Any list of the many major Bush defects would be shamefully incomplete if it didn’t include Doug Feith. With a smug victory lap indiscriminate finger-pointing of a book to promote, Feith is now touring the country explaining why the Iraq mess is everyone else’s fault. Inevitably Ahmad Chalabi, a neocon darling, con man and nincompoop, figures large in the story. Keep in mind that Chalabi is an agent for Iran.
“Antagonism to him actually wound up having a major effect on the shaping of U.S. policy,” says Douglas Feith, an architect of the war in Iraq.
[…] “Feith says that Chalabi had a “longstanding bad relationship” with the CIA and several people at the State Department. What’s more, he explains, the State Department and the National Security Council were at odds over how to deal with him.
If I knew that Chalabi was a useless font of bullshit intelligence and likely agent for an antagonistic foreign power then I wouldn’t feel all that guilty about antagonizing him. I guess that’s the difference between me and Doug Feith.
Particularly note the incoherence of Feith’s defense. The underlying message of Feith’s two interviews with NPR is that if America had followed his “liberation not occupation” strategy, this whole mess would have turned out just fine. I suppose that’s true in the sense that 4000 Americans would be alive right now, but how exactly did Feith envision Saddam’s removal helping us? There were four chief power centers in Iraq after we invaded: The Sadrists, the Iranian-allied Shiites such as Dawa and SCIRI (now ISCI), the Sunnis and the Kurds. Sistani doesn’t count because his religious perspective rules out taking an active political role. The Kurds don’t want anything to do with south-central Iraq. Handing over power to one of Saddam’s nephews seems silly and empowering SCIRI is literally the same thing as passing the keys to Tehran. The Sadrists weren’t even on our radar until they took a fast lead in the occupation body count.
That leaves…who? Feith thinks that we should have knocked over Saddam and left, which agrees with most reports of what neocons had in mind, but Feith only vaguely references some unnamed “external leaders.” Why not name them? There weren’t that many exile groups working with us at the time. Gary Makiya didn’t want to job. Richard Perle underlined the point in 2006:
In an interview last week, Perle said the administration’s big mistake was occupying the country rather than creating an interim Iraqi government led by a coalition of exile groups to take over after Hussein was toppled. “If I had known that the U.S. was going to essentially establish an occupation, then I’d say, ‘Let’s not do it,’ ” and instead find another way to target Hussein, Perle said. “It was a foolish thing to do.”
RC: As I write in the book, Wolfowitz and Feith never told Garner how to select the interim government. If they did that, they feared it would force a White House-level decision on the political transition that could backfire on them. Their hope, as described to me by people familiar with the process, was that Garner would naturally gravitate toward Chalabi and the other exiles because they would be the best organized Iraqis. Well, as we all know, that didn’t happen. Chalabi and his ilk weren’t all that organized, or well-regarded among the Iraqis.
George Packer in Assassin’s Gate (via Amazon Book Reader):
Just two or three days before leaving for Kuwait, Jay Garner held his first and only press conference. When a reporter asked whether he would hand power over to Chalabi and the INC, Garner replied, “I don’t intend to empower the [Chalabi-led] INC. I don’t have a candidate. The best man will rise.”
That night, he received several agitated calls from Feith. Garner found him so difficult to work with, simultaneously overbearing and mentally scattered, that he had taken to sending his deputy, a retired lieutenant general named Ron Adams, to deal with the undersecretary. On the phone Feith lamented, “You’ve damaged the INC, you’ve caused Ahmad embarrassment.”
Garner snapped, “Hey, goddamnit, then what you need to do, Doug, is have a little press conference in the morning and say, ‘We’re firing Garner because he embarrassed Amad Chalabi.'”
“We can’t do that.”
“Then get off my ass.”
Jay Garner was sacked within two months of taking the job; the reasons he cited were enlightening. Asked about the call(s) by Steve Inskeep, Feith gave the usual non-denial answer (“I don’t remember every call I make…”).
