Neocons' Shocking Iraq Revisionism: How They Are Utterly Divorced from Reality!

Neocons' Shocking Iraq Revisionism: How They Are Utterly Divorced from Reality | Alternet
Bill Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz and the band are still delusionally beating the war drums. They just don't get it. 
June 20, 2014 | By Eric Alterman


In a column entitled “Bush’s toxic legacy in Iraq,” terrorism expert Peter Bergen writes about the origins of ISIS, “the brutal insurgent/terrorist group formerly known as al Qaeda in Iraq.”
Bergen notes that, “One of George W. Bush’s most toxic legacies is the introduction of al Qaeda into Iraq, which is the ISIS mother ship. If this wasn’t so tragic it would be supremely ironic, because before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, top Bush officials were insisting that there was an al Qaeda-Iraq axis of evil. Their claims that Saddam Hussein’s men were training members of al Qaeda how to make weapons of mass destruction seemed to be one of the most compelling rationales for
the impending war.”

There was no al Qaeda-Iraq connection until the war; our invasion made it so. We have known this for nearly a decade, well before the murderous ISIS even appeared. There was no al Qaeda-Iraq connection until the war; our invasion made it so. We have known this for nearly a decade, well before the murderous ISIS even appeared. In a September 2006 New York Times article headlined “Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat,” reporter Mark Mazetti informed readers of a classified National Intelligence Estimate representing the consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ the analysis cited the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology: “The Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,’ said one American intelligence official.”

The Bush Administration fought to quash its conclusions during the two years that the report was in the works. Mazetti reported, “Previous drafts described actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal.” Apparently, these were dropped
from the final document, though the reference to jihadists using their training for the purpose of “exacerbating domestic conflicts or fomenting radical ideologies” as in say, Syria, remained.

At the beginning of 2005, Mazetti notes, another official US government body, the National Intelligence Council, “released a study concluding that Iraq had become the primary training ground for the next generation of terrorists, and that veterans of the Iraq war might ultimately overtake
Al Qaeda’s current leadership in the constellation of the global jihad leadership.” On the one

hand, it is impressive how well our intelligence agencies were able to predict the likely outcome of the Bush Administration’s foolhardy obsession with invading Iraq. On the other, it is beyond depressing how little these assessments have come to matter in the discussion and debate over US foreign policy.

As we know, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the other architects of the war did everything possible to intimidate, and when necessary, discredit those in the intelligence agencies who warned of the predictable consequences of war. Cheney and his deputies made repeated trips to Langley to challenge professional intelligence work and used pliant members of the media — including Robert Novak of The Washington Post and Judith Miller of The New York Times, among many, many others — to undermine the integrity of people like Joseph P. Wilson and Valerie Plame lest the truth about the administration’s lies come out. Rather incredibly, they even went so far as to ignore the incredibly detailed planning documents, created over a period of a year at a cost of $5 million by the State Department, that had a chance of providing Iraq with a stable postwar environment. Instead, they insisted on creating an occupation that generated nothing but chaos, mass murder and the terrorist victories of today.

One of the many horrific results was the decision to support Nouri al-Maliki as a potential leader of the nation. Maliki’s sectarian attacks on Sunni Muslims on behalf of his Shiite allies are the immediate cause of the current murderous situation. And his placement in that job, as Fareed Zakaria aptly notes, “was the product of a series of momentous decisions made by the Bush
administration. Having invaded Iraq with a small force — what the expert Tom Ricks called ‘the worst war plan in American history’ — the administration needed to find local allies.”

One could go on and on (and on and on and on) about the awful judgment — the arrogance, the
corruption, the ideological obsession and the purposeful ignorance — by the Bush Administration that led to the current catastrophe. As Ezra Klein recently noted, “All this cost us trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives.” And this is to say nothing of the destruction of our civil liberties
and poisoning of our political discourse at home and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died, the millions of refugees created, the hatred inspired in the world toward the United States.

But to focus exclusively on the administration begs an obvious question. How did they get away with it? Where were the watchdogs of the press?

