Thursday, November 06, 2003
Careening Back to Stupid: A KristoFisk
My recent "The Bodyguard of Lies" piece had been building for a while and was pushed out the door by this little Kristof number. I'll be commenting more on the background issues raised by "The Bodyguard of Lies" in a future post but for now a good Fisking: (my comments in bold)
Op-Ed Columnist: Death by Optimism
November 5, 2003
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
On a visit to Saddam's Iraq a year ago, I wrote a column
that outraged his government. It described officials
burning a Muslim leader's beard and then driving nails
through his head.
The next day I was summoned to a government ministry and
menacingly denounced by two of Saddam's henchmen. But
neither man could speak English, and they hadn't actually
read the offending column. (Imagine officials who don't
read papers but rely on underlings for briefings!)
At that point, my government minder took my column and
translated it for them. I saw my life flash before my eyes.
But my minder's job was to spy on me, and he worried that
my tough column would reflect badly on his spying. Plus, he
was charging me $100 a day, and he would lose a fortune if
I was expelled, or worse.
So he translated my column very selectively. There was no
mention of burning beards or nails in heads. He left out
whole paragraphs. When he finished, the two senior
officials shrugged and let me off scot-free.
That episode underscored to me how difficult it was for
Saddam's government to get accurate information.
Ultimately, Saddam's rule collapsed in part because he
couldn't read Iraq and made decisions based on hubris and
bad information.
This is the very nature of totalitarian dictatorship of course! It's consequences were particularly bad for Saddam because he was a particularly egregious dictator. But Kristof can't say that because it would ruin his forthcoming point.
These days, President Bush and his aides are having the
same problem. Critics complain that they lied to the
American public about how difficult the war would be, but I
fear the critics are wrong: they didn't just fool us - they
also fooled themselves.
Which is that BUSH IS STUPID!!! (I'm having this feeling of Deja Vu all over again!) We've careened back to stupid because the liar argument kept losing traction in the face of facts. But we can't lose face by admitting that so we'll leave it implied that he's a liar also. In fact he's so stupid that he fooled himself and it splattered over on the rest of us -- the unfortunate victims.
Evidence suggests that Mr. Bush and Dick Cheney may have
actually believed that our troops would be, as Mr. Cheney
predicted, "greeted as liberators." The administration
chose to rely not on intelligence but on wishful thinking,
and it became intoxicated by the siren calls of Ahmad
Chalabi, a silver-tongued charlatan.
Yup, an unfortunate victim of the first snake-oil salesman that came along...
I wish administration officials were lying, because I would
prefer hypocrisy to delusion - at least hypocritical
officials make decisions with accurate information.
Ummm, he's not saying Bush is a liar but I sense a subliminal message developing that stupidity isn't the whole problem after all...
Policy by wishful thinking is crippling our occupation.
Initially, U.S. officials didn't restrain looting because
they regarded it as celebratory high jinks. Then, confident
that security was in hand, they disbanded the Iraqi Army.
They didn't push hard to bring in international forces.
He means the same international forces (you know, French, Russians, and Germans) that are clean as the driven snow ... no -- wait! Weren't they Saddam's chief advisors, enablers and arms suppliers? If you subtract out these supposed "allies" of ours, everyone that's a REAL ally with any troops worth a darn are ALREADY THERE HELPING US. And by the way, the Europeans still have a stinking mess in their own back yard in Bosnia and Kosovo WHERE THERE STILL ARE NO ELECTIONS years and years after things were supposedly cleaned up...
Disbanding the Iraqi Army is at least a point worthy of debate -- but in no way a slam dunk that we shouldn't have done it.
The foreign forces they suggest introducing are Turks,
which adds to my fear that administration officials have
been more deluded than duplicitous. It is a crazy scheme:
anyone who has spent time in Iraq knows that Iraqis will
never accept their former colonial power policing them.
You can't be wrong all the time even if you try -- he has a reasonable point in this paragraph. Of course, what makes up the real negotiations behind the scene is anyone's guess.
Mr. Cheney has cited a Zogby International poll to back his
claim that there is "very positive news" in Iraq. But the
pollster, John Zogby, told me, "I was floored to see the
spin that was put on it; some of the numbers were not my
numbers at all."
