From ABC News /AP:
Anti-war protesters repeatedly interrupted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld during a speech Thursday and one man, a former CIA analyst, accused him in a question-and-answer session of lying about Iraq prewar intelligence.
“Why did you lie to get us into a war that caused these kind of casualties and was not necessary?†asked Ray McGovern, the former analyst.
This ground has been quite thoroughly covered, but let’s rehash it one more time: when you base a belief on an intel consensus and the intel of a number of foreign countries—not to mention on Saddam Hussein’s own failure to meet his obligations and document the destruction of his WMD programs—you have not lied, any more than you would have “lied” had you incorrectly predicted the outcome of a Packers / Vikings game, or got the answer wrong on an arithmetic quiz. The difference is simply one of scale.
Onward…
“I did not lie,” shot back Rumsfeld, who waved off security guards ready to remove McGovern from the hall at the Southern Center for International Studies.
During that exchange, in which Rumsfeld denied ever saying he knew where the WMDs were hidden in Iraq, McGovern confronted Rumsfeld with his own words from a 2003 interview with George Stephanopoulos (a partial transcript of which follows):
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Finally, weapons of mass destruction. Key goal of the military campaign is finding those weapons of mass destruction. None have been found yet. There was a raid on the Answar Al-Islam Camp up in the north last night. A lot of people expected to find ricin there. None was found. How big of a problem is that? And is it curious to you that given how much control U.S. and coalition forces now have in the country, they haven’t found any weapons of mass destruction?
SEC. RUMSFELD: Not at all. If you thinkâ€â€let me take that, both piecesâ€â€the area in the south and the west and the north that coalition forces control is substantial. It happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed. We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.
As Rick Moran notes, in a post arguing that Rumsfeld “embarrassed himself”:
The irony here is that McGovern was accusing Rumsefeld of “lying†in 2003 while the Secretary ended up lying about actually telling the truth. What was the truth? That Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, George Bush, the overwhelming majority of analysts in our intelligence community, the intelligence agencies of the western world, Hosni Mubarak, the Emir of Kuwait, Vladmir Putin, and Saddam Hussein himself all believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Rick goes on to suggest that Rumsfeld’s “folly,” as he calls it, was a failure to take responsibility for what were errors in pre-war intelligence. And if that’s what happened, Rick is certainly correct—though had Rumsfeld said something to the effect of “I was wrong,” the headlines likely would have read something like, “Rumsfeld admits US wrong about reason for invading Iraq.” Which doesn’t excuse him. It just serves to illustrate the political position an administration unpopular with the media finds itself in. (For another interpretation of yesterday’s event, I’ll highlight this observation, from a commenter on Moran’s site:
To use a Clintonian argument, I think your contention that he lied depends on the definition of the word “they.†If “they†are the WMDs themselves, you’re right. If “theyâ€Ââ€â€as Rumsfeld maintained at the eventâ€â€means “suspected sites†then that comports with the facts.
I didn’t see the event live, and I haven’t yet read a full transcript of it. If I’m able to find one, I’ll link it and let you decide for yourselves.)
Moran also argues that early troop levels in Iraq are another mistake Rumsfeld should admit to—but on that account we disagree: the purpose for keeping troop levels low, you’ll recall, was to avoid a large US footprint and make the inevitable suggestions by the war’s opponents that the US was engaging in an imperial occupation of Iraq difficult to proffer with a straight face. And that approach appears lately to be paying dividends: US troops are increasingly allowing the Iraqi forces they’ve training to take the lead in security operations against the insurgency—all while an Iraqi government is taking shape, and while al Qaeda itself is convinced the insurgency is all but lost.
Interestingly, many of same people who at one time tried the “occupation” and “imperialism” tack to criticize the war now agree with Rick that we should have sent in more troops from the outset, which marks them as either unserious, unscrupulous, cynically opportunistic, or completely confused.
But that’s hardly a surprise.
Anyway, back to yesterday’s Rumsfeld exchange. As Allah notes, the AP has gone out of its way to bracket out a bit of important context about Ray McGovern. Quoting this bit from the AP story:
When security guards tried removing McGovern, the analyst, during his persistent questions of Rumsfeld, the defense secretary told them to let him stay. The two continued to spar.
“You’re getting plenty of play,” Rumsfeld told McGovern, who is an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq.
