Reflecting on the post below......
Three years ago, I sent a note to a mailing list I belong to (and Doc Magoo can verify this) in which I argued that Saddam Hussein posed no imminent threat, and I also rather accurately predicted that W's imminent invasion of Iraq would end up as the nightmare it has become.
I say that not to show that I am Nostradamus or a particularly insightful pundit--I say that because it was SO DAMNED EASY to see this train wreck dead ahead. I'm no Middle Eastern or geopolitical specialist (American constitutional and Civil War history is my area), but with some general background and a little common sense, anyone could have predicted the horrific result we've spawned--talk about your low-hanging fruit. My question is, if it was so easy for me to see--
1) Why did our supposed "free press" fail so miserably? Myriad reasons, but primarily they let themselves be bullied, bought and sold. They think, if I ask a hard question, I won't get access. Judy Miller of the New York Times was so damned happy that the White House returned her calls that she turned the "newspaper of record" into the White House PR firm. I can just see her as Sally Field saying "They like me, they really like me!" If it was up to me, she would still be rotting in prison--and
2) What the hell happened to Congressional Democrats? They can try to weasel out by saying that "we didn't see all the intelligence" or claim that the books were otherwise cooked, but folks, how about exercising a little independent judgment and as I said above, a little common sense? Why didn't more of you have the guts to say, "Excuse me, but this is bullshit?"
Oh, that's right, I remember. You were afraid. You were afraid that Karl Rove would say mean things about you and call you "weak on defense." You had a chance to at least voice your opposition to the worst foreign policy disaster in perhaps all of American history and you blew it. You meekly went along and now you have to do this agonizing contortionist routine to maintain a phony consistency while American soldiers, and perhaps America itself, are dying.
Sometimes I really do hate to say "I told you so."
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I thought about this last week, in that I was going to write about how you were the one who most succinctly and clearly explained why removing Saddam wasn’t necessary and would result in the problems that have come to be.
Me, I had argued that when you take out a thug ruler, you need to put another thug in place to keep things in order, otherwise without the threat of the thug the people will start to assert themselves. And when you occupy another country, people are willing to set aside their various differences to remove the occupiers—the French excepted.
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