So now we are in the distribution phase of the Iraq disaster: Who will
end up with the Old Maid card? The new and improved maniacs are taking
more and more territory, the Americans have washed their collective
hands of it and Obama apparently agrees. Quo Vadis?
Well, where did the creature come from in the first place?
In 1998 President Bill Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 into law which supported regime change in Iraq; he gave a speech on the dangers of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
After 9/11 both houses of Congress voted overwhelmingly to pass a resolution authorizing the removal of Saddam Hussein by force. Support was unusually bipartisan with Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Harry Reid all speaking on the Senate floor in support of the bill. Sen. Jay Rockefeller and Rep. Nancy Pelosi spoke in the House about the dangers of Saddam's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. (They were not nuts; they drew on the same classified domestic and foreign intelligence reports that had led Bush to call for Saddam's forcible removal. They all heard the same evidence.)
There were 23 points offered as reason to get rid of Hussein, most of them unconnected to 9/11. His attempts to commit genocide against the Kurds, the Shiites and the Marsh Arabs, his attacking four of his neighbors, his attempt to arrange the assassination of a former U.S. president (George H.W. Bush), his bounties for suicide bombers on the West Bank, his harboring of global terrorists, and his almost maniacal flouting of U.N. no-fly zones.
George Will, David Brooks, William F. Buckley, Fareed Zakaria, David Ignatius and Thomas Friedman all wrote in support of the action.
But....no WMDs. Now virtually no Iraq.
So who is to blame? Everyone? No one? Well I nominate arrogance. I nominate the astonishing confidence that led a Western nation whose graduate school students couldn't find Iraq on a map to think they could remake an ancient land in their own image. I nominate the pride of a monolithic bureaucracy that sees everything else as a monolithic bureaucracy when all the evidence is that our mortal enemies are miniaturizing and downsizing like American start-ups.
Guard the borders. Buy Geiger counters. Invest in immunology.
Winter is coming.
Well, where did the creature come from in the first place?
In 1998 President Bill Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 into law which supported regime change in Iraq; he gave a speech on the dangers of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
After 9/11 both houses of Congress voted overwhelmingly to pass a resolution authorizing the removal of Saddam Hussein by force. Support was unusually bipartisan with Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Harry Reid all speaking on the Senate floor in support of the bill. Sen. Jay Rockefeller and Rep. Nancy Pelosi spoke in the House about the dangers of Saddam's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. (They were not nuts; they drew on the same classified domestic and foreign intelligence reports that had led Bush to call for Saddam's forcible removal. They all heard the same evidence.)
There were 23 points offered as reason to get rid of Hussein, most of them unconnected to 9/11. His attempts to commit genocide against the Kurds, the Shiites and the Marsh Arabs, his attacking four of his neighbors, his attempt to arrange the assassination of a former U.S. president (George H.W. Bush), his bounties for suicide bombers on the West Bank, his harboring of global terrorists, and his almost maniacal flouting of U.N. no-fly zones.
George Will, David Brooks, William F. Buckley, Fareed Zakaria, David Ignatius and Thomas Friedman all wrote in support of the action.
But....no WMDs. Now virtually no Iraq.
So who is to blame? Everyone? No one? Well I nominate arrogance. I nominate the astonishing confidence that led a Western nation whose graduate school students couldn't find Iraq on a map to think they could remake an ancient land in their own image. I nominate the pride of a monolithic bureaucracy that sees everything else as a monolithic bureaucracy when all the evidence is that our mortal enemies are miniaturizing and downsizing like American start-ups.
Guard the borders. Buy Geiger counters. Invest in immunology.
Winter is coming.
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