I generally avoid blogging about Iraq, both because it’s too depressing and because there are other bloggers who do it so much better than I could. But this quote about Paul Wolfowitz’s February 2003 testimony before congress is too stunning not to reproduce.
….Enlisting countries to help to pay for this war and its aftermath would take more time, he said. “I expect we will get a lot of mitigation, but it will be easier after the fact than before the fact,” Mr. Wolfowitz said. Mr. Wolfowitz spent much of the hearing knocking down published estimates of the costs of war and rebuilding, saying the upper range of $95 billion was too high….Moreover, he said such estimates, and speculation that postwar reconstruction costs could climb even higher, ignored the fact that Iraq is a wealthy country, with annual oil exports worth $15 billion to $20 billion. “To assume we’re going to pay for it all is just wrong,” he said.
Oy, oy, oy, oy.
Via Political Animal..
The U.S. just gave up control of the Sadr area in Baghdad. That’s a clear sign that the troop numbers there are quite adequate! I always feel terrible when my predictions turn out right, and today is one of those days. I even demonstrated against the war (not something goddesses do a lot), and what did it avail? So yes, Amp, depressing is the correct word to describe Iraq and some other countries, too. We never seem to learn the lessons history keeps poking at our noses.
Ooops! Looks like a spam troll got into the system.
I have a confession to make—I am not a died-in-the-wool Democrat. I have (occasionally) voted for the odd Republican. I will even cop a plea to admiring a few republicans on the current national scene, most notably Arlen Specter and Olympia Snowe. Now that my dirty little secret is out, I feel obliged to state why I so despise the policies and practices of the ideologues that have so thoroughly captured the GOP. It is not because I hate George W. Bush, at least not in the same way that the zealots of the far right hated Bill Clinton (and still do). I am simply unwilling to expend the time, energy, and emotional capital that this type of hatred requires. Instead, I find it much more productive to loathe the actions of this administration. I choose to do this by pointing out that their policies are by no means conservative, either a) in the economic sense (limiting government spending) or b) in the general policy sense (controlling the power of government to too easily intrude in the private affairs of the citizenry). In neither case is the current administration “conservative” not in sense a) (as witness the over $5 trillion turn around from surplus to deficits we have undergone by means of the giveaway to the wealthy in the form of tax cuts “of the rich, for the rich, and (most especially) by the rich”), nor in sense b) (where one must only say two words, ‘Patriot Act’, to give the lie to this claim of conservatism). If it were simply a matter of conservative as opposed to liberal, there would be a much less divided country than today. It is, instead, a matter of the most pernicious form of radicalism I have seen in the body politic since Joe McCarthy arrived on the scene in the 1950’s.
Rather than ask anyone to take this on faith, I would like to make the following challenge to the truly undecided of the voting public. Choose an issue which is really important to you, whether it is tax cuts or the invasion of Iraq or the environment or benefits for the military or whatever, get on the internet, access Google, and enter “BUSH” and then the issue you are passionate about. I think that you will find that, in almost every case, the percentage of resulting sites exposing Bush and company as not performing acceptably on the chosen issue will be 75-90%. If, upon performing this exercise, you find Bush to fare at an acceptable level, then, by all means, vote for him. However, because I have tried this for every important issue I can think of, with the results panning the administration, I will continue to emulate Cato the Elder, the ancient Roman Senator who ended every speech with the words, “Therefore, Carthage must be destroyed”.
Therefore, Bush must be sent back to Crawford.