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SOS II

Mar 14, 2006

maha

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It’s happened again; another fragment broken loose from the brackish depths of secrecy has floated to the surface, and there for all the world to see is more proof that The Mess We’re In is not the fault of terrorists or biased news reporting or insurgents or France or Hillary Clinton’s anger and/or ambitions or playing blame games or bad message discipline or Democratic obstructionism or Michael Brown. It’s not the fault of polls or Iran or the UN or some freaky thing like the orbit of Earth around the Sun that no one could have anticipated. And you can’t blame Canada or the governor of Louisiana or Hollywood or gay marriage. Or sleep deprivation, for that matter.

This time what’s washed to shore are memos from a senior British diplomat named John Sawers, envoy to Baghdad in May and June 2003, who wrote his prime minister that the US administration of Iraq was “an unbelievable mess.”

“No leadership, no strategy, no coordination, no structure and inaccessible to ordinary Iraqis,” Mr. Sawer said.

Sawer and others tried to warn the prime minister, but there’s a rule in Britain about not pissing in the Atlantic. Just like so many of us wrote truckloads of letters to our senators in October 2002 — don’t pass that resolution — but there’s a rule among Washington Democrats about not pissing on the rose garden.

So everybody says yes, Mr. President, and then they go home and close their eyes and get plastered. Because what comes next is too painful to watch. It’s always too painful to watch.

Spotlight

11 Comments

Edward Deevy • Mar 14, 2006 @9:02 am

Now that the Administration has totally screwed up Iraq they want to go on to Iran. And you have Joe Biden on one of the tv networks this morning bewailing the fact that Bush hadn’t sent more troops to Iraq. Are these guys as stupid as they appear to be? Anyone paying attention would know that the effort to create a pro-American and pro-Israel government in the middle of the Arab world was doomed to failure. And now the NeoCons are deluded enough to believe they can create a pro-American regime in Iran…by using economic sanctions! Idiots.
spiiderweb • Mar 14, 2006 @9:03 am

Not to be an ass or anything, but did this surprise you? Bush has a long track record of appointing incompetents and we all knew there was no plan going in on how to handle Iraq. This info was bound to surface.

It has bothered me for a long time that ambassadorships, envoys and such are political appointments used to “reward” the faithful. But they are some of the most important positions in government because they’re representing our government and, by extension, US. You and I, to the people of other countries are our ambassadors.
maha • Mar 14, 2006 @9:19 am

but did this surprise you?

Did I sound surprised?
steve duncan • Mar 14, 2006 @9:43 am

It doesn’t matter what surfaces. Bush is never wrong and his supporters and enablers will go to their graves proclaiming it.
Britwit • Mar 14, 2006 @9:54 am

We all knew that this would happen.

We all knew that there was no strategy. Tommy Franks was an insult and read his script whenever and wherever it was handed to him.

Spiiderweb – good comment no. 2
neoJoe • Mar 14, 2006 @9:55 am

As the Democrats bow to King George and his apparent ineptitude, I’m not certain that this was not the plan all along. King George and the NeoCon court NEVER liked government of, by and for the people. They have created disdain, hatred and loathing for government for a long while with Goldwaterism, corporatism, theocratism They have incrementally taken the power of the government and slowly given it to the private sector and the religious right.

-Halliburton et.al. basically control the infrastructure of the military operations.
-Nasa is being squeezed out of its long history of innovation and progressive thought and science.
-The national weather service may be privatized.
-Medicare is being slaughtered and rebuilt into a inescable labyrinth of redtape and dead ends.
-The national parks are being given to private-for-profit corporations who plan on taken our heritage, despoiling it and selling you their ill-gotten gains deeded them by the Royal Bush Court.
-The religious right is slowly stacking local, circuit state and the supreme court with their theocratic candidates
-The labor markets have been NAFTA-ed and CAFTA-ed and WAL-MARTED overseas.
-Global Corporations own the worlds natural resources and just tried to secure control of the trade ports (Dubai).

Does this sound like incompetence?

I have always thought no administration could be this stupid and inept..and I may be right. BUT I am beginning to think I could also be very wrong.

If all this incompetance was simply a grand farce. The Ineptitude of King George as a ploy by the NeoCon cabal that operates behing the curtain….The grand Farce played on our backs. The point being to dilute the government we cherish, give the spoils to Royal BushCo, dumbdown the American populace to level of sheep as King George and the Royal Bush Court laugh all the way to the bank.
Donna • Mar 14, 2006 @1:19 pm

Yes, yes, yes to neoJoe in #6 above…..it is good to always look behind the scenes and ask, “WHO PROFITS?”
Is it incompetence to manufacture a pair of panty hose or an automobile that is designed to fall to pieces? Nope…..such a design comes from bottom-line-amoral-brilliance: ‘keep making profits by selling replacement products’.

Similarly with the military-industrial complex…….peacetime is, to these folks, anethema……peacetime defeats their future profiteering. So I ask, as does neoJoe, is the Iraq debacle due to incompetence, or perhaps designed to prolong military-industrial profits…….wherby the [obviously true] issues of incompetence, so delicious to chew on, is ALSO being used as a successful red herring by those moneyed interests hiding behind the incompetent Bushies.

As far as I can tell, the only difference between the Bush-befriended Iraq war profiteers and petty looters drawn to disaster sites is that the former helped create the very disaster from which they CONTINUE to benefit.
uncledad • Mar 14, 2006 @1:29 pm

#6 neojoe,

We’ll said. Case in point (dumming down) the MSM will write this story off because it is in the Gaurdian.
Sue • Mar 14, 2006 @3:13 pm

We seem to get more information from leaked British memos than from investigations performed by any of our many (kangaroo) intelligence committees. Let’s just dismantle them and assign someone to hang around 10 Downing Street.

Hopefully more truth will come out before Rummy resigns, I mean retires, and receives one those Medals of Honor that Bush is so fond of giving out to the incompetent.
Swami • Mar 14, 2006 @10:11 pm

This revelation is already covered by Bush’s blanket absolution of any charges of incompetence, failure of leadership, coordination or any reasonable expectation in conducting a war. Bush has acknowledged that, ” Mistakes were made”, so any exposure of mis-management that follows that statement becomes a rehash and makes the one who seeks accountibilty seem petty. It’s like we’re beating up on poor repentant Georgie

Ah, come on guy’s. He’s already said that mistakes were made, what more do you want? And why do you all hate America?
Britwit • Mar 14, 2006 @11:31 pm

I guess you heard the latest Breaking News-

In an attempt to thwart the Bird Flu,

George W. Bush has bombed The Canary Islands.