It’s odd how you can be a doughty, flint eyed warrior of freedom one moment, and 12 months later you are shown to be a hapless, stumble footed incompetent at MENA real politiking, and the dupe of a smooth, but fairly obvious con man, who has played your desires and arrogance and like a Stradivarius for his own ends.
I voted for Bush in the last election, and I don’t believe he is a unintelligent or incompetent President, but given the direction he has been been heading with Iraq, and the sheer level of willfully ignorant hubris on the part of his neocon advisors and officials that seems to have propelled this war, I’d be hard put to vote for him again at this point, though things may change.
There was plenty of press back in the day before the Iraq invasion as well as stuff on these boards about Chalabi being pretty questionable. Be that as it may, good to see that the fallout is starting to make some voters re-appraise who should be running the US and what direction we should be taking in the world
If you think they were going to learn anything, then get this: the new Iraqi leader is the guy who sold the British the bupkiss “they can launch a massive bioterror assault on us in 45 minutes.” He’s got family all over the post-Iraq power structure and profit angle, he’s an ex-intelligence strongman, and by all accounts the exact sort of guy Saddam was back when we first decided that we could bring stability to Iraq by supporting Saddam’s rise.
Chalabi has got to be kicking himself. He’s on the outs, and this guy, with virtually the same resume of lying, corruption, and violence, is going to be Iraq’s next bigwig.
Do I see an “emperor has no clothes” moment here?:
Why is that after getting official word that Chalabi was at the head of an organization, involved in treason, that he is freely going from pundit show to pundit show and he is not arrested, or deported at least?
Why it is that Neo-cons are still aiding and supporting this fellow? Why are they condoning treason?
What did the best friends of Chalabi in the white house knew?
I don’t think (for myself at least) if it’s so much a “emperor has no clothes” moment, as a sense of profound, slowly growing disappointment, that people at the very highest pinnacles of power, with access to resources unimagined by mortal men, can be revealed to be so credulous, arrogant and willfully ignorant.
These were supposed to be the old hands and “grownups” taking over after eight years of Clintonian antics. They were going to make the necessary hard choices and run things professionally, and for while they did. I still would rather have had Bush in the saddle after 9-11 than Clinton or Gore.
But, somehow, things got really messed up after Afghanistan. Heady after our relatively quick and bloodless victory over the Taliban we looked around and a whirlwind began developing out of a confluence of ambitious agendas. Wolfowitz and Pearle’s strategy for MENA pacification and Israel’s security, tucked neatly into Chalabi’s schemes, fake intelligence, and assurances about how invading Iraq would be well received by the Iraqis, and finally Bush’s desire for what… revenge, rooting out terrorists, a dream of a democratic MENA state friendly to the US and our dreams and ideals, who knows.
Cap all this off by giving operational implementation of this to a Secretary of Defense who is a true believer in a “small force” paradigm, and hand day to day execution of this over to a bunch of 20 somethings, who are undersupplied, understaffed, over-worked to the edge of exhaustion, and are often despised by the people they are trying to serve and protect.
It’s all such a fuck up, and on so many levels it’s mind-boggling. Nobody listened to the old hands in the field urging caution and restraint. All the hawks in the Bush Administration knew better than they did. We were, smarter, faster, better armed, and more virtuous. How could we fail? With the possible exception of Chalabi, everyone was doing this (in their own minds) for all the right reasons.
We may still be able to extricate ourselves from this mess, but it not going to be with any grace or sense of a job well done. The Bush Administration is so desperate to hand over this mess to the new Iraqi governments you can feel them marking off the days, and there’s this distasteful “running for the exits” stink about the hand over.
It does make you wonder about the quality of thought and consideration that’s going into various decisions at the highest levels of the executive branch.
Well, yes astro, I agree with most of what you said, but what I do see here is an attitude from many republicans (Some notable exceptions: McCain and you) of looking the other way.
The NIC having connections with Iran, and getting information what very likely caused or will cause harm to America, is what I would call treason. I was not willing to call the Neo-cons traitors, but their current efforts to support Chalabi, get into that old territory of “it is not the crime but the cover-up”. The more I see these clowns, who had access to the president; defending this scoundrel, the more I think it is appropriate to accuse them all of treason.
The Neo-cons knew all along what he was (I don’t swallow the idea that they were so dumb), still they did go ahead and gave him millions of dollars in tax payer money, and still, even with all the recent revelations, support him. I do think calling them traitors is the least of their problems.
One more thing: for much less than this Clinton was investigated, I hope to see at least three independent investigations to find out why this was allowed to occur…
[Crickets chirping]
[sub]Notices congress is in republican hands.[/sub]
Well, never mind, but do take into account that having a republican administration, when congress is republican hands, means that the administration will get away with more abuses like this one, this is IMHO the most powerful reason why to vote Democrat in the next election.
Yes, repeat no. One of the things I think people like myself tend to miss about the whole neo-con schtick with the ME is their fundamental disconnect, their relentless optimism, founded on ignorance and self-righteousness. They like to present themselves as hard-headed and pragmatic realists, somber and heavily burdened with thought and strategem. But for all this posturing they are wild-eyed optimists, pistol-packin’ Pollyannas.
They wanted to see rainbows and gumdrops, so they did. They wanted to see a deeply patriotic Iraqi exile who has his finger on the pulse of a nation seething with revolt, a veritable fountain of hard intelligence, a solidly pro-American who had been maiciously slandered by those Who Hate Freedom.