Much has been written on this topic. No one denies that the truth was available at the time. Not all of it, of course, but enough to know that certain catastrophe lay down the road the administration chose to travel at 100 miles per hour. Top journalists, like those who ran the Times and The Washington Post, chose to ignore the reporting they read in their own papers.

As the Post itself later reported, its veteran intelligence reporter Walter Pincus authored a compelling story that undermined the Bush administration’s claim to have proof that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction. It only made the paper at all because Bob Woodward, who was researching a book, talked his editors into it. And even then, it ran on page A17, where it was immediately forgotten.

As former Post Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks later explained, “Administration assertions were on the front page. Things that challenged the administration were on A18 on Sunday or A24 on Monday. There was an attitude among editors: ‘Look, we’re going to war, why do we even worry
about all this contrary stuff?” The New York Times ran similarly regretful stories and its editors noted to its readers that the paper had been “perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper.” (Bill
Moyers’ documentary special “Buying the War: How Big Media Failed Us tells the story, and in conjunction with that Moyers report, you can find an Interactive Timeline as well as post-March 2003 coverage of Iraq.)

Many in the mainstream media came clean, relatively speaking, about the cause of their mistakes when it turned out that they had been conduits for the Bush administration lies that led to catastrophe. But what they haven’t done, apparently, is change their ways.

As my “Altercation” colleague Reed Richardson notes, the very same people who sold us the war are today trying to resell us the same damaged goods: “On MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ this past Monday,
there was Paul Bremer, the man who summarily disbanded the Iraqi Army in 2003 in one of the
biggest strategic blunders of the war, happily holding court and advocating for ‘boots on the ground.’” Not to be outdone, POLITICO had the temerity to quote Doug Feith blithely lecturing Obama about how to execute foreign policy. Don’t forget the throwback stylings of torture apologist Marc Thiessen either, who was writing speeches for Rumsfeld during the run-up to the Iraq
War.  On Monday, he, too, weighed in with an op-ed in the Washington Post unironically entitled “Obama’s Iraq Disaster.”

Among the most egregious examples of this tendency has been rehabilitation of neoconservative thinker Robert Kagan and his frequent writing partner, the pundit and policy entrepreneur William Kristol. Back in April 2002, the two argued that “the road that leads to real security and peace” is “the road that runs through Baghdad.” In an article entitled “What to Do About Iraq,” they added that not only was it silly to believe that “American ground forces in significant number are likely to be required for success in Iraq” but also that they found it “almost impossible to imagine any
outcome for the world both plausible and worse than the disease of Saddam with weapons of mass destruction. A fractured Iraq? An unsettled Kurdish situation? A difficult transition in Baghdad? These may be problems, but they are far preferable to leaving Saddam in power with his nukes, VX, and anthrax.”

Recently, Kristol could be heard on ABC’s idiotically named “Powerhouse Roundtable” explaining that the problem in Iraq today was caused not by the lousy decisions for which he argued so vociferously but “by our ridiculous and total withdrawal from Iraq in 2011.”

Both men made this argument over and over, and especially in Kristol’s case, often in McCarthyite terms designed to cast aspersions on the motives and patriotism of their opponents and those in the media. For his spectacular wrongness Kristol has been punished by being given columns in The Washington Post, The New York Times, andTime magazine, not to mention a regular slot on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” (These appointments came in addition to a $250,000 award from the right-wing Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation; an occasion that inspired this collection of a just a few of his greatest hits.)

Recently, Kristol could be heard on ABC’s idiotically named “Powerhouse Roundtable” explaining that the problem in Iraq today was caused not by the lousy decisions for which he argued so vociferously but “by our ridiculous and total withdrawal from Iraq in 2011.” (Surprise, surprise, he did not mention that our 2011 withdrawal from Iraq was the product of the 2008 “Status of Forces” agreement negotiated by none other than President George W. Bush.)

Similarly, last month, Kagan was given 12,700 words for a cover essay in the (still hawkish) New Republic entitled “Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire,” which he used to make many of the same sorts of unsupported assertions that underlay his original misguided advice. As a result, he found himself
not only celebrated in a profile in The New York Times that all but glossed over his past record, but also called in for consultations by the current President of the United States.

