71^st in continuing blog series on the administration push to war. In the last 48 hours before the invasion—which of course the administration has already determined on—the president plays his cruelest prank on the Iraqi people and on the American public. The White House issues a pretended ‘deadline’ for Saddam Hussein to leave power in Iraq. Saddam actually does make plans to exit and begins his attempts to escape, but of course the deadline is bogus. With U.S. and world opinion sufficiently trammeled, there is no chance that the Bush administration will voluntarily refrain from invading.
March 17-18, ...   more »