Judging by the Washington Post cite in SimonX’s last post, Richard N Perle has done more to earn a couple of years’ torture at Gitmo than some of the “terrorists” held there.
From your lips to God’s ears.
Just to beat lucy.
Now you get me all depressed. But all joking aside, this world is a sordid place, full of all sorts of power-hungry scumbags, and when dealing with such people one can’t afford to take a back seat, but has to assume the initiative. Whatever questionable deals we had with different despots, it is not US fault they were there. Although I’m sure a few examples can be found when we supported a real villain against somewhat more respectable opponent.
Since Shodan is having problems comprehending my earlier post, I’ll spell it out in simple terms:
-
During Clinton’s terms in office, the Republican Party didn’t give two toots about liberating the poor oppressed Iraqi people. They were too busy sniffing around Bill’s closet to care about them.
-
During Clinton’s terms in office, a handful of neo-conservatives at the PNAC were having wet dreams about invading Iraq and grabbing all that oil.
-
The Republican Party and the neo-conservatives at the PNAC didn’t have intersecting goals until Bush got selected in 2000.
Keep reading those three sentences until they sink in; I’m sure you can manage it, eventually…
[QUOTE=New Iskander]
… this world is a sordid place, full of all sorts of power-hungry scumbags, and when dealing with such people one can’t afford to take a back seat, but has to assume the initiative. …QUOTE]
Platitudes, platitudes, platitudes. It is amazing to me that fear has allowed GW to run this bullshit on so many people. Our president hasn’t been a success in much of any scheme he has tried and his current operations fit his pattern. Big start, then fizzle …
This thread started when Sam Stone found a puff piece about “thousands” of Iraqis marching for “something-to-be-determined-later” back in 2003. Has anybody noticed what a whole bunch of Iraqis are marching for now?
GW, lad, where did all the flowers go?
Young girls pick them, every one
When will we ever learn?
That’s mega-bad imagery dude.
Flowers->Young girls->Husbands->Soldiers->Graveyards->Flowers
New Iskander:
The list is long.
First off, we have the lies. There have been so many lies about this war. Some of them were subtle. Some of them were tricky. (Simon X, in fact, was forced to develop a new term – the “not-lie” – to try capture their essence). Others were transparent.
It didn’t matter though. Those who supported the war not only believed in the lies, subtle, tricky, or transparent – they actively promoted them. People like december, Shodan, Sam, and you have played the role of “enablers.” You’ve chosen to go forth to spread the gospel of lies. At literally every opportunity – although of late the opportunities have been sparse – you’ve chosen the path of willful gullibility. This thread is one example. Sam’s recent thread about the al-Zarqwai letter was another, albeit at this late date, very tentative. He posted another one about all the wonderful things the CPA had accomplished not long ago, also chock-full of disinformation.
So basically, you are liars. All of you. You may have earnestly believed, prior to the invasion, that Iraq really was a threat, and that it really did possess “WMDs;” but to ignore the issue afterwards, to try to pretend that it was never important in the first place, etc., is low beyond belief. It reveals the lies for what they really were; a distracting pretense to enable an illegitimate act of aggression.
So that’s one thing. Then there’s the contempt, and the hypocrisy, with which we who have opposed the war are greeted. The pretense to moral and intellectual superiority. Consider an example from this thread, by Shodan. First post after its revival, he opens thusly:
What garbage might that be, I wonder? The fact that he is wrong, yet again?
After accusing everyone who disagrees with the OP of “intellectual dishonest” (practiced habitually, I assume, since it was “nothing new”), he closes snidely:
Sweet. And how ironic, after being subjected to two years of lies from Bush and his supporters, to be accused of intellectual dishonesty by such a worthy as Shodan.
Let us once again roll back the mists of time, and consider some of Shodan’s arguments prior to the invasion:
Now, time has shown that we were right, and Shodan wrong. Does this matter to him? Do we see a public recantation, an admission of error, anywhere? An apology, perhaps, for the hateful tone he had adopted prior to the war, towards those of us who desperately tried to warn him, and people like him, that this was going to be an expensive, dangerous mistake? Even a slight sign of regret, or remorse? Perhaps we on the “left” (nota bene: Simon X is a conservative) were not so “short-sighted” or “breathtakingly stupid,” after all? Perhaps friend Shodan should take a step back and reevaluate his opinion?
No. Like an adroit eel, he merely squirms over to the next talking point. Now, he says, the whole thing is about human rights; establishing a democracy in Iraq. Let us pretend like “WMDs” were never important, stop discussing them, ignore them. And while soldiers are fighting and dying in Iraq, he wastes his time, and ours, by trying to score irrelevant debating points against rjung: as if, by that act, he can somehow vindicate the entire mess his boy Bush has gotten us into. Myopic, I think, is the word.