Mr. Cheney claimed that Iraqis chose the U.S. as their
model for democracy "hands down," and he and other
officials say that a majority want American troops to stay
at least another year. In fact, Mr. Zogby said, only 23
percent favor the U.S. democratic model, and 65 percent
want the U.S. to leave in a year or less.
He relies on Zogby who is clearly an Arab-it's-all-the-Joooos- fault-party-line partisan. You might also consider what Healing Iraq says: "According to a poll by an Iraqi agency, only 3% of Iraqis want Saddam back and less than 40% want the Americans to leave immediately. Did you even hear about these results?" SPEAKING OF WHICH, FOLLOW THE LINK AND READ ZAYED'S POST!
"I am not willing to say they lied," Mr. Zogby said. "But
they used a very tight process of selective screening, and
when they didn't get what they wanted they were willing to
manufacture some results. . . . There was almost nothing in
that poll to give them comfort."
Ummm, did someone whisper "liar" in my ear?
Sure, we're making some progress in Iraq. A hand grenade
sells for $2.50 now, compared with 10 cents a few months
ago. But U.S. troops now face 25 to 30 attacks daily,
compared with 15 to 20 in September. Last month 33
Americans were killed, twice as many as in September.
This is clearly the use of selective statistics -- one month does not a trend make and all the trend graphs on casualties have been headed down. On the the other hand, it's not at all unreasonable that we'll actually see a spike in attacks and casualties if we really are getting more aggressive in focusing forces on the "Sunni Triangle" -- which by the way IS where the vast majority of the attacks and bad guys are.
In fact, I am quite amazed that the hundreds of thousands if not millions of viscious Saddamites -- likely augmented by A-Team terrorists like Mugniyah himself -- can't make more havoc than they have! I would have thought a helicopter a day would be easy pickings.
One of Mr. Bush's strengths as a politician is his
optimistic nature, but I now fear it is also his central
weakness in governing. Reckless overconfidence led him to
adopt fiscal policies that will leave our children
indebted, and this same cockiness led us into Iraq. Brash
optimism perhaps has its roots in Mr. Bush's hometown,
Midland, Tex., an oil town that regularly rewarded hard
work with a gusher, a place where everybody you meet
displays this same hearty can-do confidence. In Midland,
Mr. Bush unfortunately absorbed the lesson that risks in
the desert pay off.
Dumb Texan. Gets up in the morning and thinks about his cajones all day long.
So the scary thing is, Mr. Bush and his aides may not be
lying when they look at Iraq and boast of a cheering
population that a Western press sourly refuses to
acknowledge. There's a precedent: Saddam Hussein.
Yup, Bush is just one of your run-of-the-mill tyrannical dictators. But look on the bright side -- Kristof finally admitted that Saddam IS a tyrannical dictator!
And don't worry, he's given up the argument that Bush lies ... or has he?
Op-Ed Columnist: Death by Optimism
November 5, 2003
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
On a visit to Saddam's Iraq a year ago, I wrote a column
that outraged his government. It described officials
burning a Muslim leader's beard and then driving nails
through his head.
The next day I was summoned to a government ministry and
menacingly denounced by two of Saddam's henchmen. But
neither man could speak English, and they hadn't actually
read the offending column. (Imagine officials who don't
read papers but rely on underlings for briefings!)
At that point, my government minder took my column and
translated it for them. I saw my life flash before my eyes.
But my minder's job was to spy on me, and he worried that
my tough column would reflect badly on his spying. Plus, he
was charging me $100 a day, and he would lose a fortune if
I was expelled, or worse.
So he translated my column very selectively. There was no
mention of burning beards or nails in heads. He left out
whole paragraphs. When he finished, the two senior
officials shrugged and let me off scot-free.
That episode underscored to me how difficult it was for
Saddam's government to get accurate information.
Ultimately, Saddam's rule collapsed in part because he
couldn't read Iraq and made decisions based on hubris and
bad information.
This is the very nature of totalitarian dictatorship of course! It's consequences were particularly bad for Saddam because he was a particularly egregious dictator. But Kristof can't say that because it would ruin his forthcoming point.
These days, President Bush and his aides are having the
same problem. Critics complain that they lied to the
American public about how difficult the war would be, but I
fear the critics are wrong: they didn't just fool us - they
also fooled themselves.
Which is that BUSH IS STUPID!!! (I'm having this feeling of Deja Vu all over again!) We've careened back to stupid because the liar argument kept losing traction in the face of facts. But we can't lose face by admitting that so we'll leave it implied that he's a liar also. In fact he's so stupid that he fooled himself and it splattered over on the rest of us -- the unfortunate victims.
