Jeb Bush, left, is finding himself tied to the minuses of his brother’s presidency
"The Fall Of Iraq. Jawdropping Video Footage Of Cheney, Albright, Gen Clarke & Others"
"Israeli War Historian, Martin van Creveld's Startling Commentary On The Iraq War"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/06/israeli-war-historian-martin-van.html
He Is Heavy. He’s My Brother.
WASHINGTON — IT isn’t about what we know now.
It’s about what we knew then.
It
is simply not true, as Republican presidential aspirant Scott Walker
said on Friday, that “any president would have likely taken the same
action Bush did with the information he had.”
That’s not giving enough credit to W. and his frothing band of Reservoir Dogs.
It
took a Herculean effort of imagination, manipulation and deception to
concoct “the information” that propelled the invasion, occupation and
destruction of a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.
When
the Republican House majority leader at the time, Dick Armey, balked at
invading Iraq unprovoked, because Saddam was a clownish tyrant but not a
nuclear menace to America, Dick Cheney summoned Armey to his Capitol
hideaway and coerced him with brazen fabrications.
Paris When It Sizzles
JUL 4
Trade Winds Blow Ill for Hillary
JUN 20
Obama’s Flickering Greatness
JUN 13
From Paris, With Tough Love
JUN 6
Hooray for Hillarywood?
MAY 30
As
Barton Gellman wrote in “Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency,” Cheney
tried to spook his old friend in September 2002 by confiding that the
Iraqis were well on their way to developing miniaturized nuclear weapons
and that Al Qaeda was working with Saddam and his family — both
spurious assertions.
Aside
from the Blair poodle and the Coalition of the
Willing-to-Overlook-Counterfeit-Claims, our allies tried to warn us. You
know you’re in trouble when the Germans tell you that you’re too
militaristic.
The
Saudis thought Saddam was a monster, but, according to a Saudi
official, they sent top emissaries to urge W. against war. Prince Saud,
the foreign minister, and Prince Bandar, the ambassador in Washington,
told the president that Saddam had assured them that he would allow the
inspectors in. The Saudis explained what should have been obvious to the
foreign affairs neophyte in the Oval Office: Saddam, who was writing
romance novels, listening to Frank Sinatra and reading Hemingway’s “The
Old Man and the Sea,” was simply blustering like any Arab despot would,
trying to deter Iran with a big imaginary cache of W.M.D.
Everyone
paying attention after 9/11 knew that the Bush crew had crudely and
cynically switched villains, diverting America’s fury and fear from
Osama, whose address was unknown, to Saddam, a reliable Bush family
punching bag. They used patriotism like brass knuckles.
It
was the Potomac version of “Murder on the Orient Express.” All those
who pushed, or went along with, the Iraq invasion, had different but
interlocking motives for the crime: W. wanted to avenge and one-up his
father, whom he accused of cutting and running in Iraq; Hillary wanted
to show that she could man-up; Cheney wanted to make America a
hyperpower. Donald Rumsfeld wanted a target-rich environment to pound
some Arabs. Paul Wolfowitz wanted to turn Iraq into a model kitchen for
democracy.
Karl
Rove, who once thought the war would help build a Republican empire at
home, still defends it. At a University of Connecticut
speech in March ,
he was confronted by an Iraq war veteran who asked him to apologize for
the “useless war.” Rove insisted that “it was the right thing to remove
Saddam Hussein from power.”
But,
as Senator Rand Paul bluntly argued last weekend while visiting a San
Francisco tech company, America was better off with Saddam in power.
“Every
time we’ve toppled a secular strong man, we’ve gotten chaos and more
radical Islam, and we’re all less safe because of it,” the Republican of
Kentucky told me. “I think I could say that at the Iowa Republican
convention and still be well-received with it.”
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Colin Powell,
told the Concord Monitor that it was a “fair assessment” to say Iraq was better off under Saddam.
Thinking is hard.
Most people hate it.
To avoid the thinking, humans cling to the facile "ideas" of childhood and adolescence.
Flag waving and creed recital overcome any vestigial impulse to think.
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