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Thu 30 Oct, 2003 05:43 am
From today's New York Times:
Eyes Wide Shut
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: October 30, 2003, New York Times:
WASHINGTON ?- In the thick of the war with Iraq, President Bush used to pop out of meetings to catch the Iraqi information minister slipcovering grim reality with willful, idiotic optimism.
"He's my man," Mr. Bush laughingly told Tom Brokaw about the entertaining contortions of Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf, a k a "Comical Ali" and "Baghdad Bob," who assured reporters, even as American tanks rumbled in, "There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!" and, "We are winning this war, and we will win the war. . . . This is for sure."
Now Crawford George has morphed into Baghdad Bob.
Speaking to reporters this week, Mr. Bush made the bizarre argument that the worse things get in Iraq, the better news it is. "The more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers will react," he said.
In the Panglossian Potomac, calamities happen for the best. One could almost hear the doubletalk echo of that American officer in Vietnam who said: "It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it."
The war began with Bush illogic: false intelligence (from Niger to nuclear) used to bolster a false casus belli (imminent threat to our security) based on a quartet of false premises (that we could easily finish off Saddam and the Baathists, scare the terrorists and democratize Iraq without leeching our economy).
Now Bush illogic continues: The more Americans, Iraqis and aid workers who get killed and wounded, the more it is a sign of American progress. The more dangerous Iraq is, the safer the world is. The more troops we seem to need in Iraq, the less we need to send more troops.
The harder it is to find Saddam, Osama and W.M.D., the less they mattered anyhow. The more coordinated, intense and sophisticated the attacks on our soldiers grow, the more "desperate" the enemy is.
In a briefing piped into the Pentagon on Monday from Tikrit, Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno called the insurgents "desperate" eight times. But it is Bush officials who seem desperate when they curtain off reality. They don't even understand the political utility of truth.
After admitting recently that Saddam had no connection to 9/11, the president pounded his finger on his lectern on Tuesday, while vowing to stay in Iraq, and said, "We must never forget the lessons of Sept. 11."
Mr. Bush looked buck-passy when he denied that the White House, which throws up PowerPoint slogans behind his head on TV, was behind the "Mission Accomplished" banner. And Donald Rumsfeld looked duplicitous when he acknowledged in a private memo, after brusquely upbeat public briefings, that America was in for a "long, hard slog" in Iraq and Afghanistan.
No juxtaposition is too absurd to stop Bush officials from insisting nothing is wrong. Car bombs and a blitz of air-to-ground missiles turned Iraq into a hideous tangle of ambulances, stretchers and dead bodies, just after Paul Wolfowitz arrived there to showcase successes.
But the fear of young American soldiers who don't speak the language or understand the culture, who don't know who's going to shoot at them, was captured in a front-page picture in yesterday's Times: two soldiers leaning down to search the pockets of one small Iraqi boy.
Mr. Bush, staring at the campaign hourglass, has ordered that the "Iraqification" of security be speeded up, so Iraqi cannon fodder can replace American sitting ducks. But Iraqification won't work any better than Vietnamization unless the Bush crowd stops spinning.
Neil Sheehan, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "A Bright Shining Lie," recalls Robert McNamara making Wolfowitz-like trips to Vietnam, spotlighting good news, yearning to pretend insecure areas were secure.
"McNamara was in a jeep in the Mekong Delta with an old Army colonel from Texas named Dan Porter," Mr. Sheehan told me. "Porter told him, `Mr. Secretary, we've got serious problems here that you're not getting. You ought to know what they are.' And McNamara replied: `I don't want to hear about your problems. I want to hear about your progress.' "
"If you want to be hoodwinked," Mr. Sheehan concludes, "it's easy."
AND THESE ARE THE PEOPLE RUNNING THE COUNTRY!
These are the people running the world.
Whilst walking in the woods one fine day I chanced upon what I thought might have been a nest of angry hornets. I wasn't exactly sure it was a nest of angry hornets, but I needed to be sure, becuase a nest of angry hornets is something that should not be allowed.
So I gave it a good kick. I was right! It was a nest of angry hornets.
The Killers
W is now calling the resistance fighters killers instead of the evil doers. The missles and such that rained down on the Iraqie people didn't kill any of them? W has no blood on his hands?
Re: The Killers
pistoff wrote:W is now calling the resistance fighters killers instead of the evil doers. The missles and such that rained down on the Iraqie people didn't kill any of them? W has no blood on his hands?
So the US should have let Saddam remain in power? I'm willing to bet our weapons killed far fewer innocent Iraqis than would have died by the hand of Saddam and his henchmen this year.
A majority of the Iraqi people are happy with America and think they are better off than they were under Saddam. Apparently many of these terrorists are coming in from Iran and Syria. I would rather our soldiers be fighting them over there than they be attacking our populace over here.
Rez, It doesn't hurt to think before you post.
Your post has some rather blatant lapses in reason.
First, we have a good idea how many people Saddam and his henchmen killed each year before. It is nowhere near the estimated 13,000 people killed by the US the war. But then, Saddam wasn't dropping bunker busting bombs on anyone.
Second, not even Bush himself would say that "majority of the Iraqi people are happy with America". This is clearly not true.
