heart?

Strange how Republics are never responsible for the things they do.

Maybe I am wrong, but I do not recall one leaders of a major country who claimed before the war that Iraq had no WMD.

First, the Brits knew that the WMD was bullshit. So did the French, who are said to have good intel. The Germans sold Iraq a lot of chemicals, so should have had a pretty good handle on what was really going on in Iraq, and what Saddam actually had access to in terms of WMD. The Brits went in for reasons still not clear, but partly because Tony Blair figured if he joined Bush that he could at least reign Bush in a bit. Blair miscalculated on that score.

Second, please go read EW’s Ghorbanifar Timeline, also listed on the right sidebar of this page. Pay special attention to the spring of 2003:

April 2003: Iran proposes re-establishing relations; US rejects proposal because Iranian government “on the verge of collapse”

May 3, 2003: US and Iran in negotiations in Geneva

May 7, 2003: Rhode apparently stages “find” of anti-Israel materials in Iraq (and uranium document) with Ahmed Chalabi; Judy Miller [of NYT] reports it

Late May, 2003: Ledeen sends new letter outlining Ghorbanifar plan to Feith, including promise of finding “Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that had been moved to Iran”

May 21, 2003: US cancels Geneva meeting with Iran, accusing Iran of harboring Al Qaeda leaders

May 25, 2003: Report (quoting Rummy elsewhere) that US considering using MEK to launch attack on Iran

June 2, 2003: Feith forwards Ledeen letter to Cambone; “let’s discuss”

We can assume that Bart Gellman’s reporting in his autobiography of Cheney (“Angler”) is accurate in stating that at least one of Cheney’s employees (Edelman) intercepted NSA transcripts of DoS’s Richard Haass** in Dubai (or was it another UEA principality?) attempting to open negotiations with Iranians, presumably including nukes.

Note further that Ms Plame’s job was to track Iranian nuclear materials, until she was ‘outed’.
Note additionally that Chalabi turns up in ‘planted WMD’; the CIA had determined that Chalabi was either a serial liar, a double-agent for Iran, or a completely untrustworthy person. Yet the neocons around Cheney were thick as thieves with Chalabi.

Note further that IIRC, Ghorbanifar is also Iranian.
Both Chalabi and Ghorbanifar were also involved in Iran-Contra, which Cheney shut down tighter than a duck’s ass when Cheney was Chair of House Intel. Later, Cheney would become GHWB’s Sec of Defense. GHWB was certainly involved in Iran-Contra, although because our government is evidently gutless, his role has never been publicly clarified. It defies logic to presume that Cheney doesn’t have a great deal of knowledge about US sales of weapons to Iran in exchange for US hostages.

Note that one of the key foreign policy topics in the world today is ‘Iranian nukes’, as well as their role in prompting other Middle East nations to acquire nukes.

I find it nearly impossible to conclude anything other than:
— 1. Bush and Cheney were played for fools and duped by Iranian agents, starting with Chalabi, but also Ghorbanifar.
— 2. The Iranians wanted to be rid of Saddam and surely would have realized that the US and Oil Majors wanted the Iraqi oil fields. It’s no great stretch of imagination to assume that the Iranians told the oil majors and the neocons in the BushCheney admin exactly what they knew (the neocons) wanted to hear.
— 3. Cheney was probably paranoid enough, and ambitious enough, to believe what he wanted to hear: that the US could invade Iraq and all the military costs would be repaid by oil revenue from Iraqi oil fields.

None of this convoluted idiocy hurt China’s or Russia’s interests, now did it?
If I were sitting on a ring of Saturn watching this play out, there are moments that I’d wonder just WTF Cheney’s real objectives were – or the neocons around him.

Rove is reprehensible, but it’s a safe bet that because he was working for Junya, the Bush Family protection agency covered Rove’s butt as a means of trying to keep some kind of fig leaf over the moronic stupidity of GWBush.

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** no longer in government; now Pres Council on Foreign Relations… if you can call that ‘leaving government’. His current job probably pays better than his position at DoS.