History Cakewalk Parade
posted by on May 2 at 15:00 PM
Via Howard Kurtz:
On the anniversary of “Mission Accomplished,” Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Dick Polman compiled some telling quotations from a bygone era.
Neoconservative leader Bill Kristol, April 1, 2003: “There is a certain amount of pop psychology in America that the Shia can’t get along with the Sunni….There’s almost no evidence of that at all.”David Asman, Fox News, April 9, 2003 (upon the toppling of Saddam’s statue in Firdos Square, where tight shots by the cameras masked the fact that the crowd barely filled one quarter of the plaza): “My goose bumps have never been higher than they are right now.”
Brit Hume, Fox News, same time: “This transcends anything I’ve ever seen.”
Dick Morris, Fox News, April 9, 2003: “Over the next couple of weeks, when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing…the left is going to have to hang its head for three or four more years.”
Fred Barnes, Fox News, April 10, 2003: “The war was the hard part….And it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is hard, but not as hard as winning a war.”
Columnist Charles Krauthammer, April 19, 2003: “The only people who think this wasn’t a victory are upper West Side liberals, and a few people here in Washington.”
David Broder, The Washington Post, reacting to the events of May 1: “This president has learned how to move in a way that just conveys a great sense of authority and command.”
Columnist Robert Novak: “Could Joe Lieberman get into a jet pilot’s jump suit and look credible?”
Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, same day: “I think it was time to say to the American people, the hostilities in Iraq have ended.”
Bush, speaking to the press, May 29, 2003: “We found the weapons of mass destruction,” claiming that two mobile labs “to build biological weapons” had been discovered. (This was false.) “For those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they’re wrong. We found them.”
Fucking asshats, the lot of them.
We should be spamming their inboxes with these quotes on a daily basis.
Burn.
You forgot this one:
"Whatever opinion you held on the war three weeks ago... you have to concede that this war did actually liberate the people of Iraq... even if you're a pacifist, even if you don't support a war to roll back secular and religious fascism in the Middle East, can you at least admit to being somewhat pleased by the results of this war? The war in Iraq was short, and it did more good than harm." - Dan Savage, April, 2003
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=13963
Choke on a dick and die, wf. The fuckers listed in the post are wrong and hurtful in everything they stand for, and have been using their position, priviledge , and "authority" to damage this country their entire professional lives.
Dan writes a great, helpful, awareness raising, kink-normalizing sex column, has written some interesting and enjoyable books and is generally on target without being a raving idealogue.
No fucking comparison.
My favorite (which Kurtz didn't quote) is:
Judy Miller of the New York Times, talking on CNN, March 19, 2003: According to “a slew of information from defectors” and her other “intelligence sources,” American troops would soon find the WMD sites; indeed, “one person in Washington told me that the list could total more than 1400 of those sites.” (Italics added.)
@3:
It's not Dan's fault. As a gay, contrarian political columnist with a middle class catholic upbringing, he had no choice but to support the war.
Lauren-- the point was that nobody back then predicted what was going to happen, not even Dan. In America, we have a saying about hindsight.
Anyway this reminds me of when my Republican friends were tryiing to convince me about the Iraq war. I had to concede that Iraq was pretty much one of the worst countries out there at the time, and that yeah I'd say it would be a good thing to get rid of Hussein, just there was something off-colour about the whole war deal when there were clearly a) worse countries out there and b) North Korea was a waaay bigger threat, and c) on humanitarian grounds, there's waaay more efficient ways to alleviate the world's suffering. But I said, like Dan, yeah I guess it'd do more good than harm, yeah i guess at this point I'm for it (this was imminently before the invasion).
Then when Baghdad fell nice and quick, they were all jumping up and down with I-told-ya-so's for the non-believers. Disgusted that they would be so quick to congratulate themselves (as if the fall of Baghdad was the part that had been questioned... who really doubted that would happen? I was thinking about WMDs and nation-building and stuff), I told them to go suck a nut. It was a visceral moment cus my (extremely bright) friend Rob (I was in HS back then btw) threw up his hands and said I was totally incomprehensible.
All I can say is I hope he comprehends now. Basically the lesson I know nobody's going to learn (probably not me either) is don't be an asshole about your own opinion. Chances are 9/10 that half of everything you believe is questionable, and the other half is straight-up wrong. Like... who, before this happened, envisioned it exactly as it unfolded? Nobody, that's who.
It's not that they lied.
It's that they still lie.
Continually.
@7: This outcome was predicted by many people in 2002/2003. Scott Ritter, Dennis Kucinich, Robert Byrd, even our own Patty Murray. Since you were in high school back then I'll give you a pass. But do pay attention.
#7--
No one predicted what would happen? Bullshit. Everything that happened and is happening in Iraq was predictable, and many people predicted the general clusterfuck that's happened even if the details of it actually happening are more horrifying than our pre-war imaginations were. I actually predicted this (sectarian civil war, increased terrorism, regional instability, a quagmire with thousands of American dead) way back before Gulf War I, when I assumed that GHWB would topple Saddam and occupy Iraq. All of this probably would have played out similarly, only 12 years earlier, but cooler heads prevailed at the time.
Unfortunately, one of those cooler heads at the time, Dick Cheney, changed his tune in the intervening years. The other cooler head, Colin Powell, played the part of the dutiful soldier and let Cheney get away with it. And of course W's only concern beyond being a loyal puppet was to one-up his Daddy and make money for his business buddies.
Scott Ritter's my dad's 1st cousin.[/pointless]
Many, many people predicted the ensuing chaos in Iraq - it was open and obvious. Hell, I did more research than the White House apparently.
Sorry, but people who believed the propaganda and lies of Preznit Bush and his army of keyboard warriors in our broken and corrupt media are simply gullible fools.
Some real gems also in the Sunday 4/13/2003 Seattle Times Letters to the Editor section.
@#4
I like Dan a lot and tend to agree with his opinions more than I disagree, but that doesn't give him a pass for being so shit-stupidly wrong about this war. And (contra #7), it's not as if nobody predicted what a collosal fuckup this would end up being.
Yeah, the evidence on WMD's and the bin Laden and Iraq connection was shaky, to say the least. If someone messed up on their analysis, it's fair game to call them on it.
That said, what upsets me about those quoted and most of those Moyers quoted last week isn't as much as they were wrong, but that they won't admit it, or don't want to discuss it (NY Times). Dan Rather said he messed up. But the others are still working as "expert" pundits saying we should "stay the course" or bashing Harry Reid because he says the Bush strategy is bunk.
You missed one of my favorites, where Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Defense Secretary at the time) said that the Iraq war would pay for itself.
Even better, he is now president of the World Bank.
@16,
The closest I could find: from Paul Wolfowitz, in Senate testimony, March 27, 2003: “We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.”
Since he said it in Senate testimony, he was probably joking. Can't hold that against him.
ITMFA
ITMFA
ITMFA, dammit.
Seriously.
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