Part 1 of 2....
TPM: It is September 16th and it seems in the last couple months in Iraq we've basically gone through--quickly gone through--three phases, as near as I can tell. We had a period where there were fairly constant guerilla attacks, and then things escalated with a series of major bombings, and then the administration--first in sort of fits and starts and then in two or three major moves--did this reconfiguring of their policy. The president came forward with his budget request and the new overture towards the United Nations, and we're still trying to negotiate some sort of new arrangement with the international community. So, setting aside why we're in Iraq, how we go there, whether we should have gone in in the first place, where are we now? Where do you see our position right now?
WILSON: Well, I think we're fucked. I think the--we should have learned from the bombing of the United Nations building that there was all sorts of anti--not just American but anti-international presence--pressure building within Iraq. And I think we should have reacted rather quickly to that by attempting to truly embrace the United Nations in the sense of internationalization. A crime against the United Nations should have been perceived as a crime against us all, and we should have been much more aggressive in ensuring that we did everything we could to help the United Nations through that period. And that would have meant really trying to draw them into something that, as I said the other day, would help us change "latitudes and attitudes" in Iraq (to quote Jimmy Buffett). And by that I mean what you need to do is, you need to aggressively persuade Iraqis that what we--the rest of the world, not the United States, the rest of the world--are doing is attempting to assist it through this difficult period and assist it in reconstructing itself in a new, modern, post-Saddam Iraq.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/sept0303.html#091803639pmLots more...CIA and Cheney, Yellow Cake and Niger...
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