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Saturday, Jul 4, 2009
In retrospect, though, it seems clear that he arrived in the White House surrounded by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other twisted neocons who were determined to topple Saddam Hussein given any excuse, or none at all.
It seems clear, in retrospect?
I actually completely disagree with Joan Walsh on her assertion that people who voted for Bush didn't think he'd bring the nation to war. Most of the people who voted for Bush knew exactly what they were getting — a swaggering, hyperaggressive stick-swinger who was going to show those limp-wristed nicey-nice Democrats a thing or two about how to run the world. Of course he would also pay lip service to humility, just like Reagan did, but everyone knew that was just for effect.
What's more, after 8 years of amnesia a lot of them believed explicitly that what had doomed Bush, Sr, was his failure to "finish the job in Iraq" (as if the Gulf War, as undertaken, had in some way gone unfinished).
That wasn't just some kind of secret neocon passphrase — it was a commonly-held, if somewhat squishy, opinion.
If Bush voters were fooled it was by their man's illusion of competence, not some belief that he was going to be a quiet president or that Iraq would never be revisited.
The people who were fooled on that score were centrist liberals, who failed to see in Bush's career, his campaign, his choice of advisers, the 2000 coup, and the disastrous early months of his first term, the five-alarm fire bells going off.
When the history of this age is written, it will not treat George W Bush kindly. But it will treat contemporary liberal thinkers far less so — Bush was merely a symptom of their disease.
Nothing illustrates that more clearly than "in retrospect, though, it seems clear..."
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1028-01.htm
Bush planned to get Saddam by war if necessary long before he even became president. I believe he gave the go ahead to rig the intelligence by not accepting any intelligence that did not implicate Saddam.
The man is totally disgusting. He will not take responsibility for the result of his own goals and machinations. The only thing he didn't actually expect to happen to him was the superior manipulations of Dick Cheney.
He won't take responsibility now because then he would have to take responsibility for other things, like torture.
He's a bastard war criminal and I would love to see him tried in the Hague.
I guess that won't ever happen. Sometimes I think that there is no justice in the world.
I just watched Joan on Hardball make the same arguments. Chris makes it clear, and I cannot really remember him making it this clear and Joan had something to do with this, that w along with dicky were ready to invade Iraq the first day they got into office. None of this crap: some contend that w had made the decision to invade.....or some have stated that w might have wanted to invade Iraq prior to 9/11/01....or some have stated that there really are WMD's in Iraq and we just have not....
None of that crap. Joan was clear and concise and ready to proclaim that all the intelligence was cherry picked, that Cheney was right there looking over the shoulders of 'analysts' (what the hell does that mean anyway)and that w had just proceeded to lie through the entire interview with Charly G.
You know, trees do not make any sound when they fall in the forest unless the sound is recorded and reproduced for cable news. Every time I see Joan on that screen, I know my voice is going to be heard.
GOOD JOB. KEEP ON TRUCKIN.
A failure where?
There was no intelligence
In the first place there...
The real "intelligence failure" was most pronounced by the public that elected him not once but twice. Secondly, the pathetic main stream media who were more committed to sucking up to the administration than simply performing their job, which is to be sceptical and ask hard questions again & again, rather than prance on a stage with the revolting Rove who embarassingly performed a minstral show. There will be no accounting for those of the Bush/Cheney administration; they will just fade away as they have since the primaries ended. And it is all the fault of each citizen. We abdicated from our country.
Nice post. Well said.
He should have finished his sentence more truthfully Joan. This President was unprepared. Not just for war but he was seriously unprepared for being President. He sure was unprepared for war. First we are attacked by some terrorists, he believes his goons that we ought to attack some country that didn't even attack us, I mean why was anybody even looking to attack Iraq? But all of the sudden, we have to attack Iraq. Why? Well from everything I've read, both Ron Suskinds book and Jack Goldsmith's book really explain the belief behind attacking Iraq, that this would teach the Middle East a lesson. They thought winning in Iraq would be easy. Easy... yeah war... easy. What a naive idiot. He actually believe those neo-cons who are really nothing more than a modern Utopian except they believe you can spread democracy by force. Geez... Democracy by force, I mean who believes this stuff? It is hard to believe that so called seasoned pols, yeah I am talking about Cheney, were this naive. So Bush was unprepared. The real truth is this President was simply unprepared to be President. He has no management skills, hired people based on loyalty rather than skills and this is what we got, highly incompetent government. Thanks George, for pissing me off one more time.
Oh and PS, they never believed there were WMD's in Iraq. I have no doubt of this, they just made it up to scare people, the evidence is in, we know it.
The only reason I won't praise Walsh's editorial more than I am about to is that Bush is such a sad-sack, easy target, who is inviting this criticism like a dog in heat.
But Walsh hits each point exactly right. How can anybody take Bush remotely seriously? Is he being deceptive, or just deluded?
"I wish we'd had better intelligence"? What does that question even mean, in light of Bush giving CIA head what's-his-face a Medal of Freedom?
Or in light of the fact that Bush used the "yellowcake uranium in Niger" argument in his State of the Union speech long after it had been thoroughly debunked?
Or in light of revelations that the Bush administration forged letters, doctored evidence, ignored expert recommendations, and based conclusions on the singular testimony of informants they knew were unreliable, or who had a vested interest in giving false information?
Bush wasn't just the victim of bad intelligence work, he had a willfully poor intellect. Reports from the likes of Bob Woodward and Seymour Hersh suggest Bush didn't even know the difference between Shia and Sunni at the time of invasion.
There is a very strong case to be made against the entire Bush administration for war crimes. I strongly suggest everybody try to see the film "Taxi to the Dark Side," along with "No End in Sight." Those two films should be MUST VIEWING for every citizen of the United States. There are many other good documentaries on the subject, but those two especially stand out. See them even if you're sick to death of hearing information about the Iraq war, or even if you think you know how bad everything is. They're compelling!
The media outlet's use of Bush euphemisms sparks a much-needed debate on journalistic standards.
The Wasilla soap opera just gets weirder as Palin complains critics are "picking apart a good point guard"
And so are his Fox News pals, who lambasted Sen. Al Franken's "stolen election"
An inflexible right wing is allowing the Golden State to drown in debt. But it's not alone
Thanks for sharing, Governor. Now please take a cue from Norm Coleman, and go away
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