The cause is lost, whatever it was.
Like many Americans, we have put off that conclusion, waiting for a sign that President Bush was seriously trying to dig the United States out of the disaster he created by invading Iraq without sufficient cause, in the face of global opposition, and without a plan to stabilize the country afterward.From an editorial in the New York Times HERE. (subscription may be required)
At first, we believed that after destroying Iraq’s government, army, police and economic structures, the United States was obliged to try to accomplish some of the goals Mr. Bush claimed to be pursuing, chiefly building a stable, unified Iraq. When it became clear that the president had neither the vision nor the means to do that, we argued against setting a withdrawal date while there was still some chance to mitigate the chaos that would most likely follow.
While Mr. Bush scorns deadlines, he kept promising breakthroughs — after elections, after a constitution, after sending in thousands more troops. But those milestones came and went without any progress toward a stable, democratic Iraq or a path for withdrawal. It is frighteningly clear that Mr. Bush’s plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor. Whatever his cause was, it is lost.
Agree?
posted by The Inside Dope @ 7/10/2007
27 comments
27 Comments:
Even if Iraq had all the weapons the Bush administration claimed in their doctored intelligence reports, it still didn't add up to an imminent threat to U.S. security.
People who played along with the game--the national political and media establishment--have permanently earned my contempt.
Blah, Blah, Blah...will you people ever say something that can benefit our future, or are you going to just continually live in the world of 'hindsight is 20/20.'
Pretty easy to convince yourselves of how smart you are when you never have to do anything but criticize!
What's not to like? As the Times admits, we would be responsible for "reprisals against those who worked with American forces, further ethnic cleansing, even genocide...destabilizing refugee flows...Iran and Turkey power grabs...and a new stronghold from which terrorist activity could proliferate".
It's interesting the among this laundry list of horrors, the Times fails to mention that a vast quantity of the world's oil is situated in the region, and paying $5.00 (or more) per gallon for gasoline would be a fact.
Normally the Times and other left-wingers are hollaring about how our standing in the world has been damaged by George Bush. It looks like the Times doesn't really care about this as long as George Bush will be blamed. Or does the Times really think the the world will love us more if we pull out and create a conflagration in the Middle East?
The New York Times no longer cares about classical liberal values, it's all about BDS. This is honestly one of the dumbest editorials I have ever read in the New York Times----and that's saying something.
You mean like your splendid example of just that?
Talk about irony.
There's this thing called accountibility. It would be nice if someone in this administration was held accountible for something at sometime or other.
And it will do this country and society a lot more good to continue to expose and prosecute those who have broken the law, as well as to examine how this gang of thugs has wrecked so many pillars of our government and how they've done it.
It's always productive to study the collossal venality and blunders of the past in order to avoid repeating the same mistakes and to set about trying to undo the vast damage which has been done.
And if you're looking for some sort of easy bumper sticker solution to this mess, I suggest this: Get rid of Bush and every single one of his cronie incompetents and replace them with capable people more devoted to the betterment of this country than to their warped political and religious ideology and to propping up their leader and party.
As I said in a previous post which you conveniently "lost". I think it is naive to think that just because we get a new presidential administration in 2009, like magic all our problems will go away and the world will be safer.
There will still be war in the Mideast and terrorist threats. Gas will NOT go back to a dollar a gallon, I don't care who the President is. There will still be a trade deficit. There will still be millions of uninsured and under-insured Americans. Yes, there will still be these problems and others after Bush leaves office. But, as I asked before: WHO WILL YOU SIT AROUND BLAME THEN??
The liberal blogosphere will be a quieter place after 2009, but our problems aren't going away. And if you get to the end of your tunnel of love with Hillary, and SURPRISE you haven't reached UTOPIA, I hope that you liberals will hold her to the same high standards and expectations.
Just remember, you won't have Bush to kick around anymore.
Oh and by the way, when is "Ol' Brighteyes" gonna line up the votes in the House for impeachment?
Ooops, I forgot...she doesn't have the nerve.
Bush's war of fascist imperialist aggression against the people of Iraq must cease IMMEDIATELY. This is all about stealing oil. Everybody knew there were no WMDs. Bush's Saudi friends are the authors of 9/11. Halliburton, Blackwater, et al. are making billions off the murder of over 10,000 Iraqis per month. Shame! Republicans have blood on your hands: Repent!--Blue in Kansas
Nico,
As the amiable dunce once said, "There you go again."
No one ever suggested, much less me, that "like magic all our problems will go away."
(not to mention that you strangly assume that I pin all my hopes on Hilary Clinton as if she's the end all and be all. Weird. Were'd you get that from?)
You base your entire post on something no one has ever said nor suggested. Of course there will be serious problems, most of which might have been avoided if it weren't due to the collossal and misguided blunders of this administration.