…Allah writes:
That’s as much bio as the AP provides of this fearless, plain-speaking truthteller. Journey back in time with me now to June 2005, where we’ll join WaPo reporter Dana Milbank at John Conyers’s kangaroo court impeachment hearings  already in progress:
The session took an awkward turn when witness Ray McGovern, a former intelligence analyst, declared that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel and military bases craved by administration “neocons†so “the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world.†He said that Israel should not be considered an ally and that Bush was doing the bidding of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
“Israel is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation,†McGovern said. “The last time I did this, the previous director of Central Intelligence called me anti-Semitic.â€Â
Justin Raimondo, Pat Buchanan, Juan Cole, and messrs. Mearsheimer and Walt would likely nod sagely at that last bit—after all, this Jew conspiracy to keep honest Jew critics from criticizing Jews is becoming very very frustrating to those select few who have broken free from the Jew-run matrix and have seen through our current puppet government (which, remarkably, is still being controlled by Sharon’s “comatose” brain, removed by the Israelis in secret and installed by Mossad in a jar at an undisclosed location, right next to Dick Cheney’s shotguns and the “lite” jerky the Veep enjoys so much).
“The pointy bird, pointy pointy. Anoits my head. Anointy-nointy…”
But I digress.
Allah continues:
Jacob Laksin of FrontPage has more:
McGovern was not above retailing anti-Israel conspiracy theories. Hence he claimed, inter alia, that an Israeli company had advanced warning of the 9/11 attacksâ€â€an accusation echoed in literature passed out by Democratic activists at the hearing.
And more still:
That Israel pulls the strings of American foreign policy is not the only conspiracy theory propounded by McGovern. While maintaining that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence information to justify the war against Iraq, McGovern has allowed for the possibility that WMD may be found in Iraq. But he hastens to add that any weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq will likely have been “planted†by American forces. “Some of my colleagues are virtually certain that there will be some weapons of mass destruction found, even though they might have to be planted,†he told Agence French Presse in April of 2003, darkly insisting that “that would justify the charge of a threat against the U.S. or anyone else.â€Â
If McGovern’s name sounds familiar, it should: he’s been popping up on TV and in newspaper articles lately as one of the media’s go-to guys for quotes defending accused CIA leaker Mary McCarthy. Evidently, believing that Jews have their hands up the back of a U.S. puppet government isn’t quite the mainstream credibility-killer it once was.
But there’s more still. McGovern belongs to a group of ex-intel officials known as Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, or VIPS. VIPS is infamous for  no, I’m not kidding  encouraging intelligence operatives to undermine the Bush administration by breaking their confidentiality agreements and leaking information. As McGovern himself put it in a September 2004 op-ed, “[l]eaking can be patriotic.â€Â
A few final words on McGovern, courtesy Rick Moran:
Somehow, rogue ex-CIA agent Ray McGovern had been invited to the event. McGovern you may recall is on the steering committee of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), the group which has carried out an insurgency against the Bush Administration during a time of war […] McGovern has also advanced the theory that the United States government was involved in the attacks of 9/11 and has urged active duty intelligence officers to leak classified information to the press.
The fact that he is a hero on the left shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. And the fact that he was in attendance at this forum in the first place proves that the disruptions and protests were about as spontaneous as Saturday night sex for an old married couple. This was a planned op carried out to maximize media exposure not to mention the goal of embarrassing the Secretary of Defense.
[My emphasis]
****
More background here.
And, as if on cue: “CBS and NBC Lead by Trumpeting Anti-War Activists Confronting Rumsfeld’s ‘Lies’”:
Matching cable news networks interest during the day, two of the three broadcast networks (CBS and NBC, as well as MSNBC’s Countdown) led Thursday night with how, at an event in Atlanta, a handful of protesters confronted Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and accused him of “war crimes†and “lying†about Iraq. ABC also aired a story, but put the Moussaoui sentencing first. All three featured former CIA analyst Ray McGovern who demanded: “Why did you lie to get us into a war that was not necessary?â€ÂBut all failed to note McGovern’s long record of hostility to the Bush administration. As McGovern boasted when he first got to the mike (video not shown by ABC, CBS or NBC), he’s a co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and if you Google “Ray McGovern of CIA†you get a plethora of returns from far-left sites (DemocracyNow.org, antiwar.com, truthout.org, alternet.org, TomPaine.com and CommonDreams.org).
