Endgame
Vanity Fair recently interviewed several of the Iraq war’s neoconservative architects to see if they had any regrets about the last four years. The short answer is, “Yes.” The less short answer is, “Oh you better believe it motherfucker.” The actual answer is the following:
Richard Perle: “In the administration that I served [Perle was an assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan], there was a one-sentence description of the decision-making process when consensus could not be reached among disputatious departments: ‘The president makes the decision.’ [Bush] did not make decisions, in part because the machinery of government that he nominally ran was actually running him. The National Security Council was not serving [Bush] properly. He regarded [then National-Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice] as part of the family.”
Michael Ledeen, American Enterprise Institute freedom scholar: “Ask yourself who the most powerful people in the White House are. They are women who are in love with the president: Laura [Bush], Condi, Harriet Miers, and Karen Hughes.”
Kenneth Adelman: “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. And they get the highest civilian honor a president can bestow on anyone! That was the day I checked out of this administration. It was then I thought, There’s no seriousness here, these are not serious people.
This puts me in a somewhat awkward position. Normally, I enjoy reading angry apostate Republicans trash the administration they were once so eager to worship. But many of the neocons- particularly Perle and Ledeen- are so odious that I cannot take any pleasure in their anti-Bush ravings. The main reason? Because they still do not accept responsibility for anything they have done. Look at this little nugget from Perle:
“Huge mistakes were made, and I want to be very clear on this: They were not made by neoconservatives, who had almost no voice in what happened, and certainly almost no voice in what happened after the downfall of the regime in Baghdad. I’m getting damn tired of being described as an architect of the war. I was in favor of bringing down Saddam. Nobody said, ‘Go design the campaign to do that.’ I had no responsibility for that.”
Know what, Richard? Go to hell. You brought Chalabi and his merry band of crooks to the White House and had them feed the CIA bogus intel. You kept insisting that the invasion was a success long after it was clear to all non-Glenn Reynoldses that it was an abject failure. And you and Frummy wrote An End to Evil, the ultimate book of neocon wingnuttery that recommended, among other things, that the United States declare France an enemy state. To say that you bear no blame for this sad human catastrophe is beyond reprehensible. You and your buddies need to be banished completely from the national discourse and be forced to beg on the street for food. Just go away. Never come back.
Brad, they are addicts. Every single behavior they display is textbook addict behavior. As such, they are incapable of taking responsibility for anything – if you’ve ever known an addict, you know that it’s always “not their fault”.
They all need a dose of tough love, and with any luck, they’ll all get it next Tuesday.
[…] Update:Â Richard Perle, true neo-con war profiteer, weighs in on his lack of responsibilty. […]
Brad, you’re way more than just right. History, and Americans, must deal maximally harshly with these people. They still believe, and always will believe, that th actual courses of action they championed were the right ones, and it was only the execution that was faulty. There is not enough non-american blood to spill to satisfy their desparate need for utter hegemony, domination, and unquestioning american exceptionalism. Given the requisite power, they would continue to use Americ’s military power recklessly and without thought to outcomes. Why should they? If something goes wrong, they can just kill, destroy and intimidate some more. Anybody who thinks that there is a greater threat to world peace, or for that matter a more ruthless, deadly terrorist group operating in the world today is not looking in the right direction…
mikey
Those Leibovitz photos are fareeeeeeekay.
Mikey, I don’t believe these monsters care whose blood is spilled.
Ken Adelman: “The policy can be absolutely right, and noble, beneficial, but if you can’t execute it, it’s useless, just useless.”
The Hague is waiting for you, Ken.
Look it’s not anyone who argued for the war’s fault that the thing turned out so badly. It was a brilliant scheme, a stroke of genius really, foiled not because of its boldness or vision. One can give careful consideration to the fact that previous US interventions in the Middle East (See Regan, Lebanon and Shah, Iran) had backfired rather badly, the shakiness of the WMD intel, the widespread looting and complete social breakdown when Saddam’s regime fell, Mission Accomplished, and the obvious paradox between a democratic Iraq, and a government which would do what the US wanted. Granted, the surrender-crats were largely proven right with the whole Iraqmire thing and grudgingly we have to admit that stay the course makes an okay election slogan but a poor substitute for grand strategy. But really, is this Richard Pearle’s Fault? Is this David Frum’s Fault? Kristol’s? Leeden’s? Feith’s? Bolton’s? Cheney’s? Rumsfelds? Even Bush’s?
