475)

Just in case you weren't paying attention, he elaborates on that charge later in the book. "Spinning the possible possession of WMDs as a threat to the United States in the way they did is, in my opinion, tantamount to intentionally deceiving the American people." (488)

These are pretty serious charges, given that they come from the man who was the nation's top military officer for four years immediately preceding 9/11.

Bush lied, people died, indeed.