Evidence suggests that Mr. Bush and Dick Cheney may have
actually believed that our troops would be, as Mr. Cheney
predicted, "greeted as liberators." The administration
chose to rely not on intelligence but on wishful thinking,
and it became intoxicated by the siren calls of Ahmad
Chalabi, a silver-tongued charlatan.
Yup, an unfortunate victim of the first snake-oil salesman that came along...
I wish administration officials were lying, because I would
prefer hypocrisy to delusion - at least hypocritical
officials make decisions with accurate information.
Ummm, he's not saying Bush is a liar but I sense a subliminal message developing that stupidity isn't the whole problem after all...
Policy by wishful thinking is crippling our occupation.
Initially, U.S. officials didn't restrain looting because
they regarded it as celebratory high jinks. Then, confident
that security was in hand, they disbanded the Iraqi Army.
They didn't push hard to bring in international forces.
He means the same international forces (you know, French, Russians, and Germans) that are clean as the driven snow ... no -- wait! Weren't they Saddam's chief advisors, enablers and arms suppliers? If you subtract out these supposed "allies" of ours, everyone that's a REAL ally with any troops worth a darn are ALREADY THERE HELPING US. And by the way, the Europeans still have a stinking mess in their own back yard in Bosnia and Kosovo WHERE THERE STILL ARE NO ELECTIONS years and years after things were supposedly cleaned up...
Disbanding the Iraqi Army is at least a point worthy of debate -- but in no way a slam dunk that we shouldn't have done it.
The foreign forces they suggest introducing are Turks,
which adds to my fear that administration officials have
been more deluded than duplicitous. It is a crazy scheme:
anyone who has spent time in Iraq knows that Iraqis will
never accept their former colonial power policing them.
You can't be wrong all the time even if you try -- he has a reasonable point in this paragraph. Of course, what makes up the real negotiations behind the scene is anyone's guess.
Mr. Cheney has cited a Zogby International poll to back his
claim that there is "very positive news" in Iraq. But the
pollster, John Zogby, told me, "I was floored to see the
spin that was put on it; some of the numbers were not my
numbers at all."
Mr. Cheney claimed that Iraqis chose the U.S. as their
model for democracy "hands down," and he and other
officials say that a majority want American troops to stay
at least another year. In fact, Mr. Zogby said, only 23
percent favor the U.S. democratic model, and 65 percent
want the U.S. to leave in a year or less.
He relies on Zogby who is clearly an Arab-it's-all-the-Joooos- fault-party-line partisan. You might also consider what Healing Iraq says: "According to a poll by an Iraqi agency, only 3% of Iraqis want Saddam back and less than 40% want the Americans to leave immediately. Did you even hear about these results?" SPEAKING OF WHICH, FOLLOW THE LINK AND READ ZAYED'S POST!
"I am not willing to say they lied," Mr. Zogby said. "But
they used a very tight process of selective screening, and
when they didn't get what they wanted they were willing to
manufacture some results. . . . There was almost nothing in
that poll to give them comfort."
Ummm, did someone whisper "liar" in my ear?
Sure, we're making some progress in Iraq. A hand grenade
sells for $2.50 now, compared with 10 cents a few months
ago. But U.S. troops now face 25 to 30 attacks daily,
compared with 15 to 20 in September. Last month 33
Americans were killed, twice as many as in September.
This is clearly the use of selective statistics -- one month does not a trend make and all the trend graphs on casualties have been headed down. On the the other hand, it's not at all unreasonable that we'll actually see a spike in attacks and casualties if we really are getting more aggressive in focusing forces on the "Sunni Triangle" -- which by the way IS where the vast majority of the attacks and bad guys are.
In fact, I am quite amazed that the hundreds of thousands if not millions of viscious Saddamites -- likely augmented by A-Team terrorists like Mugniyah himself -- can't make more havoc than they have! I would have thought a helicopter a day would be easy pickings.
One of Mr. Bush's strengths as a politician is his
optimistic nature, but I now fear it is also his central
weakness in governing. Reckless overconfidence led him to
adopt fiscal policies that will leave our children
indebted, and this same cockiness led us into Iraq. Brash
optimism perhaps has its roots in Mr. Bush's hometown,
Midland, Tex., an oil town that regularly rewarded hard
work with a gusher, a place where everybody you meet
displays this same hearty can-do confidence. In Midland,
Mr. Bush unfortunately absorbed the lesson that risks in
the desert pay off.