I submit to you that no one*, not even the president, could have predicted that they would screw this one up so badly. And it isn’t even the people in charge’s fault. No, the blame lies with reality itself failing to live up to the brilliance of PNAC’s plans. So the next time you start chanting “Bush Lied, our soldier’s died,” I think you should take a minute and look deep within your own hearts and ask yourself, why do I live in a world that failed to live up to the Neo-con’s expectations?
*Non-Lieberman Democrats do not count.
Michael Ledeen: George W. Bush is a girly man because he listens to girls.
Yeah, I thought Ledeen’s comment smacked a little too much of the He-Man Woman Hater’s Club.
J–, Dan:
I wonder idly if it isn’t a two-fer from his perspective: Maintain loyalty to Cheney and Rumsfeld (the only ones who actually do pull the strings) while blaming the whole thing on the women-folk.
Because, ya know, men-folk cannot fail, they can only be failed… 😉
All I can think of is that great moment in Salt Lake City Punk when Stevo gives his parents the longest “Fuck you” in cinema history. It’s all I have to say to twats like Perle and Ledeen. You helped make this mess, your apologies mean shit now.
But really, is this Richard Pearle’s Fault? Is this David Frum’s Fault? Kristol’s? Leeden’s? Feith’s? Bolton’s? Cheney’s? Rumsfelds? Even Bush’s?
Yes. Yes, it is.
Simply for the fact that they DID NOT UNDERSTAND the people, the politics, the religion, or the context of the Middle East before barging into the room. Is it their fault that they wanted to go to a party and got the wrong address?
Yes. Yes, it is.
I’m thinking of the scene in “Training Day” where the vatos got the kid cop to hand over his piece and he ended up in the bathtub with a shotgun in his mouth. You walk into a war, you either win or lose. And if the rules prevent you from winning, guess what? You lose….
mikey
And can you believe it? They are saying these things while troops are in harm’s way! Emboldening The Terrorists and destroying the Troops’ morale!
So… Perle claims he hasn’t been near the Oval Office since Ronald Reagan, and then blames Rice & her bureaucratic minions for everything. Ledeen blames the women (conspicuously not including his own baby girl Simone and the NINE BILLION DOLLARS she “mislaid” after the invasion, when the neocons swarmed Iraq). Adelman says we can’t blame him, because he “checked out of this administration” after three people who were not him got big shiny medals and he din’t. Way to look intellectually serious, dudes. You can see the lipsweat and smell their fear-funk as they slide greasily towards the exits. Forget “begging in the streets for food”, I want them publicly excoriated, humiliated, and pelted with rotten produce — just as a start. No, actually, I want them air-dropped into Sadr City with all their press clippings and the same crappy body armour American soldiers have been issued. Let them expend all that intellectual brilliance convincing the Iraqis that it would have been totally different if only reality didn’t have a well-known liberal bias.
I want them all in orange jumpsuits. War crimes, crimes against humanity, plundering the Treasury, corruption, all of the above. I want them in orange jumpsuits on the front page of every newspaper in the world, on every TV channel, on billboards, everywhere. Their media collaborators, too. Especially them, because they could have done something right and honorable, and didn’t.
It’s the only way we can ever make the USA anything but a curse word in every language in the universe, and it will never happen, and they have no honor. And they have destroyed ours.
Thanks a lot, neocons, theocons, stupid people, media stooges and Republicans of all stripes and types. Yes, I’m looking at you, ‘moderate’ Republicans. You were fine with this shit as long the story was ‘We’re Winning!’ Elections, wars, whatever–didn’t matter to you because your ‘team’ was ‘winning.’
