Oh, it must be Sullivan. Sullywatch makes an excellent point in response to a post that they term as a "semi-fisking". You can't argue the points about all the "good outcomes" of the war in Iraq, after the war is "done" other than those points that fit the original premise of the War (i.e. WMDs, imminent threats). Making those arguments now is intellectually dishonest, since they are based on known outcomes, not on pre-war 'intelligence'. I agree, unfortunately, Sullly needs to read a bit more Sullywatch and get his head out of his backside. Here's his argument:
This applies also to the post-war debate about the pre-war. It is relatively easy to criticize the Iraq war, the intelligence behind it, and the post-war reconstruction. It's another thing to say what you would have done instead. Memories are astonishingly short, but the notion that 9/11 did not and should not have impacted our entire defense doctrines is absurd. How we pro-actively tackle the problem of Islamist terrorism, and the morass of the Middle East from which it comes, is an urgent question.
...
Such a nice combination of backward-looking, revisionist thinking and wistful subject-changing, wanting to know what anyone else but Commander Codpiece would have done to remove the onus from his Idol...like I always say, wish in one hand, etc...
posted by Jo Fish on 10.21.03 at 12:42 AM
Comments:
Got a link on Bush's use of "imminent?" Any where? Any time? Even once? One document or speech with the word "imminent." Just one?
And of course, in the SoU, he specifically said that the threat was not imminent, that "terrorists don't announce their intentions."
Oh, let's play the cheap shot game, since those are Commisar's rules. Got any proof nobody in the administration said "imminent"? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence!
Any attempt to find in the above an endorsement of the claim that the occurrence of the exacty term "imminent" is crucial to establishing the mendacity of the administration, or the claim that nobody in the administration ever uttered the word (hint: Ari Fleischer) is hereby notified as being a boondoggle.
posted by: lazyman on 10.21.03 at 10:41 AM [permalink]
So Bush never uttered the two words "imminent" and "threat" together. So why did we attack and occupy a country in March that wasn't an "imminent threat" at a cost of hundreds of US soldier's lives, thousands of Iraqi lives, thousands of US casualties, billions of US dollars?
You dumb hypocritical dittohead fuck.
