1) “‘airplane paint’ thing is…stupid lie”

The memo in which Bush is quoted as suggesting this was written by Tony Blair’s top foreign policy advisor, David Manning. It summarized a meeting held on January 31, 2003, between Blair, Bush and six of their top aides.

According to the NY Times, “two senior British officials confirmed the authenticity of the memo.”

2) “the WMD controversy is purely an artifact of the Left and the Press”

There were other good reasons for invading Iraq besides Hussein’s purposted WMD’s, and Bush did talk about some of these before the war. However, Congressional authorization for going to war was based solely on the WMD issue. This is why the question of what the Administration really knew about WMD’s, and the fact that they were DETERMINED to go to war regardless of what was found, are such relevant issues. Congress would not have granted Bush open-ended warmaking authority to build democracy in the Middle East, avenge massacres that took place in the late eighties, or to prevent Saadam from trying sometime in a post-sanctions future from attempting to get his hands on some unconventional weapons.

Of course, some happy armchair warriors here probably believe the President doesn’t even NEED Congressional permission to go to war.

And OK, say for argument Bush knew there were no WMDs. Ignore for a moment the fact that the WMD controversy is purely an artifact of the Left and the Press, a matter simple enough for their simple minds to grasp. Take for granted that Bush is a vile, evil, conniving plotter. Why the Hell wouldn’t he have had some taken along? Simplicity itself to hide a few drums of Sarin in the kilotons, possibly megatons of materiel the military carried along. Again, not just a lie, but a stupid lie.

Repeating stupid lies demonstrates either evil intent or indefeasible ignorance.

Regards,
Ric

I’m unclear though what Slaughter says in that article that is inaccurate or false. Cetainly her tone is not very friendly to the Bush administration, but this should be secondary to the points she raises. Unless the incident with the UN plane is a lie, it seems to fall in the above-the-belt catagory of rhetorical hits. The second accusation — that neither Bush nor Blair expected to find WMD’s — is also either true or false. If true, how is this a problem, given all that we have heard in the last couple years from invasion backers about the irrelevancy of finding WMD’s, since Saadam was just biding his time in order to build weapons AFTER sanctions were lifted anyway.

Also, she raises these points as a introduction to the main point of the article, which is the opposite: that POSITIVE things are happening in the region (specifically in Lebanon) in addition to or in spite of the bad news.

I like the way you’re thinking, markus. We must be rubbing off on you.

why should you have anything to gain from a dialogue with a progressive?

I don’t think we have anything to gain from dialogue with a progressive, as a progressive. If somebody demonstrates an ability to say something useful and interesting then he should be listened to, regardless of his views. But it’s been a very long time since the progressive community has had much of importance to say. I checked out the link you provided, and the various learned fellows of the Wilson school at Princeton sound a good deal less insightful than the typical blog commenter.

Even with the horrific toll this weekend in Iraq, and the sickening news that the Administration was willing to paint an American plane in UN colors to try to provoke an Iraqi attack to help justify the war and that neither he nor Tony Blair actually expected to find WMD in Iraq, new winds are blowing in the Middle East.

That drive-by sliming was brought to you by Anne-Marie Slaughter, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Bert G. Kerstetter ’66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. She is also the convener and academic co-chair of the Princeton Project on National Security, a multi-year research project aimed at developing a new, bipartisan national security strategy for the United States. Prior to becoming Dean, she was the J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign and Comparative Law and the Director of Graduate and International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. She is also the former President of the American Society of International Law. And she appearently is one of the dwindling band of people who believe what they read in the NYT.

markus, you are a more worthy advocate for the progressive cause than Slaughter is.

So…dear sir, since most “progressive” positions on public policy are fundamentally flawed, and the people who hold them are crackpots, worthy of no more respect than someone who believes that the earth is flat — why should I and other crackpots be allowed, from a moral perspective, to retain political rights at all? How is it our nation’s interest for Howard Dean or Nancy Pelosi to be allowed to spread their sophistry and destructive lies? Particularly when those lies –far from remaining marginalized like those of real flat earth theorists — are allowed to infect our media and political system at the highest levels. Just look at the pressure building for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, how destructive this pressure is to our national interest, and WHO is spreading this poison!