Dumb Texan. Gets up in the morning and thinks about his cajones all day long.
So the scary thing is, Mr. Bush and his aides may not be
lying when they look at Iraq and boast of a cheering
population that a Western press sourly refuses to
acknowledge. There's a precedent: Saddam Hussein.
Yup, Bush is just one of your run-of-the-mill tyrannical dictators. But look on the bright side -- Kristof finally admitted that Saddam IS a tyrannical dictator!
And don't worry, he's given up the argument that Bush lies ... or has he?
That Stupid Bush...
A WOW of a speech today! Andrew has the best short analysis and excerpts but this is a READ IT ALL. Period. You'll also discover how stupid Reagan was as well ;)
WaPo Boffo
I could hardly believe my eyes that WaPo actually delivered an apparently reasonable analysis of how Saddam miscalculated this time around. READ THE WHOLE THING -- THIS IS AN EXCELLENT CONTEXT PIECE. Just an attention-getter to get going:
So it's really a credible argument then that someone who has been proven to not understand deterrence could be trusted with what would certainly be the quick acquisition of WMD if sanctions were lifted (which was the only real alternative to the war for anyone who gave a whit about the Iraqi people themselves)?
Oh, and given his known use of WMD as well as the massive quantities of WMD he had during Desert Storm and were discovered in the succeeding years of inspections it's just simply craven to make blanket statements that an utter sociopath like Saddam clearly didn't have WMD -- or for that matter that he hasn't already given them to terrorists. If there is a clear pattern here it's that it's quite impossible to predict the moves of someone this completely nuts!
Finally, there is a great irony. Clinton's continuing appeasements and pinprick actions may have actually provided some of Bush's best ammunition in attacking Saddam: evidence that the US wasn't serious even with an armada on his border! For that matter, Bush senior's premature end to Desert Storm contributed as well.
After Chamberlain's appeasements in the 30's failed and the war started, Neville had the presence of mind to at least fall into line behind Churchill. Credit where credit is due, while I think Clinton as all former presidents should be more retiring in their retirements, he has at least been vaguely Chamberlain-like when it was required regarding this war...
Taiee, one of the former major generals interviewed by The Post, agreed that Hussein had "not expected a war." The Iraqi president had concluded that "there would be bombardment as in '98 and the regime would continue and he would be a hero. Then, in case war did happen, these promises he had received from the French and Russians -- plus the resistance he thought the army would put up, not knowing that they would go home -- this would be enough to win a cease-fire and a settlement."So let's see, we have a confused person who doesn't understand the mechanics of deterrence, feeds massive numbers of his own people into plastic shredders creating mass graves as far as the eye can see, is the only known actual user of WMD (in Halabja against the Kurds -- ostensibly his own countrymen) besides the US in WWII, is responsible for the deaths of more Arabs than any other Mideast leader in history, invaded Kuwait almost for the glee of it, created one of the largest environmental disasters in history with the burning of the Kuwaiti oilfields, tried to assasinate a former US president (the elder Bush), funded Palestinian terrorists and was linked to at least al Qaeda affiliates (see my "No Evidence?"), and:
But Maj. Gen. Amer Shia Jubouri, 50, a former army division commander and chief of the Iraqi war college, said in an interview that he believed "the French and Russian governments delivered very clear messages to Saddam that the war was going to happen," and that if Hussein believed otherwise, it was a result of the president's own confusion.
"He obviously misunderstood the theory of deterrence," said Jubouri. "You have to know when this theory can be successful, and when it can be disastrous." [Emphasis added.]
"We have not yet found stocks of weapons, but we are not yet at the point where we can say definitively either that such weapon stocks do not exist," the leader of the Iraq Survey Group, David Kay, told Congress on Oct. 2. U.S. officials said that conclusion still holds one month later.was actually not completely nuts in his approach to constituting his WMD programs. And, oh yes, as a child he loved to run white hot iron rods thru animals (see Pollack's "The Threatening Storm"). And did I mention he was at minimum in clear violation of the cease fire agreement that ended Desert Storm?
