Dear most excellent Mr. Millroyj
I am most thanking your generous self for attention.
As you know, things here in Nigeria are very most not good. But I have a plan…
The only real problem with this thread is that the truly thick-headed pro-Iraq-war hawks don’t have the spine to step forward and admit they’ve been misled all this time.
Scylla, despite how often I disagree with his views, at least shows he’s got some spine. There may be hope for you yet… 
No, all the evidence shows that they planned the war first and the justification second. Personally, I think they were frustrated by their inability to find bin laden and they conceived the Iraq invasion as a means to give the illusion of a victory in the “war on Terror” as well as to provide a surrogate boogeyman for OBL in the person of Saddam Hussein. Hussein was already Satan in the US and required no further demonizing. Americans only had to be convinced that Iraq was in league with al Qaeda or, barring that, that they posed some other threat to the US. After attempts to connect Hussein with 9/11 failed to pan out they went to plan B which was WMDs. They ignored warnings from the CIA about a lack of confirmation for that and just assumed in their self-righteous hubris that enough ex post facto evidence would be found to justify an invasion or at least to politicize it as a justification. They knew that 9/11 fever was running high and that it would be easy enough to ratchet up the rhetoric and spin ambiguous “intelligence” information as fact. They didn’t think they would ever be called on it. They really thought that they would find something but that wasn’t the reason for the invasion.
Apos:
---- If it was fraudulent, then my question is: why the war at all?
To put it simply,
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This administration doesn’t believe in responding to events, it believes in using events to forward it’s pre-existing agenda.
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Saddam was perceived as a tin-pot dictator who had thumbed his nose at the US for over a decade. Pragmatically, it was time for him to go, or so they thought.
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Intelligence was cooked accordingly.
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More generally, the administration is not inhabited by policy-wonks, conservative or otherwise. In J.M. Marshall’s word’s, they refuse to recognize that there is such a thing as expertise which is anything more than a cover for ideological predilection. Unhelpful facts are dismissed as the obstructionist maneuverings of bureaucrats seeking to undermine needed change.[sup]†[/sup]
- Furthermore, I can’t think of a single expenditure of political capital that W has undertaken. Clinton took a lot of heat for his tax hikes on higher incomes, spending restraint, his push for NAFTA and his bailout of Mexico during its currency crisis. Bush Sr. took heat with his tax raise. Reagan pushed hard for the 1986 tax reform. From whence is W’s political courage?
[sup]†[/sup]Love these daggers. The previous 2 sentences were shamelessly adapted wholesale from J.M. Marshall. While I’m at it, I saw the “Pre-existing Agenda bit” originally in Krugman’s column, but I see that J.M.M has picked up on it.
Apos, I certainly can’t claim to be inside the administration and I’m definitely not inside of Paul Wolfowitz’s head. But I think that at this point the policy is evident and quite evidently put into practice.
Some of you are probably getting tired of these citations, but we might as well run through them again.
Excerpts from Wolfowitz’s 1992 preemption strategy.
Evolution of the Bush Doctrine.
The National Security Strategy of the United States, published September 17, 2002, almost exactly one year after President Bush directed that Iraq be added to the list of countries to be targeted in the War on Terrorism.
The President’s speech of November 6, 2003, which appears to be the first coherent public admission of the above policies.
And, just for fun and as an explanation for one of my more incomprehensible statements in a prior post above, here’s someone else who has noted the unusual historical similarities between Iraq and the Peleponnesian War. Donald Kagan, compiler of the authoritative history of the Peleponnesian War is, by the way, the father (or is it grandfather? I can never find the endnote…) of Robert Kagan, the co-founder of the PNAC.
In fact, the invasion of Iraq may actually have had its rationale spelled out in crystal clarity 2,400 years ago, when the Athenians arrived at the neutral island of Melos and told them this, from the famous Melian Dialogue:
Replace “islanders” with “oil producers” and we may have distilled the Bush doctrine to its very essence:
You’re either with us, or… oh, fuck that tired-ass bull-shite.
The important thing to know, for those of you keeping score at home, is that the motherfucking Athenians lost that 27-year long war!!! They never regained their former glory because by the time they recovered other empires like the Macedonians and the Romans were superior to them.
What should be considered absolutely unconscionable is that President Bush (or his puppeteers) obviously considered the idea to be either too controversial or too complex to be publicly discussed with the American people.
Bush (or his handlers) apparently thought the American people were too stupid or too meek–or possibly too smart–to accept the long-term application of the theory. They’d rather lie to us to get the desired result than tell the truth and risk being crucified for the incredibly fucking bad idea they are actually attempting to realize.
I hate to tie the knot up here, because it’s going to offend people, most of whom are not as honorable as our fellow poster Scylla, so I’ll just say this. You, the American voter, have a strand of your own ignorance in one hand and a vote in the other. President Bush is going to ask you to tie a slipknot for him next November. But he’ll correctly interpret a granny knot as a mandate for his continued policies, and if you’re missing one or both strands, it’s because his boys are trying to tie your shoelaces together with them.
Ignore the ax-grinding agenda-pushers, buddy, 'cuz I’ll tell you the real, only reason for the war: 'Cuz someone felt like there was unfinished biz.
“Then why the WMD’s?” asks you.