Such a view is the logical extension of your disrespectful, intolerant, obnoxious attitude toward non-conservatives. It is also destructive to the conservative movement, preventing it from examining its own failures, and tweaking its policy prescriptions to reflect lessons learned. Just as doctors don’t have reason to waste their time talking to faith healers, why should you have anything to gain from a dialogue with a progressive?

Liberals made the same mistake in the sixties, seventies and eighties (and leftists still do today), by refusing to take the conservative intellectuals seriously, along with their critiques of certain sacred cows of contemporary liberalism seriously.

Regards,
Ric

For example, remember how the “insurgency was growing” a couple of years ago? The Iraqi people were getting increasingly frustrated with the security situation, the lack of electricity, etc., etc?

Or remember how the experts were saying that we had a “rapidly closing window of opportunity” to make real changes in Iraq?

And then there was the Muqtua Al-Sadr uprising. He was at the vanguard of a popular insurgency, remember?

But now they finally realize they need to persuade America that they too care about national security, they turn to this opportunist, knowing his ambitions, and use them for their own purposes – masking their woeful impotency on national security.

The funny thing is, in the end regular Americans – you know, the ones Democrats think are so stupid for voting Republican they can be persuaded to vote for them with Wes Clark’s face on national security – will see through this pathetic charade and vote for the party that is working to win the war. Americans know Democrats hate Bush and the Republicans more than they hate America’s enemies – and aren’t going to elect a Democrat to the White House (or to majorities in Congress) who care more about impeaching Bush than they do fighting the war, let alone winning the war.

Probably the single most despicable Democrat strategy during the pre-war debate was the “we need allies!” argument. It was an appeal to both internationalism and isolationism at the same time. Some people genuinely wanted international approval, and others just wanted other nations to take some of the weight off America’s shoulders.

The average person thinks of countries like France, Germany, Spain, etc. as great and mighty nations. This perspective mostly comes from their high school European history class. They just sort of assume that the French and Germans have these huge and capable armies that are ready to be depoloyed to Iraq if only we win UN approval for the action. Germany is a modern country that gave us the Nazis and all, and France had Napoleon, Lafayette — they must have mighty armies, right? I mean, you know, they are France and Germany!

The truth is that France and Germany have pathetic miltiaries. They are unable to deploy much of anything to Iraq, and even if they were capable of doing so — and they are not — they would refuse to deoploy them, or at the very most would make only a token gesutre with 5,000 or 10,000 troops or some other meaningless number like that. The Foreign Legion was never going to take Baghdad or Fallujah for us, UN resoluton or no.

Even if we had “allies,” the US would still be doing literally 90% of the fighting and dying.

The things that makes this argument evil is that: (a) it preys on the ignorance of well-intentioned American people; and (b) every senior Democratic politician who makes it knows it is an outright lie. And no one was a more outspoken advocate of this policy than Wesley Clark.

The other, related, argument that Clark was a big fan of was the “Arab Armies” meme. The idea was that American and European forces would be perceived as crusading occupiers by the people of Iraq, and that if the occupation were run by more culturally sensitive Arab armies, things would go much smoother.

This argument is even more laughable to anyone who knows anything at all about military stuff, even rank amateurs like me. But again, to Joe and Jane Schmoe it has a surface appeal. The fallacy of this argument can be best illustrated by an analogy. If we had invaded Iran, instead of Iraq, would we have wanted the Iraqi Republian Guard to help us occupy and administer the country? No? Becuase that’s exactly what having Egyptian, Syrian, and Saudi troops partcipate in the Iraq reconstrucion would have amounted to.

The “arab armies” strategy would have been a disaster for two reasons. First, they themselves know nothing about democracy and are obvioulsy not in a position to help teach Iraqis learn about it. Second, most of these “armies” are little more than ill-trained and ill-disciplined rabble. They would have started raping, pillaging, and plundering almost immediately. If the Arab armies had entered Iraq we would have seen what a real “resistance” looks like, the Iraqi street really would have risen up against the occupying forces. The Arab armies, for their part, would either (a) turn tail and run, never leaving their fortified compounds (most likely); (b) start randomly shelling the cities and indiscriminately killing men, women, and children in an effort to “send a message” and “impose their will” on the Iraqi people; or (c) cut deals with local militia members and outlaws to keep the city quiet. Maybe even some combination of all of the above.

Again, Wesley Clark was a big proponent of this argument, which he knew to be complete and utter BS. The man is not a person of character.