The investigators' most significant new discovery over the last month, officials said, was that Hussein made a secret deal to purchase Nodong missiles from North Korea (news - web sites), in addition to a previously reported clandestine deal to buy North Korean missile parts between 1999 and 2002. Neither shipment came through, however, because North Korea's government said it was under too much U.S. pressure in 2002 to risk a delivery by sea.
The substantial evidence of Iraq's secret long-range missile programs, combined with more fragmentary testimony in which Hussein reportedly asked scientists how long it might take to reconstitute chemical arms, has led some investigators to conclude that Hussein saw missiles as his most difficult challenge. In this hypothesis, Hussein wanted to build or buy long-range missiles before he took on the risks of secretly restarting banned programs to make weapons of mass destruction.
"The pattern I think we're seeing is, they were working on the long pole in the tent," the missile program, said the senior U.S. official involved in the weapons search. When Hussein asked scientists how long it would take to restart sarin and mustard gas production, he learned the timelines "were all so sufficiently short" that he could afford to hold off until the missile program was further along, the official said.
So it's really a credible argument then that someone who has been proven to not understand deterrence could be trusted with what would certainly be the quick acquisition of WMD if sanctions were lifted (which was the only real alternative to the war for anyone who gave a whit about the Iraqi people themselves)?
Oh, and given his known use of WMD as well as the massive quantities of WMD he had during Desert Storm and were discovered in the succeeding years of inspections it's just simply craven to make blanket statements that an utter sociopath like Saddam clearly didn't have WMD -- or for that matter that he hasn't already given them to terrorists. If there is a clear pattern here it's that it's quite impossible to predict the moves of someone this completely nuts!
Finally, there is a great irony. Clinton's continuing appeasements and pinprick actions may have actually provided some of Bush's best ammunition in attacking Saddam: evidence that the US wasn't serious even with an armada on his border! For that matter, Bush senior's premature end to Desert Storm contributed as well.
After Chamberlain's appeasements in the 30's failed and the war started, Neville had the presence of mind to at least fall into line behind Churchill. Credit where credit is due, while I think Clinton as all former presidents should be more retiring in their retirements, he has at least been vaguely Chamberlain-like when it was required regarding this war...
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
The Bodyguard of Lies
There seems to be a lot of talking about lying going on – but no attention to the history of war, strategy and common sense. And there really is a lot of lying going on – so let’s look a little deeper.
Since the “lies of interest” revolve around the war, perhaps we should study up on the recent history of war and wartime leadership. What recent history lessons can we look to?
What about Clinton’s (NATO) attack on Serbia? Straight down the Orwellian “memory hole” with that one – it’s too inconvenient when arguing against Iraq II without U.N. sanction.
Then there was Clinton’s “Desert Fox” cruise missile attack on Saddam. How about “[terrorists] will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen. There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein.” Not bad for Clinton actually. But down the “memory hole” with it since Clinton would be a “liar” alongside Bush!
I remember Bush senior’s “this will not stand” regarding the U.N.-sanctioned Gulf War I – barely. But riveting was the Army’s “left hook” through the Iraqi desert – and then leaving Saddam in power!
Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” was powerful. But did we really win the Cold War or just a battle? And did we really do all we could to "lock down" all those Soviet nukes?
And Vietnam? That was so disastrous that to this day queries about the boat people or the domino deaths of two million Cambodians to Pol Pot’s Communist-nihilist slaughter are “memory holed” with a wicked barrage of personal attacks on the questioner.
Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs? He bungled it so incredibly that Krushchev was emboldened to embark on the Cuban missile crisis and we nearly abandoned MAD to instantiate nuclear winter together.
Better keep going in search of satisfaction.
The stalemate in Korea? The other U.N.-sanctioned war! Both times American Generals – MacArthur in Korea and Schwarzkopf in Gulf I -- were sacked or stopped short. Both resulted in totalitarian dictatorships left in power. In fact, the two large U.N.-sanctioned wars last century allowed the survival of two of the three members of Bush’s “axis of evil”. Fascinating coincidence?
Finally we arrive at World War II and – real satisfaction. Winston Churchill! Franklin Delano Roosevelt!
How about Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” WWII rationale of “Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. Freedom from want. Freedom from fear.” That’s pretty good. But by the time we entered the war Japan, Italy, Germany, German-Poland, German-Czechoslovakia, German-Denmark, German-Netherlands, German-Norway and – of course -- German-France were all against us. World opinion against us as today!