Third, The Iraqis have never attacked the US, nor has this even been a threat.
Please engage brain before posting.
Anybody else see the video last nite on TV that was given to us by an Iraqi showing Saddam's henchmen beheading people, chopping off fingers, cutting out tounges, throwing people off buildings onto concrete, beating people in the back etc.? This was all done in public in front of men women and children, and military as a lesson to them to obey Saddam or recieve the same fate. Grizzly.
Next he will propose a Ministry of Truth.
Brand-X<
I saw the video about which you are writing. It was truly horrible and gruesome. I don't know, however, if it was any more stomach churning than the videos of some of the people (on both sides) who have been maimed and/or murdered in our current war.
The fact that the Dubya administration was ill prepared for post-war Iraq is now obvious. It was commonly thought that this war of liberation would have Iraqis throwing down palm leaves and applauding the U.S. invasion team as it entered Baghdad.
With each death of an American soldier, Dubya's chances of actually being elected president fade into the quagmire. Too bad for daddy's boy Dubya that he failed to do his homework.
Here is an interesting excerpt from "A World Transformed", the book written by George Bush (Sr.) and Brent Scrowcroft abuot the first Bush presidency.
if only GW could read...
"Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different ?- and perhaps barren ?- outcome."
"Anybody else see the video last nite on TV that was given to us by an Iraqi showing Saddam's henchmen beheading people, chopping off fingers, cutting out tounges, throwing people off buildings onto concrete, beating people in the back etc.? This was all done in public in front of men women and children, and military as a lesson to them to obey Saddam or recieve the same fate. Grizzly."
(...and I have a special category for people who sit and watch and then report they've seen this stuff on TV...)
ebrown<
A World Transformed is not on my reading list. Thus, I do appreciate the excerpt you cite. It is indeed interesting!
ebrown_p wrote:Rez, It doesn't hurt to think before you post.
Your post has some rather blatant lapses in reason.
First, we have a good idea how many people Saddam and his henchmen killed each year before. It is nowhere near the estimated 13,000 people killed by the US the war. But then, Saddam wasn't dropping bunker busting bombs on anyone.
Second, not even Bush himself would say that "majority of the Iraqi people are happy with America". This is clearly not true.
Third, The Iraqis have never attacked the US, nor has this even been a threat.
Please engage brain before posting.
Wow! What an obnoxious post! Nice job there, ebrown_p.
First, do you have any sources that Saddam's regime killed fewer than 13,000 people per year over the last several years?
Second, a Zogby poll from September showed that 37% of Iraqis wanted to model their new govt after the US. Second closest competitor was Saudi Arabia, with 28%. An October Gallup poll showed that 71% of Baghdadis did not want the US to leave in the next few months.
I don't know if Saddam would ever have attacked the US. Maybe he would have if he had the chance. Maybe he would have supplied weapons and training facilities to terrorist groups. The fact is he was in violation of 12 Chapter 6 UN resolutions, and needed to be dealt with. Now that the US is there, it seems that jihadists from Syria and other countries are flocking to Iraq to fight Americans. I like this idea better than having these animals plotting attacks here in the States or against American targets in other countries.
Lastly, if you want to be taken seriously, you might rethink how you post.
Maybe
this will help.
ebrown_p wrote:Here is an interesting excerpt from "A World Transformed", the book written by George Bush (Sr.) and Brent Scrowcroft abuot the first Bush presidency.
if only GW could read...
"Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different ?- and perhaps barren ?- outcome."
That's right. At the time, the only mandate we had was one to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait. This time around our mandate was much more broad.
Frank Apisa wrote:"Mandate" my ass.
I am positive that nobody has a mandate on your ass.
the only "mandate" that I can discern regarding our current situation in Iraq was to eliminate WoMD.
Rez,
There is a somewhat defensible, somewhat intelligent argument to be made that the war in Iraq was justified. However, you are making broad extreme statements that are completely devoid of logic.
For example your statement "The Majority of Iraqi people are happy with America". Your statistics don't at all back up this rather ridiculous statement.
The fact is that American kids are dying daily now in Iraq. As you say
"Now that the US is there, it seems that jihadists from Syria
and other countries are flocking to Iraq to fight Americans."
This was not happening before the Iraqi war. You really "like this better...."?
I certainly liked things better before the war, even in spite of all the WMD's we found to keep out of the hands of terrorists.
Read Bush Sr's prophecy again - It seems like he got it right, even 10 years in advance...
"...the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different ?- and perhaps barren ?- outcome."
That sounds a lot like what is happening now.
(P.S. Hint: Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.)
ebrown_p wrote:
For example your statement "The Majority of Iraqi people are happy with America". Your statistics don't at all back up this rather ridiculous statement.
I was referring to America's presence in Iraq at this time.
ebrown_p wrote:The fact is that American kids are dying daily now in Iraq. As you say
"Now that the US is there, it seems that jihadists from Syria
and other countries are flocking to Iraq to fight Americans."
This was not happening before the Iraqi war. You really "like this better...."?
That's what I said, isn't it?
ebrown_p wrote:
(P.S. Hint: Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.)
(P.P.S. Hint: I never said Iraq had anything to do with 9/11.)
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