Oh, we made such fun of "Baghdad Bob," aka the Iraqi Information Minister. Now no lesser body than the Iraq Study Group essentially confirms: yup, he was pretty much on target. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Tony Norman explains:
Nicknamed "Baghdad Bob" by a credulous American press corps all too willing to parrot Bush administration propaganda, the Iraqi bureaucrat had a talent for lurid prose that hinted at a poetic sensibility beneath the nonsense.
And it was more than "poetic," it turns out he was telegraphing a great whacking lot of military strategy right out there in front of God and everybody, including television cameras. Might have helped if somebody capable of understanding had been listening.
Carry on below...
Among my favorites were: "God will roast their stomachs in hell at the hands of the Iraqis"; "The midget Bush and Rumsfeld deserve only to be beaten with shoes by freedom-loving people everywhere"; "Washington has thrown their soldiers on the fire"; and "I speak better English than this villain Bush."
Baghdad Bob made his final prophetic utterance on April 7, 2003, before disappearing into the obscurity of occupied Iraq: "This invasion will end in failure.
Three years into a war that has gone worse than expected for America and its coalition allies, it would be hard to find anyone in Washington -- with the notable exception of Mr. Bush -- who doesn't agree with him now.
It wasn't the first time old Baghdad Bob said something prescient. Even buffoons are capable of connecting the dots in ways that would put our current president to shame.
Ow. Oh, so ow.
For the benefit of the mentally deficient (ongoing Bush or Iraq War supporters, both of them) I take no glee in this, for chrissakes. Please google "dark humor" or "Jonathan Swift" or "sardonic irony" if you are unclear on the matter. This is a hideous, horrid, ugly tragedy all the way around, but even Those People know that deep down now. That's why there are so many jokes about death.
But analyzing why this is such a debacle, while it will occupy historians for generations if we are desperately lucky enough to maintain a civilzation capable of supporting such luxuries, is not complicated in its essence. Norman sums it up succinctly:
Unfortunately, his was the only voice of dissent countering Mr. Bush's on the world stage for a while.
Democrats in Congress were institutionally AWOL, afraid that even the mildest criticism of the war would result in a loss of precious political clout.
The U.S. media rolled over for Bush months before the military campaign even began. Organized protests against the invasion of Iraq were dismissed by editorial pages and beltway pundits as naive and short-sighted.
Once American news operations agreed to the onerous conditions that were part of the military embedding process, all pretense of objectivity went out the window. The press became just another cog in the military-industrial complex.
Go read. Tony Norman is an under-the-radar kind of columnist, not unlike Mike Royko was back in the day in Chicago. But when he's on his game he's up there with the best. And he's on today.
(Crossposted at Corrente