Letters to the Editor
MereMortal
Published Letters: 151 Editor's Choice: 19
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@Robert1014
[Read the article: What George Tenet really knew about Iraq]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think you have expressed perfectly my thoughts on the kind of WMD that they were expecting to find in order to justify their pre-war frenzy. You just put it much better than I did.
meremortal
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sorry for the deluge...
[Read the article: What George Tenet really knew about Iraq]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]when I said Mahmood Ahmad ex-head of the CIA, I of course meant the ISI, although it might have been a Freudian slip since many people think that the ISI is merely the CIA office in pakistan...or put more seriously, the ISI rarely does anything that the CIA doesn't get informed about and approves beforehand.
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There is an enormous difference
[Read the article: This Modern World]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]between having genuine debate with thoughtful people and just name calling. I love Salon, and I always feel regret when I see flame wars. The web is full of this garbage, can we not keep Salon more interesting and resist calling people on the fact that they decide to broadcast out of the very narrow slit that they have for consciousness?
just Ignore! it drives them mad and it stops you from joining them ankle-deep in the gutter.
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of all people....
[Read the article: Leave the Muslim world alone]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]how could my beloved Gary Kamiya, start writing about 9/11 with relation to Iraq [it was understandable after 9/11 that Americans wanted to lash out at the enemy]
I know he doesn't conflate these things in his mind, really, it's a slip of the pen.
Try as I might, I cannot see either the Afghan or the Iraq war as authentic reactions to 9/11. Too much has been written and proven about how 9/11 was used as a pretext to launch existing planned wars. I've spoken before about the Likudisation of US politics under Bush/Cheney and the neocon regime. Similarly nobody really believes that the Kadima-launched Lebanon war wasn't an off the shelf plan by Dan Halutz to liquidate hezbollah at the first excuse or should I say opportunity.
They believed Chalhabi's promises of gold and petals if they toppled Saddam, they tried desperately to link him to 9/11 and Al-qaeda, until Al-Qaeda obliged creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. When I watch Bush being defensive or delusional about Iraq (it's one or the other) I think to myself:
"could even this man's most ardent admirers, really believe in their heart of hearts that he's intellecutally coherent about this? that cometh the hour cometh the man?"
I mean, maybe his most ardent admirers, but luckily for the rest of us, his ratings are tanking further every day
The people who brought you the Iraq show supposedly because of 9/11 have another production in the pipeline called "Iran the sequel", but congress is waking up and especially the GOP, these things are viral and have a tipping point, all it will take is some large insurgent success and the US public will lose the will to hang around. Both these wars will end in retreat as they make no sense, and at the moment serve only as a figleaf to bolster Dubyya's brittle but crumbling sense of self.
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I once had a work colleague
[Read the article: Cooking the intelligence, again]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]who on a night out drinking (this is England folks, so the beer is strong and had on an empty stomach) confessed that her boyfriend was as good as useless, but then it turned out that at least one of the many reasons why he was useless, was that he wouldn't pop the question.
I was with a male colleague and we both listened rapt until he finally said: "why don't you just get rid of him, he clearly doesn't make you happy" at which point, she bared her teeth, got very aggressive indeed and accused him of all sorts, but particularly of unwelcome meddling. This was all very absurd. The poor boyfriend was pressured in due course to get down on bended knee, they went off to Hawai, got married on the beach her in a white gown, he in a suit and both barefoot
7 months later SHE filed for divorce.
I concluded at the time that they both knew it was a hopeless enterprise but that neither could pull out as paradoxically it was infinitely harder to cancel a wedding (what with all the announcements, diaries being coordinated and people's expectations) than to actually go through with it, no matter how grim the prospect. It takes guts to do the right thing.
Bush is the groom to be, here, and the GOP is having cold feet and for some reason most of them know that he is taking them to the abyss, but they don't want the internecine strife that will come with despatching him, so they're hoping he will do the right thing or that he will implode and they can then say, "What happened" or "boy were we wrong" I think the same logic applies. Whilst they can convince people that there is hope of a happy marriage in prospect with George, they're deluding themselves, but in an odd way this is more comforting to them that any of the alternatives. There are exceptions of course. Not all adults in the GOP are gutless, spineless cowards.
when I think back to the sinking feeling I had as Bush won in '04 (or was it 'won') I have to say, i'm rather glad it's a Republican that is having to face their own mess and not some Democrat who would then be blamed ceaselessly by the Republican Noise machine.
George, you made this bed, no-one but no-one will be able to pin this on the next president if they're a democrat, not with a straight face anyway!
as usual Thursday morning's SB article and all the accompanying Salon correspondence repay reading and re-reading as well as provide comfort that there are still voices of sanity in the US.