Now suck it. You went along for the ride, and you got here. Suck it. Is it sweet? Do you love it? Are you proud? Does it taste like victory?
Hundreds of thousands of people dead or maimed. A sovereign nation invaded and destroyed. The whole world very nearly in flames. The people of this country and the rest of the world who knew what the hell was going on branded as ‘traitors’ and ‘anti-American’ and ‘pro-terrorist.’ The government so decimated by cronyism, theft, your retarded ideology, and incompetence that you threw away a major American city and its people. The country so divided by partisan hatred it may have become impossible ever to be governed again, even by competent people (in other words, people who are NOT YOU). You have helped ensure that the name of the USA will be a byword and a hissing down the centuries.
I’m with the Rude Pundit on this: Fuck them for…well, you know what? Just fuck them.
Bryan Adams – Summer Of ’69
Jeb Bush got the next Presidency
Got it from Ohio this time
Played it to the bleeding red
It was summer of 2009
His brother and some neocon fools
Had a plan and we all almost died
Dummy dimwit, shoulda got fired
shoulda known we’d see all the mothers cry’n
Oh and his crack smokin’ Rummy
This crap war seems to last forever
Now if we only had a choice
Ya – we wouldn’t want him to be there
Those were the worst days of our lives
(CHORUS)
We don’t need no explainin’
When you got a job to do
Spent our soldiers lives for Haliburton
And that’s when I said, “Screw you”
Standin on a right wing plank
You told us that we’d be secure forever
Know that when you drew your plans
You knew that it was a no-brainer
Those were the worst days of our lives
(Chorus) Back in Summer of 2009
Man it was killin’ time
We killed the young and Innocent
We needed to see WMDs
I guess we’ll be in Iraq forever, Ohhh
And now the insurgency is rage’in
Look’n at the plan that’s come and gone
Sometimes when I think of North Korea
I wish God had put oil there
Standin on a right wing plank
You told us that we’d be secure forever
Know that when you drew your plans
You knew that it was a no-brainer
Those were the worst days of our lives
(Chorus) Back in summer of 2009
Huge mistakes were made
The keyboard was yarked on
All my money was spent on akvavit and beer
Shorter Neocons: http://us.movies1.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/fox/futurama___vol__1/zapp.jpg
I really need to learn how to use those tab thingies for italics and URLs.
Our patriotic reps: As we noted back in mid-October after Ney pled guilty, he just needed to hang around Congress until November 1st to get his last paycheck of $13,000.
Oh say can you see?
Mark Foley was supposed to come out of rehab Nov. 1st. Now he’s staying in a “while” longer…. Nov 8th?
I think Brad, that you need to take a break from all “this.” You used to be a funny guy. Lately you’re all angry and dark and I dunno, but you’re not yourself.
Take a vacation and relax. You take things too seriously. Lighten up. 🙂
Michael Ledeen, American Enterprise Institute freedom scholar: “Ask yourself who the most powerful people in the White House are. They are women who are in love with the president: Laura [Bush], Condi, Harriet Miers, and Karen Hughes.�
That shit right there? That shit’s creepy as hell. Even if Ledeen’s just talking trash, it’s still creepy as hell. In a junior way, too, at that “In love with the president” is not a phrase that should ever enter the public discourse when it comes to just who has the stroke in the joint and who don’t.
Gah.
I’d say we could all take nice, relaxing vacations after November 7th, except we just can’t. November 7th, regardless of its outcome, is only the very beginning of our travails. *bleah*
“Ask yourself who the most powerful people in the White House are. They are women who are in love with the president: Laura [Bush], Condi, Harriet Miers, and Karen Hughes.�
Yeah, Mikey. And how’s daddy’s little girl doing these days, you creepy fucker?
That man is evil. Truly, truly evil. Like his neocon buddies. First up against the motherfucking wall, you motherfuckers.
[…] Update: Brad R. has more commentary. […]
Also from the article: Fearing that worse is still to come, Adelman believes that neoconservatism itself—what he defines as “the idea of a tough foreign policy on behalf of morality, the idea of using our power for moral good in the world”—is dead, at least for a generation. After Iraq, he says, “it’s not going to sell.”
