Condoleezza Rice, US Secretary of State, speaking during a visit to Britain has acknowledged that the US has erred in a thousand ways in Iraq. Unfortunately her refreshing admission was diluted by her argument that those tactical mistakes should be judged against the bigger picture of the US getting rid of dictator Saddam Hussein to, ahem, ‘pave the way for democracy’.
Many Iraqis would have immediately said to her “If what we are currently experiencing is American understanding of democracy, please take it back to your own country.”
Iraq is right now in the midst of the worst spate of sectarian violence as ethnic and religious animosities have exploded into the dreaded civil war that will benefit only one nation in the region, and need we even ask who that is?
Indeed I admire Rice as a highly intelligent and very capable person, and understand her loyalty to her president, but she has stretched her credibility too far and insulted our intelligence by arguing that ‘the US and British invasion of Iraq three years ago be judged on its strategic goal - the ouster of dictator Saddam Hussein’.
Note how she has splitted hairs over the terms 'tactical' and 'strategic' to demonstrate to us that, the US might have made some relatively small errors (dead Iraqis and Amnmerican soldiers wouldn't be able to contradict her on this of couse) but there would be a greater good at the end of it all (does she mean like right NOW?).
If there weren’t so many Iraqis slaughtered with their country turned into the hell hole it is now, we might have just laughed at Rice’s arguments that the US motive had been to oust Saddam for democracy. But thanks to Bush's stupidity - for being led by the nose into committing the US' greatest strategic blunder in its short history, apart from its tactical loss of 2000 plus lives and trillions of dollars - both Iraqi and American families have suffered enormously at the hands of American draft dodgers.
Note KTemoc also knows how to use the two words of 'strategic' and 'tactical'.
Iraq had been on the neo-cons' hit list just as Iran continues to be today – all for the benefit of one nation in that region, even at the expense of America’s own national interests.
When 9/11 occurred, the neo-cons led by Dick Cheney and egged on by the instigators, who motivated avaricious Cheney into drooling a la Pavlov with visions of controlling Iraq’s incredible oil reserves, fabricated the case for attacking Iraq.
If one were to read the ‘Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on the US Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq’ two things are worth mentioning. The 9/11 Report clearly spelt out former US deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz’s urgings that Iraq be attacked for the 9/11 incident when no such evidence of Iraqi involvement existed. Furthermore it stated that there was ‘no credible evidence’ supporting Paul Wolfowitz’s argument that Iraq was involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre.
The Report noted that Defence Secretary Rumsfeld also urged the president to consider that Iraq might have harboured the attackers.
‘Consider’! Attack on suspicion! Therein lies the genesis of the evil of US military killing Iraqis and Afghans on the basis of ‘suspicions’, as in 'suspected' terrorists.
Yes, Iraq was already in one nation’s gun sight – don’t ask which nation but a hint, it was not the USA because that would have been against its interests to destabilize Iraq by invading and occupying it.
The other point the Report revealed was the internal tussle between the pro-war-invasion-occupation-of-Iraq Cheney camp and the more-internationalist Colin Powell’s State Department. For example, one lie that both Bush and Blair fabricated to attack Iraq was that Saddam had purchased uranium from Niger. In fact the US State Department’s bureau of intelligence and research (INR) has consistently dismissed that allegation. Niger has only two uranium mines, where one was flooded and the other managed by a French company, which exercised very strict control over the uranium product.
From the Bush-Blair lie, the Valerie Plame affair arose. The INR was proven correct, that Bush-Blair had lied through their teeth. The Senate 9/11 report demonstrated that intent amply. The sinister aim of the administration of President Bush Jnr had always been to invade and occupy Iraq. It’s original lie was the non-existent WMDs, which both Blair and Bush knew right from Day 1, and which a recent revelation by the New York Times confirmed.
Then there was the fallback lie, the ridiculous nonsense about Saddam Hussein’s link with al Qaeda. Again, the US Senate 9/11 Report put short shift to that most incongruous allegation of a relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, by showing that al Qaeda considered Saddam Hussein as an American stooge. It also brought out evidence to dismiss the allegation that Mohamed Atta, one of the 9/11 attackers, had met with an Iraqi intelligence officer.
Bush's casus belli continued to tumble like a house of cards, before it degenerated into ‘regime change’. Why not then change the draconian regimes in Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and, when they had the chance, Uzbekistan? All of those regimes were supported and abetted by the USA. Look back at history and see the immoral US complicity in draconian dictatorships all around the world.
The obdurately defiant statement of "He's a bastard but he's our bastard" has been attributed to President Harry Truman in describing a US ally, the brutal Nicaraguan dicatator Somoza, as well as various other US presidents about their dictator clients. The statement does tell us of the hypocritical US claims of democracy (read that as US' interests).
However, allowing for Rice’s defence of President Bush and his idiotic decision to attack Iraq for another nation’s interest at the cost of over 2000 American lives [let alone several thousands of Iraqi ones’], what is significant has been Rice’s new admission. Though she has previously acknowledged US mistakes in Iraq, such as the shambolic and virtually non-existent Iraq’s reconstruction and delays in training Iraqi security forces, her remarks during her visit to Britain has signalled the possibility of far more extensive US errors. This is a first from the US Secretary of State. What else will emerge?
She said: "Decisions, when you look at them in historical perspective, that were thought at the time to have been brilliant, turn out to have been really rather bad - and vice versa."
Obviously her ‘vice versa’ was a valiant but futile clutching at straws, but one thing’s for sure, today the USA has become one of the most despised and feared, if not hated, regimes of the world!
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Read here to know what is Foo Yong Hai that's mentioned in the posting's title? It's about eggs in Rice's face for her nonsense ;-)
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