We invaded Iraq without having any domestic Iraqi faction in mind to take over after us. The only “option” was the INC. In every meaningful way the INC meant Ahmad Chalabi, an Iranian agent who had such a profound constituency in the country that his bloc failed to win a single seat in Iraq’s national election on December 15, 2005. So what was plan B? I’m glad you asked.
“There was no Phase IV plan” for occupying Iraq after the combat phase, writes Maj. Isaiah Wilson III, who served as an official historian of the campaign and later as a war planner in Iraq. While a variety of government offices had considered the possible situations that would follow a U.S. victory, Wilson writes, no one produced an actual document laying out a strategy to consolidate the victory after major combat operations ended.
These are the guys who don’t want to talk about the past. Imagine that.
***
(*) Tommy Franks on Douglas Feith: “I have to deal with the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth almost every day.”
4tehlulz
It’s all Clinton’s fault.
Tom
SEE VIDEO and Help the antiwar efforts of Tomas Young and others, pass it on to others.
Promoting this film helps the antiwar movement. I interviewed Phil Donahue in this Representative Press Video, please help amplify his efforts and my efforts, get this video to others. It is important that good crowds show up at the theaters. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9 the movie is showing in NY and Donahue and the co-director will be there. Spread the word.
See VIDEO: See Body of War, Hear Body of War * Part 2
I want Phil Donahue’s appearance in my video to have been productive so I am really trying to get this video maximum exposure.
Jen
from the Slate link.
I lawled. I’m a dork.
Desargues
Feith’s stupidity is indeed gigantic. A ‘coalition of exiles’ wouldn’t have lasted a week in power without the backing of the US Army’s might. I was in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s, and I know from personal experience that returned exiles have no clout. The large majority of the population regards them with contempt and mistrust, because they didn’t suffer like the rest of them under tyrannical regimes. Plus, they all lack a local power base, which is vital for acquiring and consolidating political power. They can’t mobilize the loyalty of the locals, and lack a patronage network to ensure it for them. This is what makes al-Sadr so popular — he stayed in Iraq even as his father was killed by Saddam Hussein, and suffered with the rest of the impoverished Shi’as.
So again, without American troops, Chalabi and his exiles would have been ousted in no time. But that contradicts the central premise in Feith’s argument: that the American army could have liberated Iraq, installed an exile regime, and left.
As a foreigner, I keep being amazed every day by the discrepancy between the intelligence and abilities of ordinary Americans and the lobotomized incompetence of their leaders. It’s such a mystery to me how this can happen.
Zifnab
To be fair, Clinton could have ended all of this back in the early nineties if he’d just told the neo-cons to piss off and pushed for the UN to lift sanctions they were already eager to lift.
This isn’t to excuse neo-con stupidity by any stretch of the imagination. But Clinton’s hands are hardly clean. He was bombing Saddam back in ’98 long after everyone in the know knew the guy didn’t have any WMDs. And it was the Desert Fox mission that lead no small number of middle-of-the-road independents to assume Bush wasn’t totally full of shit when he and Powell started talking about roving chemical labs and aluminum tubes.
So yes. Clinton fucked up on this one. Bush just managed to outperform his predecessors stupidity by leaps and bounds.
Josh E.
I’ve always thought the “stupidest guy on the face of the earth” line was a little off. I’m sure Feith is smart in the sense that he did well at school, knows a lot of information, etc. I think I read a more apt quote in the Atlantic a while ago about this whole crew: “They are smart men. They are educated men. But they are not wise men.”
Soliton
To a big extent it is because Americans believe their own propaganda. Comforting lies are much more readily received than are discomforting truths.
Our leaders are experts at one thing, the comforting lie.
That’s all they really need. See: Reagan, Ronald Wilson
Gus
Desargues, you must not meet many ordinary Americans.
mark
Count me in as one who got conned by this. But who was “everyone in the know”? Was this public knowledge? Or was our wonderful librul media drinking the kool-aid along with me?