“I’ll give you the same answer I always gave,” says I, “'cuz it’s easier to get the huddled masses concerned about something NOW rather than something a decade ago.”
Um, whose ax-grinding agenda are we supposed to ignore? Yours? Bush’s? Ignore in what way? Pretend it doesn’t exist? What exactly do you mean?
Doing a search of some of my past posts, I made a shocking discovery.
I claimed that WMDs would be found in Iraq.
Apparently, my cynicism led me down a blind alley. The idea that those in the administration could successfully resolve the problem of the missing WMDs by simply waving their hands and saying “We’re not there because of WMDs” wasn’t something I had considered.
I was wrong.
Not quite, I think.
Well, more successfully than I would have thought possible.
You know, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, that in these recent months the US and UK publics are not bearing down on Number 10 and the White House with pitchforks and torches.
What amazes me even more is that, despite the overwhelming wealth of evidence out there, and on this board - hell, in this thread (Sofa King’s excellent post above is more than enough), that the US and UK populations were spoonfed a Big. Fat. Lie. - and fed it so incompetently and with so little care as to indicate that the respect the Prez and the PM have for their respective populations’ intelligence is negligible at best and highly patronizing at worst - as if a drunken Mary Poppins were woozily proffering a spoonful of sugar to Jane and Michael, from which protrudes a barely-concealed dog turd - that people like milroyj are still happy to chow down on that poo, remark how sweet it is, and continue into the abyss that is known as “voting for Bush”. :eek:
Fwiw, I think there’s an interesting psychology at play – in the sense of a new phenomenon, this reminds me a little of the mass reaction in the week between Diana dying and her burial. And goodness knows how many doctorates that spawned.
I sense people understand it was all predicated on a lie but aren’t quite prepared to bring their politicians to account for a couple of reasons;
One – the public can convince itself that, despite everything, ‘good’ came of it (the ‘freedom’ of the Iraqi people) so ‘we’re’ not really bad people . . .
Two – It’s still ongoing. While the majority might now feel WMD won’t be found, the situation itself is fluid so it would be premature to judge the consequences of the lies – perhaps human nature itself prevents us from admitting we were ‘had’ until we really have to face up to it . . .
I dunno, really. But I do think there’s something of a ‘mass’ psychology about the public reaction to this war of aggression that’s new and based on a new combination of factors. Justifying aggression to oneself is in the mix somewhere . . . Mostly I take clues from the experts who feed the hot buttons into Bush’s speeches “freedom”, “terrorists”, repeat ad nauseum.
Certainly in terms of explaining/justifying aggression, yer average bod in the street is in new territory and doesn’t like to think in such terms.
My greatest fear is that he doesn’t care enough, that consumerism - ‘paying the bills’ - is now the only priority. Time will tell.
I’m satisfied. Thank you, Scylla.
Though I am rather curious as to what this revelation does for your support of Mr. Bush.
** milroyj ** IMO you should be pushing to have Bush removed and another Rep. put in.
Does sending your soldiers to fight under false pretenses not anger you at all? Never mind all the harm done to the Iraqi’s and the reputation of the US.
There are higher principals involved here than just political points scoring IMO. Precedents are being created here that I find very worrying indeed for the future. Leaders need to know that it can’t happen this way.
Sigh I know I’m talking to myself BTW
Thank you for posting Scylla. I hope you, and everyone else in this thread, has a nice holiday. See you on Monday!
Course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that he’ll do us that way again in the next four years.
I think that GWB has learned his lesson. He’s going to seek more of his father’s advice these next four years. It’ll be alright.
Off-topic question, but sure:
Has a sitting incumbent president ever been successfully challenged and replaced before running for a second term? I realise there have been challenges to incumbents but has any substitution of candidate mid-term ever transpired?
As a completely aside joke, if you ‘Dowdified’ the Dictionary.com definition of “incumbent” you can get the following definitions:
[ul][li]Imposed as an obligation or duty; obligatory:[/li][li]Lying…<snip>[/li][li]Currently holding a specified office:[/li][/ul]Definion two…heh.
So the Iraq thing was just a bit of homework for “presidency 99c”, and now he’s ready for 101? The best you can hope for from the guy is a gentleman’s C.
Here’s the screwed up part. We did find “WMDs” in Iraq, if you count nuclear material. Tuwaitha was a known nuclear site. It was one of the sites touted before the war as a potential site for “new” WMD development. Not only did that not pan out, but the site was left insecure after the US invasion.
“Insecure”! That’s where the local people used nuclear barrels for common household storage bins. [eek!, save-the-hamsters version]
While I’m pretty angry with George for what certainly and overwhelmingly appears to be justification through false pretenses, I’m still not prepared to kneejerk my vote. Some terrible mistakes have been made but I’d hardly characterize the rational as being entirely short sighted. What I’m now faced with is how does this administration’s policy and future potential stack up against that of the other candidates? I don’t see a single one to date that appears to be even as competent at formulating a thoughtful policy and assembling a competant administration as that of the current, save Ashcroft.
McCain would now be my front runner but that ain’t gonna happen. The democratic collection to date makes me cringe, each and every one.
Sure, I’ve got a major beef with what’s happened to date but a clear improvement in character and policy is coming from just exactly where?