The dissembler in chief just said it again. Yes--he humbly admitted without accepting an atom of responsibility--the pre-war intelligence was wrong. Yes, there were no weapons of mass destruction, or even any active programs for developing them. But--here it comes, get ready for it... the world is Better Off Without Saddam Hussein.
He said it again and he'll go on saying it until we shut him up. A suggestion below the fold.
(NOTE: this diary by
Thalio was archived via a techical glich and removed from the front page a couple of minutes after it posted. It is reprinted with permission by Geronimo. Apologies to the three commentators who posted their thoughts before the diary was moved, especially my old friend Whitney Brown who years ago taught me the importance of a good analogy)
I'm sick to death of this specious argument and it's long past time we started tearing it down at every opportunity. So, here are a few talking points to that end.
First, this is just cherry picking redux, looking at the scene through the peephole of a fanatical agenda and ignoring the bigger picture--exactly what was done with that faulty pre-war intelligence. Maybe this is just another part of the president's stay the course strategy. Hey, if something doesn't work, like skewing the facts to suit our own purposes, by all means keep doing it. But let's get back to the president's pet argument. A vicious dictator has been toppled here. Okay, we got it, that part's a good thing.
Oh, oops, but look over here. On the other hand, and that's the hand that's kept hidden like a secret CIA prison, the actions that brought about Hussein's removal from power had other inseparable consequences which must be considered in any fair evaluation of what was undertaken. Tens of thousands of US military personnel dead and wounded, the US treasury drained, the credibility of the United States reduced to a mangled and bloody horror, the entire Middle East destabilized and made more vulnerable to the designs of Islamic Fundamentalists, recruitment of men and money to Al Qaeda boosted through the sky, and the terrible list goes on and on and on.
Yes, but Saddam...
Oh, shut the F**K up already! Can't everyone see it? It's like a man going to the doctor with a badly infected left big toe, and waking up with both his legs amputated.
"What the hell have you done?" the man cries.
"Ha," says the doctor, "if it were up to you, you'd still have that infected toe!"