Wisdom
Unknowable to most, in Gov’t there are some able visionaries and there are some able bureaucrats. But very rarely those who are both. This administration did not fail in vision, 50 million free people are a testament to that. If there was one thing that could not be forseen, it was that the bureaus and international institutions would be so incompetent and petty, eager to encourage turning this effort into a failure at every opportunity.
As always, liberals want to pile on some visionary like Feith. I have no doubt that he and Gen. Franks (reviled by so many leftists, but embraced when it comes to Feith) would clash – Franks did not want anything to do with Phase IV, he and his staff couldn’t get out of Iraq fast enough. If he’d felt so strongly about not doing Phase IV operations, why didn’t he say something about it?
Davis X. Machina
Shorter Wisdom:
“Movement Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed.
Next time we’ll have really committed cadres.”
The Cold War is over, and Lenin won.
Fwiffo
Jail is a four letter word?
Doug “lovechild of Steve Forbes Richard Gere” Feith has been making the rounds on the talking head programs peddling his book. I feel the pain of Tommy Franks every time I see him. I don’t think there is a stupider fucker anywhere.
4tehlulz
Svensker
Well, yeah, the plan was to knock over Saddam, install Chalabi et al, set up our permanent forward bases from which to attack Iran and Syria, have Iraq recognize Israel, and build the Iraq to Haifa pipeline. The WMD horseshit was just that — something to make the rubes go along with the plan. Ditto the “liberation” of Iraqis. For those rubes who went along with it, how’s that horseshit smelling to you now? Pretty dang expensive horseshit, too, ain’t it?
The important thing was to get the bases and, at that, Bush appears to have succeeded. Even if Obama (or Clinton) manages to get the presidency, it is likely those bases will still be available for when the next NeoCon Death Lord gets into the Oval Office. If they have to put off the attacks against Iran and Syria for a few years, don’t expect them to say “oh, well, we tried.” They’ll be back and the bases will still be there.
joe
That’s not quite right. The ISG has confirmed that Saddam DID have some WMDs remaining in 1998 (most of them having been destroyed under the supervision of the UN inspection teams), and it was only AFTER Operation Desert Fox that he ordered them destroyed.
4tehlulz
>>I don’t think there is a stupider fucker anywhere.
You mean other than those who think he’s a visionary?
Fe E
FTW
DBrown
What country are you talking about? Iraq never had that large a population (30 million at best.)
This article proves that bloddy-hands-cheney and his talking puppet bushwhack, are the stupidist assholes to ever hold office – not to have even a plan much less a backup to run a fucking country is beyond belief; only repubics could vote for such idiots
joe
I recall all the chest-pounding and back-patting among, well, certain people on the right about how much more worldly and clear-eyed they were than the deluded, idealistic hippies who opposed the war.
And these people couldn’t see through Ahmed Chalabi? The guy is a shiny-suit-wearing playa, and anyone with a lick of sense could have seen that from fifty paces.
National Review, for example, was running articles about “the George Washington of Iraq” back in the 90s!
Jen
Wow, wisdom. So Doug Feith is such a visionary that some day Iraq will be teh awsum that there will be statutes of him next to the Baghdad Starbucks, but the only thing he couldn’t foresee, despite this incredible vision, was that unspecified “bureaus and international institutions” would, either incompetently or deliberately, sabotage his glorious plan.
This makes no sense on at least eleventy different levels.
ed
The best part may be how Feith’s specific method of spreading Democracy is by simply installing a leader, election free. It’s “1984” for the mouth-breathing Fox News set.
Gerald Curl
So many lies were told in this war that it’s hard to even separate them out in one’s mind. But the one that will always remain crystal clear for me was the lie President Bush told about never meeting Chalabi after Chalabi got in trouble in the summer of 2004. Bush said this only a few months after Chalabi was a special guest at the State of the Union and sat behind Laura Bush during the speech.