But to think that continuing with a bunch of morons who continue to operate based on this administrations ideology is ever going to be able to improve things, much less recognize and take the necessary steps to reverse and correct the damage done and begin to try to undo what Bush and Co have done is folly.
Obviously a change is needed, and not just nibbling around the edges.
As to impeachment, it's not a matter of "nerve", it's a matter of common sense. The chimp is going to be uncermoniously kicked to the curb in a matter of months. How smart would it be to initiate impeachment proceedings? Then what? The real president would actually become president? No thanks.
History will impeach this gang in full measure, I'm certain.
1. Nico - great post, thanks.
2. Anon 7:13, wow, what are you smoking? Posts like yours show the left for exactly what they are - a group of very poor thinking nut cases. Your comments are so foolish, from one to the next,
(a) "about stealing oil" - if this is all about oil, wouldn't you think that added supply would have lessened the price of oil, not doubled it in 4-years?
(b) "everyone knew that there were no WMD" - well, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, M. Albright, every world leader, Ted Kennedy, etc. they all are on record as stating that they knew that Sadam had WMD's/
(c) "Bush's Saudi friends are the authors of 9/11" - Islamic fundamentalists, some from Saudi, authored 9/11. Bush knew none of these 'authors' any better than Bill Clinton. Do you even understand that Bush was in office for all of 8-months prior to 9/11 and that 90% of the planning of 9/11 happened under the Clinton Administration?
(d) "Halliburton, Blackwater, etc. are making billions" - do your homework, (1) Halliburton is the only company on earth big enough to do many jobs, (2) Clinton was closer to Halliburton than Bush - again, out of necessity, nothing more.
A typical post from a typical leftie. A lot of words and little if any thought.
Josh, you show some thought, at least enough to lay out the typical right wing spin.
The fact remains that there were many, including myself that could plainly see that there were no WMDs in Iraq, if for no other reason that every time reports from the inspectors came in they were getting closer and closer to declaring that there were none, and just about then, they started smearing the chief inspector, ordered him out of Iraq, then went around lying that Sadaam had thrown them out.
They clearly wanted to get their little war on, and nothing, especially not pesky facts or reality was going to stop them.
That was clear to an awfully lot of people, including myself.
The fact that Dems were political animals and caved in and fell in rank behind the invasion is hardly something surprising.
Would you actually expect them to stand up vociferously AGAINST the war? Any war?
It was known as a political fact even back before the turn of the century that to oppose any war was political death. That fact alone is what will probably doom this country.
When reporters are getting fired for so much as reporting anything critical of the plan to invade, and mouth breathing rednecks are running steamrollers over Dixie Chicks records because one of them actually said she was ashamed Bush was from her home state of Texas, then it's not likely that any politician of any stripe is going to swim against that current. They simply don't have the moral or political courage. And yes, it would have likely been political suicide to do so at that time.
So now you and the other right wing parrots yammer that Democrats voted to fund this invasion. Wow. Imagine that.
Yet in the same breath, you could easily brand them as "soft on terror" or wanting to "destroy the military", etc. etc.
You bash them for supporting the war, then bash them for noticing that it's been horribly bungled, rip them for not voting to cut off all funding for the quagmire, and turn around and beat on them for trying to enact some sort of rational plan in place of the endless and maniacal meanderings and utter lack of strategy of Bush in his increasingly mad desire to run out the clock and never admit a mistake, even if it takes the sacrifice of hundreds more lives.
In short, you're desperate to change the subject. You're desperate to focus on how the Dems are going to drag the country out of the sordid mess the right led it into.
Not surprising. After all, even you know better than to look to the Republicans for some sane policy.
But don't fret. Little George will run out the clock and dump his idiotic blunder into a Democratic president's lap, and there's simply no way that they could possibly do any worse than this gang.
The bottom line is that there is NO good solution to this hare-brained screw-up.. the result of a twisted mix of neocon ideology in defense of Israel, Texas oil greed, and a large dose of end-times theological madness.
There will be no easy way out of Iraq. Things very likely will get worse before they get better.
But the situation has got to be dealt with from some other perspective than the shallow, arrogant, brutal and callous approach this gang has utilized.
You could manage this crisis better than Bush and Cheney. Hell, a tuna salad sandwich could.
And you know, you can smugly think that anyone who opposes this administration and their reckless and needless war and killing isn't thinking.
But the fact is, I believe, that you're simply avoiding thinking yourself. Otherwise, you'd never busy yourself trying to be an appologist for these thugs or spend a second of your time trying to defend them.
Wow, you guys are nuts...
EVERYONE knew that there were WMD's. President Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy - everyone made numerous comments/ policy statemnts stating so much.
He used WMD's!
