alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

April 24, 2006

When Idiots Tell Tales

by AltHippo @ 5:18 pm. Filed under Uncategorized

One of the narratives that’s developed over the last few years, starting with Woodward’s Plan of Attack, echoed by a variety of books and mainstream news articles, not to mention scads of blogposts on the Downing Street Memos, was that the decision to invade Iraq had been made well in advance, and that all the strutting and frutting we saw from Powell, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, and Condi was a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury.

As Froomkin reminds us in today’s White House Briefing:

Said Drumheller: “The group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they’re no longer interested. . . . And we said, ‘Well, what about the intel?’ And they said, ‘Well, this isn’t about intel anymore. This is about regime change.’ ”

Drumheller’s view is reminiscent of last month’s Foreign Affairs article by a fellow former CIA official, Paul R. Pillar . He wrote: “It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community’s own work was politicized.”

Well, just how was the decision to invade Iraq made? What was the basis?

This quote from the Post online (the story and quotes will evolve, I’m sure) gives us some insight to these questions:

“I base a lot of my foreign policy decisions on some things that I think are true. One, I believe there’s an Almighty. And, secondly, I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody’s soul, regardless of what you look like or where you live, to be free.”

The phrase “regardless of what you look like or where you live” is a head scratcher. Is this a pre-emptive defense of ugly people? Also, Bush may want to rethink that “where you live” bit. As far as I can tell, the whole immigration bruhaha is about people who live in Mexico, and who want to come to the US. Exactly what notion of freedom that applies to Iraqi’s, but not to Mexicans, but still has nothing to do with “where you live” is beyond the grasp of this hippopotamus.

Does Bush really believe that the Iraqi invasion was to appease his (theologically very incorrect) view of doing God’s will by invading other countries? Or is this just another tale told by an idiot?

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3 Responses to “When Idiots Tell Tales”

  1. KCinDC Says:
    April 27th, 2006 at 10:58 am

    The “what you look like” bit is just Bush’s standard ploy of accusing his opponents of racism. He’s done it many times before — for example:

    Some of the debate really center around the fact that people don’t believe Iraq can be free; that if you’re Muslim, or perhaps brown-skinned, you can’t be self-governing and free. I strongly disagree with that.

    Another example:

    There’s a lot of people in the world who don’t believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren’t necessarily — are a different color than white can self-govern.

  2. AltHippo Says:
    April 27th, 2006 at 11:20 am

    On the surface, “what you look like” appears to be a way of saying independent of race, religion, etc. If you think about it, it indicates an even more superficial take on race issues. He’s saying that whether you’re Muslim-looking or Jewish-looking, Budhist-looking, or like me Christian-looking, you still are capable of imitating our Christian-looking society.

  3. KCinDC Says:
    April 27th, 2006 at 1:07 pm

    The worse thing about “people whose skin color may not be the same as ours” is that it indicates he’s talking only to white people.

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hip·po·pot·a·mus n. A notion, perhaps distinct from conventional wisdom, that needs to be verified by reality-based scrutiny.

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