Chalabi is a convicted crook (faces 22 years in prison in Jordan), a spy for Iran and a spreader of lies (he was a U.S. government source on WMDs and the main source for Judy Miller’s bullshit). I will never forgive the mainstream American media for failing to expose this guy.
joe
McCain/Chalabi ’08: Stay the Course.
Tom in Texas
OT but funny:
Venezuela cancelled the Simpsons because it was unfit for children. The replacement programming?
Baywatch.
Tim F.
Um, not everyone who sees visions is a visionary. Being a “visionary” normally calls for some unusual insight into the subject matter. If he thought that Iraqis would happily answer to a Dictator Chalabi then Feith was hallucinating.
rawshark
Is Wisdom from Powerline? This sounds a lot like the ‘Bush is so brilliant but people can’t tell’ story.
Jen
For nuance, I prefer Ross Douthat: Bush is a failure, but we won’t know how big a failure he is until we see whether he’s a Civil War-type failure, or just a Great Depression-type failure, and historians who are already ranking him last are jumping the gun.
Brachiator
As Desargues notes, Chalabi’s main problem was not that he was a con man or an agent for Iran (he has always been more for himself than for anyone else), but that he was a leader of an exile group with absolutely zero local support.
Neocons, and oddly some liberals, seem incapable of grasping the concept that the US cannot simply impose “leaders” on a country, especially if the idea is to create a “democracy.”
One of the best examples here is not Vietnam, but Cuba, where the smartest guys in the room during the Kennedy Administration were shocked, shocked to learn that the Cuban people did not magically coalesce around the exiles put on the ground during the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco. Instead, the exiles were routed and captured in short order, providing a great propaganda victory for Castro.
What “we had in mind” was irrelevant, and obviously doomed to failure from the start. Intelligence analysis was ignored which clearly warned that Iraq might dissolve into warring camps. And the notion that a faction might take over and suppress others is incompatible with the neocon fantasy of the rise of a strong coalition government in which all groups would be represented.
Perhaps things might have been different had there been some Iraq equivalent of Poland’s Solidarity movement — a strong, indigenous, popularly supported democratic group.
But there wasn’t. There was only the opportunistic factions that arose from the vacuum created by Saddam’s fall.
Of course, the fantasy pushed by Bush and his stupid agents such as Douglas Feith is that since everybody just naturally wants democracy, it doesn’t matter whether or not there is any viable local democratic movement in Iraq or where ever else the US might choose to “liberate.” You just have to invade, sprinkle a little neo-con holy water, shock and awe, and before you know it you have a pro-Western coalition government. Not.
sglover
Is Feith actually doing a book tour? The regular kind, in which he shows up at bookstores and gives a little spiel and then signs copies?
Somehow I kinda doubt that he has the guts to do it. But I for one would absolutely **love** to get face-to-face with the scumbag. Anybody know if I can expect him at Politics & Prose, or some such venue?
Jen
Tim F. is an anagram of FTW, if you turn the “m” upside down and ignore the “i”.
The Other Steve
We need to focus on the future, not dwell on the past.
Sure in the future these idiots who damaged our country may find new jobs allowing them to do more damage. But we can deal with it then, not now. Doing so now would be vindictive.
jake
Well, there’s your problem. They mistook him for a reflection in the mirror and fell in love. We’re talking about a group of fucknuts lead by a man who looked into Putin’s soul, and didn’t punch him in the face. He subjected Musharraf to similar inspection and didn’t puke.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
I hate to bring the harsh light of reality on what was seared — SEARED!!XI XI XI ! — in your “crystal-clear” memory, but Frank Rich and Think Progress (who harped on this for awhile) got debunked on this short-lived meme long ago, after somebody (maybe me) spent 10 seconds with our friend Google.
So Bush never said he hadn’t met Chalabi — in fact, he plainly says rather the opposite, and he readily recalls the SOTU address visit. So, again, who was the liar here? Frank Rich or Bush?
