In today's Huffington Post, Jane Smiley provides the best summary yet of Bushco's invasion and bungling of the Iraq war.
While I wish I'd written it myself, I also feel obliged to pass it on -- particularly in light of the front-page story in this morning's Guardian on how the UK also screwed up their end of post-war planning.
But more on that below. Smiley's precis deserves to be read -- even memorized -- to toss at the 28% who still think Dubya walks with God. Like a photographic lens, it brings everything into focus -- an apt image, since all was planned in camera.
Jane Smiley's brilliant abstract:
Here's how the sequence of events went: In 2000, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Kristol, and others decided that the US was the boss of the world, and was to be the boss of the world for at least a hundred years. Cheney made himself vice president and grafted his ambitions onto whatever Bush thought he was doing. Already in "Rebuilding America's Defenses," the PNACkers were planning to get rid of Saddam Hussein, but then after the Republicans cheated and bullied their way into the presidency (thank you, Jeb Bush), they disdained everything Clinton had learned about Al Qaeda and the Middle East and a potential terrorist attack on American soil. When that attack occurred, they instantly annexed it to their agenda, and used it as an excuse to begin a civil war in Iraq, get rid of Saddam, and take control of the oil (not, as Greg Palast says, to turn the spigot on but to turn it off, and raise prices and profits). Having begun the Iraq civil war, which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and injuries to Iraqis and Americans, not to mention the internal displacement of millions, the PNACkers have no interest in ending it (and don't know how, anyway).
The suspicion that Cheney's energy goons are actually more interested in keeping Iraq's oil in the ground to raise prices and profits has been discussed more frequently in recent dKos diaries. Sitting where it does in Smiley's summary, between "excuse to begin a civil war in Iraq" and "the PNACkers have no interest in ending it," it sounds logical and plausible, jiving perfectly with Bush's intransigence regarding the war.
Smiley continues:
Why is that? It is because they don't know who the enemy is, or rather, because they define the enemy as anyone who is opposed to American interests. Today the enemy is one set of Islamic fundamentalists, tomorrow it will be another set. Today, two sets of Islamicists are against us. Tomorrow, one set will be for us and the other set will have found a new ally, and be against us. But, in actual fact, how can any person or any group in the Middle East or Europe or China or Africa or South America define themselves as the PNACkers define them, solely in relation to American interests? People and groups have to define themselves in relation to their own interests. If, for example, they have a resource, such as oil, it is in their own interest to possess it and profit from it. Are they really required to think first about what the gas-guzzling, bomb-wielding Americans might want? Well, yes, if we can make them. But we aren't actually "in the right" if we make them do so by force or by threats.
That, and the rest of Smiley's diary -- read it and pass it on -- speak for itself.
As for the other news, well, what more can one say after reading
In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Geoff Hoon reveals that Britain disagreed with the US administration over two key decisions in May 2003, two months after the invasion - to disband Iraq's army and "de-Ba'athify" its civil service. Mr Hoon also said he and other senior ministers completely underestimated the role and influence of the vice-president, Dick Cheney.
"Sometimes ... Tony [Blair] had made his point with the president, and I'd made my point with Don [Rumsfeld] and Jack [Straw] had made his point with Colin [Powell] and the decision actually came out of a completely different place. And you think: what did we miss? I think we missed Cheney."
As far as I'm concerned, Cheney the Abettor is the enemy -- of all that is good, fair and just. The influence of his Hobbesian view that life is "nasty, brutish and short" has darkened both sides of the pond for too long.