One often reads analyses these days that grant the no-longer ignorable fact that American conservatives, especially those in control of the Republican Party, have become so obsessed by right-wing ideology and beholden to corporate cash that they have entirely lost touch both with
reality and with the views of most Americans. As the famed Brookings Institution analyst Thomas Mann recently wrote in the Atlantic Monthly, “Republicans have become a radical insurgency — ideologically extreme, contemptuous of the inherited policy regime, scornful of compromise,
unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of their political opposition.”

This tendency was the focus of the coverage of the shocking defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in his local primary by a man with no political experience and little money, who
attributed his victory to “God act[ing] through people on my behalf,” and warns that unless more Americans heed the lessons of Jesus — as he interprets them — a new Hitler could rise again “quite easily.” These right-wing extremists have repeatedly demonstrated their contempt for the views of most Americans whether it be on economic issues, environmental issues, issues of personal, religious and sexual freedom or immigration, to name just a few, and Americans are moving away from them as a result.

This is no less true, it turns out, with regard to the proposed adventurism in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East by those who sold us the first false bill of goods back in 2003. A strong majority of Americans now agree that removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq was not worth the trillions of dollars and lives lost. Barely one in six want to go back in. There is also strong opposition to military intervention in neighboring Syria. And yet not only do the same armchair warriors continue in their demands for more blood and treasure to be sacrificed on the altar of their ideological obsession with no regard whatever for Americans’desire to do the exact opposite, they remain revered by the same mainstream media that allowed them to get away with it the first time.

The conservative foreign policy establishment, it needs to be said, is no less out to touch with reality — and democracy — than the tea party fanatics who control the Republican domestic agenda (and are fueled by the cash of the Koch Brothers and other billionaires who stand to profit from their victories). That so many in the media pretend otherwise, after all this time, all this death and all this money wasted, demonstrates not only contempt for their audience but utter disdain for knowledge itself.

Former Iraq Interrogator Dismantles Cheney's Argument

Matthew Alexander--who writes at VetVoice as Major Matthew--spent some time last week deconstructing former Vice President Dick Cheney's claims about torture.

Dick Cheney says that torturing detainees has saved American lives. That claim is patently false. Cheney's torture policy was directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of American servicemen and women.

Matthew Alexander was the senior military interrogator for the task force that tracked down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq and, at the time, a higher priority target than Osama bin Laden. Mr. Alexander has personally conducted hundreds of interrogations and supervised over a thousand of them.

"Torture does not save lives. Torture costs us lives," Mr. Alexander said in an exclusive interview at Brave New Studios. "And the reason why is that our enemies use it, number one, as a recruiting tool...These same foreign fighters who came to Iraq to fight because of torture and abuse....literally cost us hundreds if not thousands of American lives."

Sound off at http://bravenewfoundation.org

Here's the clip:

I tell ya, this has been the...

longest period of time that I have actually written in a journal/blog/diary or whatever you would like to call it on a regular basis. It isn't always daily, but I've been somewhat consistent. I tend to be lazy at times, and I'll say I'll do this or that, and I procrastinate doing what it was I was going to do. So, maintaining this writing thing is important to me. A lot of it doesn't make sense, but that really doesn't matter because it is sort of a analogy for my life, a lot of it doesn't make sense. I bet when you read the title you thought I was going to say something about the Inauguration Day events, or Obama or how this was the greatest day of my life or nation or God only knows what. Nope, didn't want to mess with that, at least not yet. I kind of go where ever my brain takes me, even if it's a train-wreck.

Today was an important day for it was the first day of President Obama's term as President of the United States of America. I watched throughout the day, as I had CNN and MSNBC on, switching between to 2, until I got tired of Keith Olbermann harping on Ted Kennedy and him being taken away during the luncheon. And, like many misinformed in the media, he kept talking about Kennedy's brain cancer. No, I didn't misstate what he said, it was brain cancer. Now, Kennedy had a brain tumor, a glioma, just like I have, just different location and grade, but otherwise it is similar. It is a primary BRAIN TUMOR Keith!!!

