The "Nobody could have known" Excuse and Iraq

[ProfessionalLeftist]

The predominant attribute of American elites is a refusal to take responsibility for any failures. The favored tactic for accomplishing this evasion is the "nobody-could-have-known" excuse. Each time something awful occurs -- the 9/11 attack, the Iraq War, the financial crisis, the breaking of levees in New Orleans, the general ineptitude and lawlessness of the Bush administration -- one is subjected to an endless stream of excuse-making from those responsible, insisting that there was no way they "could have known" what was to happen: "I don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," Condoleezza Rice infamously said on May 16, 2002, despite multiple FBI and intelligence documents warning of exactly that. One finds identical excuses for each contemporary American disaster. Robert Gibbs just invoked the same false excuse: that "nobody" knew the depth of the financial and unemployment crisis early last year.


...


Anyone who claims they didn't realize that an attack on Iraq could spawn mammoth civilian casualties, pervasive displacement, endless occupation and intense anti-American hatred is indicting themselves more powerfully than it's possible for anyone else to do. And anyone who claims, as Burns did, that they "could not know then" that these things might very well happen is simply not telling the truth. They could have known. And should have known. They chose not to.

MORE...

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/31/burns/index.html

[gratuitous]

1. When they say "nobody," they mean the dirty fucking hippies

And they don't count, whether they're Nobel laureates or millions strong marching in the streets.

[ProfessionalLeftist]

2. Unfortunate because

the dirty fucking hippies were right. Always were. Still are.

[Solly Mack]

3. It's the it's nobody's fault since nobody could have known excuse

If nobody could have known then it can't possibly be anyone's fault, so no one should be held responsible.

It's the same as when they say "everybody thought" Iraq had WMD - even though "everybody" didn't think that...but if everybody thought something then how can any one person or group be held responsible...so it's really nobody's fault. (Though they did manage to blame Saddam for misleading them into attacking, invading & occupying Iraq ...and torturing Iraqis. They said if only Saddam hadn't fooled them into thinking Iraq had WMDs they would never have attacked Iraq...)

Both use language intended to absolve the guilty.

[madrchsod]

4. anyone who had a half assed understanding of the middle east ...

knew the war was going to be a disaster. but little georgie wanted to show his old man he had the biggest cock in the family.