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While We Were Being Disappointed

Mar 11, 2008

maha

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Iraq War

In the past few hours, eight U.S. soldiers died in Iraq. This brings the total to just over 3,900, I believe.

Eugene Robinson writes in today’s Washington Post:

Has anyone noticed that Iraq, supposedly transformed into an oasis of peace and tranquility by George W. Bush’s troop surge, is growing less peaceful and tranquil by the day?

The nation’s attention has been riveted by the presidential campaign, with its compelling characters and its edge-of-your-seat story line. Iraq is treated almost as a theoretical issue: What would happen there if Barack Obama became president, as opposed to what would happen if Hillary Clinton became president, as opposed to what would happen if John McCain became president? There has been little debate about what’s happening in Iraq right now.

That seems likely to change.

Wow. And after they celebrated over that damn ugly cake. Be sure to read all of Robinson’s column, which make a good argument that Iraq is still a failure, no matter what the Bushies say.

Warren P. Strobel writes for McClatchy Newspapers:

An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida terrorist network.

The Pentagon-sponsored study, scheduled for release later this week, did confirm that Saddam’s regime provided some support to other terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East, U.S. officials told McClatchy. However, his security services were directed primarily against Iraqi exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime.

The new study of the Iraqi regime’s archives found no documents indicating a “direct operational link” between Hussein’s Iraq and al Qaida before the invasion, according to a U.S. official familiar with the report.

This is not exactly news to most of us. But just last week I saw Christopher Hitchens on Bill Maher’s HBO show talking about Saddam’s support of al Qaeda. I doubt Hitchens will ever admit to the truth; he’s too emotionally invested in his Glorious Little War. When the report comes out, expect the Right Blogosphere to come up with some reason why the Pentagon couldn’t possibly know what it’s talking about.

Spotlight

6 Comments

Donna • Mar 11, 2008 @12:39 pm

Maha, not ‘just over 3,900 dead…..that figure was some time ago. The death toll for our soldiers is 3,983. Pretty close now to 4,000 of ours have died for a stupid pre-emptive war waged in the wrong country.
ppatt • Mar 11, 2008 @3:14 pm

Hitchens waxes poetically about love, war and death but I suspect that the closes he ever got to war was a bad hangover, but I could be wrong about that…maybe he visited a war zone or talked to someone who had. Listen to him closely over time and you will begin to observe his personal terror that is at the very bottom of his black and white cultural phobia.

His peculiar combination of righteous indignation and willful ignorance excused by anecdotal exaggeration would make any conservative proud.

Sometime back he appeared on Maher, apparently sauced, and angrily engaged the disapproving studio audience. It was better than wrestling.
felicity • Mar 11, 2008 @4:07 pm

Hitchens’ first, last and only investment is in his grossly inflated ego.

There’s a clip being played on the tube of George and his court attendants having a laughingly good time celebrating? It makes me wretch that half way around the world, and many places in between, their policies and acts have caused and are causing untold suffering. Aren’t people who are without remorse called sociopaths? (By the way, we’re dropping tons of bombs daily on the Iraqi people.)
Ken • Mar 11, 2008 @4:43 pm

God Bless, Eugene Robinson. Today Richard Cohen put in his column, the dems will self-destruct because they nominate someone with no foreign policy experience.

My response sent to the WashPost.

I used to think the media’s job was to just keep America clueless. You know, tell us things you know are lies, like George Bush is a great leader. Not sure why, makes you feel improtant I guess.

But Richard Cohen has burst that bubble. No, you are the ones that are clueless.

In his latest opinion (lie) piece, Cohen tells us the Democrats may lose because they will nominate someone without foreign policy experience.

Well if I were clueless enough to even have that opinion, maybe I would try looking at the facts. (facts, what a concept) The war in Iraq, I guess that would be considered a foreign policy event. I know I’m not as smart as Cohen, but just humor me. Maybe I would look at what Barack Obama said before the war and compare to say, I don’t know, Bush, Cheney, McCain, you know, those giants of foreign policy experience.

So looking at what Obama said, it is on his website, Mr. Cohen, have someone explain how a computer works, you would see he was 100% right on everything he said would happen if we went into Iraq. Bush, Cheney, McCain, 100% wrong.

Maybe you are smarter then us, Our esteemed brilliant columnist. So put up or shut up. Show us where the war club was right and where Obama was wrong.
wmr • Mar 11, 2008 @6:22 pm

I’m not too impressed by Eugene Robinson. He never seems to notice that the ones responsible for riveting the peoples’ attention to the political circus are he and his friends in the corporate media.

He’s welcome to talk about Iraq any time, but I doubt his editors would approve.
Zeus • Mar 12, 2008 @12:27 am

It would be funny if it weren’t so sad – McClatchey Newspapers being the first to report that there was no connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda. McClatchey reporters were the only ones to do the due dilligence that we expect (or used to) of our media by investigating Bush’s rationale for going to war. They did the investigations that the “acceptable” media neglected to do. But, alas, no one was listening.