Friday, September 14, 2007
The Ramble: Disaster is the new mission
Originally written on August 24:
On Tuesday, when speaking to a VFW group, George Bush assured the assembled, and presumably memory-addled, veterans that we would not pull out of Iraq because millions suffered when we pulled out of Vietnam and he won’t repeat that mistake.
In other words, even though we have been chastised for years that we shouldn’t compare Iraq to Vietnam. Vietnam was a disaster. Vietnam was a quagmire. Vietnam was a unique mess, and to compare the war in Iraq to the Vietnam War is unfair and unpatriotic. Until today.
Today, we can compare the Iraq war to Vietnam, but not because (as most people have concluded) Iraq is, in fact a quagmire and a disaster, but because apparently WE NEEDED MORE VIETNAM.
As my officemate pointed out, this is probably not a conclusion he would have come to if he had actually had to serve in Vietnam. Then again, with a recent calculation showing that Bush spent over 1/4 of his presidency on vacation, he hasn’t exactly served in Iraq either.
Monday, April 23, 2007
2 Birds With One Stone
From the AP:
[F]ormer Arkansas governor [Mike Huckabee] also left open the possibility that, if elected, he would increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq and change the Pentagon’s policy on gay service members, although he insisted he would take his cues from military commanders on both fronts.
As a guy so Christian that he doesn’t believe in evolution, I’m going to guess that he takes a hard biblical line on homosexuality also. So he is wrapping the entire conservative agenda in a neat little bow by upping the active duty military in Iraq by sending homosexuals to die.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Is anyone still buying this bullshit?*
On July 4, 2005, George W. Bush told the crowd gathered to see him in West Virginia that “We’re taking the fight to the terrorists abroad so we do not have to face them here at home."
On July 8, 2005, four explosions rocked London, sending the city into a panic and disabling the subway system. Apparently, al Qaeda has claimed responsibility.
* “this bullshit” intended to refer to the Bush administration’s weak justifications for the invasion of Iraq, not this blog, which we know no-one is buying.
Thursday, November 11, 2004
What happens next?
1. Let’s say that there are free and open elections in Iraq in January.
2. And let’s say they elect an Islamist leader not beholden to the U.S. (which seems likely if the elections actually are OPEN and FREE).
3. Said leader then asks us to leave.
What happens next?
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Can we say case closed NOW?
The first to arrive at Al QaQaa didn’t inspect thoroughly ... and the explosives were still on site. We know because there is video footage of the explosives from the days after the troops left.
Daniel Radosh nails the analysis.
Karol, the next time you want to put “pack of lies” in a post on the media, here is the link you can use. The Russians removed the weapons during the runup to the war? Seriously?
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
The Army talks to the New York Times?
Yes, they do. And when the commander of the unit in Al QaQaa on April 10, 2003 talks to the New York Times, he tells them that “We happened to stumble on it,’’ he said. “I didn’t know what the place was supposed to be. We did not get involved in any of the bunkers. It was not our mission. It was not our focus. We were just stopping there on our way to Baghdad. The plan was to leave that very same day. The plan was not to go in there and start searching. It looked like all the other ammunition supply points we had seen already."
No blame to Col. Anderson and his unit. They had a specific mission to do and it wasn’t to safeguard a site that they knew nothing about. But it puts the whole “it was gone when we got there” nonsense into clear relief. Unwilling to admit to even minor tactical mistakes on the battlefield, the Administration is willing to tell bald-faced lies to cover its ass.
It is hard to say whether the Administration is actually at fault for the looting of Al QaQaa. I tend to believe that they are, but a reasonable case can be made that there was too much ground to cover and too many sites to secure and too many things that can go wrong that every mistake can’t be second guessed without the appearance of partisan sniping. Even so, this is hardly the first time insufficient troop strength has led to increased danger for our soldiers and for the mission. It is hardly the first time the Administration has been caught hiding the ball about tactical mistakes. And it is hardly the first time that the Administration has rushed to the press with an easily falsifiable refutation of its argument solely to get an excuse on record before the end of the news cycle.
Once again, reality has caught up with the Administration and it isn’t any less “real” because the New York Times broke the story.
