Thursday, 20 November, 2003

Sanc. Safire William Safire has write himself an editorial in the New York Times: 'Mistakes Were Made'. It takes the form of a numbered memo, very trendy these days. I can't speak for all his points. His premise is people ought to admit their mistakes on the Iraq exercise. Does he mean Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, and company? Not quite, he means you who dared question, who presumed to doubt, these righteous giants. I've prepared a short gloss: Noisy, discourteous, whinging pacifist leftys spoiling King George's triumphant tour of his best colonial possession. I'm not sure where Safire gets the idea of their being the minority opinion, maybe he did his own polling. I also note the curious phrase freedom-speaking nations, an odd reference to english the new order's lingua franca? Perhaps an admission that the hawks and neoconservatives travail for freedom is mostly lip service. Lets take No.s 2, 3 and 4 at one. He offers himself up with an ever-so-cute mea culpa of the 'have you stopped beating your wife yet' type. that the Iraqi Dr. Germs have not fessed up to where they hid the WMD, and not really WMD at that. Conservatives are now only talking about chemical weapons, the one nonconventional armament everyone knows the Iraqi's had. Safire would like Wesley Clark to admit his military incompetence for predicting casualties and difficulties in the conventional phase of the war (he wasn't the only one with General in his sig to think that). Rumsfeld goofed by losing track of the Republican guard, and having them come back (perhaps) to form a baathist terrorist insurgency, but really, it's the Iraqi's fault not Don's: for not lining up and allowing themselves to be slaughtered by our smart bombs, artillery, 20mm chain guns, and multi layered 3C. They just don't 'get' modern superior techno warfare. A backward people! Then there's his Chalabi reference, the army of Iraqi expatriates that Powell and Tenant didn't allow to be trained. Actual the Pentagon special projects office did fly Chalabi and a small force into h2 on their own without asking or telling. Like Lenin on a sealed train through Poland. He didn't do much when he got their but sit around and wait for people to come by and offer him bribes (and hasn't done much else since). I do not see what any additional taxpayer money spent on him would have accomplished For not being Bush's lap dog, Schroder gets called Chirac's toy Spitz by one William Safire, I can feel the shrug of indifference across oceans and continents. The Memo. CIA Seeks Probe of Iraq-Al Qaeda Memo Leak (washingtonpost.com) Yes the one the Weekly Standard wrote up in flushed wet fever in their last issue Case Closed Never mind that 98 percent of it is the same tired retread that vP Cheney trots out every time he's in public. Never mind that this is the manipulated pressure cooked, tenuous, self serving intelligence that is in dispute and subject to Senate inquiry. Oh that's right, this letter and its top secret attachments were on their way from DoD Dep. UnderSec Douglas Feith's office to the Senate subcommittee on Intelligence when somehow a copy got dropped off at Bill Kristol's office. The remainder of this 'bombshell' is the Feith's special ops office's take on gleanings from interrogated prisoners. Safire's casual brushing aside of the CIAs requested investigation indicates he missed this press release: DoD News: DoD Statement on News Reports of al-Qaida and Iraq, and the Post's reports of similar concerns from the NSA The Kurd's take a hit for spurning Turkey's offer of 10,000 troops to help suppress the terror campaign; of course, it's not the terror campaign the Turks were interested in suppressing. Paul Bremer comes under question for dismissing the Iraq army as part of the Clean Break plan. Since that plan cannot be questioned, Safire decides, what else could have been done? The Iraqi army might have attempted a coup (and the difference that would make?) His ninth point is curious and arcane, certainly it is not an obvious error to desire a constitution of some sort before an election to establish a head of state. There had been a continental congress, and articles of confederation, but Geo. Washington was elected on the ground of our Constitution. The Sunni's appear to have stalled writing a constitution in order to force a expedited round of elections diminishing formal recognition of Shite majority opinion. The conservative clarion call of freedom and democracy for Arab people (which they continually insinuate liberals doubt, sometimes seems thin and tinny when one stops and reflects that their vision of Iraqi freedom, is not true democratic freedom for it was never intended to give complete control of Iraqi state powers, or control of natural resources and contracts to what group prevailed in post Suddam Iraq. Nor were they going to have the freedom to form their own attitude towards Israel. The neoconservatives had a handpicked government in exile - waiting. What the second half of his fourth point is really about, is that they blame the State department and CIA for preventing this group from forming a large armed force that could have gone in and staged a coup of their own at some appropriate moment. Thus spake Safire. Yet the right is willing to call Paul Krugman a sanctimonious twit. What possibly could we call this one? 1:39:46 AM    comment [];trackback [];

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