And No, I'm Not Ready to Give It Up Yet
Iraq.
Remember Richard Clarke? He was Clinton's national security coordinator. After Bush was elected, he begged him to pay more attention to Al Qaida. Bush told Clarke to fuck off, and we knew what happened. Once again, there is nothing that gets you eliminated from consideration as a serious voice on national affairs, like being right.
Well, here's Clarke today, on MSNBC:
Not Obama. Not weak-on-defense liberals. No, the mighty Conservatives and their warmongering brought us the chaos and terror in the Middle East today; and in the process destroyed whatever shreds of moral leadership the United States might have had left after Vietnam and fifty years of the idiotic cold war.
And while I am on the subject, I would like to point out Clarke's estimate of a couple of million deaths consequent to the Iraq invasion. Some people may remember a peer-reviewed study conducted by scientists at Columbia and Johns Hopkins University, and published in the world's premier medical journal, The Lancet, which estimated that up to a million Iraqi civilian deaths had resulted from the U.S. invasion. This study was shouted down by the warmongers in a sterling example of right wing denial of reality, and disappeared from public consciousness. The animus directed toward it was so great that even here at Green Eagle, to avoid meaningless arguments about numbers, I took to referring to "hundreds of thousands" of deaths, rather than the real number. Thank you, Mr. Clarke, for finally being willing to point out the true magnitude of the damage we did in Iraq, because somehow, somewhere, the truth still must count for something.
Not in this country, of course, where Republicans, in their desperation to hide the grotesque, colossal damage they did in the Middle East, will continue to forever deny what they really did.
Remember Richard Clarke? He was Clinton's national security coordinator. After Bush was elected, he begged him to pay more attention to Al Qaida. Bush told Clarke to fuck off, and we knew what happened. Once again, there is nothing that gets you eliminated from consideration as a serious voice on national affairs, like being right.
Well, here's Clarke today, on MSNBC:
"...all the stuff we're seeing today -- the rise of ISIS, the disintegration of the state in Iraq, the disintegration of the state in Syria, I think is directly connected to our invasion...We destroyed the state. This is what happens when you destroy a state. You have chaos, you have the rise of factions, regional and ethic factions," he continued. "And I think you can look at that decision and say that's the reason hundreds of thousands -- probably a couple of million if you add it all up -- people have been killed."
Not Obama. Not weak-on-defense liberals. No, the mighty Conservatives and their warmongering brought us the chaos and terror in the Middle East today; and in the process destroyed whatever shreds of moral leadership the United States might have had left after Vietnam and fifty years of the idiotic cold war.
And while I am on the subject, I would like to point out Clarke's estimate of a couple of million deaths consequent to the Iraq invasion. Some people may remember a peer-reviewed study conducted by scientists at Columbia and Johns Hopkins University, and published in the world's premier medical journal, The Lancet, which estimated that up to a million Iraqi civilian deaths had resulted from the U.S. invasion. This study was shouted down by the warmongers in a sterling example of right wing denial of reality, and disappeared from public consciousness. The animus directed toward it was so great that even here at Green Eagle, to avoid meaningless arguments about numbers, I took to referring to "hundreds of thousands" of deaths, rather than the real number. Thank you, Mr. Clarke, for finally being willing to point out the true magnitude of the damage we did in Iraq, because somehow, somewhere, the truth still must count for something.
Not in this country, of course, where Republicans, in their desperation to hide the grotesque, colossal damage they did in the Middle East, will continue to forever deny what they really did.
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