This leads to a separate point that I first made in asphnxma’s comments section. I think more damage has been done to political discourse in this country by the Right’s relentless accusations of bias in the mainstream media than by any single political or legislative act undertaken by Reagan, Bush41 or Bush43. The “liberal media” is the only indepent source of information with a wide enough reach to actually apprise people of the facts. With nothing but overtly partisan sources to fill the vacuum of distrust fomented by mainstream conservatives (and to a lesser extent, but with no less malice intended, far leftists like Pacifica) we end up with silly “who is the source” arguments instead of analysis of the facts.
Which brings us back to Al QaQaa. Short story: The Administration was aware of Al QaQaa’s location and its contents. It did not make any effort to protect the site at the inception of the war. It sent insufficient troops into battle to adequately achieve its own stated war goals, which certainly should have included securing known caches of powerful explosives. It has no fucking idea when the 380 tons of RDX and HMX went missing, but is willing to state - with no evidence whatsoever - that the building was looted before they could do anything about it. This is not an Administration desrving of our trust on November 2.
Read Less...
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
THEY WERE NEVER THERE! (or were they?)
Yesterday, the New York Times ran a story about 380 tons of explosive “disappearing” from a military installation in Iraq. Later on that day, a certain pro-Bush blogger pointed to a third-hand account from an NBC reporter as proof that the explosives “went missing before a single one of our soldiers was on the ground”. Indeed, she now has gone as far as to call the New York Times story “fake", and compares it to “Rathergate”.
Well, I’ve said my piece on her site, and it is obvious where she stands. Let’s see what the Administration has to say . . .
Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita said, “We do not know when—if those weapons did exist at that facility—they were last seen, and under whose control they were last in.”
Bush Campaign spokesman Steve Schmitt says “the explosives were already missing.”
But White House spokesman Scott McClelland blames the disappearance on “some looting that went on in Iraq toward the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom, or during and toward the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
Nicole Cavendish, another spokesperson for the Bush campaign, wants to shift the burden: “Since [Kerry] does not know whether it was gone before the war began, he can’t prove it was there to be secured.”
But Scott McClelland also says that the White House just learned of the disappearance two weeks ago, and is “getting to the bottom of it”.
How is it, if the explosives were “never there”, that the White House is just learning of their “disappearance”?
But this one is my favorite: “Should we have gone there? Definitely,” one senior administration official said. “But there are a lot of things we should have done, and didn’t.”
Does it frighten me that there are now 380 tons of explosive in the hands of either Iraqi insurgents or—worse—al Qaeda? Yes. Do I think it is, as Kerry is calling it, “the most grave and catastrophic mistake in a tragic series of blunders in Iraq.”? No. Certainly not if the weapons were never there in the first place.
What really bothers me, though, is how either the Pentagon and the Administration have no idea what actually happened to the explosives, or they are intentionally trying to muddy the waters. Either way, that is indicative of a systemic problem ultimately far more dangerous to the American people than 380 tons of explosives.
1. A YEAR AND A HALF LATER, OUR GOVERNMENT SHOULD KNOW WHETHER OR NOT THOSE EXPLOSIVES WERE THERE WHEN WE GOT TO AL QAQAA.
2. IF THE EXPLOSIVES WERE THERE WHEN WE GOT TO AL QAQAA, THE FAILURE TO SECURE THEM IS INEXCUSABLE.
3. IN ANY EVENT, WE SHOULD HAVE SENT ENOUGH TROOPS TO SECURE AL QAQAA IMMEDIATELY.
Read Less...
Monday, October 18, 2004
In Iraq, No News is Good News
As the White House website clearly shows, the true liberation of the Iraqi people came on or about June 30, 2004—the first day on which they were able to exist entirely free from the oppressive burden of facts!
Right-wing nutbloggers (and their president) often complain that the only reason average Americans think that the war in Iraq is going badly is because the liberal media refuses to cover all the good things that are happening there. Well, there must be some pretty damn wonderful things going on over there in Iraq to counterbalance the horrific scenes of violence, death, destruction, chaos and hate that I see every day in the news. And so, I went in search of this good news, looking to sources I knew would not be tainted by the Liberal Islamofascist Cabal that controls all media (wait, I thought that was the Joos?).
First stop, Fox News. Here’s the good word for today: Fallujah Talks On Hold; Car Bomb Kills Six. Kind of a downer, but then I saw that Zarqawi has pledged allegiance to bin Laden. Wonderful!! How refreshing to get a fair and balanced view of Iraq! Also, Fox brought me news of our vaunted coalition and the tremendous international support that George W. Bush has gathered in Iraq! Yes, you can read all about it in “UK: Troops Not Going to Baghdad". Oddly, no mention was made of Poland.
