Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz made the rounds of the news shows today and said that in the war on terror the United States has no choice but “to act on the basis of murky intelligence.”

On Fox News, he said, “I think the lesson of 9/11 is that if you’re not prepared to act on the basis of murky intelligence, then you’re going to have to act after the fact, and after the fact now means after horrendous things have happened to this country.”

Do you think Wolfowitz was asked about Afghanistan? Or about attempts to track down Al Qaeda cells in Pakistan? Nope, he was talking about Iraq.

You may have been confused because he kept talking about Sept. 11, when no connection between Hussein’s regime and Al Qaeda was ever demonstrated. The intelligence on that subject wasn’t murky — it didn’t exist!

Even a nuclear-armed Iraq wasn’t a plausible threat to the United States unless you believed there was some reason Hussein would cooperate in some kind of handoff of arms to Al Qaeda or another anti-American terrorist organization. That’s why the demonstration of coordination between the two was crucial to the case for war.

Indeed, Wolfowitz and his boss, Donald Rumsfeld, targeted Iraq Sept. 12, 2001, before even any attempts to investigate the (it turns out, nonexistent) relationship between Hussein’s regime and the attacks of the day before.

Not only that. Not only that. They had targeted Iraq years before, urging then-President Clinton to undertake a policy of regime change there in 1997, years before Sept. 11 woke everyone up to the real danger posted by terrorism, back when everyone was harping about “rogue nations” like, oh, Iraq and North Korea.

Meanwhile, the real battle against Al Qaeda is not being fought with the full force it deserves. And we can only hope against hope that the Iraqi reconstruction does not turn into a painful episode with possibly disastrous consequences.

Bullshit, Wolfowitz! I call bullshit on you.

(Also posted to Stand Down.)

A joint congressional inquiry reveals that there is not now, nor has there ever been, an Iraq-Al Qaeda connection.(Update: This story was corrected; apparently the reporter was misfed by a source. Nonetheless, the Iraq-Al Qaeda connection’s still very shaky.)

Why did Dubya keep saying that in all of his speeches? In fact, in Dubya’s March 17 speech giving Hussein and his boys 48 hours to vamoose, he said Iraq “has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of Al Qaeda.”

Up to the last minute, Dubya was straining to tie Iraq and Al Qaeda together tighter than a yellow ribbon ’round the old oak tree. Maybe he just forgot that there was no evidence to back up the bogus claim. That seems to be happening a lot with this administration.

Josh Marshall, as usual, has been all over this:

It would be one thing if the administration had pursued this war because of weapons of mass destruction and, in so doing, pumped up the evidence to strengthen the case. Perhaps, one might hypothesize, they knew there was a lot of chemical and biological weapons production underway and the beginnings of a major push for nuclear weapons and, to seal the deal, said the nuclear program was further along than it was.

But this greatly understates the scope of the problem. Not only was the WMD issue (and the allied issue of Iraq’s connection to al Qaida) systematically exaggerated, the entire WMD issue — and the nexus to non-state terrorist groups like al Qaida — wasn’t even the main reason for the war itself. So the case for war amounted to one dishonesty wrapped inside another — not quite Churchill’s “riddle, wrapped in mystery, inside an enigma” but not that far off it either. …

But over time after 9/11 one overriding theory of the war did take shape: it was to get America irrevocably on the ground in the center of the Middle East (thus fundamentally reordering the strategic balance in the region), bring to a head the country’s simmering conflict with its enemies in the region, and kick off a democratic transformation of the region which would over time dissipate the root causes of anti-American terrorism and violence: autocracy, poverty and fanaticism.

That is why we are in Iraq today. That is the theory of this war.

Marshall concludes that this was a much more complex case to make which, frankly, Dubya & Co. didn’t the American public could understand or support. So, when faced with the inescapable difficulty of trying to sell a preemptive war being fought for an uncertain purpose with an unpredictable post-war scenario, the administration [take your pick: hyped / exaggerated / misled / deceived / fabricated / lied] its way into it.

And now, 2,000 more troops are being sent to Liberia to back up the administration’s newfound liberation theology.

It doesn’t matter, now, though. All of this is, as Dubya likes to say, “revisionist history.” The new history being written, day by day, is not about whether the United States government tasks itself with the mission of remaking the entire Middle East, but how well or poorly that mission will be carried out.

G-Rod has Illinois state prison workers taping Downstate news programs so he can keep track of what everybody’s saying about him.

Reminds me of the scene from Woody Allen’s “Sleeper“:

Historian: We weren’t sure at first what to make of this, but we developed a theory: When people committed great crimes against the state, they were forced to watch this.

Miles Monroe: Yes. That’s exactly what it was.

Except the only crime these folks have committed is to get hired by the state prison system. Poor schmoes.

Saddam’s boys killed in a firefight with U.S. forces.

All aboard the no-smoking train, Wilmette will be your next stop. No smoking, littering, radio playing or freedom is allowed on board.

Thank you, and have a nice day.

(Ping! Doors open. Whoosh!)

Of course you can count on The New York Times to pick up the ball and, in a story headlined “The Gorge-Yourself Environment,” keep running:

Traditionally, the prescription for shedding extra pounds has been a sensible diet and increased exercise. Losing weight has been viewed as a matter of personal responsibility, a private battle between dieters and their bathroom scales.

But a growing number of studies suggests that while willpower obviously plays a role people do not gorge themselves solely because they lack self-control.