I do hate shattered crystal.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Trotsky, actually.
A non-trivial number of the neocons were actual honest-to-god Trotskyites in their misspent youth. Also, if you had to pick a branch of communism that combined hair-brained visionary idealism with a total disregard for organization and can’t-run-a-lemonade-stand levels of massive incompetence, that would be the one.
joe
I don’t know, Jen.
There’s a lot of win in jake’s comment.
Svensker
THE PRESIDENT: My meetings with him were very brief. I
You’re supposed to DRINK the Kool-Aid, not munch on the little packets.
4tehlulz
You know how sometimes a hitter will be so stunned that a pitch was served so perfectly into his wheelhouse that he can’t swing at it?
I now know how that feels.
OniHanzo
Google is only sometimes your friend, EEEL. But good try. The issue is that Bush tried to put some kind of rhetorical distance between himself and his admin and the cheap Mardis Gras float they tried to put in Saddam’s place…. the issue is that there’s a vast difference between gladhanding some unknown in the handshake line, per Bush’s dishonest little spoonful of bullshit and this:
How extensive a conversation do you think they had?
Stick to snorting your crystal instead of trying to shatter other people’s.
cbear
An Iranian spy and an Israeli spy (Feith) planning the liberation and occupation of Iraq. What could possibly go wrong?
Excellent point—however I would go even further and point out that the previous (Eisenhower) administration’s “smartest guys in the room” thought it was a good idea to arm the Castro insurgency. That worked out real well.
Similiarly, I expect our current policy of arming the Sunnis AND the Shia in Iraq to pay big dividends for the U.S..
Gerald Curl
E,E,E&L,
I wasn’t trying to say that Bush didn’t meet Chalabi at the SOTU (I phrased it poorly). Bush’s lie is that he hadn’t “had any extensive conversations with him.”
They’re not going to develop that because right here in the Oval Office I sat down with Mr. Pachachi and Chalabi and al-Hakim, people from different parts of the country that have made the firm commitment, that they want a constitution eventually written that recognizes minority rights and freedom of religion.
President Bush, February 8, 2004
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Thanks, but I think I was very precise on what the issue was. Certain leftwingers had pumped out an outright lie — saying that Bush said one thing when he, in reality, had clearly said the exact opposite — and it was clearly and honestly debunked with a simple search and link (which anyone could have done if they had been, you know, journalists…or just intellectually curious).
I was correcting the poster’s “crystal clear” memory of the bald-faced lie he was fed by Frank Rich, or Think Progress, or TPM, or whoever. End of issue.
If you want to argue the further point honestly, then go ahead, but it has nothing to do with my post.
OniHanzo
I seem to recall the Jordanian king rescinded those embezzlement charges. Did I imagine that?
rawshark
Keep splitting that hair Mac.
Gerald Curl
The king proposed a pardon, but it was rejected by Chalabi who said he wanted an apology. I don’t think in the end a pardon was issued.
OniHanzo
EEEL, if you can’t get your head around the fact that the denial of “extensive conversations” is what he lied about or even pay attention to the blatant contradiction in his statements… then seriously, friend, I can’t fucking help you.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
If you say so. But if it were so crystal clear in your memory, I’d think you’d be able to distinguish between “said he never met him” and “said he never had extensive convo with him,” which are two entirely different things. Especially since “said he never met him” was the Frank Rich meme from the start. Also, your explanation doesn’t ring true in light of what you posted earlier (Why would you have mentioned his seat at the the SOTU address? That would only prove they’d met, not had extensive conversation).
Anyway, now your crystal clear memory of Teh Most Egregious Bush Lie Evah! is reduced to your definition of “extensive conversation” vs. the Prez’s, as regards a meeting he had with several leaders that didn’t include you. Sorry, that’s not terribly compelling for your case.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
There are many reasons that you can’t help me, and my ability to understand you isn’t one of them.