Still, maybe today was just a bad day in Iraq. I searched the archive, but it was just more of the same. The cops we’re training are getting killed, our own guys are getting killed, and members of the military and their families say the Bush administration underestimated the number of troops needed in Iraq. Wow, I guess the Liberal Media Borg have finally assimilated Rupert Murdoch!
Undaunted, I went to the one place I knew I could count on to give me the unvarnished truth about Iraq: the White House.
OK, are you done laughing? Because really, it shouldn’t be funny.
Anyway, it turns out the White House has a whole section of their website devoted to Iraq. Seeing as how this is the perfect place to disseminate all the good news about Iraq the President claims isn’t being reported by the mainstream media, I was sure I’d hit a goldmine. I went directly to the “News” section, and was surprised to see nothing more than a list of public statements made by the President (and every once in a while his staff) about Iraq. Is this meant to indicate that the only “news” of note on Iraq has been that the President talks about it, or are we to believe that all the relevant “news” about Iraq is contained in the President’s statements? I ask because most of what he says is pretty nonspecific, and a lot of it is just him complaining about the media focusing on the bad stuff.
So where is the good stuff? Well, I had hardly exhausted the White House’s Iraq page, so I kept looking, clicking on a link to something called the “Iraq Liberation Update", and eagerly clicked on it. Surely this would be a detailed account of the progress we have made in Iraq, and proof of our unwavering commitment to the Iraqi people and the cause of Iraqi freedom. What I found was a whole list of quotes, many of which contained positive sentiments, if not exactly good news, and some of which actually contained good news—or at least references to good news. I was somewhat encouraged, until I realized that the entries stop in December of 2003. Has there been no good news in the past ten months, or did the White House just stop caring?
Then I clicked on a link called “100 Days of Progress in Iraq", but this turned out to be a series of Top Ten lists from August of 2003. Maybe the President was going to be guest-hosting for Letterman? A bit exasperated, I clicked on the Iraqi Fact of The Day. Apparently the last day the Iraqis had facts was June 29, 2004. Which is when I realized what the problem was—I was still thinking in terms of “facts”, and “reality”!!! How anachronistic!
As the White House website clearly shows, the true liberation of the Iraqi people came on or about June 30, 2004—the first day on which they were able to exist entirely free from the oppressive burden of facts! As the last four years have shown us, what many of us liberals still think of as “Democracy” is merely the larval stage of true freedom: liberation from the shackles of “fact” and the burdens of “reality”—the transendence of Empire. As one of George W. Bush’s senior advisors put it:
We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’
Frère Jacques, dormez vous?
Read Less...
Thursday, October 07, 2004
Now I know why
I and many people I know have been asking the same question: Why do so many people still support the Bush adminsitration, when the lies, shortsighted policies and hamfisted execution are so obvious and so pervasively damaging?
The answer, I’m afraid, is that alot of them are simply—to borrow a phrase—dumb.
OK, I’m being uncharitable. But although some of the blame goes to the media, and most of it goes to an Administration that has betrayed our trust time and again, these people have got to take some responsibility. After all, if you’re going to participate in a participatory democracy, you’ve got to be paying attention.
Perhaps the most stunning example of what has recently become known ‘round these parts as “dumbness” is a recent USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll indicating that a startling 42% of those surveyed thought Saddam Hussein was involved with the 9/11 attacks. 32% thought Saddam had personally planned them. How can that many people possibly think that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11? Well, there is no easy answer, but it is clear to me that this is in large part due to the fact that we have a lazy/biased mainstream media that is almost completely seconded to a partisan machine that uses the mainstream media as its own propaganda tool against people too tired, lazy, or uneducated to realize they are being bamboozled.
While 42% of those surveyed thought there was a Saddam-9/11 link, 62% of Republicans believed Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks. Why so many? It think it is a combination of (a) greater willingness to suspend disbelief in the name of “loyalty” (I promise, I won’t use the word “fascism”. Oops.) and (b) greater voluntary exposure to the most biased media outlets. Still, what does it take to wake these people up?