Now, for the last 5 1/2 years I have read everything I could get my hands on about brain tumors, looked at scores of images, learned the parts of the brain and what they do, particularly where my tumor is located in the left middle cerebellar peduncle, with extension into the ipsilateral cerebral hemisphere, pons and into the medulla. Also shows expansion of the middle cerebellar peduncle. Extension into the pons fails to show any evidence of crossing the midline. There is an element of involvement of the superior cerebellar peduncle as well, and that is on the left as well. This information was from one of my MRIs, repeated often in every MRI I have gotten in the past 5+years. It is a Low Grade Glioma, which means it is slow growing, and according to Dr. Kerry Brega, my neurosurgeon, it is very slow growing. sort of like I'm an anomaly. The down sides are 2 important things, that being its' location, and the probability that it could decide to start growing any time it wishes. The symptoms are also significant, but not life threatening. We made the decision 5 years ago to constantly monitor it, because attempting to remove it could cause serious problem, effecting my quality of life, or even death. So we went with the monitoring option for the time being. It's sort of like a ticking timebomb in my brain, and who knows what could trigger it to decide it should get busy? I don't and neither do the doctors. But it is in an area that controls basic life functions including blood pressure, heart beat, and breathing. I'm rambling again, oops!

Now back to Mr. Keith Olbermann. and him continuing to call Ted's Brain Tumor brain cancer.

From the ABTA -
-A malignant brain tumor is life-threatening, invasive, and tend to grow at a more rapid pace than a benign tumor. Malignant brain tumors are sometimes called brain cancer even though they do not meet the true definition of "CANCER" (Since primary brain tumors rarely spread outside the brain and spinal cord, they do not exactly fit the general definition of "cancer" -- a tumor that has the ability to spread to other organs of the body. Since primary brain tumors tend to stay in the brain, they do not meet the true definition of cancer.) Thus, within the brain tumor community, you’ll hear the words "benign" or "malignant" or "lesion" or "tumor" but never, or hardly ever hear "cancer", "brain cancer", or "cancerous!" NEVER, unless it is about a metastatic brain tumor.
A brain tumor is a mass of unnecessary, and abnormal, cells growing in the brain. When doctors describe brain tumors, they often use the words "benign" or "malignant." But what do those words really mean? The words “benign” or “malignant” generally refer to how unusual the tumor cells look under a microscope when compared to normal brain cells. Tumors with cells that look similar to normal cells, yet aren’t quite normal, are called “benign” tumors. Tumor cells that are very different in appearance are called “malignant.” And between the “not quite normal” and the “very unusual” are the tumors referred to as low grade or mid-grade.
But it is not always easy to classify a brain tumor as "benign" or "malignant" as many factors other than pathological appearance play a role in their outcome.
A "benign" brain tumor consists of very slow growing cells, usually has distinct borders, and rarely spreads. When viewed microscopically, the cells have an almost normal appearance. Surgery alone might be an effective treatment for this type of tumor. A brain tumor composed of benign cells, but located in a vital area, can be considered to be life-threatening - although the tumor and its cells would not be classified as "malignant."
Benign brain tumors may be considered malignant if they are located in a part of the brain that controls vital life functions, such as heartbeat or breathing.
Some types of malignant brain tumors can spread to other locations in the brain and spine, but they rarely spread to other parts of the body. They lack distinct borders due to their tendency to send "roots" into nearby normal tissue. They can also shed cells that travel to distant parts of the brain and spine by way of the cerebrospinal fluid. Some malignant tumors, however, do remain localized to a region of the brain or spinal cord.
One other type of brain tumor is always considered malignant. Cancer cells that begin growing elsewhere in the body and then travel to the brain form “metastatic” brain tumors. For example, cancers of the lung, breast, colon and skin (melanoma) sometimes spread to the brain. All metastatic brain tumors are malignant since they began as cancer elsewhere in the body. -