DBrown
What Trotsky are you talking about?
The one who took a broken, ill equip (by Russian standards, considered third world by European std), reorganized and equipped it, provided supplies/transportation locally and then crushed the Russian White army (heavily supplied by England/France/US with money/arms/supplies – we held all major Russian sea ports!) and forced the retreat of the English/French/American expeditionary forces and beat back a number of uprisings all over a two year period. That guy was a genius for organizing a country and setting up an effective military; however, a total idiot when it came to the political side (Stain, a ice pick axe and vacation = bad headache!)
Timb
From EEEL: “Nothing to see here. I defend the failed policies of this administration over at my proteeny site, and insist everyhting is going fine until Obama starts his race war, BUT if just one of you points out that the President’s deception (Whaaa??? Who’s this Chal-a-by guy you guys are talking about. I think I saw him once) was mis-reported as a lie instead of deception? Then I will step in and correct the record. The president was hiding the truth not lying about it. I’m here to correct the record.
“Well, not correct the record, since this is an unimportant point in a much broader discussion and all I bring is smoke to obscure the vileness of my heroes’ actions and beliefs. But, by parsing I have known the only victory I will ever know in the upcoming 8 years of electoral hardship.”
I’ll pick on your closer, though. Bush is the liar and Frank Rich was wrong.
By the way, EEEL, don’t you have to troll a martial arts site for Jeff and track down little white guys who offend him.
Can Goldstein go anywhere without antagonizing people or playing the victim?
cbear
Sure thing, bud.
I mean, no one could predict that Bush might resort to lying about his connections to numerous and sundry assholes. After all, he and Kenny Boy Lay only met in passing, right?
People like you remind me of what Warren Harding’s father had to say about his son:
“If you were a girl, Warren, you’d be in the family way all the time.”
Gerald Curl
The best part of that transcript is the Oscar level acting by Bush. “Chalabi?” Huh? What? Whozzat?
Svensker
The point it, Bush wanted to pretend that he barely knew the guy, had only shaken hands with him in a receiving line, and asked him about his kids and his lovely wife. Just like the Abramoff thing. Clinton did the plausible deniability stuff pretty well, but the Bush Regime has perfected it. And you’re still crunching on those Kool-Aid crystals real hard. What’s your favorite flavor — lime? fruit punch?
Here, I’ll make it clear for you: Dear Leader is a lying sack of shit, a war criminal, and a nincompoop.
TenguPhule
Shorter EEEL: 100 more years of Fuckstain McCain baby!
Tsulagi
You crack me up, Lambchop. You and “Bush is a misunderstood genius” Assrocket must be special friends. A snippet from your previous blockquote…
Of course Tard doesn’t say how many meetings, but to be fair, is he ever really all there in any of them?. Then when he thinks real hard about it, he “thinks” maybe he saw him in a rope line. Certainly not in the Oval Office as noted from OniHanzo’s link, nor when sharing a little turkey with the administration’s darling in Baghdad in 03…
Keep carrying the Bush jizz, Lambchop. Don’t change.
binzinerator
Desargues, roughly half of this nation twice insisted on having a fuck-wit for president. They said he was somebody they could sit down with and have a beer. That means they felt comfortable he wouldn’t give them that sense of inferiority and inadequacy they often get when sitting too close to intelligent and articulate and learned people.
In other words, American dumbfucks recognized one of their own.
I’m glad you met the better half, it makes us look good but sadly it’s not an accurate impression.
Gerald Curl
You’re right EEEL. I didn’t know that in your world a person, totally out of the blue, can get invited as a special guest to the SOTU. The President doesn’t even have to know who he or she is!
I was wrong to use the word “meeting” as shorthand for “discussing important things with people.” From now on the word “meeting” will exclude everything other than short perfunctory flesh touching. In fact, I will tell my boss that we are only supposed to hold hands and pat shoulders at our “meetings.” We might be able to squeeze in a “Thank you for coming…how’s the wife?” But if we want to discuss actual business we will have to arrange for “extensive conversation” time.
