Vision Circle

The holding of Iraqi elections is certainly an undeniable success. Those of us on the Left are able to separate the idea of Iraqis exercising their citizenship for the first time with the understanding that its impetus and our occupation came under less than pristine evidence and circumstances.

OF COURSE the circumstances were less than pristine. The Battle of Lexington and Concord was less than pristine. The shelling of Fort Sumter likewise, and I daresay neolibs could even find fault with Pearl Harbor or Korea.

Are we to wait for pristine circumstances before we take ANY military action? Oh yeah - the embassy bombings of 1998, the USS Cole, the first World Trade center bombings don't count...

True Liberal,
The Cole, the Embassy Bombings, First WTC attack: I was not aware that Iraq had anything to do with those.

As far as the elections in and of itself they are a great thing. I just don't think the costs to us and the Iraqi people, in terms of lives and money, was worth it. IN the very least it could have been done at a smaller price, if there was better planning upfront.

My biggest concern is that the new government will kick us out before Iraqis are ready to handle their own security. If that happens all of this would have been for nothing.

Robert Fisk properly questions the vote and it's inevitable outcome....,

It's funny to hear diehard post hoc rationalizations for one of the monumental fuster clucks in recorded history. What's worse, the entire boondoggle was avoidable had the lesson of history or experienced advice from Colin Powell been heeded, or at a minimum, had the cover story been constructed so as to even remotely sync up with the situation on the ground.

So..., please do tell what's to like about Shia political ascendency in Iraq - with hostile, brilliant, and capable Iran next door - when the fundamental idea was U.S. control of Iraqi crude oil?

How does this political outcome help that national security objective?

blackhacker:
Before W took office in 2001, Sen. Kerry said Saddam had WMD or was very near to same. ditto Teddy. ditto a few dozen more Dems.

ditto Clinton.

Saddam defied UN resolutions re his past WMD programs. He gave UN inspectors the runaround, and thus gave the entire world reason to suspect his intentions.

And there was the little matter of the al Qaeda - Iraq dealing when Sudan was the base of operations.

Then came 1/20/2001, and then came 9/11/2001, and suddenly none of the above counted.

Pristine? What the hell kind of vocabulary it THAT?

"neocon" - an early 21st century term used to denote the idiologues who drove U.S. foreign policy and national security over a cliff with their propagandistic disregard for the lessons of history - most notable for their ability to delude and misdirect the uneducated by glib and often repeated just-so storytelling, see also, "AM talk radio"

"United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting. According to reports from Saigon, 83 percent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong. A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam."

- Peter Grose, in a page 2 New York Times article titled, 'U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote,' September 4, 1967.

True_Liberal,
The perception WMDs in Iraq, was the reason we SHOULD have let the UN inspectors finish their job. Had we done that we would know exactly what we know now about Iraq. That they NEVER had WMDs since the early 90s. Difference is being the thousands of dead and wounded US and Iraqis, and the millions of dollars. The difference being that we could have taken all of those resources we diverted from Afghanistan, and used them to catch Bin Laden, you remember him. He was ACTUALLY responsible for 9/11.

Wait a minute. WHO on this board actually believes there was even a microscopic chance Saddam would -- umm --"...let the UN inspectors finish their job"? There was FAR too much territory to cover, FAR too few inspectors, FAR too much of a shell game going on - the whole "inspection process" was soon seen to be fraudulent.

Why did Saddam keep playing this game if he was not a threat to the region? He kept saying "Trust Me", when the UN had declared him untrustworthy. We have theories, and may never know -- but ultimately he must have thought it would keep him in power.

(Raises hand.)

I did. In fact there were a number of people from a variety of ideological predispositions that held similar beliefs. The only reason the inspection process was deemed fraudulent was because it became clear to most observers--from "hard line" conservatives to "dove loving" leftists--that Bush never intended to wait for the inspections to finish. Possibly because he KNEW that if he did, he'd have no plausible reason to invade.