Rather, social scientists are finding, a host of environmental factors — among them, portion size, price, advertising, the availability of food and the number of food choices presented — can influence the amount the average person consumes.

Fortunately, reporter Erica Goode explains, a group of helpful lawyers are dreaming up ways to sue the pants off Big Food, which just doesn’t seem to get it:

The food industry, however, dismisses such suits as a device to deposit more money in lawyers’ bank accounts. The onus for eating healthfully, industry spokesmen say, rests entirely with the consumer.

My heavens, what a notion! Studies also show, Goode reports, that price is a huge factor in how much people eat. Who’d have thunk it? I wonder how those clever lawyers will tackle that problem.

The story concludes:

Researchers have yet to cement the link between larger portions and a fatter public. But add up the studies, Dr. Rolls and other experts say, and it is clear Americans might have more success slimming down if plates were not quite so large and a tempting snack did not await on every corner.

Obviously, people have responsibility for deciding what to eat and how much, Dr. Rolls said. “The problem is,” she said, “they’re not very good at it.”

Are people good at anything? Really, how the heck do they survive? Hopefully, the people in the government will straighten this whole mess out!

Did you know that some folks even manage to be obese and hungry at the same time? (Thanks to The Agitator for the link). Now that’s a real feat of ingenuity. They oughta give a medal for that.

Oh, people. When will they ever learn? When the gummint starts telling them what to eat, that’s when. That’ll learn ’em, and good.

What — you don’t trust Ted Kennedy and Denny Hastert for your diet tips?

I’ve been saying for a while (mostly under my breath, to no one in particular) that there’s nothing about the coming fight over fatty food that is substantively different from the tobacco wars. It may be just a matter of time before those poor, desperate, addicted souls huddle outside office buildings scarfing down greasy potato chips next to the cigarette smokers.

The only difference is that most people still have an instinctive responsibilitarian streak, you might call it, that finds any attempt to blame others for individuals’ obesity repulsive. But a steady diet of junk science and a subtle shift in discourse will change that soon enough. The folks at the Center for Consumer Freedom (formerly the Guest Choice Network) have been following this for a while.

Here’s a perfect example — headline: “Burgers are as addictive as heroin: study.”

Yeah. Right. Apparently, some lab rats got upset when their little pieces of burger were taken away. They also professed a sudden fondness for Lou Reed and the movie “Trainspotting.”

Meanwhile, the entire premise of a July 15 story in the Chicago Tribune bodes ill for those who think people should be free to eat what they want and held responsible for their own choices.

The front-page story by Andrew Martin (incidentally, a journalism instructor of mine at Columbia), headlined “Obesity woes eating at fast-food chains,” says the burger slingers are shaking in their boots about new FDA regulations and the onslaught of obesity-related class-action suits. That part is true enough, but the rest of the story is filled with contradictions.

Martin writes:

The super-size approach has come under increasing fire from nutrition experts, Wall Street analysts and lawyers concerned about the food industry’s role in the obesity epidemic.

But while manufacturers promote “lite,” “low cholesterol” or “heart healthy” products, fast-food and casual restaurants are confronted with the reality that their customers still crave sugar and fat … many are still relying on a decades-old formula: abundant food at bargain prices.

Apparently, the restaurants’ problem is that they serve the kind of food their customers like to eat. That’s a problem most restaurants would love to have.

But, you see, it’s really a no-win situation, according to Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition and food studies at New York University:

They’re caught in a cycle that nobody feels like they can get out of. If people eat less, it’s bad for business. The whole point of the food industry is to get people to eat more, not less.

Really? I thought the whole point was to make money. Amazingly, people like to get more for less. Wait until they hear about this at Wal-Mart!

Martin goes on to list Huddle House restaurants, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, Culver’s and McDonald’s new McGriddles as the latest culprits in the conspiracy to fatten up hungry, hungry hippo Americans. But how could that be? According to a poll that’s all done up pretty with a bunch of pie charts accompanying the story, Americans are fed up with fast food.

Sixty-eight percent of them are sick of the poor nutritional value of fast food, while 64 percent are famished for healthier items on menus. Hmmm …

I guess that’s why Pizza Hut now not only offers a pizza with cheese that’s baked into the crust, but a golden ring of cheese on top of the crust as well.

What could possibly explain this difference between people’s expressed opinions and their revealed preferences? Obviously, people are being brainwashed into wanting sugary, fatty foods. What else could explain it? Certainly, not something so mundane as biology. Oops!

Thus spake Jim Hill, director for the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado:

We have this innate preference for sweet, fat things. And sweet, fat things are the cheapest thing on the planet to produce.

Whoa! Just how could we level the playing field here? Those poor fruits and grains and veggies are getting such a raw deal. To paraphrase the Beatles, “Taxes are all you need.”

There’s no question that obesity poses serious health problems, as does cigarette smoking. But where are we willing to draw the line when it comes to how unelected legislators, aka the plaintiffs bar, dictates the way we live our lives? Where will we draw the line that politicians simply cannot cross?

“The government will never tell me what I can put in my mouth!” you say. Good for you, but aren’t most drugs taken by mouth? Aren’t cigarettes smoked by mouth?

The sad truth is that the line has already been crossed — by politicians and by the public at large. The mental gorge that allows for this kind of tyranannyism, I’ll dub it, has been bridged.

The game has already been lost. The only question now is how badly the forces of freedom will get beat. The final score in that fight is one thing the nannies are more than glad to super size.