They’re all still lying about Iraq: The real story about the biggest blunder in American history

[bemildred]

Republicans’ verbal gyrations over the Iraq War should not be dismissed as the usual rhetorical jabberwocky of an election season. Their stumblings and justifications provide an important window into a larger, crucial story. They reveal that Movement Conservatives remain rooted in a worldview that has been outdated for so long it is now delusional.

The tempest began in a teapot when Fox News’s Megyn Kelly asked Jeb Bush whether he would have gone into Iraq knowing what we know now. Bush said yes, defending the 2003 invasion that more than 70% of Americans now think was a mistake. This answer prompted astonished observers to wonder how he could have fumbled so badly. Within days, Bush stammered first to the suggestion that he had misheard the question, and then concluded that he would, in fact, have opposed the operation altogether.

But Bush’s first answer was not an error. It revealed his continuing loyalty to a series of principles to which he actually put his name in 1997. With those principles, a group of elite white men set out to revive the Cold War world that had given men like them control of the rest of humanity. Those principles dictated the Iraq War, and — although they are completely obsolete — they still animate Movement Conservatives.

===

The debacle that became the morass in Iraq has roots in arguments far older than today’s debates over whether or not presidential candidates would have gone into Iraq knowing what we know now. Those debates illustrate a delusional view of foreign affairs based in a perilous worldview. That worldview establishes that a small group of elites can simply dictate reality, no matter how out of touch with the real world they are. It is the last-ditch fight of an aging group of white men who cannot accept that their supremacy was not because of their extraordinary worth but because the vagaries of history aligned, very briefly, to make men like them supreme. Those historical circumstances were unique, and they are long gone.

http://www.salon.com/2015/05/24/theyre_all_still_lying_about_iraq_the_real_story_about_the_biggest_blunder_in_american_history_and_the_right_wings_obsessive_need_to_cover_it_up/

[jwirr]

1. Our whole system of responsibility looks only to place the blame for everything on anyone but

"ME". They do not want to admit the truth because then they would have to take the blame and the responsibility for ending the mess. That is one of the reasons John McCain and others continue to call for the total destruction of the countries we have destroyed with our policies. They desperately want to find some way to call it a win.

[The Wizard]

2. It has been and always will be

War for profit and Treasury looting, or to be more blunt, treason for self enrichment.
Scaffolds: If you build them..............

[trusty elf]

3. .......

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[Demeter]

4. If the Democrats were speaking Truth, we could crow. They Aren't

[eomer]

5. To call it a blunder is a lie (or else idiocy).

And it's to grossly misunderstand American history.

I confess I didn't read the article because the title pissed me off. Maybe someone who did can say whether it's a case of stupid editors giving an obnoxious title or is the article also just as stupid.

[bemildred]

6. It is both a blunder and a lie.

No need to choose just one.

[eomer]

7. It isn't a blunder by the people who did it.

It's a coldly calculated system that they've been working for decades and they know exactly what they're doing and why.

[bemildred]

8. I don't think they think they are the bad guys.

But you go with that if you like, lots of them are genuine assholes of one stripe or another, and they do always take good care of themselves.

[eomer]

10. I don't know what mental gyrations they go through to feel justified.

I sort of take your point, but then I have to say, no, that to call the evil they do "blunders" is a gross misstatement. Evil doers will often, I assume, have some rationalization. We should still call it evil and point out that they are the ones gaining power and wealth and that whatever twisted logic they have come up with it is self-serving and it is lies, not blunders.

[awoke_in_2003]

18. They don't think in the terms

"good guy" or "bad guy". The only their brains can process is money and power. I don't think these sick fucks are even capable of really loving their spouses or offspring. They probably look on them as so many props needed for their elaborate stage.

[bemildred]

19. Yeah, the need for control.

That is evident, isn't it? The inability to admit any fundamental error, still. And we are all supposed to be bit-players in their imperial hero movie. But all dogmatists are pretty much that way. Got to make the world fit their preconceptions.

[shadowmayor]

20. More media manipulation

Was it a lie? a blunder? a mistake? incompetence? Oh hell yes to all of the above. But don't let us speak the truth. No matter what reasons or calculations the invasion of Iraq was a War Crime. When will the media ask a candidate: "Knowing what we do now, or perhaps what many knew then, would you still support the criminal invasion and destruction and mass murder of a country that posed zero threat to the United State?"