A sham election to do nothing more than *annoint* the occupation, and imperial appropriation of the largest remaining proven reserves of sweet light crude oil in the world ~17% of middle eastern oil and of the highest possible quality.

Interesting take on the Iraq election as analogous to the L.A. train wreck. Gorbachev has called it a *profanation*

MosNews - 31 January: Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev called the Iraqi parliamentary elections a profanation. In an interview with the Interfax news agency, he said the elections are “very far from what true elections are. And even though I am a supporter of elections and of the transfer of power to the people of Iraq, these elections were fake...” “I don’t think these elections will be of any use. They may even have a negative impact on the country. Democracy cannot be imposed or strengthened with guns and tanks,” the agency quoted Gorbachev as saying.

Funny. On my side of the street, we recognized the fraud when Saddam's thugs held inspectors hostage when they got too close to the truth -- ummm -- well BEFORE W won his first term.

In other words, it demonstrably was not about Bush AT ALL...

...except to the dreamers who wore Clinton-esque blinders, who let Saddam get away with his little stunt once, and who condemn W for not repeating the mistake.

True_Liberal
Everybody saw Saddam for what he was the first time around. The inspectors told us about it. But the second time around was a different story. They had access to what ever they wanted. They could go anywhere. Ironically, I believe, largely because of the Presedent's sabor rattling. But we didn't have to put boots on the ground in Iraq. All this freedom speading stuff is mearly a cover excuse when the main premise for the war was found to be a lie.

Gorbachev!? What does he know about being elected?

All national elections are shams. They represent the consent of the governed. That's all this one did. The majority consented to be governed, the rabid nutcase minority tried to shut the election down. The Iraqi people have decided to hand over their fate to 275 individuals. That's a great leap of faith. But there it is, undeniable.

I am rather stunned that anyone could suggest that the Kurds have no skin in this game. Forget Iraqi Shia and Sunni, the Kurds are the ethnic minority whose rights are going to be established here. We've been keeping Mosul from getting attacked from the air for 14 years. The weapons of mass destruction was the Iraqi Air Force.

Go ahead and deny it. I know you're capable.

So far as I know, no one raised the issue of the Kurds except you and Turkey. So now you're perhaps suggesting that W and Neocon's WWIII escalation ploy will not only encompass Iran and Syria, but perhaps even Turkey which has made its position on further Kurdish independence rather clearly known?

The only consent that was ratified by this sham votes for food fraud was consent to eat for a little while longer, and consent to U.S. occupation of indefinite duration. The subtext accomplished by the just-so story was involuntary consent to the continuing escalation that the Neocon gangsters really set about accomplishing in the first place.

Let us be insofar honest with ourselves, because it's got to be tiring as hell to maintain the pretense of just war in the face of overwhelming evidence of simple resource control and appropriation gangsterism. As an aside, listening to Bill O'Lielly y'day cracked me up. He got hopping mad with a priest who refused to question the popes unwillingness to sanction our imperial gangsterism as just. Even my 10 year old daughter has enough common sense to recognize lying for what it is, she thought it yet another shameful example of how desperate the administration is becoming to find somebody, anybody, to go along with the incompetent storytelling they've done heretodate to justify their naked gangsterism.

I'm still driving my car, heating my house, and doing everything else that life in this polity of the gangsterish *free* affords. After all, despite our superficial differences in the matter of self-calming or team-building narratives, our shared way of life IS our polity. My politics haven't changed one jot or tiddle in the face of the obvious villainy at the bottom of our supply chain.

Errthing else is, after all, merely conversation.

What I want to know is why you think it so important that the conversation be bogged down with paternalistic palliatives for the children instead of more adult fare that simply spells it out like it T.I.is? The GOP big tent is large enough to accomodate brutal realists, no need to pander to the hypnotized herd in order to go along and get along.

If so, then you're rubbing elbows with the wrong class of conservatives.....,