Well, sorry. No can do.
Seems you aren’t allowed to comment anymore (or rather, you can, but your posts aren’t likely to survive the moderations purge [see update 2])—though I notice Maha isn’t “moderating” folks like R.L. Page, who, when he isn’t parroting the anti-“Godlstein” jibes he’s picked up from the Sadly, No! archives or from the Pandagon oeuvre, is likely busying himself with memorizing the Klingon dictionary in order to score some him fine Trekkie tail at “EschaCon IV: This Time We DO Have Berry Wine Coolers.”
Remember: the current allegation making the rounds (which we know to be true, because Maha is careful to quote news reports telling us so), is that the Bushies—having misled and or/ pressured Congressional Democrats into voting overwhelmingly to authorize the use of force against Saddam (by way of hiding intel and/or threatening to slap them on the ass with the moistened tip of a rolled up towel the next time they find themselves together in the Congressional shower; it’s unclear which)— proceeded then to move unthinkingly into Iraq, (which had no connection whatsoever to bin Laden) eschewing the dire warnings of the CIA in their nefarious gambit to drag the US into an unpopular war and alienate us in the eyes of the world so that…um, Vietnam could get oil contracts, Republicans would lose Congress, and Joseph Wilson could rise to prominence on the cocktail party circuit. I suppose.
The sinisterly clever bastards.
And you, pw faithful, mustn’t go disrupting the forging of the Glittering Truthiness with your pesky little facts. After all, true conservatives like Mona and Greenwald(s) and St. Andrew of the Ubiquitously Inflamed Virtue Gland are on board with the progressive movement, so you subhumans are no longer necessary, representatively speaking, and have been effectively marginalized. As has the need for “proof” itself, which we now know is a mere Englightenment construct—a fallacy, in fact, just like ad hominem or tu quoque or appeal to false / self-serving authority, etc.
In other words, the left has filled its “conservative quota.” Which in turn proves that it is committed to intellectual diversity. And it hardly needs proof when it has an abundance of conviction. QED.
So. How you like us NOW, meanie jock assholes who tormented us in high school bloodthirsty brownshirted warjackals!
—Which gets my wondering: is Maha is also blocking links to this article in the NYT (“Sure. But who runs the Times? Answer: Jews. Now, then: PNAC. Wolfowitz. Perle. Kristol. Goldberg. Satan. Starting to see a pattern, warmongers?”), dated January 6 2003, and already quoted from by happyfeet at length in the comments to Dan’s earlier post?
Pres Bush’s national security team is assembling final plans for administering and democratizing Iraq after expected ouster of Saddam Hussein; plans call for heavy American military presence in country for at least 18 months, military trials of only most senior Iraqi leaders and quick takeover of country’s oil fields to pay for reconstruction; proposals amount to most ambitious American effort to administer country since occupations of Japan and Germany at end of World War II; many elements of plans are highly classified, and some are still being debated as Bush’s team tries to allay concerns that US will seek to be colonial power in Iraq; broad outlines show enormous complexity of task in months ahead, and point to some of difficulties that would follow even swift and successful removal of Hussein from power […]
[…]
Officials involved in the planning caution that no matter how detailed their plans, many crucial decisions would have to be made on the ground in Iraq. So for now they have focused on legal precedents – including an examination of the legal basis for taking control of the country at all – and a study of past successes and failures in nation building, reaching back to the American administration of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War.
The plans presented to Mr. Bush will include several contingencies that depend heavily, officials say, on how Mr. Hussein leaves power. “So much rides on the conflict itself, if it becomes a conflict, and on how the conflict starts and how the conflict ends,†one of Mr. Bush’s top advisers said.
Much also depends on whether the arriving American troops would be welcomed or shot at, and the CIA has been drawing up scenarios that range from a friendly occupation to a hostile one.
[…]
It is widely assumed that in the first chaotic months, the military commander will have unquestioned authority. “Remember, you will have decapitated the command and control for the Iraqi military forces,†a senior official said. “Who is going to make sure that score-settling does not break out, that there is not fights between the various ethnic communities? It is going to have to be the U.S. military for some period of time, and if there is a military command, there will certainly be a military commander.â€Â
But the handover of more and more responsibility from the military administration to an international civilian administration – and several years down the road to an Iraqi-run government – is still murky. Officials, referring to the ruling Baath Party, say “de-Baathification†of the nation will be at least as complex as de-Nazification was in Germany.
What the…?
Well that certainly doesn’t track with the current media tropes.
And so, while the NYT and others are having difficulty searching their own archives, we should do our best simply to forget any prior reporting exists. Or at least, studiously ignore it and go on about our business of testifying to the precise opposite of contemporaneous reports. Because let’s face it: if you are going to do the fact-dodging two-step, you’d best be prepared to go all the way, lest some annoying viral nodal point slip through and infect the entirety of your narrative.
Sure, you aren’t susceptible to such a bug, having inoculated yourselves with a steady dose of rationalization. But what of those useful idiots who aren’t pretending to believe their own garbage, but instead actually buy this nonsense?