I doubt we will ever fully drive a stake through the heart of this particular view of American exceptionalism, but if it is truly “dead, at least for a generation”, then I’m going to pop a bottle of champagne right now.
I still have such visceral hatred for these people I can’t think straight.
And no, that’s not a Foley/Haggard joke. I just can’t fathom the depths to which they have bought into their own bs so they can sleep at night.
I say drop ’em into Kurdistan with the PNAC manifesto permanently tattoed on their asses, and let the hijinx ensue.
Hi Everyone.
Politics Mixed in with LAPD and LADA Corruption. I posted one of my Audio Tapes from The OJ Simpson Case here:
http://blog.myspace.com/mariognitrini111
One Audio Tape from The OJ Simpson Case (view more)
You’re not going to believe what you are hearing.
MarioGeorgeNitrini111
mariogeorgenitrini111
__________
The OJ Simpson Case
Reverend Haggard lectures about science and arrogance. Richard Dawkins is amazed.
——————————————————————–
The Hpocritical Republicans in teh Closet Case
blah blah blah the Dustbin of History.
If you look at that video clip ITDGY linked to above, right at 3:40 there’s this bit where Haggard leans in close to some smiling guy in the audience and whispers something to him. The guy starts up like he’s surprised, and has this amazingly huge shit-eating grin on his face.
It would be irresponsible not to speculate….
I want these motherfuckers buried under Leavenworth, in a cell so far below the ground they have to pipe in sunlight and stale air. I want children to throw rocks at them as they pass, housewives to make the sign of the cross as their shadow appears, and have decent men shun them as the incompetent fuckups we know they are and refuse to admit. They should be living examples of fuckupry, of the consequences of allowing shallow, emptyheaded men with enormous penis-envy and nonexistent morality and compassion to be allowed ANYWHERE within 1000 miles of the machinery of government, ANY government, even the worst run dictatorship in the foulest hole in the last untamed corner of the Earth.
They have surrendered their humanity, and I’ll be damned if I’ll give it back to them. They can all go to hell by their own fucking hand.
I think Qúebec would be a great place to banish him to
[…] A brief note: Brad R. at Sadly, No! finds this fascinating quote from Michael Ledeen in an article in Vanity Fair about how the neocon hawks feel about the problems in the prosecution of the war in Iraq.Ask yourself who the most powerful people in the White House are. They are women who are in love with the president: Laura [Bush], Condi, Harriet Miers, and Karen Hughes.Ledeen is the neocon known for using cartoonish concepts like "Terror Masters" (right from bad superhero comic, no?) in book titles. Apparently, he’s quite prominent. The other quotes in the S,N! post are pretty good too.I do note that I occasionally find people blame the flaws of empires on the associated seraglios. I think that I am right to be skeptical. But Ledeen is just funny. […]
From the Impenitent Neocon Players’ version of Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me”:
Baghdad’s still a-smolder
It wasn’t me
Treating prisoners like Botha
It wasn’t me
Blix got the cold shoulder
It wasn’t me
Our credibility’s in tatters
It wasn’t me
Osama’s trail’s getting colder
It wasn’t me
Condi says no one told her
It wasn’t me
Now Iran’s getting bolder
It wasn’t me
The Bush Doctrine is over
Perle, Ledeen, and Adelman all sound very combative. And since they are no longer with the President, that means they are against him. And you know what we do with combative enemies.
Attorney General Gonzales, attach the electrodes.
On Ledeen’s statement: In fairness to him (yeah, I know), this is just an excerpt Rose has chosen to highlight from a longer exchange. It would be good to read it in the context of the full interview, but that won’t be out until December. So for now the excerpt is all we’ve got to work with, and I think it has number of nasty implications. Such as:
-Instead of following the advice of tough men who were all Cobra Kai, saying, “Strike first, strike hard, no mercy, sir,” President Bush allowed himself to be swayed by fawning women who were all, “Can we talk.”
-It’s risky to have women as consigliere because they are prone to fall in love with the patriarch.