CBS anchor Bob Schieffer trumpeted: “Not since the Vietnam War has a Secretary of Defense been under the kind of criticism that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been getting lately. A group of retired generals has called on him to resign, and today he caught it from another front when he went to what has been Bush country—Georgia—and ran head on into hecklers that included a former CIA analyst.†Of course, Atlanta is hardly “Bush country†and CBS offered no proof the protesters were locals. David Martin concluded by admiring the guts of the protesters: “This is not the first time a former CIA officer has accused the Bush administration of misusing intelligence. But, Bob, it’s never been done in such an in-your-face way.” NBC’s Brian Williams saw a greater meaning: “Today the Secretary of Defense received a blunt and personal reminder of the split in this country over the war in Iraq.†He then showcased a woman shouting in the audience: “You lied to the American people!…You lied! You lied that Iraq’s oil would pay for the war! You lied about everything the CIA told you was lies!..You’re a liar!” Jim Miklaszewski next touted how “today’s protests join a growing chorus of criticism against the Secretary and follow the calls from at least six retired Generals for Rumsfeld’s resignation.†([partial] Transcripts follow)
To be clear, McGovern’s status as an anti-war agitator and conspiracy monger doesn’t mitigate Rumsfeld’s lie, if you conclude that he did, in fact, lie.
However, it is precisely because it doesn’t mitigate Rumsfeld’s actions that it is curious that the major media outlets covering the story felt it important to water down McGovern’s biography to “former CIA analyst” and “critic of the war.”
I doubt that would have extended the same “courtesy” to, say, David Duke, —who ironically enough agrees, in large part, with everything McGovern believes.
Not sure he’s attained the status of hero to the left yet, though. After all, the Paleocons are only marched out by the anti-war camp when they need to assert that Republicans, too, are revolting against the failed war.
And even then, they’d much prefer to get a quote from Chuck Hagel, who is more of a conservative libertarian.
****
See also, TalkLeft, Gateway Pundit, and Jawa Report.
If Rumsfeld were running the CIA, I’d agree. But Rumsfeld, at DoD, is a customer of the CIA when it comes to intelligence, and is dependent on the CIA to get the big picture right.
Rumsfeld has also been sharply criticized for trying to set up his own intelligence apparatus within DoD, an accusation which, if it were true, he ought to be commended for, given the unreliability of the CIA.
So Rummy’s damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t, and damned if George Tennent’s CIA gives him the wrong information. His “folly” is not that he didn’t take the blame for getting the intelligence wrong—his folly is the existential problem of simply being Rumsfeld.
I don’t envy him.
But in our brave new world, where sedition is the highest form of patriotism, I guess it’s to be expected.
Uh huh. And who, pray tell, had that brain before Sharon? Well, it begins with ‘H’ and ends with ‘itler’.
STOP THE ISRAELI GENOCIDE OF PALESTINIANS! At this rate in 50 years, the Palestinians will be 90% of the population in Israel! Stop the horrors!
Fools.
Breaking free of the Jew-run matrix is part of the Jew-run matrix.
McGovern, you have played your part.
Oh my God, that so makes sense.
Hmmmm.
1. I watched it. McGovern comes across as a spittle-flecked madman.
2. A 27 year veteran of the CIA? The the intelligence failures for the past 27 years can be laid at McGovern’s feet then.
Frankly if I were Rumsfeld I’d have pointed out that any problems with CIA intel is probably partially McGovern’s fault.
3. Who invited McGovern to this? He’s not a journalist, he’s an activist. Aren’t there security procedures? Did McGovern get in on his own or was he credentialed by a MSM organization? And if he was credentialed in that way how is that not the MSM making news rather than reporting it?
I don’t understand the criticism of McGovern regarding the role of Israel.
After all, when two professors, hailing from two of the most august institutions of higher learning in the United States, publish a paper declaring that the US Government is under the influence of the Joooooossssssss, is it any wonder that a CIA analyst would come to the same conclusion?
He knows where they are. North, south,west and east somewhat.
So, part of McGovern’s schtick is defending leaker McCarthy. Anyone else suspicious of a pattern I see developing?
That’s right – there’s a Scottish conspiracy in the CIA to overthrown the Jew-run Matrix! As a pro-Israeli conservative named Scott, I’m terribly conflicted.
The self-loathing has already begun. And you know what Scots do when the going gets rough… where’s that damned bottle of Fittich?