Could be fatal to such weak-willed lambs. Or at least, cause them to question some of the essays at Huffington Post. Which is practically the same thing.
HELP US, MIKE FARRELL! OUR NATION TURNS ITS LONELY EYES TO YOU!
Thanks, Jeff. That was exactly the bit on Janus-faced Jay that I was looking for.
You’re suggesting argument with maha?!? HOW DARE YOU!
tw: better to keep your distance34. It might be catching.
Well, I wasn’t really suggesting it, Pablo.
More like “corrections”. But I didn’t want to come across as presumptuous. After all, she did provide links in her dismissal of Dan.
Which qualifies, on the left, as doing your due diligence.
No further “discussion” needed. Hypertext is involved. Which is like a frickin’ LASER to neocons.
Next time, I’m to use Google It!–because she’s not a friggin’ encyclopaedia, you know.
And here, Tony Blair tries to remind the UK, in the wake of the absconded probated al-Qaeda, what it’s about. But the reality-based know better, and tell him so, in the comments.
Thank God she didn’t go all caps on him. Consider yourself lucky, Mr. Collins! You got away easy!
Caps lock is Cruise Control for Cool.
And TRUTHY!
I wonder if it will ever occur to those dipshits that if a President really did withhold intelligence from Congress regarding the authorization for war impeachment would be a slam dunk.
Shhhh. You’re going to give away the game, B Moe!
Hmm, this post is really long. Let me summarize it: WAAAAAAAHHHHH!
I’M NOT LISTENING TO JEFFREY!
This post: 1111 words, including quotes. Maha’s post: 2121 words.
Did you manage to read either of them, genius?
Perhaps you’d find it more comfortable to continue chanting, with fingers in ears “Lalalalalalalalalaa!!!” I’m sure you’ll find it much less tiring than actually looking at the arguments being made and the supporting material offered. And you can keep that righteous feeling stoked without having to be troubled with any pesky facts.
It’s possible that Mr. Helpful is trying to be funny.
I continue to be impressed by the sheer audacity these folks show in their attempts to reframe the truth.
I don’t even get how the “summary” makes sense.
Am I supposed to be whining because Maha and her commenters are ignoring the facts and closing off debate?
Because I couldn’t care less. That was just an occasion for the post, which points out, among other things (I “summarize” here for furture Mr Helpfuls, so that they don’t have to click through links or read anything longer than “Yeah, I think Bush lied, too! Now show me your tits!”), that JayRock, who Maha cites, put out a memo noting his intent to try to gin up false accusations of the misuse of intelligence; that, in turn, Ted Kennedy, John Edwards, and John Kerry have each denied that there was any “misleading” going on, with respect to prewar intel; that the NYT itself puts lie to the current suggestion that the Bushies gave no consideration to CIA issuances warning of potential troubles after the fall of Saddam; that the CIA was not nearly so dire in their assessments as we are now being asked to believe; that Bush had access to probitive intel that was not available to Congress; and that such right wing sources as the Guardian linked bin Laden and Saddam before a GOP took office.
In “sum,” I don’t think Mr Helpful’s summary was all that helpful or accurate.
Or clever.
Or interesting.
Or coherent.
Or creative.
But I’ll admit to being biased.
The administration obviously did do a lot of planning for the occupation of Iraq in advance, but equally obvious was that a lot of the planning was for events that didn’t happen. That is how reality works, sometimes you spend a lot of effort on contingencies that don’t occur.
Until the end of the invasion itself, no one could have any idea what a defeated Iraq would look like, and certainly much of the CIA’s predictions – when examined in detail – bear as little useful content as one would expect of the CIA.
It is amusing to see how much dishonesty is involved in “exposing” the Bush administration’s alleged dishonesty.
Not many people realize there’s a certain amount of water you need to drink to keep those high-fiber foods from doing that to you.
Here’s a story that tells you why you should continue to counter the message-manipulating pro-surrender left: People Often Think An Opinion Heard Repeatedly From The Same Person Is Actually A Popular Opinion
Sounds like an Onion headline, right? Only the science behind this explains why popular opinions tend to stick in the mind and be considered received truth. The repetition of a message is self-reinforcing. Repeat a lie often enough, and unless it is challenged, it becomes conventional wisdom.
Thus, Oswald didn’t act alone. There were no WMDs in Iraq. Paris Hilton is a slut.
All right, just seeing if you were paying attention with that last one. I meant Lindsey Lohan is a slut.
As if that’s a bad thing.
But that’s beside the point. Whenever you hear nonsense from the left, don’t surrender to their point of view. You have to fight back. We all do. Else the terrorists really will win.
Was that before or after Jay’s memo explaining how he was kind of too stupid to really understand those complicated intelligence reports?
I hope, for the administration’s sake, that they didn’t plan anything for post-war Iraq. If they did have a plan and things have gone as badly as they have, what does that say about their plan? I think it would be better press if they just say they have been winging it, like a tone deaf musician doing a jazz improvisation.