-Someone who is emotionally attached to someone else is incapable of giving them good advice.
-Bush ignored men whose commitment to the president was more institutional than personal and whose advice sprung from their rational reflection on the nation’s best interest.
Those Leibovitz photos are fareeeeeeekay.
Richard Perle’s photo looks like he’s auditioning for the part of the corpse of Norman Bates’s mom, is what I’m saying.
Richard Perle wants France declared an enemy state? An enemy state that he owns a summer house in?
Fuckety fucking fucktards.
I am reading “Imperial Life in the Emerald City.” It’s so fucking depressing how badly they fucked this whole thing up. But These assholes’ fingerprints are all over it!
To trash Condi — incompetent Condi — when the groundwork for the fuckups was laid by Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz with their sponsorship of Chalabi is disingenuous. Oh, strike that. Not disingenuous. LYING.
To cast Bush as a bumbler mislead by the ladies — yeah, Bush was a bumbler allright, but he’s responsible for his bumbling.
I can’t tell you all how much this book is depressing me. How utterly stupdily self-centered, politically and ideologically driven the whole occupation and “reconstruction” of Iraq has been — there is a special place in hell for these people.
And as for Perle, throwing up his hands and crying, like Bart Simpson “I didn’t do it!” – he deserves to be turned on a spit in Satan’s firey grill. With chimchurri sauce.
To cast Bush as a bumbler mislead by the ladies — yeah, Bush was a bumbler allright, but he’s responsible for his bumbling.
Just watch how history records it. It will be satisfying.
I don’t know about y’all, but I’m thinking Ledeen’s weird theory about those silly, smitten women has less to do with actually blaming them for the Permanent Shitstorm than with proactively cementing the idea of Bush as a raging heterosexual. Because if Dubya’s . . . y’know . . . indiscretions with the paid male companions comes out, it would be best if nobody believed it.
The creepy underlying assumption of Ledeen’s comment is that the ladies, busy creaming their suitpants distracted the Bushtator from his real mission, thus causing the downfall of this Chimperorship.
I never saw Bush as a Samson, and I don’t now either. They’re running out of life preservers, but it’s not happening fast f’ing enough for me.
David Frum is having a hissy fit about the VF acticle over at HuffPo. Among other whoppers, he claims that Simone Ledeen’s war profiteering is actually patriotic service to her country.
“Simone Ledeen’s war profiteering is actually patriotic service to her country.”
Oh, on one level I believe that Simone Ledeen was the starry-eyed little neocon idealiste thinking she was bringing American values to the benighted Iraqis. She was young and idealistic.
It’s just that a) she had access to a job way beyond her abilities and b) she was hired by people who valued loyalty over ability and c) the whole place was full of war profitteers.
That and the fact that she “lost” 9 million dollars. I don’t think it went into her pocket, at least not most of it. I think lots of people way smarter than Simone stole more that she did.
Oh, I dunno. So, if Scottie McClellan had hired JeffuLube to stop by teh White House a few (dozen) times so’s Dumbya could fondle his bald pate for, well, hours at a time, would that be so gay? What? Naked at the time‽
JeffyLube’s little head is bald, too‽
“Oh, yeah, Mr. Preznit!!1! Yeah!1! Ohhhhhhh… Hail to teh Chief!!!1!” [splut splut splut]
[please vomit over in the Corner–thank yew!]
Uh… nevermind.
Jillian said,
Brad, they are addicts. Every single behavior they display is textbook addict behavior. As such, they are incapable of taking responsibility for anything – if you’ve ever known an addict, you know that it’s always “not their faultâ€?.
Damn straight. What’s worse is that the corporate media will be the oh-so-willing codependents – happy stenographers for all the neocon’s blaming and back-peddling.
Thanks for this post, Brad.
The photos accompanying the article are interesting; all four of the guys look like they’re trying to keep the smirks off of their faces, but can’t quite pull it off. Condi, on the other hand, isn’t looking at the camera, but has that sideways resentful glare, the one that she’s seen using so often, as if she knows that she was invited to dinner with the old boys just so that she could get stuck with the check.