cheney on iraq – Hugh McGuire

Hugh 2007-08-22

so the question i puzzle over:

-did they know they were going to make a mess and they did it on purpose, and this is all part of the masterplan?

-is the mess in iraq – and elsewhere – the result of stupidity and incompetence (and bad policy)?

you constantly hear the right say things like “no one could have predicted…[no WMD, sectarian splintering in iraq, rise of Iran into Iraqi vacuum, control of Afghanistan by warlords]” … and yet, all of that has been predicted by everyone I’ve read over the past 6 years, but it was either ridiculed or ignored.

Yet now it appears that Cheney, architect of US foreign policy, predicted it, and understood it too.

so: what to think? cynics with a devlish masterplan to destabilize the middle east? or, bumbling ideological idiots?

Funny to note Cheney’s change of heart appears to predate Sept 11 … see his signature, along with all the heavies of the Bush administration, on the 1998 Project for a New American Century statement of principles. Hmm interesting, he is not listed as a signatory on the 1998 letter PNAC sent to Clinton about Iraq, which includes this para:

Given the magnitude of the threat [of Saddam Hussein], the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

2 Comments

Neil McKenty 2007-08-21

Cheney, who said some years ago, that going into Iraq wto topple Hussein, would be a quagmire and would end in failure is one of history’s great hypocrites. He and Bush deserve each other. Only a little more than a year to go before Hillary Clinton is president.
Hugh 2007-08-22

so the question i puzzle over:

-did they know they were going to make a mess and they did it on purpose, and this is all part of the masterplan?

or

-is the mess in iraq – and elsewhere – the result of stupidity and incompetence (and bad policy)?

you constantly hear the right say things like “no one could have predicted…[no WMD, sectarian splintering in iraq, rise of Iran into Iraqi vacuum, control of Afghanistan by warlords]” … and yet, all of that has been predicted by everyone I’ve read over the past 6 years, but it was either ridiculed or ignored.

Yet now it appears that Cheney, architect of US foreign policy, predicted it, and understood it too.

so: what to think? cynics with a devlish masterplan to destabilize the middle east? or, bumbling ideological idiots?

Funny to note Cheney’s change of heart appears to predate Sept 11 … see his signature, along with all the heavies of the Bush administration, on the 1998 Project for a New American Century statement of principles. Hmm interesting, he is not listed as a signatory on the 1998 letter PNAC sent to Clinton about Iraq, which includes this para:

Given the magnitude of the threat [of Saddam Hussein], the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

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