FEELING VERY WRONG: I've read Eric Haney before, and I respect his career. Here he is taking apart the war, the torture, the Bush legacy. It hurts to read it.
I haven't written much about Bush and the war in a while. What's to write? I believed in the war. And I believed in the president. I read, I researched as best I could, and I voted for what appears to have been a uniquely incompetent administration. That I did so with the best of intentions leaves me with a clear conscience, but a heavy heart.
3.27.2006
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3 comments:
Scott - With all due respect, my fear is that you're still refusing to see the full picture. The administration may be uniquely incompetent (as evidenced by domestic policy).
But, it's more than that with Iraq. As Eric Haney says, "Tommy Franks was brow-beaten" and "The only reason anyone tortures is because they like to do it. It's about vengeance, it's about revenge, or it's about cover-up. You don't gain intelligence that way. Everyone in the world knows that. It's worse than small-minded, and look what it does."
These are not displays of incompetence. By Haney's own words, they are methods of malevolence and self-interest.
I agree. The Katrina response was incompetence; the Iraq debacle has followed almost exactly the arc that many against the war (note, not against Bush) predicted. This was an adminstration certain of it's own destiny and dismissive of those who counseled restraint. At no point was anyone with even a slightly divergent point of view asked to comment and the ensuing tragedy that has unfolded results almost purely from choices made and vigourously defended, even today.
Scott--
With all due respect as well.... I agree wholeheartedly with the comments made by isaacjosephson. I am sorry to say that I feel that all those who voted for Bush did so in the face of clear and certain knowledge--available throughout both campaigns, evident in Bush's past and in his performance in debates, and in the people he surrounded himself with--as to who Bush was and is. The response to Katrina, the Medicare disaster, the handouts to Halliburton, the hell of Iraq, the threatened bombing of Iran are of a piece with this man's history. It's not as though anyone was duped.
I also have to say that I feel a profound disconnect between the post in which you say that McCain's your man--McCain who licks the boots of Bush and slavers to inherit his followers--and this one. If McCain's your man, then you have learned very little from your disillusion about Bush and the war in Iraq.
I still like you though.
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