Churchill’s “The Americans will always do the right thing … after they’ve exhausted all the alternatives” was the painful summation of why WWII reached tens of millions dead.
Churchill’s “If Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” was a jarring lesson on wartime alliances.
Or his “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” (You were wondering if I lost my bead on lying weren’t you?)
And Winston’s eye-opening corollary, “In war time, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” Allowing the bombing of Coventry after Allied cracking of the German codes leaps to mind.
Shock and awe? Or epic-historic logistics?
Quagmire? Or flypaper?
Hopefully, George Bush the Churchill-admiring history major will tell us – and the enemy -- more “strategery”-ically placed whoppers.
Since the “lies of interest” revolve around the war, perhaps we should study up on the recent history of war and wartime leadership. What recent history lessons can we look to?
What about Clinton’s (NATO) attack on Serbia? Straight down the Orwellian “memory hole” with that one – it’s too inconvenient when arguing against Iraq II without U.N. sanction.
Then there was Clinton’s “Desert Fox” cruise missile attack on Saddam. How about “[terrorists] will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen. There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein.” Not bad for Clinton actually. But down the “memory hole” with it since Clinton would be a “liar” alongside Bush!
I remember Bush senior’s “this will not stand” regarding the U.N.-sanctioned Gulf War I – barely. But riveting was the Army’s “left hook” through the Iraqi desert – and then leaving Saddam in power!
Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” was powerful. But did we really win the Cold War or just a battle? And did we really do all we could to "lock down" all those Soviet nukes?
And Vietnam? That was so disastrous that to this day queries about the boat people or the domino deaths of two million Cambodians to Pol Pot’s Communist-nihilist slaughter are “memory holed” with a wicked barrage of personal attacks on the questioner.
Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs? He bungled it so incredibly that Krushchev was emboldened to embark on the Cuban missile crisis and we nearly abandoned MAD to instantiate nuclear winter together.
Better keep going in search of satisfaction.
The stalemate in Korea? The other U.N.-sanctioned war! Both times American Generals – MacArthur in Korea and Schwarzkopf in Gulf I -- were sacked or stopped short. Both resulted in totalitarian dictatorships left in power. In fact, the two large U.N.-sanctioned wars last century allowed the survival of two of the three members of Bush’s “axis of evil”. Fascinating coincidence?
Finally we arrive at World War II and – real satisfaction. Winston Churchill! Franklin Delano Roosevelt!
How about Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” WWII rationale of “Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. Freedom from want. Freedom from fear.” That’s pretty good. But by the time we entered the war Japan, Italy, Germany, German-Poland, German-Czechoslovakia, German-Denmark, German-Netherlands, German-Norway and – of course -- German-France were all against us. World opinion against us as today!
Churchill’s “The Americans will always do the right thing … after they’ve exhausted all the alternatives” was the painful summation of why WWII reached tens of millions dead.
Churchill’s “If Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” was a jarring lesson on wartime alliances.
Or his “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” (You were wondering if I lost my bead on lying weren’t you?)
And Winston’s eye-opening corollary, “In war time, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” Allowing the bombing of Coventry after Allied cracking of the German codes leaps to mind.
Shock and awe? Or epic-historic logistics?
Quagmire? Or flypaper?
Hopefully, George Bush the Churchill-admiring history major will tell us – and the enemy -- more “strategery”-ically placed whoppers.
Managing Iraq for the Election Cycle
Ledeen gets right to the point:
Ledeen gets right to the point:
As I have repeated to the point of monotony, we are particularly weak on Iran, and have been since the late 1970s. At the time of Khomeini's seizure of power, there was no full-time Farsi-speaking Iran expert on the crisis team at CIA. A few years later, when Oliver North and Robert McFarlane went to Tehran, they had to drag a man out of retirement to serve as interpreter. And even a year or two ago the agency was still claiming that Sunnis and Shiites don't work together, and denying that there was any link between Tehran and Osama bin Laden. By now we are reduced to begging for information on the numerous al Qaeda terrorists in Iran.WELL WORTH THE READ. De-nihilism is not owned solely by the left -- it's likely infesting the president's closest advisors if not George himself. Or things may not always be as they seem? OK, here comes...
Second is the interplay between policy and intelligence. Over the years, the intelligence people have learned not to bring forward information that policymakers do not want to hear. At the moment, the top policy people do not want to take on another terror master, whether in Damascus, Tehran, Tripoli, or Jeddah. So the intel guys oblige by not looking very hard at the remaining state sponsors of the terror network. It's clear that the (domestic, electoral) political imperative is now paramount, and our leaders want to "manage" Iraq until the president is reelected. Then they'll see. [Emphasis added.]
