Let's review
What do we know?
We attacked Saddam, who we knew hadn't attacked us on 9/11, because of the threat that he would give weapons he didn't have to terrorists he wasn't working with. We had to strike preemptively, and couldn't wait for the UN and other countries, because we didn't want to wake up to a mushroom cloud, from a nuclear weapon Saddam couldn't build with uranium we knew he didn't buy from Niger, purified in a centrifuge we knew he couldn't build with aluminum tubes we knew couldn't be used to build one.
Got that? Good. To do this, we redeployed Special Forces troops away from the hunt for the guy who DID attack us on 9/11, and the White House stopped the Pentagon from acting on its plans to strike at the one major terrorist Saddam might actually be working with, which would derail us from attacking Saddam. That terrorist now has a base he didn't have before (where he is chopping off the heads of Americans) in a no-go zone that exists because of the lawlessness and chaos we knew would result if we didn't send as many troops as we knew we needed, which we didn't, even though we knew beforehand we would need them, because we'd been told by the general who we then canned.
Afterward, when the guy we put in charge there asked for them, we didn't send them either, and disbanded the only local, organized body of trained people who could help establish order. We sent this large number of unemployed people with guns and training in explosives, who we didn't keep track of, into a shattered economy we didn't replace or repair, administered by right-wing 20-somethings who'd never done such a thing, or much of anything, before in their lives, and fired some people who actually had experience in rebuilding countries. We also turned down offers of international assistance, preferring to keep the contracts exclusively for American companies, like Halliburton who over-charged us and, by the way, is writing checks to Dick Cheney for his deferred compensation.
Still with me? OK. The guy we wanted to be President in Iraq hadn't been there in 20 years, was known to lie, and was probably an Iranian operative. When we discovered no one would listen to him, we instead installed a CIA and MI6 asset, who gives speeches written by Republicans, but is very brave because Saddam sent men to chop him with an ax, and who is seen by Iraqis, for some reason, as a tool of the Americans. This isn't such a good thing anymore, particularly since everyone saw those photos of Abu Gharib, where agencies which will not be named tortured and killed Iraqis, who they kept but did not name to the Red Cross, as authorized by Donald Rumsfeld, who takes responsibility but hasn't been fired because he's doing a "superb" job. Other Iraqis were tortured separately by Army soldiers who probably hadn't had enough training and may have been confused about the Geneva Conventions which we still subscribe to even though the top of their chain of command has lawyers that say they don't have to.
Moving on. We have caught and jailed the guy who didn't attack us, and we haven't caught and jailed the guy who did attack us. We also jailed a bunch of other guys who may or may not have attacked us, but they didn't have a right to tell anyone whether they had or not, until the Supreme Court said they did, after they spent a couple of years in Guantanamo. One of these guys turned out to have American citizenship, but he was extra-specially dangerous, so he was held in a brig in the US with no charges, and had to be kept in solitary confinement, and couldn't be allowed to talk to a lawyer, until he was, and we let him go with no charges and sent him back to his family without much fanfare.
Meanwhile, we have a system that makes sure that Teddy Kennedy can't get on a plane in Boston, and also makes sure the singer of "Peace Train" doesn't actually land in Washington, though he was ON a plane to Washington, and had BEEN in Washington two months earlier meeting with the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to talk about charity work, because it's important that we spend government money to help people through spreading the word of God. We don't have a system that makes sure bombs can't get on planes, but we have a brand-new government department that's in charge of that, and will be getting to it real soon now, which the President was against until he was for it.
Got all that? Fine. Now hang on. Here's where it gets tricky.
The guys in charge of all this want to keep their jobs, and think we should vote for them in November.
Yeah, I can't follow that last bit, either.
We attacked Saddam, who we knew hadn't attacked us on 9/11, because of the threat that he would give weapons he didn't have to terrorists he wasn't working with. We had to strike preemptively, and couldn't wait for the UN and other countries, because we didn't want to wake up to a mushroom cloud, from a nuclear weapon Saddam couldn't build with uranium we knew he didn't buy from Niger, purified in a centrifuge we knew he couldn't build with aluminum tubes we knew couldn't be used to build one.
Got that? Good. To do this, we redeployed Special Forces troops away from the hunt for the guy who DID attack us on 9/11, and the White House stopped the Pentagon from acting on its plans to strike at the one major terrorist Saddam might actually be working with, which would derail us from attacking Saddam. That terrorist now has a base he didn't have before (where he is chopping off the heads of Americans) in a no-go zone that exists because of the lawlessness and chaos we knew would result if we didn't send as many troops as we knew we needed, which we didn't, even though we knew beforehand we would need them, because we'd been told by the general who we then canned.
Afterward, when the guy we put in charge there asked for them, we didn't send them either, and disbanded the only local, organized body of trained people who could help establish order. We sent this large number of unemployed people with guns and training in explosives, who we didn't keep track of, into a shattered economy we didn't replace or repair, administered by right-wing 20-somethings who'd never done such a thing, or much of anything, before in their lives, and fired some people who actually had experience in rebuilding countries. We also turned down offers of international assistance, preferring to keep the contracts exclusively for American companies, like Halliburton who over-charged us and, by the way, is writing checks to Dick Cheney for his deferred compensation.
Still with me? OK. The guy we wanted to be President in Iraq hadn't been there in 20 years, was known to lie, and was probably an Iranian operative. When we discovered no one would listen to him, we instead installed a CIA and MI6 asset, who gives speeches written by Republicans, but is very brave because Saddam sent men to chop him with an ax, and who is seen by Iraqis, for some reason, as a tool of the Americans. This isn't such a good thing anymore, particularly since everyone saw those photos of Abu Gharib, where agencies which will not be named tortured and killed Iraqis, who they kept but did not name to the Red Cross, as authorized by Donald Rumsfeld, who takes responsibility but hasn't been fired because he's doing a "superb" job. Other Iraqis were tortured separately by Army soldiers who probably hadn't had enough training and may have been confused about the Geneva Conventions which we still subscribe to even though the top of their chain of command has lawyers that say they don't have to.
Moving on. We have caught and jailed the guy who didn't attack us, and we haven't caught and jailed the guy who did attack us. We also jailed a bunch of other guys who may or may not have attacked us, but they didn't have a right to tell anyone whether they had or not, until the Supreme Court said they did, after they spent a couple of years in Guantanamo. One of these guys turned out to have American citizenship, but he was extra-specially dangerous, so he was held in a brig in the US with no charges, and had to be kept in solitary confinement, and couldn't be allowed to talk to a lawyer, until he was, and we let him go with no charges and sent him back to his family without much fanfare.
Meanwhile, we have a system that makes sure that Teddy Kennedy can't get on a plane in Boston, and also makes sure the singer of "Peace Train" doesn't actually land in Washington, though he was ON a plane to Washington, and had BEEN in Washington two months earlier meeting with the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to talk about charity work, because it's important that we spend government money to help people through spreading the word of God. We don't have a system that makes sure bombs can't get on planes, but we have a brand-new government department that's in charge of that, and will be getting to it real soon now, which the President was against until he was for it.
Got all that? Fine. Now hang on. Here's where it gets tricky.
The guys in charge of all this want to keep their jobs, and think we should vote for them in November.
Yeah, I can't follow that last bit, either.
posted by Paul at 1:17 PM |
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