January 13, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

DODGING THE TRUTH

Iraq is totally a creature of the right-wing in this country. It was their bumbling and corrupt and incompetent president who launched it. It was they who cheered him on. It was they who tried to give phony rationalizations for this war. Now the right-wing elite, the pundits, don't want to own up to their mistakes. This war could have been won, some claim, but for the "incompetence" in executing the war. This column by Eric Alterman is at www.thenation.com:

The Bush/Cheney war in Iraq has proven to be even more catastrophic than those who had the good sense to oppose it could have predicted. It has killed Americans and Iraqis, destroyed a functioning, albeit unfree nation, increased the threat of terrorism, destabilized the region, empowered our enemies--particularly Iran and Syria--inspired hatred of the United States across the globe and will ultimately cost American taxpayers upwards of a trillion dollars. It is, almost certainly, as Al Gore has noted, "the worst strategic mistake in the entire history of the United States."

The problem the war creates for the punditocracy and the rest of the political establishment is twofold. First, the leaders they backed have not only been wildly incompetent but also impervious to reality. Offered a face-saving exit by the Baker Commission, Bush, Cheney & Co. prefer instead to double down on disaster. Second, there is the problem of the pundits' individual reputations. If William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Lawrence Kaplan and David Brooks et al. are so smart, why were they so wrong about something so crucial? And why, given their sorry records, do they and their editors still think anybody ought to keep listening to them? At the very least, those they misled are entitled to an explanation.