And the never uttered follow-up: "And how exactly do you propose to pay for that war?"

The Shadow Mayor

[JHB]

9. They USED the uncertainty and need to respond to 9/11 to...

...to push their preexisting pet project to oust Saddam. A project that the neocons had been fostering ever since the 1991 war failed to oust him or generate an acceptable (to them) coup.


Driftglass puts the nature of the current neocon rewrite nicely:

Bill Kristol, and his former employee, David Brooks, are neither ignorant nor disengaged nor are they competing in some kind of dumbassery claiming race which Kristol is currently winning by a half a length. Instead, they are both helping the Right to successfully nail down the upper and lower thresholds of the Overton Window for any future public debate of the Iraq war (which they both so eagerly and profitably pimped) in a way that:

A) Insures that none of their neocon fellow travelers or media enablers will ever be held accountable for the catastrophic war they lied us into. And,

B) Delivers a set of clear talking points to every GOP candidate running for President in 2016 with which they can weasel their way out of any unpleasant Iraq-based conversations.

Neocon David Brooks' side of the frame is that Operation Endless Clusterfuck was a noble cause undertaken in good faith by honorable men who mismanaged it terribly:

(snip Brooks quote)

Neocon Bill Kristol's complementary side of the same frame is that Operation Endless Clusterfuck was a noble cause undertaken in good faith by honorable men who did a great and difficult thing, which was subsequently fucked up by the Kenyan Usurper

http://driftglass.blogspot.com/

[Ichingcarpenter]

11. 935 false official statements by the administration

is not a blunder which was a very disingenuous excuse and softens the murder, torture, depleted uranium, birth defects, etc into a careless mistake.


A blunder by definition

: to move in an awkward or confused way

: to make a stupid or careless mistake

The war and the path to war was no such thing

So that word, blunder, the writer used, was a blunder and very poorly chosen as a headline to her story so she does need to be called out for .. the story... which I did find interesting enough to click but did not go far enough.

[Enthusiast]

13. Precisely.

No blunder. No way.

[Enthusiast]

12. The article gets a lot of this right.

But it ignores the fact that 9/11 was simply too convenient to the PNAC purposes. There are actual coincidences, of course. But 9/11 was just too big of a coincidence to have been an actual coincidence.

[bemildred]

14. OK, I get it that people think the use of "blunder" here is intended to be exculpatory.

I don't think that is correct. They really did think they were going to get to rule the world. That fact that that is an infantile fantasy is what makes it a blunder. Do you ever get tired of such posturing, ignorant buffoons as Hayden? Do you think he is an evil genius? I don't. The MIC may have done well from all this war up to now, but our military has most certainly not, and they will not rule the world, that is clear now, and they are not going to be able to be so fat, dumb, and happy in the future either.

And all of that does not change the fact they have lied us into war over and over knowing quite well what they were doing.

[Jefferson23]

15. Where does one even begin, wow. I appreciate how the author gets to it, as there is

a great deal of history that brought us to the brink with their disastrous foreign policy
approach, their world view. Dumb, arrogant, dangerous, outright lethal for well over a
million people.

Bush and company did not pay a personal price for their lies and distorted view of humanity;
lets torture a reason out of them..that'll give us a link to Saddam, these truths should be
prominent in the campaigns against Republicans.

Lets not forget how far they reached and if not for Justice Kennedy, the case
Hamdan vs Rumsfeld would have turned out very differently and not in a good way.

Not that the case saved the US from the continued abuse and extensive reliance on
executive power regarding the NSA and wiretapping.

The OP is excellent and can/ should serve as a hammer on Jeb Bush's campaign and
all those dumb arrogant white guys who never change.

[colsohlibgal]

16. A Blunder With A Thumbs Up From Too Many Democrats

IMHO it didn't take a genius to see this was a huge mistake - not for the Bush Cabal, but for all the enablers - including HRC. The Bush gang got what it wanted , oil and big bucks flowing to Halliburton, Dick Cheney, and others.

I praise the courage of those who saw this for what it was and came out squarely in opposition. Those democrats who voted yes were either taken in or too cowardly to vote no.

[JEB]

17. Intentional blunder.

The criminal Bush cabal just went for it (the money, the power (("I'm a war President&quot ) and the chaos for profit). They could care less about the unnecessary deaths and injuries. War crimes of historic magnitude.