He never disposed of WMD's!
He never gave free acceess to inspectors!
Amazing that you are so much smarter -and more well informed- than all of them!
Josh,
Click your heels together three times and keep repeating, "The war was somehow justified..."
But you're indeed operating on faulty intelligence yourself, having swallowed all the frantic distortions of the truth the right has dished out. (by the way, how do you keep them straight when they change almost daily?)
Weapons inspectors were crawling all over Iraq, having had access to thousands of sites and were very close to concluding that there were indeed no WMDs, much less any of the mythical "mobile weapons labs" and other purely fictional crap that the Bushies asserted existed.
As I stated, the Dems were spineless during this time, realizing that to do anything other than parrot the Bush line would be suicide, not to mention that they, foolishly, actually choose to BELIEVE this gang of thugs when they loudly and often trotted out a host of scary things that Sadaam was capable of if we didn't rush in and knock him off immediately.
Are you suggesting for a moment that anyone other than the US and a handful of it's lackeys ever truly believed any of the crap about WMDs? Is that why the "coalition of the billing" was so tiny that Bush had to tout the contributions of countries people didn't even know existed? Countries that contributed as few as a dozen troops and who have long since gotten the hell out of the mess themselves?
Europe and the rest of the world could see that it was all a trumped up pack of lies. They didn't fall for it for a moment.
As a matter of fact, I believe that the only reason any other nation participated was simply as a political and economic consideration. After all, Connecticut Cowboy George proclaimed, "Either you're with us or agin' us, right? When your economy depends on trade with the U.S., you might want to at least pretend to go along, which is what most nations did, sending token forces. Of course, other nations are still contributing large forces and efforts in Afghanistan, where they realize the actual problem lies. But not Georges's splendid little adventure in Iraq.
You say he used WMDs. Josh, being a bright guy like you are, could you tell us all who provided those WMDs to Sadaam in the first place?
So Sadaam brutally gassed people in a region which was plotting to overthrow him. Now we see how much better we're doing in dealing with the various factions struggling for control.
Bush said Sadaam must go, after all, "he tried to kill my Daddy."
Bush destroys an entire country (maybe two) partly for that reason, and you're still shreiking that Sadaam put down insurection by brutally gassing innocent people?
You seem to have NO qualms whatsoever about the literally hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children slaughtered in our invasion and subsequent destabilization of the entire country and region.
Your protests ring false and your facts don't even approach anything which would somehow justify the Iraq disaster.
Dope, I am saying that no one lied...or everyone lied.
Say what you will, justify your brain-dead opinions, but,
BILL CLINTON
AL GORE
MADALIENE ALBRIGHT
JOHN KERRY
HILLARY CLINTON
ETC.
ETC.
All stated that Iraq had WMD's.
Either they all lied, or Iraq had WMD's, or everyone (and the rest of the world) was duped.
And just to save you from the lame, stupid response of, "Bush controlled the intelligence" -
These statements of WMD facts by the Dem's were all made before Bush took office.
Answer that goof-ball.
OK asshat.
Your facts are false, or at best, not true.
Secondly, yes, when someone is given intelligence that has been twisted and jiggered and "fixed" by monomaniacal ideologues in the White House who set up their own parallel intelligence outfit within the Pentagon, then yes, people were duped.
And yes, though I know you don't think Bush should be held accountable for ANYTHING WHATSOEVER at anytime, the fact remains that he's the shallow dunce who allowed these people around him and who allowed this disgraceful incompetence and dishonesty to not only occur, but to be used as justification for what has led to the slaughter of literally tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.
Is there ANYTHING, anything at all, that Bush is responsible for? He's the freaking PRESIDENT and Commander in Chief.... why do you and the other walking zombies insist on blaming someone else for every half-witted and criminal thing that's occured under his watch?
Have you slipped into some sort of cult of personality that makes you utterly blind to reality and facts?
You're still spewing the ridiculous argument that Dems thought that Hussein had WMDs? So what's your point? What the hell does it matter?
What is the point?
....And Josh, since I'm that kind of guy, I'll even try to help.
Go read this and maybe it will begin to put you on the path to telling the difference between BS and reality.
Latest poll I've seen had 25% approval levels.
How in the world did this guy get elected? I'm seriously considering passing up job offers when I graduate this May in order to begin campaigning.
UGH
The "who knew what" game about WMD is really stupid and pointless.
Everytime I see a blog exchange on this topic, I see that everyone involved forgets that five years transpired between 1998 and 2003, no one writing had access to ANY intelligence during that period ('cause they'd rightfully be silent), and probably no one blathering about who said what was in near or over Iraq during that time period.
What partisan politicians said or say about WMD is worthless.
