Wednesday, January 30, 2008

The stupid will continue until we leave, I guess

We're almost at the 5-year mark for this misbegotten war, and they're still making up the reason for being there in the first place:
Wurmser said that Cheney, Feith, and Bolton were convinced that U.S. containment of Saddam Hussein was failing and that the controls to keeping Saddam Hussein from expanding his regional influence were dying. As a result, the Iraqi leader was in position to exploit the rising anti-Americanism in the region and to break out from the sanctions strategy and the no-fly zones to lead a rogue coalition of nations to expel the United States from the region and even to wage war against the United States. The failure of the United Nations and multilateralism in general made a compelling case for U.S. intervention, according to Wurmser.
I don't even know if this is supposed to be taken seriously.

Saddam Hussein was going to build a coalition? With whom, the 3 2 1 0 countries he hadn't been at war with, or close to war with, in the last 20 years? Wurmser seems to be an idiot, and the reference to "rogue coalitions" is a hint: clearly, there was some Syrian-Iraqi-Iranian superpower alliance that needed to be stopped before it started. Just one thing: the combined GDP of these three countries, today, is just over $1 trillion. That is less than 10% of US GDP, and about what the US spends on all of its security and defense obligations. Meaning that even if Saddam Hussein suddenly became a master diplomat, managed to cobble together an alliance with two of his rivals, and started a war against the United States, it would still be the shortest war ever. Hell, America would barely need to get off the couch. Canada might need to go to the gym for about 30 minutes before winning a war against these jokers.

Man, I miss the days when the excuses for the war were really outlandish, like "the new Iraq will be an Israel-friendly state" or "we're certainly not there for the oil, just don't ask which ministry we're guarding".

2 comments:

That guy said...

Oh, fer....

What really pisses me off is not just the fact that they just keep making up excuses. It's the fact that there are people who obviously believe each new excuse as they hear it for the first time. They're nuts, all of them.

Anonymous said...

What Bush foisted on the American people, our good PM is trying to do on us in Afghanistan.

From helping our friends the American to go after Al Qu'aida, it is now become, "We will stay if we get another 1,000 troops from NATO."

Like you say, Chet - there are people that believe each new excuse/rational.