Well, well, well
the dogs of war have at last turned on their masters. It was bound to happen. Of course rather than accepting blame for the delusional fantasy that Democracy is an exportable commodity and there were no WMD, they blame it all on the incompetence of Bush, Cheney, Rummy and the rest of the gang. Not that I can really argue with that. Bush and Company certainly have screwed the pooch in Iraq but to claim that the NeoCons had nothing to do with that strategy and if they had it would have turned out differently, well, let's just say that is just more of the cognitive dissonance exhibited by them during this whole sad tale. The NeoCon's unrealistic wishful thinking, that happen to also be shared by the NeoCons in the administration, are what got us into this mess in the first place and Bush Co's incompetence magnified the problem.
Now on to some selected quotes.
Perle before war:
"Iraq is a very good candidate for democratic reform," he said. "It won't be Westminster overnight, but the great democracies of the world didn't achieve the full, rich structure of democratic governance overnight. The Iraqis have a decent chance of succeeding."
Perle Now:
"I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?,' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.' ... I don't say that because I no longer believe that Saddam had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction, or that he was not in contact with terrorists. I believe those two premises were both correct. Could we have managed that threat by means other than a direct military intervention? Well, maybe we could have."
You believe those premises were correct? WTF? You're still deluding yourself even after all the evidence proves that those premises where undebatedly
incorrect?
"The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn't get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly.... At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible.... I don't think he realized the extent of the opposition within his own administration, and the disloyalty."
Wait a second? What disloyalty? You mean Cheney, Rummy and Rice? I'm guessing you mean Powell because he actually had the smarts to see what a piece of crap the Iraq strategy was and actually question the distortion of intelligence tailored to fit you and Bush Co's intentions to get us in Iraq at any cost.
"...David Frum, the former White House speechwriter who co-wrote Bush's 2002 State of the Union address that accused Iraq of being part of an "axis of evil," it now looks as if defeat may be inescapable, because "the insurgency has proven it can kill anyone who cooperates, and the United States and its friends have failed to prove that it can protect them." This situation, he says, must ultimately be blamed on "failure at the center"--starting with President Bush."
And...
Kenneth Adelman, a lifelong neocon activist and Pentagon insider who served on the Defense Policy Board until 2005, wrote a famous op-ed article in The Washington Post in February 2002, arguing: "I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk." Now he says, "I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national-security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."
Thinking that this administration could in anyway be described as competent was your first mistake.
Adelman again:
"The most dispiriting and awful moment of the whole administration was the day that Bush gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to [former C.I.A. director] George Tenet, General Tommy Franks, and [Coalition Provisional Authority chief] Jerry [Paul] Bremer--three of the most incompetent people who've ever served in such key spots.
At least you got that part right Kenny.
Had the NeoCons actually occupied the same reality as sane people we wouldn't be in Iraq period and discussing the fine mess this administration has gotten us into.