It's amazing, it really is -- you think you've become so disgusted that you've finally hit rock bottom. And then you read this self-serving tripe from the likes of the aptly-named Slaughter, and you discover new depths of dsigust yet to be plumbed.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

As long as they are the ones that get to stay in power, be part of the elite, that's the most important thing of all.

Getting things done correctly, that's not as important, especially if it is done by others.

Quick, name three pundits who got better jobs, raises, more attention -- whatever -- for being right about what a cock-up this was going to be.

("Being right too soon is socially unacceptable." -- Robert Heinlein)

Well, lucky for Slaughter: the blame and gotcha game is so easy that we can play that one AND the "serious" game of discussing Iraq's future at the same time.

including the extremely ambitious objectives of weakening terrorist groups, "improv[ing] the human rights of the Iraqi people"; and "establish[ing] a government in Iraq that could help stabilize and liberalize the Middle East.

I once spent two weeks as a child attending a summer camp run by Wheaton College (devoutly Babtist). One of the phrases they spent time drilling into our heads was "Nothing is impossible" I'm also recalling a book about the Apollo program entitled "Failure is not an Option"

Well I'm not sure the best way to point this out but sometimes things are impossible and failure is inevitable. The inability to consider that possibilty has so far killed tens of thousands people, (Millions if you consider how the same sort of thinking has been behind other disasterous human engineering projects!)

and not assign blame to those who were so obviously wrong, because they are the fools who were wrong and we were the ones who were right.

Sorry - it doesn't work both ways. If the invasion of Iraq turned out to be a success, do you think they would be offering the same "olive branch" to the liberals who opposed the war?

Seriously?

Give me a f%cking break.

Randy

Although, sure, you can repeat the famous expression, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

But that's such a negative way of looking at it. From the point of view of those who want more wars and more hawkish policies:

"Those who cannot allow the past to be remembered are allowed to repeat it!"

is the breathless "24"-style Absolutely Unique Emergency Situation the Slaughters and McCains of the world are trying to make this out to be.

Taking your surgeon analogy, if the doctor had botched the surgery as you describe, and then you were in a plane crash with them and you needed emergency anesthesia-free surgery to remove a piece of metal from your abdomen and he was the only doctor who survived the crash, well, you'd have no choice but to try him again.

THAT's the scenario Slaughter and McCain want you to think this is. And however many lies they have to tell to get you to think that, that's what they'll do.

On a related note, it never ceases to amaze me that only people on the Left can ever be accused of self-interest. Non-rich people, or anti-poverty activists, who call for raising taxes on rich people are declared Unserious because hey, of course they're going to say that. Rich people who call for more tax cuts for rich people are Unselfish, Serious Analysts who have looked at the situation and offer Bold New Prescriptions, and the fact that they personally will make millions of dollars on the deal is completely coincidental.

I've noticed about such people that 2003 is ancient history, and Bush's 2001 decision that defending against terrorism "is a Clinton thing" and his ignorance of the Presidential Daily Briefing warning against bin Laden's attack is prehistory.

Then, pausing only for breath, they belly-flop into the 1998 Lewinsky mess, the 1975 Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia, Robert Byrd's dalliance as a member of a Ku Klux Klan in the late 1940s when he was a kid not yet running for any office, and finally stop for a breather at the Yalta Conference of 1945. After a rest, they'll be off and running into FDRs administration of the New Deal or, as William Randolph Hearst ordered his newspapers to call it, the Raw Deal.

She's right that we need to figure out what to do now. It's actually quite easy:

1) Remove our troops.

2) Bring in humanitarian aid and resettlement experts.

3) Assess the size of the reparations.

4) Put the perpetrators on trial in an international tribunal.

The best way to do this is to offer an olive branch to the neocons: Your surge worked, and so now we are no longer facing an imminent bloodbath. That means the troops may be withdrawn immediately. Thank you very much. You are under arrest for mass murder.

Then, having acknowledged their expertise appropriately, put them in orange suits with those really nifty pieces of jewelry that go around the wrists and ankles, with the shiny steel chain between them, and shuffle them off to the Hague. Meanwhile, raise the top tax bracket to 75%, pay the reparations out of the pockets of the slime that got rich off this administration's domestic policies, and use the remaining funds to start paying down our foreign debts.

I think it is actually:

"“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”"

And I rather like Mark Twain's take on history:

"History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.".

Then, pausing only for breath, they belly-flop into the 1998 Lewinsky mess, the 1975 Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia

Excellent point..

You made me laugh too..

One mistake though, they don't pause for breath..

You know, the Bob Shrums who, despite a decades-long record of electoral loss after electoral loss, manage to persuade yet more supposedly sentient candidates to hire them.

Because this time will be different. Because those losses weren't my fault. Because the problem wasn't the campaign I ran, but forces beyond my control.

Here's my new theory of determining competence: Whining is irrefutable proof of incompetence.

Think about it. Who's doing all the whining these days? Smirky, Darth, both McConnells and all repugs in general. All the war mongers and Iraq apologists. Hillary and her staff. DLCers and other DINOs like Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emmanuel and Jane Harmon.

Inexcusably incompetent, every single one.

All whiners off the island!