It says that their crystal ball sucks and we should go after Halliburton, or whoever it was we bought it from, probably under a no-bid contract. Or perhaps it says that they’ve been trying to implement their planning in a war zone, and things don’t always go your way in war zones. In fact, war zones are notoriously unpredictable, what with people running around trying to screw your plans up, while you try to screw theirs up.
What do you think it says, Ronaldo? And feel free to compare this situation with the plans for previous wars and the aftermath thereof.
Good job Ronaldo! After reading through the post and comments at Mahablog I was sure there was no way someone could amplify the term “dumb cunt”. But sir, you have done it!
Nothing, because as the old saying goes, “the enemy has a vote, too”.
I don’t get the implication that a plan would have made a difference. A plan, since it’s about the future, is largely guesswork. When you throw the actions of numerous hostile actors into the mix, your guesswork, no matter how carefully arrived at, is guaranteed to be wrong.
More correct way of saying what I mean: “I don’t get the implication how a different plan would have made a difference.”
JayRock’s memo was very clear that this was a media strategy…
This exchange from Nov 2005 is also revealing:
Bill Bennett’s analysis is increasingly apt:
Ask yourself, what was JayRock thinking he was accomplishing here?
Maybe he was reading the piece Bill Peschel linked too. Which kept him from really understanding the intel report, and therefore explains how he was misled.
SCIENCE LIED, PEOPLE DIED!
Somehow, this is news to our progressive friends. They were promised specific outcomes along a well defined timeline, and the fact that this fantasy hasn’t come to fruition is criminal, I tell you!
tw: force97 apparently did not get the planning memo.
That getting rid of dictators and introducing democracy in the face of a bunch of fatalistic psychotic fanatics is hard? Okay, if that’s your point, we have no argument. I mean sure the Democratic plan of just surrendering WOULD be easier, but I just can’t see how giving an entire country over to a bunch of guys that want us all dead (no matter where we might be at the time) is a good idea, nor can I see how it lives up to what this country stands for. Perhaps you could enlighten with that.
Here, let me extract this quote from my overlong post that I’m sure Ronaldo and others who’ll comment here won’t bother reading.
Translation: we’ll put together a report. But as to what’s gonna happen? Who knows.
Could be good, could be bad.
To which most Congressional Democrats at the time responded: “Let’s roll!”
Until things got rough. At which point they began pointing to the President and shouting, “He did it! We were just following orders!”
Peschel’s article is really kind of chilling…
Combine the insight above with this study…
Kinda helps explain how all the reportage of the post Iraq planning in 2003 can be so easily elided today. Reportage of opinion polling that reveals that x% believe that the Administration did not adequately plan for the aftermath of the invasion is self-reinforcing and, sadly, persuasive. You think this works in economic reportage as well?
Just wait a damn minute!
It’s not fair invoking Mike Farrell’s name here. He’s still glued to his Tookie Williams death/reincarnation watch and book sale the last I heard. How could you expect him to break away from that important work for this bullshit?
And you call yourself a giver!
Talk about cherry picking. If we are going to play the “I told you so” game, let’s go all the way and release ALL the reports from that period.
Not me. I tried and tried, but just could not care less.
TW: Let’s hang ten for justice77!
You take that back! That’s more of a YearlyKos scenario.
Yeah, yeah. Yada yada yada…
But when’s the next chocolate ration increase, brother?
I sure wish all these “boy those Administration plans were dumb/bad/duh…” would sign up to teach at the War College, National Defense University, or at least at the CGSOC…
Or just get a job with some reponsibilities in the private sector…you know, something reality-based?
Major John wrote:
All you have to do is use a Great Artist to make a great work of art in each city you take and you’ll avoid the turns of anarchy that follows. Then rush-build a bunch of happiness improvements and the cities will be yours.
(…or maybe I’ve been playing too much of this Civ4: Warlords modpack this weekend.)
The idea that you can plan something as dynamic and complex as a war, and subsequent occupation and democratization, could only take hold among those who previously believed in five-year plans.
They don’t know how to actually DO anything except moan and criticize those who try and sometimes fall short.
Wankers.
Patrick Chester:
You know when you get a ‘great’ citizen you can make them do many things (hold shift)
I’d bet $500 that I know this R. L. Page person (Not as a friend, just as a person.), if only because there is someone in my area with those initials, last name, and is an avowed moonbat.
Again, I wouldn’t use this information for unwarranted villainy. His beliefs, as wrong and childish as they are, are his own, so long as he keeps his vile, petty, and infantile belief system purely in the realm of the internets.
Still, it amazes me the depths to which Bush Derangement Syndrome drives adult, professional people into behaving like little children simply because the personal is the political to them.
Irony: Most games of Civilization end with one nation brutally conquering every other one on Earth. There aren’t any that end with a world-makeup like today’s.
Sid Meier – fascist!?!11!!
I lost track of Civ when I discovered Europa Universalis II…
OHNOES:
Actually, I tend to build the spaceship to Alpha Centauri.
Oh, and I forgot something important: if it really goes bad, load a savegame!
Bah, if you build the spaceship to Alpha Centauri, you’ve pretty much already won the game and have simply chosen the slower means of victory.