In a post yesterday, I listed some of the people who have been so wrong about the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 that they should be completely shunned, even if they were not tried for crimes. But of course, I was dreaming. They are back all over the media, shifting blame away from their own culpability. Back in 2008, the Center for Public Integrity put out a report listing at least 935 false statements about the national security threat that members of the Bush administration made about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the two years following September 11, 2001.
Dick Cheney now has the sheer gall to say today: “Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many”. When you realize that he is not referring to George W. Bush but to president Obama, it confirms the fact that these people, and those who still continue to provide them with a platform, have no shame.
Critics are now saying that things were going absolutely swimmingly until president Obama withdrew US troops. Older readers will recall the similarity of that claim to how the US defeat in Vietnam was blamed on supposedly feckless politicians who tied the hands of the US military and prevented them from winning there. These fantasies of how victory was so close but lost due to political bungling seem to follow every military debacle.
Both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert discussed the avoid-the-blame game that is now in full swing and both make the point that it was George W. Bush who, in the waning days of his presidency, signed the agreement that led to the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.
Colbert in his astute way observed that because of the mess we have created, the US no longer knows who are its friends and who are its enemies, whom to support and whom to attack. This complicates its preferred strategy of bombing the hell out of people and hoping that solves whatever problem it has.
(These clips aired on June 16, 2014. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post. If the videos autoplay, please see here for a diagnosis and possible solutions.)
It’s only too likely the powers that be will decide that the obvious solution is to bomb them all, and let God sort them out.
Yes, but Obama made the elementary error of keeping the agreement, which I’m sure George W. never intended to do. If he’d found the Iraqi leaders stubborn about agreeing to US troops remaining without being accountable to Iraqi law (which Obama tried to negotiate), he’d have replaced them with leaders who would agree.
I’m waiting for that touching scene when the helicopters fly off into the sunset from the American embassy roof in Baghdad.
This really does look a lot like Vietnam, the end of US involvement anyway.
What else can the neocons/GOP/Tea Party and Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, McCain, and the chickenhawks do?
They were massively wrong and have the blood of 5,000 US soldiers, over 100,000 Iraqi civilians, and we are out at least $2 trillion.
At this point, all they can do is blame Obama and hope there isn’t a war crimes trial.
Dolchstoß means never having to say you made a mistake.
The latest poll shows that 74% of Americans oppose sending combat troops back to Iraq. Even a majority of Theothuglicans opposed it.
Obama should just not do it and make sure everyone knows who the chickehawks are and what they want.
Quick … someone push a helicopter off a carrier so we can declare ourselves done in Iraq.
Some of the chickenhawks, like the Washington Post editorial page run by the scumbag Fred Hyatt are criticizing Obama for not being gung ho to intervene in the Syrian civil war. Of course, Hyatt, Cohen, Rubin, Krauthammer, Theissen, Gerson et al never tell us how we are supposed to tell the bad guys from not so bad guys. The Mossad has much better intelligence on Syria then the US, Britain, or Saudi Arabia have and they can’t tell the bad guys from the not so bad guys, which is one reason they have resisted the entreaties from the FSA to support it.
Channel surfing right-wing radio the past few days is hilarious as al of their host ere contradcting one anther and themselves about what to do though I’ve yet to hear one of thm aditthe Repubes have made any mitakes.
Think of it this way: Even IF it could be reasonably argued that we should go back into Iraq, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove & co. are NOT qualified to make that call. It would not, and should not be based on ANYTHING they have to say on the matter QED. In fact, their endorsement is a mark oin the “do not go to war with Iraq” column
It would appear that the good folks in Kurdistan aren’t letting any grass grow under their feet. First shipment of oil not sent through Iraqi pipelines sent to Israel via pipiline through Turkey and tanker.. That should give al-Maliki and Rouhani heartburn.
http://goo.gl/y6J4VT