Well, look. You were warned. I, myself, stayed out of this particular discussion, because I felt I didn’t quite know enough about Iraq to have an opinion one way or the other. I’ve spent the last year trying to learn about the region’s culture, religions, and so on. Truth to tell, I’d just as soon never have heard of Muqtada al-Sadr, but there you go. Now I need to know about him. But many specialists, far more well-educated than I, warned that setting up a democracy in Iraq would be nigh-impossible, that it was a neo-con pipe dream. A patch-work of tribal and ethnic rivals interlaced with strong currents of millennial, Islamic fundamentalism, they warned, would be difficult to turn into a modern democratic state.
You can’t arrest Muqtada, or condemn his followers. He speaks for an estimated 30% of the Shiite community in Iraq, and perhaps as much as 50%. These are the people you’ve come to liberate, get it? They support Hamas and Hizbollah; they are anti-Semetic to the core; they hate Israel and the US, these poor downtrodden victims of Hussein’s regime. Nice going, guys.
We were accused of being dishonest. We were accused of being unintelligent. We were accused of partisanship by blatant partisans. Even now, they keep trying to pretend like they are somehow superior.
No, gee, I’m just too stupid to make a connect, Mr. Iskander, sir. You know us stoopid lefties.
Can’t you make it for me?
Ah, now I understand. It was a secret plan advocated by a bunch of out of power ideologists. And when did that come up in the election? I don’t remember the President and Vice-President Gore talking about the secret plan for global domination in the course of the televised debates. I don’t remember any public discussion of “The Rumsfeld Doctrine” (Carthage and /or Iraq must be destroyed).
It is interesting to note that our friend’s post amounts to an abandonment of any claim that Iraq was in any significant way a threat to the United States or in any way connected with Jahadist terrorism. The destruction of Iraq was a matter of long standing, albeit secret, policy based on the economics of Light Arab Crude. Now, that is refreshing. It is like the “Big Dawg” throry of international politics. Reprehensible, but refreshing.
OK, try this: the Rumsfeld-Cheney-Wolfowitz crowd had been drooling over the invasion of Iraq for years, but in places that were mostly below the radar of the public debate: in speeches and journal articles that didn’t find their way into the mass media.
But during the eight years that Clinton was in office, how many GOP Congresspersons made the case not only for regime change in Iraq, but for us being the ones to do it? Where was the effort to build public support for this policy?
This is the problem: yes, there was such a plan, but until 2002, it might as well have been a secret plan. Sure, there was stuff out there about it, if for some reason you were inclined to search for it. But before Bush started beating the war drum in 2002, who had reason to do so?
As a Republican (albeit with extremely liberal social views), I am shocked to see how unrepentant some people are being about this. Is it so hard to admit that you were wrong? Is there something in your heads that refuses to make that kind of concession?
This isn’t a sports team you’re rooting for. People’s lives are being crushed here, and all you care about is how right you look on an internet forum. There has to be some point that your president can cross that you think, “you know, enough is enough. I’ve been lied to, manipulated, violated, betrayed, kept in the dark, and generally screwed enough by this person. I need to stand up for myself and point this out before he does it to other people.” There has to be that point.
Well Polls seem to indicate Bush is ahead... scandals and flops notwithstanding.
So I would say. What have you done to convince other voters that Bush needs to go ? I agree totally with you that its not about rooting for your team/party. Republicans especially should try to talk some sense into other republicans. When Gay Marriage gets more media attentions than 1 dead GI a day it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to notice values are distorted. So stop “whining” and do something about it… I don’t live in the US. You do. Change a few votes and its a good start.
…continued…
New Iskander:
Wouldn’t dream of “denying democracy” to the Iraqis, me.
Simply suspect that, in truth, the Bush administration is not interested in extending democracy to them, at least not on their own terms. As you point out yourself, you wouldn’t allow Iraq to elect a “fundamentalist” leader… so, in essence, you’re the one denying Iraq its democracy, not me. So which is it? After all, you support this entire fucking mess, right?
Because those of you who have supported this project from the beginning, and continue to support it now, are friggin’ out to lunch. For example, you want to both grant and deny Iraq democracy at the same time. And you have no clue how to get to the end game. You want to suppress the people you supposedly came to liberate. The entire thing is being run as a PR stunt for the Bush administration. People are getting killed over this shit daily, and it sickens me. Is that so hard to understand?
The Iraq war isn’t a TV show. It’s really happening.
For this reason, we invade them on trumped up charges, bomb the shit out of them, try to install a puppet (Chalabi), provoke them into rioting, and try to arrest their spiritual leaders.
Right.
Bullshit.
No one is arguing that the pre-war situation was optimal. All I’m saying is that the situation now is worse, that we who warned you it would probably be worse were (and are) scorned, and that now that you’ve made your bed, you should lie in it. This war was your idea. So solving the resulting situation in Iraq is your responsibility.
