One thing I still don’t understand about Iraq is why nobody in the Bush Administration apparently anticipated this long-running insurgency. Wasn’t it reasonably foreseeable that some of Iraq’s tens of thousands of Republican Guard troops, and hundreds of thousands of regulars, could simply hide their weapons and melt back into the population so they could live to fight another day after the US invasion? It’s not as though this scenario is unprecedented in history, or even in American history. Isn’t this the textbook solution for how to fight a more powerful invader? Let the invader come in, and then wear him down with skirmishes until he runs out of money, soldiers, and support back home. All those military experts who were trained at West Point and who were (presumably) advising Bush…did they forget about Viet Nam? Or the Soviet invasion of Afganistan? Or the American Revolution? How stupid does a person have to be to not know this?
W's recent realization about insurgents should be coupled with his disingenuous gem of a statement from the March 21, 2006 press conference:
"But we realized on September the 11th, 2001, that killers could destroy innocent life."
Realized this only on 9/11? Such a strange thing to say!
Here's more of that exhange between the president and Helen Thomas. When the disinformation gets THIS intense, you have to wonder whether it is lying or whether it a dissociative state or some other clinical condition:
Q I'd like to ask you, Mr. President, your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is, why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, from your Cabinet — your Cabinet officers, intelligence people, and so forth — what was your real reason? You have said it wasn't oil — quest for oil, it hasn't been Israel, or anything else. What was it?
THE PRESIDENT: I think your premise — in all due respect to your question and to you as a lifelong journalist — is that — I didn't want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong, Helen, in all due respect —
Q Everything —
THE PRESIDENT: Hold on for a second, please.
Q — everything I've heard —
THE PRESIDENT: Excuse me, excuse me. No President wants war. Everything you may have heard is that, but it's just simply not true. My attitude about the defense of this country changed on September the 11th. We — when we got attacked, I vowed then and there to use every asset at my disposal to protect the American people. Our foreign policy changed on that day, Helen. You know, we used to think we were secure because of oceans and previous diplomacy. But we realized on September the 11th, 2001, that killers could destroy innocent life. And I'm never going to forget it. And I'm never going to forget the vow I made to the American people that we will do everything in our power to protect our people.
Part of that meant to make sure that we didn't allow people to provide safe haven to an enemy. And that's why I went into Iraq — hold on for a second —
Q They didn't do anything to you, or to our country.
THE PRESIDENT: Look — excuse me for a second, please. Excuse me for a second. They did. The Taliban provided safe haven for al Qaeda. That's where al Qaeda trained —
Q I'm talking about Iraq —
THE PRESIDENT: Helen, excuse me. That's where — Afghanistan provided safe haven for al Qaeda. That's where they trained. That's where they plotted. That's where they planned the attacks that killed thousands of innocent Americans.
For more of the press conference, see http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/03/2…