At this point, it doesn’t matter how big Bush’s so-called “Coalition of the Willing” is in Iraq. The administration tried, sort of, to get some allies together, they came up with England and Australia, and they launched the invasion. The debate over the president’s success or failure in convincing allies of the war’s efficacy is not only over, it’s moot.<\/p>\n
Why, then, does the White House continue to deceptively tout the size of this alleged Coalition?<\/p>\n
As Salon’s Jake Tapper noted last week, as recently as Thursday, Bush was still bragging to reporters about the vast number of partners Bush is helping to lead into Iraq. “We’ve got a huge coalition,” Bush said proudly. He added that “the coalition that we’ve assembled today is larger than the one assembled in 1991 in terms of the number of nations participating,” a claim that, as I’ve explained before<\/a>, is demonstrably untrue.<\/p>\n At the press briefing at which Bush flaunted this impressive alliance of nations, one pesky reporter noted that many of the countries participating in this effort are not “Western allies.” Bush responded, “We have plenty of Western allies. We can give you the list.”<\/p>\n Ah, yes, that impressive list. Upon its release, one of the “Coalition” members — Colombia — said their government wasn’t really supporting the war. That apparently got the ball rolling for others. The Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands, another nation on the list, announced he wanted to “disassociate” his country with the war effort and said he was “completely unaware” of the any pro-war position from his government. Around the same time, official responses from Angola, Czech Republic, and Ireland also distanced themselves from inclusion in the coalition, but as I write this, four of these five countries remain part of the administration’s official list<\/a>.<\/p>\n At the same press briefing, England’s Tony Blair said the war remains controversial around the world and that many countries oppose the invasion. Instead of trying to spin and exaggerate the coalition, Blair said “there’s not point in hiding” the fact that “there are countries that disagree with what we are doing.”<\/p>\n Blair’s right, there is no point in hiding what is plainly true. Why the president feels the need to continue with this charade is a mystery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At this point, it doesn’t matter how big Bush’s so-called “Coalition of the Willing” is in Iraq. The administration tried, sort of, to get some allies together, they came up with England and Australia, and they launched the invasion. The debate over the president’s success or failure in convincing allies of the war’s efficacy is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}