Thursday, June 19, 2014 11:34:43 PM
Actually, Let’s Hear More From Dick Cheney on Iraq
great post! .. lol .. and loved the fact he didn't tell Cheney to STFU .. let the Dick and Liz show go big on prime time tv .. then tell the public
what a disaster he has been, and how stupid and hypocritical they are about Iraq today .. i agree with Chait here .. yeah, let them talk ..
By Jonathan Chait Follow @jonathanchait
Let's hear him out before we laugh at him. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
What do liberals believe about the current disaster in Iraq? One thing most of us believe is that the United States should stay the hell out. But another thing liberals believe with even greater conviction is that advocates of the last Iraq war should not participate in the current debate. The Atlantic’s James Fallows .. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/the-past-is-never-dead-bill-faulkner-said-but-what-did-he-know/372887/ .. argues that Iraq war hawks “might have the decency to shut the hell up on this particular topic for a while.” Slate’s Jamelle Bouie .. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/06/paul_wolfowitz_bill_kristol_and_douglas_feith_should_be_ignored_the_neocons.html , writing in the second person, instructs Iraq hawks, “Given your role in building this catastrophe, you should be barred from public comment, since anything you could say is outweighed by the damage you’ve done.” Washington Post columnist Katrina Vanden Heuvel .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/katrina-vanden-heuvel-where-is-the-accountability-on-iraq/2014/06/16/eba0ff24-f597-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html , MSNBC host Rachel Maddow .. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/18/maddow-iraq-media-coverage_n_5506739.html?&ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000021 , and many others have reiterated the point. This meta belief about who should be allowed to argue about Iraq, more than any actual argument about Iraq itself, has become the left’s main way of thinking about the issue.
Advocates of shut-the-hell-up have different ideas for who should be placed within the cone of silence. Fallows would include all 2003 advocates of war (a sweeping group that would include me, Fred Kaplan, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, not to mention a handful of .. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/lets-not-ignore-those-who-got-iraq-wrong/372997/ .. Fallows’ colleagues):
---
James Fallows ? @JamesFallows Follow
Working hypothesis: no one who stumped for original Iraq invasion
gets to give ‘advice’ about disaster now. Or should get listened to.
7:14 AM - 14 Jun 2014
791 Retweets 498 favorites
---
Others .. http://www.salon.com/2014/06/17/stop_treating_war_crazy_buffoons_as_experts_they_got_it_wrong_remember/ .. seem to have in mind only members of the Bush administration. Still others would apply it only to members of the Bush administration who are also neoconservative, oddly exempting non-neocons like John Bolton or Condoleeza Rice:
---
pourmecoffee ? @pourmecoffee Follow
Every time a Bush neocon speaks about Iraq, a giant Monty Python foot should come down and crush them
11:51 AM - 18 Jun 2014
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The most frequent justification for STHU is “accountability.” There should be a price for being wrong. I supported the war in 2003, which I now regret .. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/03/iraq-what-i-got-wrong-and-what-i-still-believe.html [ Chait, amazingly admits he didn't consider postwar (the Bush/Cheney/Chalabi war) as much as he should have .. i find it amazing that anyone wouldn't have, anyway, that aside, the link is well worth a read for it's other content ] and it is entirely reasonable to think more skeptically about my arguments. (I do; I consciously decided to write less frequently about foreign policy as a result.) Interviewers soliciting the opinions of Iraq War architects should certainly disclose and clarify that their subjects have an interest in salvaging their reputation.
But STHU advocates aren’t making a generalized case for retroactively scrutinizing the arguments made by politicians and public intellectuals. They’re arguing for accountability applied to the singular event of the 2003 Iraq War.
Most Democrats in Congress opposed the Gulf War, warning .. http://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/12/world/confrontation-in-the-gulf-day-2-lawmakers-debate-war-and-more-time-for-sanctions.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar&pagewanted=all .. of Saddam Hussein’s fearsome, World War I–style fortifications and citing .. http://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/11/world/confrontation-gulf-war-peace-sampling-debate-capitol-hill.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar&pagewanted=all .. 45,000 body bags as an indication of the likely U.S. death toll — predictions that turned out to be wildly incorrect. Why shouldn’t anti-Gulf war Democrats -- that is, the vast majority of Democrats — have been excluded from subsequent foreign policy debates? If your answer is “because people died — Iraq,” then then you’re not arguing that pro-war arguments should be ignored because they’re analytically wrong, you’re arguing they should be ignored because they’re inherently morally suspect, regardless of accuracy.