Fidditch, dammit, I know. It was my damned voice-rec software’s fault.
Probably written by some… ohnevermind.
This from further into the transcript, HTT Gateway Pundit. Mr. Rumsfield might have more accurately said “we know where the WMD were” but nuance is lost on the leftoids anyway. Otherwise, how far would this story have resonated if McGovern had been described as “a disgruntled ex-employee of the CIA”? Finally what amazes me most is that people are still sticking knives in Rummy’s back. Where can they find room?
I think I’m going to start heckling Rumsfeld and Bush. Can anyone think of a better way to get good publicity?
Nu, so there’s no spoon. They’re maybe expecting us to eat our borscht through a straw already?
Chairman Me:
Sure. Lose your child (doesn’t really matter the cause, but having them die in Iraq helps), and then loudly blame it on Bush.
You can even meet w/ him, receive condolences from him, doesn’t matter. Claim that he’s too scared to meet with you anyway.
That way, you’ll get photo ops on his unmarked grave, all-expense paid trips around the world, adoring fans, and an unquestioning press who will sympathize, empathize, and publicize all that you do.
Better grow a thicker skin, though. And jettison any sense of morality, propriety, or respect for your child’s choices (especially if they died in Iraq or Afghanistan).
C.Me,
Throw pies at them, too.
Ladies and germs, ignore actus…this last throwaway line is the mostest brilliant piece of diction he has ever uttered and ever will. From here he will go down like Moussaoui on Blood and Crip pole in the slam.
Bob Schieffer has been insufferable for a long time. He’s as unbiased an “anchor” as “reporter” Tony Valdez (LA Fox Affiliate KTTV) rambling on air during the pro-illegal alien marches about “You took this country. You killed people in order to take this country for yourselves”
Maybe someone should tell Schieffer is he continues to lay down with antisemites like McGovern, he may get up with a little more than a case of fleas.
– The anti-war cabal in the CIA will go to their collectivistic graves trying to rewrite the grand slam fuckup that is theirs alone on that day in September.
– I don’t know, sometimes I think the USSR may have crumbled into dust, but before it did it managed to “turn” a good sized block of our own people. Farking iceholes
“The irony here is that McGovern was accusing Rumsefeld of ‘lying’ in 2003 while the Secretary ended up lying about actually telling the truth. What was the truth? That Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, George Bush, the overwhelming majority of analysts in our intelligence community, the intelligence agencies of the western world, Hosni Mubarak, the Emir of Kuwait, Vladmir Putin, and Saddam Hussein himself all believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”—Rick Moran
Well, Mr. Moran, how many of these people (the Emir of Kuwait, Hosni Mubarak, Vladimir Putin, intelligence community analysts, etc.) had actually been on the ground in Iraq looking for the WMD? Zero, right? But the UN Weapons Inspectors had. And how many WMD did they find? Zero, right? But fearful that no WMD being found might undermine support for his war, Bush invaded before these inspectors could wrap up their work. After the invasion, how many WMD did Mssrs. Kay and Duelfer find? Zero, right?
So when Rumsfeld declared “we know [exactly] where they [the WMD] are,” what is the probability that he’s not lying?
Zero, right?
Herman – As desperately as the asshat left needs to keep alive the lie that WMD’s was our sole reason for taking down Hussien, its just more of the same demogogery and political hashing you’ve been engaged in since the start of the war.
– As things on the ground in Iraq continue to improve and stabilize, your side will grow more and more desperate to demonize the Administration, and put the worst posible face on the WOT, with any sorts of lies you can dreg up.
– Lacking even the most fundemental sort of party plan, a success in the WOT as Bushs term winds down would be an insurmountable problem to overcome at the ballot box, so I don’t really blame you. But thats a bit different from thinking any one buys this leftwing crap. Good luck sparky. You’re going to need it.
I assume you are talking about all that unfettered access the handful of inspectors had, Herman. Where they found illegal missiles?
The truth is, the onus was always on Saddam. Because a few inspectors being shepherded around Iraq—when their rooms weren’t being bugged—was never anything more than a way to pretend we were doing something when we were not.
And, as people have pointed out upthread, insecticide concentrate found near empty artillery shells—combined with chemical weapons detection equipment, the chem suits found, etc—combined with all the other intel (and Hussein’s past use of such weapons)—suggest dual use chem weapons capabilities.
