By Manifesto Joe
Day by day I am reminded of April 1975, when the South Vietnamese "government" was being toppled. President Gerald Ford actually wanted to send U.S. troops back to Vietnam as it became clearer that the South would be unable to survive. Congress, overwhelmingly Democratic after the 1974 midterm elections, said no. Hell no.
This time, a half-Republican Congress seems ambivalent, and President Obama appears to have been bamboozled by the military establishment. As an early opponent of Il Doofus' foolish invasion of Iraq, Obama should know that you can't fix stupid. And among many mistakes Il Doofus made during his abysmal presidency, the Iraq invasion may have been the most imbecilic. That should be clear now.
During the 2002-03 run-up to Il Doofus' folly, I watched in amazement as the American people were misled and lied to again and again. I figured I knew what the motivation was -- oil. Il Doofus and his chief operating officer, The Prince of Darkness, were figuring that they could just send troops in there, have them welcomed as liberators, and then just help themselves to all that cheap oil. Of course, they were dreadfully wrong. What happened was an eight-year war that ended up costing thousands of American lives, ruining tens of thousands more, and killing perhaps over 1 million Iraqis.
Now, three years after U.S. involvement ostensibly ended, we're supposed to be shocked, shocked that Iraq has erupted into sectarian violence, with Sunnis fighting Shiites, etc.? And that the Baghdad "government" could be toppled any day now?
Saddam Hussein was certainly a bad guy, but at least he was the Devil We Knew. His brutal regime was the only glue that held that country together. When he was toppled, the U.S. opened a Pandora's Box that could only end the way it looks like it may end now. Containment of Saddam (as was done with the Soviet Union) would have been the wise thing, but noooo ... Instead, we had to listen to half-baked stories about "weapons of mass destruction."
Il Doofus' adventure in Iraq was a grotesque mistake that will cost Iraqis, plus Americans, for many decades. The U.S. should have left well enough alone in the first place, and renewed involvement now would just compound the error. Let's face it -- we've lost another war. Now let's try not to do this again, ever.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Postscript: It was House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi who referred to the Iraq war as "a grotesque mistake."
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8 comments:
Mission Accomplished The Bible for Iraq was Post-Saddam Iraq : Desert Crossing - a war game from 1999 during the Clinton Administration. Dubya was the perfect patsy : accomplished since boyhood at playing dumb so as to deflect punishment for his vindictive ways.
It is some 'grotesque mistake', that takes the aspirations of the PNAC and implements them from State Dept. planning sessions of hundreds.
Little details people still have not caught up with : the 'blowing' of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson took out the contact for Brewster Jennings tasked with assessing Middle East WMD threats...destroying the intel network and making Addison's WMD lies plausible long enough to get the operation going...contrary knowledge being denied to government.
The U.S. installed Saddam in Iraq in the first place. And we taught him to be a ruthless bastard and purge his enemies. The CIA supplied him with lists of suspected "communists" in Iraq (who were hunted down and tortured and executed by Saddam's goon squads in the 1960s).
How many Americans know that Saddam was part of a CIA-backed hit squad tasked with assassinating Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim in 1959? (Saddam later hired James Bond director Terence Young to make a film about this attempted assassination). Yes, truth is stranger than fiction.
The U.S. goes around the world, installing and supporting cutthroat dictators. And then we're shocked, shocked to find they do terrible things.
"Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many."
---Dick Cheney, June 17, 2014, "The Wall Street Journal."
By Jeff Zeleny
@jeffzeleny
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Jun 18, 2014 1:30pm
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid delivered a tongue-lashing today to former Vice President Dick Cheney for arguing that President Obama has gotten it “so wrong” in Iraq.
“If there is one thing that this country does not need, it’s that we should be taking advice from Dick Cheney on wars,” Reid said. “Being on the wrong side of Dick Cheney is to be on the right side of history.”
In a pointed speech on the Senate floor, Reid pushed back against the blistering critique Cheney made against Obama in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. Cheney wrote, “Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.”
“Unfortunately, we have already tried it your way,” Reid said, “and it was the biggest foreign policy blunder in the history of the country.”
Cheney's quote sounds like he would be describing Il Doofus. In context, it's astonishing that he would even rear his ugly head at this point. I suppose he feels like he's got to justify his actions. I hope hell is a lot like waterboarding.
I read Vice Pres. Cheney's book, "In My Time: A Personal & Political Memoir." It's clear that, although mistakes were made, he was acting in what he felt were the best interests of the Nation at the time.
Its easy to be a Monday Morning Quarterback and to criticize the actions of others. But remember, Obama doesn't exactly have a stellar record on keeping America safe from terror (just ask the families of those who died at Benghazi).
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't that big a supporter of Bush. I support Ted Cruz. We need a President who will follow the Constitution and restore America's greatness.
Let's see: Who was in office when bin Laden was killed? Bush? And who was it who took a five-week vacation right after being warned that an attack on the U.S. was imminent? Obama?
Conservatives have a remarkable gift for rewriting, or at least ignoring, history.
The capacity of reactionaries is only for shifting the burden of compliance on others. They have perfect hindsight and a blank slate for memory. They don't pay their fair share of taxes, library fines, school expenses; they don't pick up the check, split the gas, share the work load or clean up afterward; they don't turn off the lights, turn off the water, close windows and doors --- but they'll scream bloody murder if we don't.
They've never met an issue they couldn't handle better - but only after the horse is gone and the barn is ashes. They've never made a deadline, and no team on which they served has been successful - mostly because no one listened to him - while he was too weak-kneed to be anything except silent on the matter.
Dick Weed Chainee and Anon#3 are textbook examples, 'long with shrub, rummy, wolffie - If there had ever bee participation from them before the report was written, either the report would have been the same or ... worse.
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