When you’re trying to set the terms for a debate, you have to do it in a fair way. Demanding accountability for failed predictions is fair. Insisting that only your ideological opponents be held accountable is not fair. Nor is it easy to see what purpose is served by insisting certain people ought to be ignored. The way arguments are supposed to work is that the argument itself, not the identity of the arguer, makes the case. We shouldn’t disregard Dick Cheney’s arguments about Iraq because he’s Dick Cheney. We should disregard them because they’re stupid .. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/06/cheney-not-completely-sure-if-obama-is-a-traitor.html .
Let's also cool it with the shoe-hurling, please.Photo: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images
The trouble with STHU is not that it will succeed in depriving Dick Cheney, or anybody else, of a forum to propagate his beliefs about Iraq. The trouble is that it is currently preventing liberals from thinking about Iraq. Liberals are treating the current Iraq debate as if it is literally the same thing as the 2003 debate. Paul Waldman .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/06/13/on-iraq-lets-ignore-those-who-got-it-all-wrong/ , in a column headlined “On Iraq, let’s ignore those who got it all wrong,” riffs:
---
And the rest of the neocon gang is getting back together. Here’s Lindsey Graham advocating for American airstrikes — and I promise you that if the administration does in fact launch them, Graham will say they weren’t “strong” enough. Here’s Max Boot saying that what we need is just short of another invasion of Iraq: “U.S. military advisers, intelligence personnel, Predators, and Special Operations Forces, along with enhanced military aid, in return for political reforms designed to bring Shiites and Sunnis closer together.”
---
Providing air strikes, aid, and intelligence coordination to a government that has requested it may or may not be a good idea. (I’m undecided, leaning against.) It is not the same thing as invading and occupying a country. Indeed, the ideological fault lines of the current debate aren’t even the same. Former Bush staffers and Iraq War champions David Frum .. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/iraq-isnt-ours-to-save/372932/ .. and John Bolton .. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/06/16/us-focus-must-be-on-iran-as-iraq-falls-apart/ .. have argued for a policy of non-intervention. Should they be ignored because they got Iraq wrong in 2003? The Center for American Progress .. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/17/obama-s-favorite-think-tank-we-should-prepare-to-bomb-iraq.html .. is advocating air strikes. Should it be heeded?
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/06/actually-lets-hear-more-from-cheney-on-iraq.html
Truly. Am shaking my head that Chalabi still has his snout well and truly still blubbering in the trough .. no, sorry, not surprised at that at all, but am incredulous that he is actually among those named as a possible successor to the arch sectarian (course he has only followed the de-Baathification policy of the Bush/Cheney/Chalabi et al people .. hmm, which Chalabi now does not support .. wonder why? .. could it be because he wants to be the Pentagon's man again? .. as he was before he purportedly leaked secrets .. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/02/1086058913867.html .. to Iran? .. anyway, Malaki has to go, but, please, not Chalabi.
Yes, for sure ..
"And we need to bring former Vice President Dick Cheney before those families and have him tell the truth: "We did it for the dollars. We went to war with Iraq because war profiteering was the easiest goddamn way to enrich already rich people, like my friends at Halliburton. It was robbery and we named it 'patriotism.' It was extortion and we called it 'honor.'" Then, we should let the families do what they want. Maybe they'd let him go. Maybe they'd tear him limb from hideous limb. Maybe they'd rip out his machine heart and fuck the hole left behind, jizzing into his sternum.
If nothing else, it would stop him from co-signing an editorial from him and his heinous daughter-beast, Liz, like the one that ran in the Wall Street Journal today. In it, Cheney and Cheney pretty much say that President Obama is an America-hating cocksucker who wants our enemies to win and who is too stupid to understand jackshit about the real world, the world that Cheney (Dick) understands is full of threats without understanding that they are threats he created."
See also:
Chalabi, 59, is a Savile Row Shiite who has spent much more time in London than in Baghdad. His career as a banker has been a trail of lawsuits and investigations (and one conviction for fraud, in absentia by a military court, in Jordan [fuagf: OOPS!]; Chalabi says he was framed by Saddam Hussein). Along the way, Chalabi has worked as an American spy and enjoyed the life of bon vivant and friend to the great. Though he plotted for years to overthrow Saddam, he was not taken seriously by the regime. NBC's Tom Brokaw recalled a conversation with a friend of the then Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz on a trip to Baghdad in the summer of 2002. "You guys can have Chalabi!" the Saddam flunky told the American newsman. "You can keep feeding him all the prime rib and expensive Scotch. He doesn't know anyone here. He hasn't been to Iraq in 25 years."
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=42813663
If anyone is interested in Ahmad Chalabi you will be interested in this .. a side note, one of his key backers was none other than our johnnymack ..
