Empire of lies
not "empire of incompetence." It comes to the same thing, but it's an important distinction nonetheless. "Incompetence" pins the blame on government bureaucracy and absolves the individuals involved as victims of same. "Lies" points to the dishonesty of specific individuals, who can and should be exposed, as bloggers do regularly, but rarely so clearly and powerfully as with the below video ofking death lizard Dick Cheney clearly articulating -- in 1994 -- a strategic case against the invasion and occupation of Iraq (albeit in his morally deficient way) by describing then what we are seeing now.
So, obviously, a shattered, chaotic Iraq and destabalized region has always been part of the plan, the long war, and the "greeted as liberators with hearts and flowers" line was a knowing lie, one designed to get people excited about the prospect of victory. When the lie proves hollow, there are always more and better lies, just as there are always more and better democrats to facilitate them.
From the vid:
excerpt courtesy of Jonathan Schwarz of A Tiny Revolution.
Reminder to post courtesy of Curry St. John
not "empire of incompetence." It comes to the same thing, but it's an important distinction nonetheless. "Incompetence" pins the blame on government bureaucracy and absolves the individuals involved as victims of same. "Lies" points to the dishonesty of specific individuals, who can and should be exposed, as bloggers do regularly, but rarely so clearly and powerfully as with the below video of
So, obviously, a shattered, chaotic Iraq and destabalized region has always been part of the plan, the long war, and the "greeted as liberators with hearts and flowers" line was a knowing lie, one designed to get people excited about the prospect of victory. When the lie proves hollow, there are always more and better lies, just as there are always more and better democrats to facilitate them.
From the vid:
Q: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?
CHENEY: No.
Q: Why not?
CHENEY: Because if we'd gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off -- part of it the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of eastern Iraq the Iranians would like to claim, fought over it for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.
The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families, it wasn't a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.
excerpt courtesy of Jonathan Schwarz of A Tiny Revolution.
Reminder to post courtesy of Curry St. John