In September of 2003, President Bush conceded that there was no evidence of a Saddam-9/11 connection. Since Republicans seem to believe the most blatantly obvious untruths that issue forth from W’s lips, why don’t they seem to have believed this? Could be because in September of 2003 Dick Cheney was going around calling Iraq “the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9-11,” and saying that while he was not aware of any evidence supporting a 9-11/Saddam link shortly after the 9-11 attacks:
Subsequent to that, we have learned a couple of things. We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the ‘90s; that it involved training, for example, on BW (biological warfare) and CW (chemical warfare)—that Al Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems, and involved the Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the Al Qaeda organization.
Gee, I wonder why people didn’t quite get it in September of ‘03?
But what about now? I mean, the 9-11 Commission reported in June that there was no evidence of cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaeda. And Cheney admitted that “We have never been able to prove that there was a connection.” Now, surely that was difficult for Cheney to admit, given that he had been repeatedly telling the country that there was “overwhelming evidence" of an Iraq-9/11 connection. But I won’t call it a flip-flop. It’s more of a flip-flop-flip-flop-flip . . .
You see, Cheney was also still telling everyone that Saddam had “long-established ties with al Qaeda.” In case you’re confused (I don’t blame you), Cheney claims to have been making the subtle distinction (in his own mind, anyway) between a Saddam-9/11 link (no evidence) and an Iraq-al Qaeda link ("we don’t know” - but depending on how vague you want to get . . say, some al Qaeda guy may or may not have been in Iraq before or after Saddam was deposed . . . there might be some “connection"). This is precisely the sort of subtlety the Republicans have been attacking as “inconsistency” in Kerry. Worse, it seems that the Administration has consistently gone out of its way to intentionally blur lines it tries to pretend are clear—on an issue that is of the utmost importance to America and to the world.
Most recently, for example, Rumsfeld stated he knew of no “strong, hard evidence” linking Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and al Qaeda. Surely, this is inconsistent with the administration’s earlier claims that there was “overwhelming evidence” of such a connection, yes? No. Apparently, we “imminent" threat of Iraqi WMDs. Of course, the threat was not imminent before it was imminent.
Confused again? Well, you see, in 2001, just prior to 9/11, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice both stated that Saddam Hussein was not a serious threat to the US or even to his neighbors. Then, immediately after 9/11, the Bush Administration told us we had to invade Iraq because saddam had WMD’s. Yesterday, we learned what Powell, Rice and, well, pretty much everyone but the Dittoheads, knew all along: there were no WMDs. But this morning Cheney proclaimed that the proof that Saddam had no WMD’s justifies the invasion of Iraq.
For those of you keeping track, that’s flip, flop, flip, belly-flop.
Read Less...
Wednesday, October 06, 2004
Whoops!
From today’s New York Times:
Iraq now appears to have destroyed its stockpiles of illicit weapons within months of the Persian Gulf war of 1991, and by the time of the American invasion in spring 2003, its capacity to produce such weapons was continuing to erode, the top American inspector in Iraq said in a report made public today.
When asked for her reaction, blogger Karol stated that both the report and its author were, in her view, “dumb”.
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Just another way the invasion of Iraq has made us all safer.
From the New York Times:
With tens of thousands of their citizen soldiers now deployed in Iraq, many of the nation’s governors complained on Sunday to senior Pentagon officials that they were facing severe manpower shortages in guarding prisoners, fighting wildfires, preparing for hurricanes and floods and policing the streets.
Monday, July 19, 2004
If you like John Ashcroft's America, you'll LOVE George Bush's -- er, Iyad Allawi's Iraq!
Clareified blogroller Iocaste points out a news story that is getting very little play in the mainstream media. According to news reports, Iyad Allawi, the new prime minister of Iraq, shot a handful of prisoners in cold blood just before the turnover of power. If this is true (Allawi reportedly has categorically denied these reports), it obviously raises serious questions about the new government of Iraq. But, in our haste to extricate ourselves from that quagmire, perhaps we forgot to explain “due process”. Or maybe there was nobody in the administration who could.
Also, please welcome Fantasy Life to our blogroll. Iocaste’s intelligent and interesting commentary (especially, but not exclusively, about securities law) makes it worth a visit, despite the somewhat frustrating interface.
Friday, July 16, 2004
You know what would really send a message to those terrorists . . .
. . . and maybe convice the Filipinos and others that it doesn’t pay to negotiate? If we showed that the terrorists could be stopped!
Seriously. What possible incentive do the Filipinos have to stay in Iraq?
