Amen To That

It's been a while since we linked to a Matt Taibbi piece.  Those of us against going to Iraq from the get-go will enjoy his most recent effort.

Comments

[Kristal K]

That article is one of the biggest reach around, pat-myself-on-the-back, self important pieces of crap in recent editorial history. Basically, he says "I was right and the rest of the world was wrong." Screw him.

Yeah, we get it, we fucked up.

But everything changed after 9/11 -- our perceptions, our manners and even how we get to work in the morning. I doubt I am the only person who gets on the 6 everyday and hopes that I make it to work today.

So to defend David Letterman, fuck yeah we had to do something. We were lied to and led to believe it was the right course.
We NOW know that it was not. Crucify us all upside for our sins.

But of course, Mr. Taibbi knew better than us all along -- so that makes him smarter, better and prettier than me. Let's throw him a parade.

[Frank]

Problem is, Kristal, the "rest of the world" wasn't wrong. Before the war, a large, vocal, skeptical minority existed in this country. That bloc and its latter-day adherents were and still are referred to by the pro-war crowd as "weasels", "appeasers", "traitors", and "terrorist sympathizers", in response to any expression of protest. The smug bullying and intimidation perpetrated by the war's supporters made popular dissent by a high profile politican or media figure a daunting prospect. Just ask Max Cleland.

The point is, maybe if the powerful who are analysing and Monday morning quarterbacking the situation now had taken half as much time to think about both the particulars of what they were hearing and the consequences of their attitudes back then, we wouldn't have such a regrattable mess on our hands. Yeah, 9/11 changed many things. But the need for blind revenge on someone, anyone, especially when the consequences of that need involve the deaths of people willing to make a sacrifice that you are not, is a pretty weak defense of your position.

[daveNYC]

I forgive you for being too stupid to know that you were being fed an obvious pack of lies. You want a cookie with that?

The world didn't change on 9/11, we did.

[Kristal K]

"But the need for blind revenge on someone, anyone, especially when the consequences of that need involve the deaths of people willing to make a sacrifice that you are not, is a pretty weak defense of your position."

Was it blind revenge? We were given an awful lot of "intelligence" that told us otherwise and millions of people and other foreign nations believed that intelligence -- even if it was manipulated & false -- and Dave, you can keep your cookie.

For the record, I am never in favor of any war, seriously questioned Saddam's connection to 9/11 and was not in favor of the invasion of Iraq. Still, I hoped & prayed we were doing the right thing and supported those going off to war, along with the decision to do so.

I'm grown up enough to admit that I was wrong -- but at least I'm not smug enough to sit in front of a computer and say I told you so, like Matt Taibbi.

[Maine]

Am I remembering this wrong? I seem to recall hearing a lot of people say that the Iraq invasion was a mistake at the time that it began.

And I don't think everyone else suddenly became against it after it became PC to do so - I thought people started rallying against it after a.) the reasons for the invasion kept changing on us and b.) it became obvious that the management of the war was pretty crap-laden.

Really, to echo Kristal in a sense, I think I Taibbi could only write this stuff back then. Now, it's kinda like saying "hey, maybe Barry Bonds was using steroids."

[Frank]

I'm confused. You say you "were not in favor of the invasion of Iraq" but "admit that (you were) wrong"? Wrong about what exactly?

[Kristal K]

I was not in favor of invading Iraq. After the invasion, I hoped it was the right course and supported the decision once it was made. My support ended after "mission accomplished" was declared.

[Frank]

For Maine:

http://www.counterpunch.org/taibbi02012003.html

[Nominal Me]

You have to be a real left wing nut job to consider Wolf Blitzer and David Letterman the political middle of this country. They are liberals and always have been.

The biggest hypocracy of this article is blaming the war on the media. The media thought it was acting in a way appropriate in a war-time situation. I don't blame them for that.

I do blame congress for not speaking up and asking questions. This point is avoided because the very same Democrats who avoided real scrutiny on the Iraq war build up are now going to take over as chairs of very important committees.

As for the criticism of Woodward, that's ridiculous. You have to have a very low reading comprehension level to say he flip flopped on anything. All three of his books are impartial, consisting mainly of a chronology of quotes from sources and information from documents provided. His second book (Bush at War) describes the anguish that Colin Powell was going through right before his speech to the U.N.

Everything anyone needed to be against the Iraq war was in the second Woodward book. Almost everyone missed it.

Now, the very same congressman who ignored their oversight obligation will now rule the House, using the war as their stepping stone.

And you're going to blame all of this on David Letterman? You have got to be kididng me.

[TMan]

I don't blame Letterman. However, I do blame the NYT, the Boston Globe, the Las Angles Time, CNN, MSNBC (not Fox, which is clearly a propaganda outlet) every other respectable news source which abdicated their journalistic obligations to actually ask questions, take the politians to task and generally be somewhat skeptical. Some of us could not see the connection, but the major news outlets didn't even ask the obvious questions. They were too busy worrying about keeping their access to Whitehouse sources. That was shameful.

[daveNYC]

Fuck it if I'm not a little pissed with all the pseudo-mea culpa-ness that's going around. If someone though that the Iraq fuckmire was pure BS from day one, bully for you. What's pissing me off are all the people saying 'oh, it was a good plan, but it was just poorly implemented', or 'given what I knew at the time, the vote for the war was the right one'. Fuck that shit.

It was a retarded plan. The fact that retards happened to be the ones implementing it didn't really change that basic fact.

The information was crap. You could smell that shit from a mile away. Fifty million rumors of weapons programs, but not one piece of confirmed intel. Look, if you've got one rumor and you can't confirm it, fine. If you've got a bunch of rumors and nothing solid? It's bullshit. BTW, it also helps if your informants aren't criminals and/or druggies.

The thing that's killing me is that we have a quasi-Vietnam narative starting up. In 'Nam, it was the media's fault that we lost. In Iraq, they'll be blaming the 'administration'. In reality though, the problem was that both wars were based on lies, and were really, really, bad ideas. Russian roulette with a semi-automatic bad ideas.

Personally though, I look forward to this grade of stupidity cropping up again in another thirty years. I'll do a drinking game, do a shot for every American soldier who dies because we can never admit that we made a fundimental mistake in our foreign policy.

[Maine]

Frank:

Yeah, I figured he wrote about it back then too (since a lot of us felt the same way), but the point is that there's really no value in saying this now. This article is tantamount to "Hey, remember me? I was right about shit, and here's a list of douches who were not..." I don't want to say it comes off kinda pretentious and shit-don't-stinky, but it does.

Did anyone really need to read that? Aside from his editor who needed to count it to make sure he reached his word quota? What's the point of the article?

[tennbengal]

Frank:

Thanks for the heads up, hadn't read Tiabbi in awhile.

He's spot on.