NYT editorial: President Bush's Loss of Faith

[paineinthearse]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/24/opinion/24wed1.html?pagewanted=print

August 24, 2005
President Bush's Loss of Faith

It took President Bush a long time to break his summer vacation and acknowledge the pain that the families of fallen soldiers are feeling as the death toll in Iraq continues to climb. When he did, in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Utah this week, he said exactly the wrong thing. In an address that repeatedly invoked Sept. 11 - the day that terrorists who had no discernable connection whatsoever to Iraq attacked targets on American soil - Mr. Bush offered a new reason for staying the course: to keep faith with the men and women who have already died in the war.

"We owe them something," Mr. Bush said. "We will finish the task that they gave their lives for." It was, as the mother of one fallen National Guardsman said, an argument that "makes no sense." No one wants young men and women to die just because others have already made the ultimate sacrifice. The families of the dead do not want that, any more than they want to see more soldiers die because politicians cannot bear to admit that they sent American forces to war by mistake.

Most Americans believed that their country had invaded Iraq to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, but we know now that those weapons did not exist. If we had all known then what we know now, the invasion would have been stopped by a popular outcry, no matter what other motives the president and his advisers may have had.

It is also very clear, although the president has done his level best to muddy the picture, that Iraq had nothing to do with Sept. 11. Mr. Bush's insistence on making that link, over and over, is irresponsible. In fact, it was the American-led invasion that turned Iraq into a haven for Islamist extremists.

more.......

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. and every person who protested the war

knew this, and knew what would happen.

[TahitiNut]

2. Amen. We all marched in October 2002 knowing this.

It wasn't rocket science. It was obvious then and is obvious now.

[burythehatchet]

8. Liberals have been right about long term cause and effect since time began

Sadly, being able to say "I told you so" doesn't get us out of the jam.

[Nothing Without Hope]

3. Finally, the language of at least SOME NYT articles approaches the truth

If we had all known then what we know now, the invasion would have been stopped by a popular outcry, no matter what other motives the president and his advisers may have had.

It is also very clear, although the president has done his level best to muddy the picture, that Iraq had nothing to do with Sept. 11. Mr. Bush's insistence on making that link, over and over, is irresponsible. In fact, it was the American-led invasion that turned Iraq into a haven for Islamist extremists.

http://www.allhatnocattle.net.nyud.net:8090/ol63005.jpg

Recommended - at least they get that Bush deliberately uses Sept 11 to lie about Iraq. I hope that some day they begin to question exactly how the Sept 11 attacks- Bush's "trifecta" and the springboard of so much done in the name of vengeance and protection - came to happen.

[paineinthearse]

4. .

:kick:

I expected >3 overnight replies!

[triguy46]

5. A completely absurd notion...

And bad strategy.

* et al, ignore the law of Sunk Costs. No matter what you spend today, the dead will not come back. This is a classic flaw in strategic thinking, that throwing resources down a hole because you've been doing it, is a proper decision. Absolutely wrong, the opposite is classically the correct path: You decide based on future returns not past costs.

In this case, the idea that we must kill more to support the already dead creates a logic loop that will never end, we will continue to have to sacrifice because someone else sacrificed. When there is no direction, when your assumptions are lies, you grab onto anything you can to try to look imperial/strategic/strong/leader'ish'. What a dork, and an uneducated one at that.

For a very good analysis of this, I recommend Dr. John Mowen's marketing text, "Judgment Calls: High-Stakes Decisions in a Risky World." He devotes an entire chapter to the fallacy of using sunk costs to justify ongoing behaviors. I would suggest that now that we have the imperial "CEO" president, that in fact we see that he has no "CEO" skills. We see his current behaviors and the fact that his past "business leadership" are a ruse supported by a never ending stream of daddy's (the one termer) friends who continually bailed him out. He has not had to stand as a true visionary independent CEO in his freakin life. The 19 year old Pizza Hut Asst. Manager has more CEO skills than bush.

[Uncle Joe]

6. Sort of like an addicted gambler,

who instead of using chips or money to win the big one, ponies up more lives in an attempt to recoup or in this case justify our past and continuing losses.

[mondo joe]

7. Sheer rationalization on Bush's part. What else would you expect from

a dry-drunk?