And Herman? What was Bush’s motive for going to war knowing, as the liar he is, that no weapons would be found?
Go on, spin the elaborate conspiracy tale. And make sure you leave out 911 as an object lesson of erring on the side of dithering when it comes to dealing with those hostile to the US.
Nice try, Hermie Baby. How are they coming along in Iran?
He knew weret they were. North south east and west.
“Zero” would approach a big deal, if Saddam’s WMD were the entire pretext for bringing down that dictatorship.
But there was much more, for those who care to investigate. And there was a great deal more than “zero” to the Ba’athist’s WMD program. Again, look it up.
Cordially…
TW: “tell,” as in “Do —-”
This is one of the guys that said McCarthy was a model CIA agent and always followed the rules too.
I really wish President Bush had cleaned house and not left these 5th column Clinton-appointees in power, but he did and this is the fallout.
Herman claimed:
What’s the probability that you’re not twisting Rumsfeld’s words, and adding your own embellishments?
Zero, right?
(Odd, isn’t it. How people didn’t go read the nice link with the transcript of the interview. Oh well.)
HEY! Those are not Scottish names! They’re Irish.
Dinna ye be smearin’ us Scottish wi’ involvement in an inept conspiracy like tha’ one. When we do conspiracies, we do ‘em right.
Take, for example, Bonnie Prince Charlie…
Um, wait. Maybe tha’ isnae sooch a guid example…
Moran didn’t read enough of the transcript:
Rumsfeld was talking about the areas of suspected sites, as he’s allowing for the notion that the WMDs themselves could have been removed. And McGovern took him out of context. I’m shocked!
Thank you for ignoring actus!
You guys can tell yourselves all day that the public agreed to war with Iraq on humanitarian grounds but it won’t make it true. It was nukes. Saddam had nukes, the proof will be a mushroom cloud, what if he gives one to al qaeda. None of the other shit registered. Ask people now and they say wmd and links to Al Qaeda. Not freeing the iraqis from an asshole. Which is really all that Saddam was at that point. He was a shell of his former self which even at its pinnacle wasn’t much. I’m glad he’s gone but did we have to fuck up so much else in order to do it? Did it have to cost this much?
Saddam was top ten in his class of filthy rich ruthless dictators though his particular claim to fame was gassing hundreds of thousand of people with WMDs and,
HE WAS NOT A FEMINIST!
Enough said.
Where exactly in the Constitution is the part about needing the public’s agreement to go to war?
Yes.
Yes.
So, jg, by these lights, the people of Sudan and Darfur should just go hang, right? I mean, nobody thinks they have WMD, and their dictator, if bad, poses little threat directly to us.
I’d be curious, though, did you have the same attitude towards the Rwandans during their late unpleasantness? Or were you those outraged that everyone, including the US, left them to die?
What about the Kosovars? Did you support intervention against a tin-pot dictator with not even pretentions to WMD in order to save them from genocide?
Bosnia? Srebenica bother you at all?
Or is it somehow just Iraq that gets you all hot-n-bothered?
This is beyond dense:
You’re quoting and supporting someone who doesn’t know the difference between saying “believe” and “know”? Good God. Rumsfeld said he knew that there were WMDs and that he knew where they were. That was obviously not true and it was a lie to say it. Did he believe it? Maybe. But if he had said “believe” it wouldn’t have been a lie.
Right. Rumsfeld lied, Contractors got hookers.
Pretty much over it, Thom.
– You know the more you watch the confligrate effort to scalle any mountain, argue any totured logic, repeat any feckless lie that the left is breathlessly willing to do anywhere at anytime, the more it becomes almost inescapable that the “loyal Komrad opposition” is actually AFRAID we’ll be successful in Iraq.
– To try to minimilize the importance of establishing, however non-Western modeled, any sort of Demoracy in the heart of the ME cultural wars, to focus on one small aspect of the conflict, and ignor totally the bigger long term picture simply underlines your unique unfitness to government leadership and the protection of the american people.
– Later, much later, when things stabilize and settle down, it will be interesting to see if the same rabble of anti-American voices will be graciously willing to concede they were wrong. I suppose we only have to look at the model of the Reagan years and the fall of the Soviet Bloc to anticipate the answer to that question.
TW: Sometimes the Left look like a political version of ”Meet the Forkers” visavis foriegn policy.
It’s pretty safe to say that Thomism wasn’t named after this guy.