Sorry, I have to go find Angelina Jolie and shake her hand (I do so want to be the guest of honor at her and Mr. Pitt’s wedding).
ed
One thing Gen. Franks got right. Mr. Feith was recently on my favorite comedy show, The Savage Nation. Despite the host trying to help him, Mr. Feith could not explain anything in his own book!
Brachiator
Bush, Cheney and the neo-con goon squad was obsessed with the idea that they could show America and all the idealistic hippies how the Vietnam war could have been won by securing a victory in Iraq.
Rumsfeld and Cheney in particular also tried to show the American people how tough-minded and clear-eyed they were, when they were only falling back on the worst 1950s Ugly American approach to foreign policy, the idea that the US, as the lone superpower, could do whatever they want, combined with the arrogant presumption that whatever puppet we put in power or support in Iraq or Pakistan would not only do whatever we wanted, but would be accepted by their people just because the US government said so.
As I noted in another thread, the US government is still working overtime to support Chalabi as a potential major playa in Iraq:
There was a great blog piece on the story not too long ago (Gangsta Lean: The L.A. Times Would Have You Believe Ahmad Chalabi Was A Largely Reputable Person). This piece includes substantial excerpts from the LA Times piece.
The original LA Times story might still be available here, Chalabi returns to prominence and power .
Feith’s continued obtuseness and self-justification reminds me of another central tenet of the Bush Administration. They never admit that they are wrong, even when caught in a lie. And they seem incapable of getting out of their own way with respect to their stranglehold on a rigid, narrow ideology, which is doubly ironic when they insist that they are hard-headed realists. They can’t process new facts, and their response to everything is to just keep on keeping on with their old plans and policies.
And worst of all, they keep trying to recycle rejects, from Chalabi to Wolfowitz, into positions of authority and power.
Tony J
And what always choked me about this meme was that the guy was a (supposedly) recovering alcoholic who had stopped drinking because it made him an aggressive prick who would get so wasted he’d drunk drive so he could pick a fight with his own father.
Someone, Rove or one of his gollums, must have come up with that one. Take your candadate’s weakness and turn it into a strength by selling the MSM on the idea that Bush’s alcohol-related asshattery couldn’t be an election issue because the average American Joe had already decided that they didn’t see it as a negative. They’d still rather down a beer with him than drink with Al Gore. And since Bush was a famous prick when in his cups, what did that say about Gore?
People are stupid. Just ask them
Enlightened Layperson
EEEL: I’m not sure it even matters how extensive the Bush Administration’s contacts with Chalabi were. The subject here is Doug Feith, and Feith makes it clear, to this day, that our mistake was not that we relied too much on Chalabi, but that we didn’t rely on him enough.
As for Chalabi, I fully agree with Desargues and Brachiator. Anyone who has been in exile for nearly 50 years (since age 13) is going to be completely out of touch with his country and worthless. I can’t imagine how this anyone could fail to figure that out.
rawshark
That’s because you are approaching the problem assuming they give a shit. What’s to figure out? They want something, they find a way to do it and then do it. If it works, fine. If not, they say it worked and then the Lambchops of the right use lawyerly argument methods to prove you can’t prove it didn’t work.
conumbdrum
Ahmad Chalabi must go down in history as the greatest flim-flam man of all time. The guy suckered the White House, hosed the Pentagon and played the New York Times like hillbilly rubes at a three-card-monte game. I’m still blown away that Dick Cheney didn’t have him whacked by Special Ops after the shit hit the fan about his Iranian connections. Instead, Chalabi has somehow fast-talked his way into working with us yet again.
Truly, this man could fall headfirst into a hog wallow and emerge with diamonds in his pockets.
Birdzilla
ASSUALT ON REASON by AL GORE he is comopletly unreasonible himself a complete jerk