Former British War Chief: We Underestimated Cheney

[Bluebear]

LONDON Britain's defense secretary during the Iraq war says U.K. officials underestimated the influence of Vice President Dick Cheney in White House decision making, and the coalition failed to anticipate the bloody aftermath of the war, a newspaper reported Wednesday...

"Maybe we were too optimistic about the idea of the streets being lined with cheering people. Although I have reconciled it in my own mind, we perhaps didn't do enough to see it through the Sunni perspective. Perhaps we should have done more to understand their position," Hoon was quoted as saying.

Hoon said the British side had not comprehended Cheney's influence in the U.S. administration.

Even when Blair and President Bush had agreed on some matter, "sometimes... the decision actually came out of a completely different place."

"And you think: what did we miss? I think we missed Cheney," Hoon was quoted as saying.

http://wcbstv.com/topstories/topstories_story_122055559.html

[pinto]

1. 'I think we missed Cheney' - A heads up assessment, Mr. Hoon.

[dave_p]

2. been there

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2831068

[Bluebear]

4. Not in GD, thanks mate :)

[kenny blankenship]

3. Perhaps you should have done more to anticipate that anytime you forcibly invert

the relationship between the in-group and out-groups in a society, that society will go through prolonged violent turmoil and probably an outright civil war before stabilizing again.
Fucking idiots.

[EST]

5. And how many thousands of times did it boil up from blogworld?

How many hundreds of times did a few jacked up democratic leaders and even a few putty spined ones push the issue hard enough that there was some warm stream media questioning of the ideologically crippled braintrust, even a "some say" right after the invasion-quagmire, occupation, competent?

"No, Blair is definitely not Bush's puppy?" (No, Cheney's)
Dancing in the streets.
Equal partners.

If it weren't all bullshit, and everybody knew it was bullshit, whyinhell did they set up multi billion dollar media, intelligence, and fake talking point distribution networks to sell the whole thing?
The only piece of solid evidence of anything was airplane shaped bombs in New York, Pa., and Washington, so they had to tie every piece of crap they were planning and executing to the only hard evidence and that's why it was 9-11,9-11,9-11...
Are WE the only people capable of seeing that picture?

I'm so spitting mad I could bite someone!
Not only are politicians not any smarter than anyone else, they don't even come up to average--somewhere around media talking hairdos, I reckon.

[gratuitous]

6. Oh well, tut-tut, then

Deuced bad luck, that. Thankfully, this won't result in any of our lads having to stick it for the side. We'll just muddle through, and blame some other chap for it. Have another go at it a few years from now? Hate to think we'd learn anything. Well, they're open; suppose I'll nip down for a snifter or two. Can't worry overmuch about the fellows in uniform (God bless 'em) paying the price for our little miscalc. Right. Off we go.

[peacetalksforall]

7. I am angry- again. People on DU and other blogs knew it

immediately - George was not running the show and they never intended him to run the show. He is their born again, tough guy, cheerleading fund raiser. We all knew it.

So if not George, who else? It was obvious from the first moment Cheney declared himself the VP cnadidate. And when we learned about PNAC which had Dick's name all over it, not George's.

I laugh at the fools in Britain who thought they were talking to the the President.

Anyway, we knew Dick was Pres, just as we knew when we saw the guns pointed on Afghanistan being repositioned - from 2002 to 2003 - just as we knew our Dem leaders were failing us. For votes.