I don’t expect you to wipe my Nixon after I’ve been to the crapper, do I?
How very droll.
Luckily, I have a day pass; I am only required to attend camp every other Thursday. But even us stoopid lefties have to sleep, eat, work.
Tra-la-la-la! How funny war can be, sometimes! Great laughs! Now where did I put those “WMDs?” Ho-ho-ho!
Did you hear the one about the burnt Americans in Fallujah? Ha ha ha!
War, great for a few yuks. Sorry this poor leftie doesn’t get it. Guess I’m just too dumb.
I’m working on it, trust me. 
I just got through convincing my family that gays aren’t the spawn of Satan, and I’m about to go to work on Bush with them. (Un)fortunately, I live in Berkeley, so standing outside chanting about Bush’s evils will just get me some applause, and maybe a dirty look from a rat-like neocon who scurries back into the alleys.
What disturbs me is that I’m instantly decried as a “Demoncrat,” Liberal, Communist, terrorist, and/or traitor for daring to question Bush’s policy. That is just sad. This country was founded on questioning our leaders, and the sheep following them blindly are, to me, the true traitors.
Said it before, and I’ll say it again; I love the Republic, not the Federal Government. If that makes me a dirty hippie, so be it.
So this is the one, whose “…tolerance and gentlemanly sufferance presents an excellent example…” is so highly esteemed by elucidator.
This is an outrageous lie of itself. I approved of the invasion and disapproved on most of the rhetoric Bush tried. The way I saw it, the rhetoric was aimed at lefties and foreign crooks, which are impossible to please to begin with, so why bother? Simple, isn’t it? But not for you. You have to demonize, to pump the place full of sulfur fumes and start projecting scary shadows, because simple and straightforward arguments you can’t master.
I advocated nothing more or less than a certain practical solution to a certain real problem. Whether I was right or wrong is a matter for an honest debate. But it is impossible to have an honest debate with the likes of you. Because you don’t stand for anything. You only harp and carp. What is your solution to Iraq problem? It’s not the invasion, so much is clear. Is it continuing sanctions? Then why don’t you say so? Then we can compare our cases on demonstrated merits. Or do you advocate something else entirely? In that case you have to formulate it, so I know what you really stand for.
However, let’s not get distracted. I criticized you for a stupid and insensitive remark. You answered with billows of hot air. Pray explain, what do you mean by throwing the whole Iraq problem away from yourself, saying, “Best luck, you gonna need it!” to your opponents. If and when the problem is solved, how do you plan to make sure that you will not share in the subsequent benefits of having secure and stable Iraq?
Far out, Zag. Here’s your love beads (had 'em stashed up in the attic). What’s your preference - patchouli or sandalwood? But stay away from the brown acid - bummer, man, bummer. Groovy. See you down on Telegraph, for the be-in.
Peace.
Mr. S. doesn’t need my help here. But should Iraq devolve into theocracy, civil war, or total chaos, how do you plan to make sure you do share in its trials and tribulations?
Yeppers. Boy’s a pistol, idn’t he?
In much the same way as I boycott hamburgers made from the flesh of Invisible Pink Unicorns.
What exactly was the Iraq “problem?” Weapons?, terrorism? Iraq was a “problem” only by the definition of Rummy, Wolfie, Perle, et al and the sophomoric ninny, GW, provided them the means to do what they had always wanted to do. To get rid of Saddam.
I don’t see any justification for the hot air and campaign slogans that you spout daily. For example this bit from your previous post; “This is an outrageous lie of itself. I approved of the invasion and disapproved on most of the rhetoric Bush tried. [Comment: The rhetoric that you disapporved was the justification for the war. So what other reason did you have for approving of the invasion?] The way I saw it, the rhetoric was aimed at lefties and foreign crooks, which are impossible to please to begin with, so why bother? Simple, isn’t it? But not for you. You have to demonize, to pump the place full of sulfur fumes and start projecting scary shadows, because simple and straightforward arguments you can’t master.” What straightforward arguments? Let’s hear them. So far your statements seem to come from the course in Soundbites 101.
The Iraq invasion was a tragic blunder supported by those who have no valid conception of what war is useful for or what war is all about.
War is a last resort to be resorted too only when you are under actual attack or the enemy in full view is actually at the gates. I don’t see how the preemptive war in Iraq fits that scenario.
The truth (as opposed to the anti-smoking campaign) is that we invaded Iraq for one reason: We are being kicked out of Saudi Arabia, and we need to maintain our sphere of influence in the region.
It has nothing to do with WMD, humanitarian or democratic concerns, or anything else. As Isk pointed out, that is all just rhetoric. The neocons knew that we were being kicked out of Saudi Arabia before they even took office, and had the invasion of Iraq scheduled. 9/11 only changed their schedule and gave them more justification.