[Vision2020] Re: Courageous Barbara Lee!

[Joan Opyr]

You know what, Ted . . . you're right.  I concede the argument.  I have read Manufacturing Consent (and I've seen the excellent documentary of the same name many times) and that is just what occurred during the run-up to the current Iraq war.  Consent was manufactured, marketed, and purchased wholesale.  By us.  We should expect more from ourselves and our politicians, John Kerry included.  His vote to grant Bush authorization to use force in Iraq was wrong.  If I knew better, and you knew better, then you're correct to say that there's no reason that a man with 30 years in public service shouldn't have known better.   

In this, Kerry demonstrated (and, by his refusal to renounce that vote, continues to demonstrate) flawed judgment.  I'm sorry for that; I think it's a weakness, but it's one that I'm obliged to weigh against Mr. Bush's willful misjudgment that we could invade Iraq with a light army, democratize it on the cheap, and that we'd be greeted by dancing villagers with grateful hearts.  None of the men who concocted the invasion of Iraq a decade ago in that neo-con think tank had any first-hand experience of war.  When John Kerry, John McCain, Max Cleland, Chuck Hagel and others who have served and have had that experience say they voted for the use of force, but they didn't know that the war's planners would be so inept, I accept what they say at face value.  It's no comfort to the bereaved, and there must be some judgment for the part they've played, but in leveling our judgment, let's not lose sight of the pernicious men at the top who dreamed up, engendered, and hatched this mess.

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment  

----- Original Message -----
From: Tbertruss at aol.com
Sent: Saturday, August 14, 2004 1:01 PM
To: auntiestablishment at hotmail.com; vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Re: Courageous Barbara Lee!


Joan:

Well, OK, perhaps I am being uncharitable towards people, citizens and politicians alike, who allow war to proceed without exacting scrutiny of all the issues.  But if any action calls for exacting skepticism and examination of everything involved, war is up there at the top of the list.  We are talking about killing and maiming 10s of thousands of people to achieve a "good" end.   

Joan wrote:

"Where you and I disagree is in what constitutes "bad logic."  Was it bad logic to assume that the threat of force would compel Saddam Hussein to allow UN weapons inspectors back into the country?  I don't think so.  I also don't think it was bad logic, per se, for the Congress to accept the intelligence information the Bush Administration supplied.  It wasn't bad logic but a foolish and misplaced trust in the Administration's integrity"

As I stated, anyone studying the W. Bush administration and the PNAC doctrine knew that Bush was going to invade Iraq at the time the vote in the US Congress occurred to grant Bush war authority.  There was nothing Saddam could do at that time that would make any difference.  The rest was window dressing for manufacturing consent (thank you Noam Chomsky) and to give the "appearance" of legality.  The vote in the US Congress we are discussing, that ONLY Barbara Lee voted against, was clearly a green light for Bush to invade, not just use force.  This was as plain as a clear sky in Montana.   

Joan wrote:

"The Iraq War was marketed, if you'll excuse the expression, as part and parcel of the War on Terror, and many reasonable, smart, logical people were willing to give the Bush Administration the benefit of the doubt.   Should we write them all off as dim-witted morons?"

I've been over this so many times here's my standard reply: humble Ted Moffett with a computer and an hour or two discovered over the Internet before we invaded Iraq that the following facts or intelligence sourcing by the Bush administration (used to justify the most frightening image Bush spoke directly to the American people in a speech, the "mushroom cloud" over America) were false or misleading:

1: The yellow cake from Niger was a false story.     

2: The aluminum tubes in Iraq claimed to be used in nuclear fuel processing were not for this purpose.  This was a false claim.

3: Iraq had no nuclear arms program of substance except on paper.

4: Ahmed Chalabi, once a darling of the Bush administration, was a corrupt scoundrel who should not have been trusted as a source of critical intelligence, yet the Bush administration was sourcing critical intelligence about Iraq via Chalabi's associates, and feeding this BS to newspapers.

5: Both Hans Blix and Scott Ridder, critically involved in Iraq arms inspections, were waving their arms up and down trying to moderate the Bush administration Iraq WMD propaganda, yet were dismissed to a great extent.

Why would I know all this with high certainly, yet the New York Times, Washington Post, and every cable and network news outlet did not make these facts headlines over and over before we invaded?  Michael Moore is right  The media failed us miserably, and we will not and do not have a healthy democracy here in the USA till the media gets its head out of its...

The New York Times is hammered from the left and the right for its bias.  Read "Manufacturing Consent" by Noam Chomsky if you have not.  How news stories are filtered and given emphasis by repetition or the lack thereof is brilliantly documented in this book and The New York Times is featured prominently.

Recently I heard Chomsky say he thought, of all major news sources, he thought the Wall Street Journal was offering some good journalism, quite a statement coming from Chomsky.

Ted Moffett

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