Wrong. The invasion needed to go forward when it did because of the weather. We had a limited amount of time to finish the campaign before it got really hot. Being that we assumed that our troops would be fighting in chem warfare gear, finishing the job before the temp climbed was very important.
Let’s not forget that we didn’t transition from peace to war, we transitioned from a ‘hot’ truce (hot in that we were flying combat patrols and getting shot at) to war.
Given that the calculus changed on 9/11, it made / makes alot of sense to take out a leader who: had chemical weapons; had used chemical weapons; was known to have pursued nucular weapons; had known ties to terrorists; had threatened the US; and was a symbol of how painless it was to defy the US. President Bush and his administration made the right call.
That Rumsfeld is effective is what drives the left crazy and is why they have unsheathed their blades.
I’m tired of reading their lying, hateful crap.
A 27 year veteran of the CIA? The the intelligence failures for the past 27 years can be laid at McGovern’s feet then.
-Michael McCullough
Stingray: a blog for salty Christians
Georges Sada knows where they are. They are in syria, to the north, south east and west somewhat.
To remind the more infantile:
The folks who constantly accuse Rumsfeld and others of cherry-picking intell are generally the same folks who will cherry-pick one or two sentences out of several paragraphs to accuse people of lying.
TW: Projection.
Karl wrote:
Exactly. Then they get all mad when people go read the transcript and point out the context they left out. They pound the table, stamp their little feet, repeat the tiny quote over and over and insist that it and only it be paid attention to.
Oh Karl,
Rummy says:
Rummy is referring to the Answar Al-Islam Camp that Steph named in his set-up for this question, in the northern areas not controlled by Saddam.
Rummy is talking about the Answar Al-Islam Camp that
Rummy is telling Steph to forget about the Answar Al-Islam Camp, the WMDs are
The Answar Al-Islam Camp is not
Jeff, you say
So, your saying Bush and Rummy were too pussified to follow the Powell Doctrine to use overwhelming force? Bush didn’t have the political or domestic support to counter an “imperial occupation” charge? Bush was trying to be nice?
You seem to be rewriting history a bit. IIRC, the small force was to demonstrate Rummy’s revolutionary small/special force theories. Can you provide any links to pre-war stories on the fear of an “imperial occupation” charge? Or really, any link to Bush backing down to any charge that he was being too tough in the GWOT?
Come on, if Bush/Rummy could have gone in with 500,000 troops, secured all of Iraq, drew down to 250,000 a year later and 130,000 in year three, we’d be paying $0.79 a gallon right now.
Oh, and Ray McGovern was part of the team that provided the CIA’s Presidential Daily Briefs to President-elect Reagan under the guidance of Bush’s daddy.
Yep, Ray McGovern is a real Clintonite. Let the swift-boating continue.
Is that where President Kerry got his lucky CIA hat, fracas? Or was that Cambodia over Christmas?
Swift boat my ass.
Pablo says
OK. Is Pablo your real name? Pablo, sounds like an illegal immigrant to me. Me and my buddies know 4 brown skinned people named Pablo and none of them are even American. I’ve never seen Pablo in the good old US of A and we’re both guys so if he was here, I’d know it. Pablo claims he backs Bush, but I know he’s just referring to a sexual position with his girlfriend. The only thing Pablo has done to back President Bush is put a bumper sticker on his Vesta, he has never actually voted, my buddy told me his friend says it’s true. Pablo has never served in any branch of the US military. And if he did, he was only serving day old tacos in the officer’s mess. Not exactly serving in the military, now is it. I have a picture of Pablo and Sen. Tancredo pushing El Savodorians over the border, into El Paso. And it was on Christmas Eve.
Is that OK?
If you weren’t such a rude, nasty little boy Santa Claus would give you gasoline for free.
Read your own link, dipshit:
So you are kind of right here:
McGovern was a holdover from Carter, rather than Clinton. I am somehow not impressed.
What’s this reference to “Swift Boating”? Are you tryihg to say that the truth is being told about McGovern?
I love how the left is righteously defending a proud member of the LIHOP/MIHOP Conspiracy crowd, and one that thinks the government is secretly controlled by the Jews, no less.
Such amazing idiocy.
fracus —
No, I have no link where Bush and the DoD say that their plan was pussified. But there is no doubt Rumsfeld is a small-footprint kind of guy—and that the calculus was to avoid the appearance of an occupation.
