US President Bush has now officially been “outed” by his former appointed Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O’Neill. O’Neill’s (and Ron Suskind’s) new book, The Price of Loyalty, claims that Bush had planned for the invasion of Iraq well before September 11, a date cited as a reason and causality for the Iraq war. O’Neill claims that Bush told his cabinet to find a way to dispose of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein at the very first security briefing in January 2001.

In an upcoming issue of Time magazine, O’Neill debunked the weapons of mass destruction claims against Iraq: “In the 23 months I was there, I never saw anything that I would characterize as evidence of weapons of mass destruction... I never saw anything in the intelligence that I would characterize as real evidence.”

While at the Monterrey, Mexico 34-nation Summit of the Americas last week, US President Bush defended his anti-Saddam initiative during his early administration days and claimed it was following in line with policies set forth by the Clinton administration.

“The stated policy of my administration towards Saddam Hussein was very clear. Like the previous administration, we were for regime change,” Bush said.

In September 2002, Maureen Dowd of The New York Times wrote: “When U.S. Senator Mark Dayton of Minnesota asked the defense chief on Thursday: ‘What is compelling us to now make a precipitous decision and take precipitous actions?’ an exasperated Rumsfeld sputtered: ‘What’s different? What’s different is 3,000 people were killed’…”The casus belli is casuistry belli: We can’t cuff Saddam to 9/11, but we’ll clip Saddam because of 9/11.”

In light of these statements from a former high-level Bush administration cabinet member, and statements from former Baathists who insisted nothing could stall the invasion of Iraq, the question beggars itself: were so-called diplomatic efforts legitimate or merely a guise of legitimacy for an illegitimate war?

The catch phrases “last ditch effort for diplomacy,” “going the extra mile for diplomacy,” and “nobody wants a war” have been regurgitated time and again by the media to lend a compassionate, psychologically balanced, and moral face to the impending war on Iraq. All three of the above are misconceptions; they are mechanisms to beguile the world, and specifically the American public.

In February 2003, Chile’s representatives in the United Nations suggested giving Iraq three weeks to meet certain disarmament objectives. The initiative was compiled to bridge differences between UN Security Council members who were feeling pressured by US efforts to secure the necessary nine votes for a UN resolution to pass. The Chilean initiative seemed to combine Canadian, Mexican and British efforts to overcome the diplomatic impasse.

The White House flatly rejected the initiative, saying three weeks was far too much time.

Far too much time for what? For diplomacy?

The word “diplomacy” is not a difficult word to understand; simply put, it refers to “the art or practice of conducting international relations, as in negotiating alliances, treaties, and agreements.” Apparently, the words “war,” “invasion,” and “preemptive action” are missing from this definition. In fact, diplomacy is indeed the act of avoiding war through alliances, treaties and agreements.

To the war cabal in the US government, however, diplomacy means the securing of international legalization for an illegal war. Diplomacy is a smokescreen, a carte blanche (do not pardon my French!), an authorization to wage war, a laissez-faire for US policies in Iraq.

Consequently, the war is broken up into two political spheres: one advocating diplomacy to avoid bloodshed, and one advocating diplomacy to wage war.

The fact that such a metaphysical conflict is even occurring flies in the face of every major historic development in the manner in which nations “deal” with one another since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which marked the end of the Thirty Years War and was the first initiative towards international law.

Now, every international institution, every international law that creates an obstacle in the face of war efforts is classified “irrelevant.”

We are on the verge of regressing in historical international development. McLuhan’s notion of a global village has now bastardized itself into global suspicion, hatred, and open warfare.

So, why was the Chilean proposal called a “non-starter”? Simple: It sets back the timetable for an invasion of Iraq and risks the prospect of derailing infantry morale in elevated desert temperatures. The war must start before temperatures reach 125 degrees Fahrenheit.

And so, the world went to war. Nothing Iraq or the Security Council could have done (or can do) stood a chance of stopping this juggernaut.

Three weeks before the opening salvo was fired in the invasion of Iraq, six members of the Security Council dared to tell the US they would not be dictated to, even if they faced economic and political reprisals. The State Department went into damage control, pleading with the President to make a hasty speech regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and calling for an emergency summit in the Azores, off the coast of Portugal. The Azores meeting was designed for the US, Great Britain, and Spain to meet to discuss “last ditch diplomatic efforts.”

In today’s language, that means war.

Regrettably, almost a year later, Iraq is on the verge of a civil war; Turkey and Iran have threatened to invade if Kurdish plans of federalism are executed; Iraqi women are about to lose the rights awarded to them under Saddam’s Baathist regime, and abductions and kidnappings are the most lucrative post-war enterprise in Iraq.

These are the fruits of “diplomacy.”