Friday, April 23, 2004
Some Gave All
Pat Tillman had it all. He was a professional football player - and a damn good one. He left a $3.6 million dollar contract with the Arizona Cardinals on the table when, in the wake of 9/11, he gave up his football career in order to enlist in the military. Not surprisingly, this elite athlete was in the U.S. Special Forces. He chose to put himself in the line of fire in pursuit of a cause he believed in over the life of luxury that he had earned by his talents.
Pat Tillman was killed today in Afghanistan serving his country. I have grave doubts about the way the administration is conducting this war, but I have no mixed feelings about Pat Tillman.
Tillman’s brother, Kevin, a Cleveland Indians prospect, also gave up his career to enlist and serve. I congratulate the Tillman family for raising two fine men and join them in mourning Pat’s death.
Thursday, April 08, 2004
Condi Nast[y]*
The New York Times closes its article on Rice’s testimony this morning with this quote:
“After the Sept. 11 attacks, our nation faced hard choices. We could fight a narrow war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban or we could fight a broad war against a global menace. We could seek a narrow victory or we could work for a lasting peace and a better world. President Bush chose the bolder course.”
You’ll be shocked to learn that’s not how I see it.
First of all, I’m not sure that’s a valid distinction. Does Rice really believe that al Qaeda is not a global menace? Second, assuming there is a distinction there, Bush chose neither. After demolishing what was left of Afghanistan (to what effect?), Bush has chosen to devote our country’s resources to creating a huge fucking mess in Iraq. As I was saying to Ugarte just yesterday . . .
I continue to believe that American and global security have been ill-served by the invasion of Iraq, not only because of the incredibly poor planning and execution, but because fundamentally I think it has proved to be a very costly distraction from the greater threat of international terrorism (although I continue to believe that even that is hardly the greatest problem our nation faces).
By invading and destabilizing Iraq, we (a) placed a huge American military presence in Iraq and pissed of an extraordinary number of Arabs/muslims/etc. and (b) created an order vacuum which allowed and encouraged anti-American terrorists from outside (including the ones we dispersed from Afghanistan) to come in and attack us there.
If I were an al Qaeda “officer”, Iraq would be a wet dream for me. On the one hand, it is a massive distraction and resource sink that forces the US to fight with one (or more) arms tied behind its back, and on the other hand it is a killing box ready-made for touching pastoral scenes like the charred corpses on the bridge.
If we can help Iraq to establish a stable, non-fundamentalist regime, I do think that will represent a step forward from the current situation vis-a-vis the threat/spread of Islamic fundamentalism. However, it will also represent a return to the status quo ante. Iraq under Saddam was essentially a stable, non-fundamentalist regime. Since there is little indication that the establishment of a stable, non-fundamentalist, democratic regime in Iraq is even possible, I do not believe we have any real chance of “success” in Iraq.
This, I believe, is the fundamental folly of the Iraq campaign: Now, in addition to our own national security, the fate of Iraq (formerly a non-crazy-fundamentalist state) hangs in the balance. All the invasion of Iraq did was commit resources and increase the pressure and the stakes.
I think it is a mistake to treat the threat posed by international terrorists and/or Islamic extremists as a national or geo-political entity. Iraq is not the heart of “their” operations. We are still not quite sure who or where “they” are—and THAT is what we should be focusing on. How will we defend ourselves and our operations against international terrorists if the vast majority of our troops, hardware, etc. are fighting guerillas in Iraq?
I believe that what is needed is, to borrow a phrase from Ugarte, a “worldwide anti-terror force”. Instead, we have unilateral and alienating action. Our virtually unilateral involvement in a power struggle/reconstruction in Iraq was neither inevitable nor necessary, and I do not believe the “fight” in Iraq is more than distantly related to the “fight” brought to our shores by the WTC bombings, etc, nor that success in Iraq (which seems more and more like saying “success in Vietnam") will have any significant positive effect on the threat posed by international terrorists/fundamentalist extremists. Nor have we, as some have argued, localized the fight.
While, sadly, it seems that Al Qaeda and possibly others are taking advantage of our vulnerability in Iraq, I have no reason to believe that there are not as many or more al Qaeda and others all over the world planning attacks on us and our interests and our proxies anywhere and everywhere they can.
The hullaballoo over Clarke vs. Rice is all a bit irrelevant to me, since in my view this administration has since 9/11 consistently shown that neither al Qaeda nor international terrorism are its top priorities. Why in the world would it have been any different before 9/11?
*Note: Ms. Rice was cool and professional throughout her testimony. I just couldn’t resist the headline.
Read Less...
