|
Hey, PNAC Boys! How’s it Hangin’?
By Nancy Greggs
I’ve just been going over some of your statements from the past, and Goddamn if you guys weren’t downright prescient!
Richard Perle, you are a sly one. Remember when you said: “And a year from now, I'll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush.”
That pretty well explains why there is so much frustration in Baghdad these days. It’s not the murder and mayhem, it’s not the lack of food or drinking water; it’s the fact that the Iraqi people can’t get enough peace and quiet to erect that statue in the grand square!
And as you said back in 2003, “There is no doubt that, with the exception of a very small number of people close to a vicious regime, the people of Iraq have been liberated and they understand that they've been liberated. And it is getting easier every day for Iraqis to express that sense of liberation.”
Well, I guess that’s what all the current fuss is about. People are just wantonly killing each other out of sense of ‘liberation’ – and you’re right – it is getting easier to express that sense of liberation every day. Too bad so many people are dying as a result of that liberation exultation.
And then there was this insightful gem: "Almost everything you've heard about (Chalabi) is false. We should have handed him the keys the day Baghdad fell." Well, you said a mouthful there. Too bad it didn’t work out that way. Chalabi was such a great guy (despite that arrest warrant issued by Jordan about that $300 million dollar fraud thing). If we’d put him in charge of Baghdad back then, we’d have somebody to BLAME for the mess in Iraq now, other than one G.W. Bush and his cronies. Some people can be so shortsighted.
“I think we may well have some kind of presence there over a period of time." When Dick Cheney said that, it was like he had a crystal ball – or a big financial investment in Halliburton. "The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." But it’s a good-news/bad-news scenario. The insurgency is clearly not in its last throes, and that means more people will die, more instability in the region, et cetera. But the GOOD NEWS is that the longer this conflict lasts, the more money Dickie makes. Like they say, it’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow somebody some good.
Let's not forget that Cheney, along with other top officials, said war was necessary because Iraq was maintaining illicit stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and concealing a nuclear weapons program from the U.N. And didn’t that come to pass, just as predicted? I don’t know about the rest of you, but I thank God every night that those weapons were found and destroyed.
To his credit, Dickie was completely right on one point, when he said, amazingly as far back as June 2005: "We will succeed in Iraq, just like we did in Afghanistan. We will defeat that insurgency, and, in fact, it will be an enormous success story." The fact that we are as successful in Iraq as we are in Afghanistan is no longer just news; it has passed into the realm of historic legend.
But Cheney has always been on-the-ball when it comes to insightful observations. Back in August 2002, he reminded all Americans: “It is now clear from the data that when President Bush and I took office, the nation had slid into a full-blown economic recession. The first sign of a slowdown had appeared around the summer of 2000. Among the contributing factors were high and unpredictable energy prices.” Well, thanks to Dickie and this administration, we are no longer faced with the danger of ‘unpredictable energy prices’. We all KNOW they are going to keep going up, and isn’t that a comfort to every American?
And didn’t Cheney just have his hand on the pulse of the nation when he said, “Acts of fraud and theft are outside the norm in corporate America. But when those acts do occur - where corporate greed and malfeasance causes honest people to lose their jobs, life savings, and pensions, the people's confidence in the system is undermined - and the wrongdoers must be held to account.” That being said, you just know he gave Ken Lay a good shellackin’ when they got together for those ‘secret’ meetings, don’t you?
But let’s not forget you other PNACers who deserve credit for your ability to see things so clearly, like William Kristol saying back in February 2003: “For if ever there was a humanitarian undertaking, it is the liberation of Iraq from a tyrant who has jailed, tortured, gassed, shot, and otherwise murdered tens of thousands of his own citizens.” Let it never be forgotten that thanks to the brave few in our administration, the people of Iraq would never have had the opportunity to be jailed, tortured, shot and otherwise murdered by a good, God-fearing, Christian nation instead of a heathen like Saddam Hussein.
In February 2002, Bill Kristol made a statement that rivals the predictions of Nostradamus: “Having defeated and then occupied Iraq, democratizing the country should not be too tall an order for the world's sole superpower.” If by ‘not too tall an order’ he meant an endless expenditure of blood and money, he was dead-on in his assessment.
If I had to pick a favourite among you strong, virile, never-actually-served-in-the military-myself boys, it would have to be Paul Wolfowitz, who plainly stated that thanks to the oil revenues in Iraq, this war would pay for itself. Well, give or take billions upon billions of dollars, plus-or-minus a few bucks here and there, he was pretty much right on the mark. And when he said, back in February 2004, that the attacks against US forces in Iraq were a sign that we were succeeding, little did we realize that someday we would see the ‘success’ of this many attacks on a daily basis! It’s enough to make you want to suck a comb and shout “Hallelujah!”
But Wolfowitz knew his history as well as his numbers, when he opined that a post-liberated Iraq would be a peaceful place, thanks to the fact that there was no “history of ethnic strife in Iraq” that might lead to any problems. Thank the powers that be that this kind of knowledge was at the disposal of the president when he made his all-important decision to gamble the lives of our troops and the taxpayers’ money on such a sure thing.
Now, if you are going to give props to people who have a keen ability to know the unknowable, they have to go, without question, to Donald Rumsfeld. I’ll never forget when, back in June 2002, he summarily dismissed Iraq's statement that it didn't have weapons of mass destruction and wasn't developing them by stating: "They're lying. It's just false, not true, inaccurate and typical.”
Of course, two years later when no such weapons had been found, Rumsfeld never wavered in his conviction, and offered his now–famous 'alternative views' as why no weapons have been discovered, including the ridiculous possibility that they had never existed. "I suppose that's possible, but not likely," he said. I guess the fact that we have now found those infamous WMDs gives you PNAC boys a sense of vindication that is even more delicious than the sweets and flowers we were greeted with when we arrived in Iraq!
As for the ongoing violence being meted out by the ‘insurgency’, let’s remember Rummy’s fateful words in September 2003: "A platoon out of any one of my battalions could defeat the threat, readily.” Man, as soon as he decides exactly which battalion is going to defeat this thing, we’re on our way to final victory for sure.
In closing, I am reminded once again of the words of Donald Rumsfeld, which I believe will be remembered and repeated by generations to come:
"So I think there’s kind of a myth — the facts — certain things, myths arise and people then repeat them over and over and over again, even though they’re inaccurate.”
Words that truly summarize the entire PNAC enterprise and its adherents. So keep repeating those words over and over and over again, even though they’re inaccurate, because thanks to the state of the world, we can all use a really good laugh.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