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=27480051
Now, Sen. John McCain - a longtime Chalabi advocate with many ties to the man - finds himself on the receiving end of this bamboozlement.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=30901676
great post! .. lol .. and loved the fact he didn't tell Cheney to STFU .. let the Dick and Liz show go big on prime time tv .. then tell the public
what a disaster he has been, and how stupid and hypocritical they are about Iraq today .. i agree with Chait here .. yeah, let them talk ..
By Jonathan Chait Follow @jonathanchait
Let's hear him out before we laugh at him. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
What do liberals believe about the current disaster in Iraq? One thing most of us believe is that the United States should stay the hell out. But another thing liberals believe with even greater conviction is that advocates of the last Iraq war should not participate in the current debate. The Atlantic’s James Fallows .. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/the-past-is-never-dead-bill-faulkner-said-but-what-did-he-know/372887/ .. argues that Iraq war hawks “might have the decency to shut the hell up on this particular topic for a while.” Slate’s Jamelle Bouie .. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/06/paul_wolfowitz_bill_kristol_and_douglas_feith_should_be_ignored_the_neocons.html , writing in the second person, instructs Iraq hawks, “Given your role in building this catastrophe, you should be barred from public comment, since anything you could say is outweighed by the damage you’ve done.” Washington Post columnist Katrina Vanden Heuvel .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/katrina-vanden-heuvel-where-is-the-accountability-on-iraq/2014/06/16/eba0ff24-f597-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html , MSNBC host Rachel Maddow .. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/18/maddow-iraq-media-coverage_n_5506739.html?&ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000021 , and many others have reiterated the point. This meta belief about who should be allowed to argue about Iraq, more than any actual argument about Iraq itself, has become the left’s main way of thinking about the issue.
Advocates of shut-the-hell-up have different ideas for who should be placed within the cone of silence. Fallows would include all 2003 advocates of war (a sweeping group that would include me, Fred Kaplan, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, not to mention a handful of .. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/lets-not-ignore-those-who-got-iraq-wrong/372997/ .. Fallows’ colleagues):
---
James Fallows ? @JamesFallows Follow Working hypothesis: no one who stumped for original Iraq invasion
gets to give ‘advice’ about disaster now. Or should get listened to.
7:14 AM - 14 Jun 2014
791 Retweets 498 favorites
---
Others .. http://www.salon.com/2014/06/17/stop_treating_war_crazy_buffoons_as_experts_they_got_it_wrong_remember/ .. seem to have in mind only members of the Bush administration. Still others would apply it only to members of the Bush administration who are also neoconservative, oddly exempting non-neocons like John Bolton or Condoleeza Rice:
---
pourmecoffee ? @pourmecoffee Follow Every time a Bush neocon speaks about Iraq, a giant Monty Python foot should come down and crush them
11:51 AM - 18 Jun 2014
---
The most frequent justification for STHU is “accountability.” There should be a price for being wrong. I supported the war in 2003, which I now regret .. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/03/iraq-what-i-got-wrong-and-what-i-still-believe.html [ Chait, amazingly admits he didn't consider postwar (the Bush/Cheney/Chalabi war) as much as he should have .. i find it amazing that anyone wouldn't have, anyway, that aside, the link is well worth a read for it's other content ] and it is entirely reasonable to think more skeptically about my arguments. (I do; I consciously decided to write less frequently about foreign policy as a result.) Interviewers soliciting the opinions of Iraq War architects should certainly disclose and clarify that their subjects have an interest in salvaging their reputation.
But STHU advocates aren’t making a generalized case for retroactively scrutinizing the arguments made by politicians and public intellectuals. They’re arguing for accountability applied to the singular event of the 2003 Iraq War.
Most Democrats in Congress opposed the Gulf War, warning .. http://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/12/world/confrontation-in-the-gulf-day-2-lawmakers-debate-war-and-more-time-for-sanctions.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar&pagewanted=all .. of Saddam Hussein’s fearsome, World War I–style fortifications and citing .. http://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/11/world/confrontation-gulf-war-peace-sampling-debate-capitol-hill.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar&pagewanted=all .. 45,000 body bags as an indication of the likely U.S. death toll — predictions that turned out to be wildly incorrect. Why shouldn’t anti-Gulf war Democrats -- that is, the vast majority of Democrats — have been excluded from subsequent foreign policy debates? If your answer is “because people died — Iraq,” then then you’re not arguing that pro-war arguments should be ignored because they’re analytically wrong, you’re arguing they should be ignored because they’re inherently morally suspect, regardless of accuracy.
