Goodness, Martin, you’ve put an awful lot of work into arguing this. Wouldn’t have it been easier for you to dismiss the allegations on the grounds of it being printed in “a country of fuck-ups and incompetents”.
Thanks, guys, but its OK. Always been a little touchy about that, but Martin don’t know shit from Shinola, and can’t figure out why his shoes stink so bad.
Dude…it’s OK. Let it go. It’s alright. Bush isn’t special in any way, only in his more blatant posturing compared to people like Bill Clinton or Reagan. We’ve been an imperial power for one hundred years. This is the way the game is played. Are you sad because of the Republican veneer over this whole ideal? Because your team is losing? Well, don’t worry about it. When Hillary Clinton is appointed, she’ll bomb and torture just as much as Bush, it just won’t be as up front, and you’ll be able to start threads about it. We’re not in Iraq for good reasons. Just disconnect yourself from it emotionally and it’ll be good, there’s nothing we can do about it.
As for the WMD claims and the “everyone knew he had them” canard…I’ve seen people try to dissuade you from this notion before and it obviously had no effect. I can only recommend the following works:
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
The One Percent Doctrine
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone
I do agree though…I don’t understand BG’s fascination with impeaching Bush. Talk about a symbolic gesture.
Symbolic gestures tend to get underestimated. Imagine the reaction:
“The Americans chucked out Bush!”
“Why?”
“He was a shitwit and a fuck-up, so they fired him!”
“They can do that?”
“They can in America, I guess. Kinda cool, when you think about it…”
It’s symbolic and wholly meaningless because we would then turn around and vote for someone like Mrs. Clinton, Obama, or Romney. The only reason Iraq is a domestic problem is because Bush fucked it up so bad. If he was competent, we’d probably be talking about getting rid of the 22nd amendment.
I think the only way to not have “fucked it up” would have been to not invade. We might have handled it better, but I don’t think there was a way to avoid some kind of mess. There just wasn’t a good way to invade Iraq, unless we were to install a US-friendly dictator. Someone who could keep the country together by force, but do so in a way that wasn’t a cruel as SH’s method. If that’s even possible. But would that have been acceptable to the American people? Maybe, maybe not.
Its an interesting alternative question, I admit: what if the Bushiviks hadn’t screwed the pooch with such enthusiasm, might the situation be salvaged. I agree, probably not, very close to certainly.
Take disbanding the army, often pointed out as the biggest fuckup. If they were not, they would have served as an instrument of civil order, but most likely an instrument of Shia authority. De-Baathification would have served to remove unfriendly officers at the top, and from there on down. The Shia governance would have even less reason to negotiate and compromise.
We might well be gone by now, the Shia admin of Iraq might prefer not to have any interference as the negotiations with the Sunni enter the delicate “payback” phase. The withdrawal of our troops would have been fulsomely hailed as a victory parade, with the appropriate opportunities for a grateful nation to praise The Leader. If they moved quickly, the might have had the confetti swept up before Baghdad blew sky high.
He was helped into power indirectly by the CIA backed 1963 coup that put the baathists in power. Saddam later staged his own coup with CIA aid and support.
And yet neither the PP’s own hyper-rightist ABC and/or the sensationalist and also right-leaning El Mundo have been able to rebut the story. Nor has anyone else for that matter.
Just thought I’d add a bit more info for the xenophobic, fascist, asshole.