What does matter is the fact that we cut short an inspection process that would have given us a very good answer in mid to late 2003 about any credible Iraqi WMD capability, or lack thereof, had we been patient enough to listen.
Instead, without proof (anything we saw in Powell's speech was circumstantial) we pushed a bad unidimensional, Rumsfeldesque plan--for whatever reason (I suspect it was simply because we were operationally moving military might for a March 2003 kickoff)--and, to paraphrase a former GOP SECSTATE, today, "we own it."
No, scratch that. The military owns it. No one else seems to really be lifting a finger beyond $h!t-talking.
It wasn't about WMD...never was.
Our invasion of Iraq was purely a ill-conceived, ill-informed, ethnocentric, neoconservative, geopolitical concept that we could create/wedge a democratic state into the heart of the Islamist world and cure the world of terrorism with purely military force.
Worked great, huh. Dumb@$$es
Bet a few of those former Pentagon-entrenched idiots are wishing they had a mulligan.
Dope,
HOW FREAKING STUPID ARE YOU???
Bill Clinton, and all the others, made statements specific to Iraq HAVING WMD'S -
LONG BEFORE 'W' WAS IN OFFICE.
They relied on their own evidence.
They could not have relied on 'W's evidence because 'W' WAS NOT IN OFFICE YET!!!!!!
OK, I'll say this slowly so you might understand... Clinton did not INVADE a country that posed no direct threat to ours. Period.
There are several nations which have or are developing so-called "WMDs". I guess you think we should go marching into every one of them and destroy those countries too?
Of course you do, otherwise you'd be an inconsistent fool.
Or is it just the countries sitting on top of a lot of oil?
To your point.... big deal. So there were rumblings about Sadaam and what he may or may not be up to. The fact remains that, as Colin Powell testified even while he was Bush's SOS, that we had him contained and he was no imminent threat to his neighbors, much less to us.
And by the way, why aren't YOU over in Iraq standing up for what you so fervently believe in? Are you under 40? Then get off your ass and put it where your mouth is.
The reasons for this war have changed many times Josh. There is no caps lock big or strong enough to argue against that.
-WMD's (supposedly)
-To save the people
-To create a Democracy
-Middle East stability
-About 10 others I don't have the time to explain because you've clearly made your mind up ages ago.
Here's my not so crazy opinion: BushCo probably altered the intelligence, but they also thought they might be doing the right thing, but the most important part was uniting a nation behind a war to ensure electoral successes and the retention of power. What do you think the DOJ/attorney firing fiasco is all about? They've found a way to politicize almost every office of the government imaginable.
And here you are making these prehistoric arguments. The best part about it is not matter what comes out to discredit you, you will stand by your opinion.
Wow. where did this new guy come from??
I mean this is uglier than when Mike Jacobs used to troll on here.
Since the hard drive meltdown, I feel like I picked up on a new season with new characters!!
That's a good one: "Ass-hat".. I gotta write that one down. LOL
That's true Nico... Maybe I dropped out long enough that the knuckle-draggers have wandered to other places. (Either that or they likely actually thought they'd finally gotten rid of me.)
But things are a bit nicer around here (despite the flame-throwing in this thread)
I suspect the quickest way to attract a moronic convergence would be for me to post anything about local or state politics. Draws them like flies... or maggots I should say.
How can you say the cause is lost? Halliburton (now headquartered in Dubai) and Blackwater and several other fascist corporations are making money hand over fist. So from the Fascist imperialist (Bush, Cheney, et al.) perspective, this is all working out splendidly.
Blue Kansas
Good point blue..
Explains why some Republicans are STILL trying to cheer-lead this disaster.
Truly, to paraphrase Lennon's line, all they are saying, is give war a chance.
Just to give an example of how STUPID it is to couch this war in terms of patriotism, let's take a hard look at Cheney's Halliburton, now no longer a US corporation.
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14482 offers a good article entitled "Goodbye Houston." Cheney's way of thanking America for the $20 billion that his company has made from this war is to move his company to the Middle East. Where the action (oil) is. Oh yes, and where future subpoenas may be safely ignored...
OK, suckers, let's wave flags in the unemployment line!
Blue Kansas
"Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious"
-Oscar Wilde
... and the perhaps more famous quote by Samuel Johnson ...
"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."
Johnson also spoke of what makes a true patriot in a quote that damns the tactics at the foundations of the modern Republican right and the Bush administration in particular.
"It is the quality of patriotism to be jealous and watchful, to observe all secret machinations, and to see publick dangers at a distance. The true lover of his country is ready to communicate his fears, and to sound the alarm, whenever he perceives the approach of mischief. But he sounds no alarm, when there is no enemy; he never terrifies his countrymen till he is terrified himself. The patriotism, therefore, may be justly doubted of him, who professes to be disturbed by incredibilities..."
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