When you’re trying to set the terms for a debate, you have to do it in a fair way. Demanding accountability for failed predictions is fair. Insisting that only your ideological opponents be held accountable is not fair. Nor is it easy to see what purpose is served by insisting certain people ought to be ignored. The way arguments are supposed to work is that the argument itself, not the identity of the arguer, makes the case. We shouldn’t disregard Dick Cheney’s arguments about Iraq because he’s Dick Cheney. We should disregard them because they’re stupid .. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/06/cheney-not-completely-sure-if-obama-is-a-traitor.html .
Let's also cool it with the shoe-hurling, please.Photo: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images
The trouble with STHU is not that it will succeed in depriving Dick Cheney, or anybody else, of a forum to propagate his beliefs about Iraq. The trouble is that it is currently preventing liberals from thinking about Iraq. Liberals are treating the current Iraq debate as if it is literally the same thing as the 2003 debate. Paul Waldman .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/06/13/on-iraq-lets-ignore-those-who-got-it-all-wrong/ , in a column headlined “On Iraq, let’s ignore those who got it all wrong,” riffs:
---
And the rest of the neocon gang is getting back together. Here’s Lindsey Graham advocating for American airstrikes — and I promise you that if the administration does in fact launch them, Graham will say they weren’t “strong” enough. Here’s Max Boot saying that what we need is just short of another invasion of Iraq: “U.S. military advisers, intelligence personnel, Predators, and Special Operations Forces, along with enhanced military aid, in return for political reforms designed to bring Shiites and Sunnis closer together.”
---
Providing air strikes, aid, and intelligence coordination to a government that has requested it may or may not be a good idea. (I’m undecided, leaning against.) It is not the same thing as invading and occupying a country. Indeed, the ideological fault lines of the current debate aren’t even the same. Former Bush staffers and Iraq War champions David Frum .. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/iraq-isnt-ours-to-save/372932/ .. and John Bolton .. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/06/16/us-focus-must-be-on-iran-as-iraq-falls-apart/ .. have argued for a policy of non-intervention. Should they be ignored because they got Iraq wrong in 2003? The Center for American Progress .. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/17/obama-s-favorite-think-tank-we-should-prepare-to-bomb-iraq.html .. is advocating air strikes. Should it be heeded?
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/06/actually-lets-hear-more-from-cheney-on-iraq.html
Truly. Am shaking my head that Chalabi still has his snout well and truly still blubbering in the trough .. no, sorry, not surprised at that at all, but am incredulous that he is actually among those named as a possible successor to the arch sectarian (course he has only followed the de-Baathification policy of the Bush/Cheney/Chalabi et al people .. hmm, which Chalabi now does not support .. wonder why? .. could it be because he wants to be the Pentagon's man again? .. as he was before he purportedly leaked secrets .. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/02/1086058913867.html .. to Iran? .. anyway, Malaki has to go, but, please, not Chalabi.
Yes, for sure ..
"And we need to bring former Vice President Dick Cheney before those families and have him tell the truth: "We did it for the dollars. We went to war with Iraq because war profiteering was the easiest goddamn way to enrich already rich people, like my friends at Halliburton. It was robbery and we named it 'patriotism.' It was extortion and we called it 'honor.'" Then, we should let the families do what they want. Maybe they'd let him go. Maybe they'd tear him limb from hideous limb. Maybe they'd rip out his machine heart and fuck the hole left behind, jizzing into his sternum.
If nothing else, it would stop him from co-signing an editorial from him and his heinous daughter-beast, Liz, like the one that ran in the Wall Street Journal today. In it, Cheney and Cheney pretty much say that President Obama is an America-hating cocksucker who wants our enemies to win and who is too stupid to understand jackshit about the real world, the world that Cheney (Dick) understands is full of threats without understanding that they are threats he created."
See also:
Chalabi, 59, is a Savile Row Shiite who has spent much more time in London than in Baghdad. His career as a banker has been a trail of lawsuits and investigations (and one conviction for fraud, in absentia by a military court, in Jordan [fuagf: OOPS!]; Chalabi says he was framed by Saddam Hussein). Along the way, Chalabi has worked as an American spy and enjoyed the life of bon vivant and friend to the great. Though he plotted for years to overthrow Saddam, he was not taken seriously by the regime. NBC's Tom Brokaw recalled a conversation with a friend of the then Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz on a trip to Baghdad in the summer of 2002. "You guys can have Chalabi!" the Saddam flunky told the American newsman. "You can keep feeding him all the prime rib and expensive Scotch. He doesn't know anyone here. He hasn't been to Iraq in 25 years."
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=42813663
If anyone is interested in Ahmad Chalabi you will be interested in this .. a side note, one of his key backers was none other than our johnnymack ..
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=27480051
Now, Sen. John McCain - a longtime Chalabi advocate with many ties to the man - finds himself on the receiving end of this bamboozlement.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=30901676
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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