From Jack Kelly, the Pitt Post Gazette:
If you’ll look through my archives, you’ll probably find a similar mention somewhere of the CPA as our initial misstep. We have since recovered (see, most recently, Barry McCaffrey’s assessment, and al Qaeda’s own assessment).
See also this, from the WSJ Opinion Journal:
Those were just the first two instances I found in a quick Google search. But both mention that the idea behind keeping the footprint small is to avoid incitement of Iraqi resentment over an occupation, and to therefore avoid an insurgency that is more widely supported by Iraqi nationalist.
I think, after some fits and starts, the plan worked: the insurgency is mostly Iranian run Shia (al Sadr’s “militia,” for instance) deposed Ba’athists, a portion of wary Sunnis, and foreign fighters—who have helped to organize many of the insurgent attacks). But Iraqis are behind the democratization of Iraq at 80%—more, if you factor out the Sunnis included in the polling.
But even the Sunni leadership is coming around and has joined the political process.
So yes, I disagree with Moran and the “big footprint” strategists. I think we largely avoided the pitfall of having to battle a huge number of Iraqi nationalists—while making domestic war critics screaming “imperialism” look silly—by going the route we did.
Which is why some of those same cynical anti-war opportunists have migrated to the “we needed more troops” trope, itself, my argument goes, much closer to the perception of imperial designs than is the paradigm we went with.
jg
</blockquote>You guys can tell yourselves all day that the public agreed to war with Iraq on humanitarian grounds but it won’t make it true. It was nukes. Saddam had nukes, the proof will be a mushroom cloud, what if he gives one to al qaeda.<blockquote>
I suspect you are largely right. It was indeed the fear of a nuclear armed Saddam that prompted the war. Because with them he would have been invulnerable at least as far as the US is concerned. I remember the run-up spiced with all the Iraq our Vietnam, Bagdad the next Stalingrad stuff, and the similar crap before Afghanistan – perils of winter in the fierce Hindu Cush, British and Soviet empires broken amidst the rocks of Khyber pass. The bottom line for our media and thedemocrats is do nothing. We face the same situation now with Iran.
Jeff
The Jack Kelly, Pitt Post Gazette article is dated April 23, 2006
The WSJ Opinion Journal aritcle is dated Apr-17, 2006 and cites Gen Abizaid as a small footprint” guy. Gen. Abizaid became the Commader of CENTCOM on July 7, 2003. Operation Iraqi Freedom began in March 2003.
You say:
Yes, both mention small footprint to avoid resentment 3 years after the start of the war.
Jeff you also say
Show me were that calculus was ever advanced prior to the start of the war.
Otherwise, I fear, these two articles are attempts at revisionist thinking to justify a miscalculation.
IIRC, the pre-war calculus was small footprint, greeted with flowers, crown Rummy as the “New American Strategist” NOT small footprint, avoid “Imperialist Occupier” charge.
coitus_futile-
I’m a “libertarian-anarchist”… (who hasn’t voted for the Repub Presidential candidate since Reagan ‘84)-
My understanding of ‘the “calculus” of War’ was:
1)9/11
1a)One of Bin Laden’s demands was a removal of all our troops from Saudi Arabia.
2)Despite(because?) the end of the “Cold War”, we had still somehow absolutely missed both the nature and scope of this new threat to our world-wide dominance- thus, we might need to consider different policy/tactics/procedures.
3)Afghanistan pre-2002 was a extremist-Islamic toilet.
4)We also had completely legitimate ‘prior cause’/ ‘threat assessment’ issues with Iraq.
4)Look at a fucking map.
5)See Iran, Syria, Lebanon, etc. (Not to mention Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, et. al.)— and 1a above
6)(in comparison)We still have a huge military presences in S. Korea and Germany– over 50/60 years later.(again see ‘1a’ above)
7)Draw your own conclusions…
(All you “neo-cons” are free to offer corrections/rebuttals!) :o)
T/W-’value’- as in, “Payday! Barbaro at $14.20 sure seemed like value to me!”
Again, for people for whom English is a second language. He’s talking about the area where they the WMDs were dispersed:
He said they are in an area. The resident troll himself has noted twice in this very thread, the phrase “They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.” Yeah, that sounds like he knows where they are, for sure.
Ya. He proved he didn’t know with his own words!
Замечательно! ПроÑто то что нужно. СпаÑибо))))