- Courtesy of the American Brain Tumor Association - Benign vs. Malignant -

OK, I went off topic, like I had one to begin with. The Inauguration Day stuff was nice, and I kind of welled up with emotional on a couple of occasions, which I do a lot, especially if I'm watching something that is emotional. Makes sense to me. Ever see "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants"? It makes me happy to see that a majority of our country's voters got past their prejudice or bias toward black folks, or brown folks, or mixed race folks. Oh they still may be prejudice and bias a little, but were able to vote for Barack Obama. That is great, as we are heading in the right direction. Yay America!!! Yay!!! Check out Project Implicit out of Harvard, as it is quite interesting. I know I nitpicked today, but this has been going on since Ted was diagnosed with his Brain Tumor last May 2008. I wish Sen. Ted Kennedy, President Obama, and Sen. Byrd the best, and hope the two sick Senators get well soon. And Barack, it is time to kick some ass and take some names! Now, and don't forget to prosecute the War Criminals, because I don't want Cheney coming back to Wyoming, ever!

As per Ms. Dana Perino's statement...

It is not the "policy" of this administration to torture people. Policy, policy, POLICY!!! It's against the law, both our Constitution and the Geneva Convention. I'm not an angel, and I have made mistakes in my life, for which I am responsible and accountable, and have paid a price for my illegal behavior. But not these folks, and Ms. "Stepford" Perino, and her ignorant and outright stupid comments over the years. Are her morals and ethics so damaged that she doesn't have a fucking clue what she is promoting? And delaying the truth is just another form of denial for these dirt bags.

The sad thing is Dick Cheney is coming back to Wyoming after his tour of duty, and for some that sucks, as I live in a beautiful state, with some really great people. Now, there are those who idolize him like he is some deity, or God, and are totally blind to his alleged war crimes. But I think there is enough evidence available to convict the bastard, and let that smirking S.O.B. rot in prison the rest of his natural born life. I hope the World Court at the Hague indicts him and his friends for their high crimes and misdemeanors. His worshipers here in Wyoming are some of the same koolaid drinking knuckleheads who still believe Obama is a Muslim, or that Saddam had something to do with the WTC. And I bet some of them same middle aged men sat at home and fantasized about screwing Sarah Palin. And all she was for the Republicans was a marketing tool, because sex, and sexuality is used to great effect in marketing, and it sells. Sex sells as they say. Look how well she did with the ignorant and un and under-educated.

Now, back to the torture issue. You see, the guy who is suppose to bring these kangaroo court cases forward in this hokey tribunal system said they are not going to bring this one guy's case forward because he was, was, was TORTURED! I tell you these people are extremely fucked up, as there should be consequences for this illegal behavior. The #1 question on change.gov for Obama is about torture and accountability, questions he said he would answer. My guess is that he is waiting till the 21st, so Bush Co. can't start throwing out pre-indictment pardons to protect his deviant and sick co-horts. I mean, I have never seen such spin in my life regarding this issue. US laws say water-boarding is torture, and we have prosecuted folks for it. Now it is in some existential 7th dimension. Mukasey, our AG who followed Alberto de Turdo, he couldn't even answer one simple question, Is water-boarding torture? He went into this big dissertation and double-talk about bullshit, and the little spineless lackeys in the Senate gave him a pass. A pass? I couldn't believe it. I almost shit in my draws when I heard that. I just shake my head sometimes when I hear some of this bizarro news. Einstein said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results. Obama better do something about this, and not out of revenge, although that might feel good for a little while, but because of the oath he will be taking, that being, To preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the US, the same one Dubya and Dick took, but to them it was just a ceremonial thing, and the Constitution is just a piece of paper. Obviously they were sleeping in Pol Sci - 101 because they didn't learn a damn thing. They are a bunch of narcissistic, self-centered, greedy, ego-maniacal bastards, and as you can tell, I do not like them at all. The bottom line for these folks is money and greed. like they say, just follow the money!



Term limits, sunshine laws, enfranchisement of felons and the education for all voters/Americans are some of my Christmas wishes, along with the standard Peace on Earth, which I do strongly believe in! Amen Brother!