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
And off in the lead for the next "Jaw Dropper" is -- who else could it be? -- but the NYeT on Iraqi debt relief! I just knew that as soon as I gave them a teensy morsel of credit they'd have a hog swaller plateload of remorse... (Hat tip Andrew.)
When you see that consternated look on Rumsfeld's face, could it be that the process is the problem?
You know, I've been thinking that everyone's really good at heart -- except for Bush and Cheney of course -- and that if we just negotiate, negotiate, negotiate then everything will be all better. But then, this line of thinking works lots better if you're careful to ignore all the facts.
The Window
A scoop from tomorrow's NYeT. (Hat tip to Glenn.) And it might even moderately resemble the truth of how the Iraqi's feel after having large numbers of their friends and relatives fed feet-first into plastic shredders just so they die the most horrible death possible.
So basically what is going on is that even though the Iraqi's have an irrational and unquenchable hatred of the Jooooooos like all the other nut cases in the Middle East, the unspeakable horror that Saddam visited gives us a "window" to work with them and take a shot at something vaguely like democracy. It may not work. But it would have been unconscionable not to try given how horrific the alternatives are likely to be...
UPDATE: Some of you may not have read this either since the major media ruthlessly supressed it...
So basically what is going on is that even though the Iraqi's have an irrational and unquenchable hatred of the Jooooooos like all the other nut cases in the Middle East, the unspeakable horror that Saddam visited gives us a "window" to work with them and take a shot at something vaguely like democracy. It may not work. But it would have been unconscionable not to try given how horrific the alternatives are likely to be...
UPDATE: Some of you may not have read this either since the major media ruthlessly supressed it...
Find out why Joooooish and Cheney conspiracy fans don't understand that "the world is correlated at 0.3". (Hat tip Andrew.)
David Brooks on why we have a burden too heavy.
The fact is, we Americans do not like staring into the face of evil. It is in our progressive and optimistic nature to believe that human beings are basically good, or at least rational. When we stare into a cave of horrors, whether it is in Somalia, Beirut or Tikrit, we see a tangled morass we don't understand. Our instinct is to get out as quickly as possible.NOW GO AND READ THE OTHER EXCERPT I HAVE LINKED -- AND THEN CLICK THRU TO THE FULL COLUMN. The "Battle of Midway" has been joined in Iraq...
Monday, November 03, 2003
Michael Ledeen on UNPUNISHED FAILURE. To which I would for about the thousandth time re-ask the question: "Explain to me again why Tenet is still the CIA director after presiding over 911?".
Andrew has a deadly hit on the THE LEFT AND ANTI-SEMITISM to really grab your attention. That chirping sound you hear is the canary in the coal mine...
Sunday, November 02, 2003
A QUICK QUOTE to reinforce the last post: 'But as Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic points out in a devastating critique of Judt, "if you explain anti-Semitism as a response to Jews... you have not understood it. You have reproduced it." ' This article by Bret Stephens is well worth the read and is very thought provoking -- though I disagree with his virtual endorsement of 'Political Correctness' at the end...
The Quote of the Day -- No, Make That Week
is embedded in a WOW that not only aligns with some threads I have been nurturing but should send anyone of conscience into some deep contemplation regarding the nature of hatred and true courage.
Here's the Martin Luther King quote embedded in Sharansky's article that I'll bet 10-1 you didn't know existed:
READ THE WHOLE THING -- I'LL SLOW DOWN THE BLOGGING TO GIVE YOU THE TIME :) I have some thinking and writing to do anyway...
Here's the Martin Luther King quote embedded in Sharansky's article that I'll bet 10-1 you didn't know existed:
You declare, my friend, that you do not hate the Jews, you are merely "anti-Zionist." And I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo through the valleys of God's green earth; when people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews--this is God's own truth. -- Martin Luther KingAnd as a Lutheran myself, Sharansky's pointing out the parallel anti-Semitism of Martin Luther (yes, the original one) and Muhammad really got my attention.
READ THE WHOLE THING -- I'LL SLOW DOWN THE BLOGGING TO GIVE YOU THE TIME :) I have some thinking and writing to do anyway...
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