Gen. Sanchez absolutely blasts Rumsfeld and Franks for their little dance step around and finger pointing when things predictably went sour in Iraq. (The widespread looting happened right under Gen. Franks’ nose).

In February 2003 the WP said after the Powell testimony that nobody could now doubt Iraq had WMD. Two major problems with that statement. A lot of people didn’t believe what Powell said. Hans Blix was already in Iraq and his preliminary report said that no WMD had been found there. Futhermore, Blix was complaining about being sent on wild goose chases by the Bush administration. There was plenty of doubt about the existance of WMD in Iraq. Plenty.

it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.”

The worst error was in allowing the war party the legitimacy of this pernicious and irrelevant argument. Whether or not Iraq had WMD, it was not a threat, had never threatened us, and would have been squashed like a bug if it had even tried to threaten the only nations it could have – its neighbors.

By accepting this argument we bury, once and for all, the position that we can only go to war when attacked or in immiment danger of being attacked. At least in Vietnam we had the decency to maintain the fig leaf of respectability, using the Gulf of Tonkin “incident” as justification.

Bush doesn’t talk much about being a cheerleader either, but one can not change facts…

… one may try to “FIX” facts, but change them…?

.

Hillary is a Democrat like Joseph Lieberman was a Democrat. Don’t kid yourself, there’s a very good chance that the powers that be will remain unchanged.

Speaking of Washington CompPost, I read a Hillary story about reaction to losing the support of an Indiana super, and she stated somewhere that if the Republican nominating rules were followed she’d have already clinched the nomination by now. Yes, in the same story she claimed this prolonged fight was good for the democratic party, she complemented a Republican way of doing business.

And you are right, it’s becoming easier to compare Hillary to Lieberman. I support Barack Obama bigtime and believe he will clinch that nomination, and hopefully, the election.

(By the way, neat handle!)

As it was US military policy not to record the loss of specific Iraqi lives, how would the WSJ editors be able to judge the relative loss on the Iraqi side—especially as the shock and awe bombardments were particularly directed at a city larger and more densely populated than Chicago?

WASHPPO: “None of the disasters feared before the war has come to pass: neither burning oil fields nor bloody street-to-street battles; neither Arab revolutions nor armed interventions by Iraq’s neighbors would the US military”

Except for the street-to-street and house-to-house battles that have raged over the last five years.
And ignore the fact that the Bush Administration predicted that the Iraqi oil fields would pay for the ENTIRE invasion and OCCUPATION—which is in part why protecting the oil infrastructure was a priority.

Not even the critics predicted ‘burning Iraqi oil fields’, nor Arab revolutions.

In fact the Bush administration DID predict Arab revolutions—Democratic revolutions, which have not come to pass (and of which the critics were highly skeptical).

As for “armed intervention” by “Iraq’s neighbors”, the Turks have hit the PKK and Bush is busy claiming that neighbor Iran is engaging in armed intervention (though at best it is covert and very small scale).

WASHPO “Mr. Bush acknowledged before the war that these risks were real, but argued that they were outweighed by the risks of not acting:”

No he didn’t! He said that Saddam had WMD, supported Al –Qaeda and was a threat to world peace and the US. And that was it!

WASHPO: “When the horrors of the Baathist regime — now being confirmed in terrible but necessary detail — are set against even the destruction and deaths of the war, it’s impossible not to conclude that the United States and its allies have performed a great service for Iraq’s 23 million people.”

In that the US and its allies sold Hussein the chemical weapons he used against the Iranians and the Kurds for which the US and its allies later used as an excuse for invasion, and that there are now over 2 million external refugees and 2 million internal refugees and that life expectancy, infant mortality and a whole host of other measures of social welfare have plummeted since the invasion, and that 500,000 to 1 million have likely died—directly or indirectly—from the invasion and occupation and predictable an predicted violence that has ensued from an inadequate occupation force and incompetent post-invasion management.

Indeed the Iraqi’s are so grateful that THEY have been declaring “Mission Accomplished” for the past THREE YEARS. The Iraqis still want the US out, but Bush refuses to give the order.

The Washington Post is not only re-writing its past, but the past of the Bush administration and in addition, it is re-qrting the present too, by simply ognoring it.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/22/INGUNCQHKJ1.DTL

Leaving the left I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives — people who once championed solidarity

Keith Thompson Sunday, May 22, 2005

Nightfall, Jan. 30. Eight-million Iraqi voters have finished risking their lives to endorse freedom and defy fascism. Three things happen in rapid succession. The right cheers. The left demurs. I walk away from a long-term intimate relationship. I’m separating not from a person but a cause: the political philosophy that for more than three decades has shaped my character and consciousness, my sense of self and community, even my sense of cosmos. I’m leaving the left — more precisely, the American cultural left and what it has become during our time together. I choose this day for my departure because I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives — people who once championed solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere — reciting all the ways Iraq’s democratic experiment might yet implode.

I watched with astonishment as leading left intellectuals launched a telethon- like body count of civilian deaths caused by American soldiers in Afghanistan. Their premise was straightforward, almost giddily so: When the number of civilian Afghani deaths surpassed the carnage of Sept. 11, the war would be unjust, irrespective of other considerations. Stated simply: The force wielded by democracies in self-defense was declared morally equivalent to the nihilistic aggression perpetuated by Muslim fanatics…

sanenation@yahoo.com

The conduct of the these news outlets has been beyond belief the
last 7 years. DESPICABLE!

Hillary is a Democrat like Joseph Lieberman was a Democrat. Don’t kid yourself, there’s a very good chance that the powers that be will remain unchanged.

And until then, my opinion of them and yours carry the same weight.

So there.

The conduct of the these news outlets has been beyond belief the
last 7 years. DESPICABLE!