In 1994, invading Iraq was not rationally in the national interests of the United States!
But after we were attacked in September 2001, it was okay for Shooter to lose his head, drink the Kool-Aid of preventive war concocted by NeoConservatives, and to randomly choose an Arab country to shock and awe.
On CNN Now Smearing Tulsi Gabbard for Her (Get this) Insufficient Support
of the Country's Burgeoning Surveillance State
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Their main beef I gather is that a person in charge of intelligence
shouldn't be so a) judicious in its application or b) stymied by
Constitutional res...
27 minutes ago
Did 911 make a difference, or was that just the excuse ?
ReplyDeleteWas it a progressing geo-politcal construct rationale, fueled by a desire to control the reigns of Globalism ? (oil).
Is globalism something that works against the best interests of the American people ?
Did the control of oil, and the desire to be closely associated with a 'special interest' religious group from a neighboring country, have the dominant influence for invading ?
Sandwiched in between Cheney's flip-flopping on invading Iraq is the Neo-Conservatives' Mein Kampf, PNAC's Sept. 2000 Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century (RAD) on page 10 of which we find an argument of expanding the mission of U.S. Armed Forces beyond the traditional capability of waging war in two theaters. RAD urged another capability be added: regime change and occupation:
ReplyDeleteThus, the major-theater-war standard should remain the principal force-sizing tool for U.S. conventional forces.
. . . . past Pentagon wargames have given little or no consideration to the force requirements necessary not only to defeat an attack but to remove these regimes from power and conduct post-combat stability operations. In short, past Defense Department application of the two-war standard is not a reliable guide to the real force requirements
. . . . Because past Pentagon strategy reviews have been budget-driven exercises, it will be necessary to conduct fresh and more realistic analyses even of the canonical two-war scenarios.
RAD anticipated the pace of military transformation will be slowed by the "budget-driven" mindedness of domestic politics (RAD, p. 51):
Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor. Domestic politics and industrial policy will shape the pace and content of transformation as much as the requirements of current missions.
It only took Cheney a few weeks after 11 September '01 to recognize he had his Pearl Harbor.
There you go: How many additional Americans was Saddam worth? Damn, is this Dick Cheney? Is he forgetting the 4,000+ American soldiers and million Iraqis he killed during his flip flop?
ReplyDeleteWhere are all those refugees (Americans) going? Maybe to get jobs in Kuwait at Halliburton?
Messenger, PNAC is indeed the neocon Mein Kampf. Great observation.
What's left out of Cheney's 1994 analysis?
ReplyDelete1. if we'd gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone.
2. There wouldn't have been anybody else with us.
3. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq.
4. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq.
5. Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place?
6. That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it
7. In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.
8. It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.
9. The other thing was casualties. . . in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?
Why did Cheney lose his head after 9-11? And why did the American Sheeple give head?
I think what happened is that the powerful Wahabi sect in Saudi Arabia began putting pressure on the Sauds to get US troops out of their country. Remember that the reasons for Al Qaeda's attacks against the US, even prior to 9/11 were because of US support for Israel and because of US military presence in the home of Islams holiest two sites: Mecca and Medina. To accommodate the Saud family, the AEI started looking for a more stable location for US military bases from which the US could project power to dominate the region, and circa 1997 decided to conquer Iraq. In January 1998, their brother organization, PNAC, tried to convince Clinton to invade Iraq. Cheney is involved in both the AEI and PNAC.
ReplyDelete