Abstract

Time for Truth

The editors call upon the administration of U.S. president George W. Bush to tell the truth about the war in Iraq and its failure to prevent the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The two brothers who scaled the face of Big Ben in London with a banner reading "Time for Truth" sent the right message on the anniversary of the beginning of the US-led war on Iraq and just days before the start of hearings in Washington by an independent commission looking into the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. At a moment when there are no easy answers as to how to end the US occupation of Iraq without compounding existing instability, the one thing citizens need most is straight talk: about who knew what about Al Qaeda before 9/11 and about why the Iraq war was fought, among other questions. But truth still seems in short supply, as evidenced by the furious Administration response to a new memoir by former White House national security official Richard Clarke, who describes a President obsessed with Iraq on the day after the Al Qaeda attacks even after being reminded that no links had been found between the two. The White House should keep in mind what happened in Spain, where a government already unpopular because of its support of Bush's war was voted out after trying to pin the blame for railway bombings on domestic rather than Islamic terrorists. The globe's citizens know better than to accept Bush's skewed worldview; they see the Iraq war as a dangerous diversion, not an effective response to Al Qaeda-style violence.