Yglesias dug up this Crazy Andy gem from April 22, 2003 (not long after Pulling Down the Statue Day):
I was walking through my neighborhood the other day - in D.C.’s hyper-p.c. Adams Morgan - and I swear I’ve been seeing a few more anti-war posters since the war ended. The signs are perhaps expressions of some kind of rage at reality, especially a reality that has surely undermined some of the anti-Bush left’s cherished nostrums - that American military intervention is always evil, that nothing good can come from any Bush policy, that Iraqis will loathe being liberated, and so on.
Since the war ended. Yes, we all remember the end of the war, three fucking years and tens of thousands of deaths ago.
VON HOFFMAN AWARD NOMINEE: (for egregiously bad predictions in wartime) “The administration premised virtually all of its strategy and most of its tactics on the assumption that the civilian population would treat us as liberators. Unfortunately, that basic assumption has been shown itself to be fundamentally flawed.” - Josh Marshall, April 1.
Yeah, Josh was sure off his rocker, wasn’t he? What a left-wing loonie.
And while we’re on the topic, we’d be derelict in our duty to forget this Instapundit classic from April 11, 2003:
Yeah, there has been a lot of pro-war gloating. And I guess that Dawn Olsen’s cautionary advice about gloating is appropriate. So maybe we shouldn’t rub in just how wrong, and morally corrupt the antiwar case was. Maybe we should rise above the temptation to point out that claims of a “quagmire” were wrong — again! — how efforts at moral equivalence were obscenely wrong — again! — how the antiwar folks are still, far too often, trying to move the goalposts rather than admit their error — again — and how an awful lot of the very same people who spoke lugubriously about “civilian casualties” now seem almost disappointed that there weren’t more — again — and how many people who spoke darkly about the Arab Street and citizens rising up against American “liberators” were proven wrong — again — as the liberators were seen as just that by the people they were liberating. And I suppose we shouldn’t stress so much that the antiwar folks were really just defending the interests of French oil companies and Russian arms-deal creditors. It’s probably a bad idea to keep rubbing that point in over and over again.
Nah.
posted at 04:36 PM by Glenn Reynolds
As the third anniversary of the war approaches, I’m in agreement with FAIR — it’s time to go back and take a second look at what its cheerleaders believed at the time. Feel free to send in your own favorite blasts from the warblogging past.
… looks like my own thoughts at the time were just a wee bit more nuanced…
My friends at FAIR don’t get enough respect — they were tracking right-wing media bias long before any of these Johnny-Come-Lately media activists who get all the attention these days. Anyway, they’ve just released a compilation of stupidly triumphalist punditry from the runup to and early days of the war, inspired by something Cal Thomas wrote at the time:
“All of the printed and voiced prophecies should be saved in an archive. When these false prophets again appear, they can be reminded of the error of their previous ways and at least be offered an opportunity to recant and repent. Otherwise, they will return to us in another situation where their expertise will be acknowledged, or taken for granted, but their credibility will be lacking.”
And in the spirit Mr. Thomas surely never intended, a few pundits (and publications) who clearly need an opportunity to recant and repent:
“Iraq Is All but Won; Now What?”
(Los Angeles Times headline, 4/10/03)
“Now that the combat phase of the war in Iraq is officially over, what begins is a debate throughout the entire U.S. government over America’s unrivaled power and how best to use it.”
(CBS reporter Joie Chen, 5/4/03)
“Congress returns to Washington this week to a world very different from the one members left two weeks ago. The war in Iraq is essentially over and domestic issues are regaining attention.”
(NPR’s Bob Edwards, 4/28/03)
“The only people who think this wasn’t a victory are Upper Westside liberals, and a few people here in Washington.”
(Charles Krauthammer, Inside Washington, WUSA-TV, 4/19/03)
“We had controversial wars that divided the country. This war united the country and brought the military back.”
(Newsweek’s Howard Fineman–MSNBC, 5/7/03)
“We’re all neo-cons now.”
(MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)
“The war was the hard part. The hard part was putting together a coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there and all their equipment and winning. And it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is hard, but it is not as hard as winning a war.”
(Fox News Channel’s Fred Barnes, 4/10/03)
“What’s he going to talk about a year from now, the fact that the war went too well and it’s over? I mean, don’t these things sort of lose their–Isn’t there a fresh date on some of these debate points?”
(MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, speaking about Howard Dean–4/9/03)
“I doubt that the journalists at the New York Times and NPR or at ABC or at CNN are going to ever admit just how wrong their negative pronouncements were over the past four weeks.”
(MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, 4/9/03)
“I’m waiting to hear the words ‘I was wrong’ from some of the world’s most elite journalists, politicians and Hollywood types…. I just wonder, who’s going to be the first elitist to show the character to say: ‘Hey, America, guess what? I was wrong’? Maybe the White House will get an apology, first, from the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd. Now, Ms. Dowd mocked the morality of this war….
“Do you all remember Scott Ritter, you know, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector who played chief stooge for Saddam Hussein? Well, Mr. Ritter actually told a French radio network that — quote, “The United States is going to leave Baghdad with its tail between its legs, defeated.” Sorry, Scott. I think you’ve been chasing the wrong tail, again.
“Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like Daschle, Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, and all those others, will step forward tonight and show the content of their character by simply admitting what we know already: that their wartime predictions were arrogant, they were misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe, these self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes. But I doubt it. After all, we don’t call them ‘elitists’ for nothing.”
(MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, 4/10/03)
“Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is going to have to hang its head for three or four more years.”
(Fox News Channel’s Dick Morris, 4/9/03)
“I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing to take that wager?”
(Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly, 1/29/03)
Although seemingly less brutal than physical methods, no-touch torture leaves deep psychological scars on both victims and interrogators. One British journalist who observed this method’s use in Northern Ireland called sensory deprivation "the worst form of torture" because "it provokes more anxiety among the interrogatees than more traditional tortures, leaves no visible scars, and, therefore, is harder to prove, and produces longer lasting effects." Victims often need extensive treatment to recover from injury far more crippling than mere physical pain. Perpetrators can suffer a dangerous expansion of ego, leading to escalating cruelty and lasting emotional disorders. Though any ordinary man or woman can be trained to torture, every gulag has a few masters who take to the task with sadistic flair — abhorred by their victims and valued by their superiors. Applied under the pressure of actual field operations after 1963, psychological methods soon gave way to unimagainable cruelties, physical and sexual, by individual perpetrators whose improvisations, plumbing the capacity for brutality, are often horrifying. — Alfred W. McCoy, A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation From The Cold War To The War On Terror
Salon has posted all 279 photos and 19 videos they obtained from the Army’s internal investigation of the torture and murder of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. This is probably not all the photos from Abu Ghraib. According to Salon, there were two Criminal Investigation Command reports. The first looked at 1,325 photographs and 93 videos of "suspected detainee abuse." The second report contained the smaller number of images Salon has posted. They have no information about how or why the CID culled fewer than one-quarter of the original images.
Whether or not we’re looking at something incomplete, the photographs, arranged chronologically, and with the CID’s captions of who and what the photos depict, tell the story in a way that makes it far easier to understand what’s going on in the photos, and how the actions evolved.
The earliest photos, taken in mid-October 2003, show what Alfred McCoy calls "no-touch torture" — hooding, stripping, stress positions, methods that leave no physical scars, but are designed to leave prisoners disoriented, confused, humiliated, and blaming themselves for their own abuse. The guards did not come up with this. It’s been CIA practice for decades. But within a very short time, that "expansion of ego" McCoy talks about starts taking over, and the guards are acting like petty gods in control of their own small worlds, leashing a prisoner like an animal, placing others in sexual positions.
They’re not really in control, of course. For instance, a CID agent ordered the torture of the iconic hooded and wired man — who is probably not the man identified by the New York Times last Saturday, by the way (although the same torture may have been used on more than one prisoner). The agent told guards to keep him awake and "make his life a living hell." In their own improvised way, they did just that.
But increasing cruelty is not the only sign that practicing psychological torture had a horrible effect on the guards. The clearest sign is the story behind the worst — although far from the most famous — Abu Ghraib photos, those of Manadel al-Jamadi, who was killed by the CIA, and then packed in ice and left in the room where he was murdered while they tried to figure out what to do with his body. Probably the most disturbing photos were of Charles Graner and Sabrina Harman grinning and giving thumbs up signs over his battered corpse.
The story:
According to Graner’s April 2005 testimony to CID investigators, shortly after he and Harman came on the night shift, he remembered noticing that an odd fluid was leaking out of the 1B shower into his office. He said he pulled a spare key he had to the shower room and opened the door. Graner said that there, on the far side of the room, he and Harman saw a sealed body bag leaking fluid across the floor. "We opened it up and looked at it," Graner said. "No one told us not to go into the shower."
Graner and Harman decided to pose for pictures with the body.
What horrors does it take to twist a human being so badly that he stumbles upon a battered corpse, and feeling neither horror nor pity, or maybe feeling both, and finding no way to express either, decides to take joking photos?
Look at the photos, all the photos, and you may have the answer.
HARTFORD — Anti-Iraq War sentiment heated up at the state Capitol Tuesday as 11 state lawmakers endorsed a planned rally against U.S. policy in Iraq.
State House Assistant Majority Leader David McCluskey, D-West Hartford, got so whipped up about U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman’s strong support for the war that he made a comment he quickly regretted.
“In spite of all the many good things Senator Lieberman has done, this (Iraq war) is the overriding moral issue, and if he doesn’t change his position, I cannot be with him in good conscience,” McCluskey said during a news conference to promote Sunday’s rally.
“He needs to come to Jesus on this one,” McCluskey said. A short time later, McCluskey apologized for making a comment that might offend Lieberman, a devout Orthodox Jew.
* * *
McCluskey said he thinks there will be a lot of Democratic officials who won’t show their unhappiness with Lieberman until they go to vote. “I don’t believe every public official is going to come out and support Ned Lamont. But I believe in the voting booth they will,” McCluskey said.
State Rep. J. Brendan Sharkey, D-Hamden, who also endorsed the upcoming rally, dislikes Lieberman’s position, but hasn’t decided whom he will support in the U.S. Senate race.
“I have a lot of respect for Joe on a lot of fronts,” said Sharkey, a longtime critic of the war. “I’ve been very disappointed with his steadfast support not only for the invasion but for his support for the premise for the invasion.”
What just happened a few minutes ago is that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, the reason why there was an objection, is Frist declared he wants to bring this up for an immediate vote tonight, so it will not be a free pass. He wants to get Democrats on record here, make them decide whether they want to take what could be seen as an extreme stand and vote for a censure of President Bush.
Frist is gambling that in fact this will go down something like 85-to-15 or 90-10 because a lot of Democrats are probably saying they will not support this.
Assuming only ten Democrats end up supporting the censure resolution, where does that leave us? Well, take a look at these internals from the latest CBS poll (via Atrios) :
If only 10 of 44 Democrats are willing to stand against the President, that gives Bush a greater approval rating among Democratic Senators (77%) than among his own base (74%). Cowards.
I’m getting a number of emails from people who seem personally offended that the book tour isn’t taking me to their neck of the woods. Here’s the thing: I wish I could take an entire month off, with no responsibility other than to travel around and meet friendly people who appreciate the work I do. Seriously, it beats the hell out of actually doing the work. Unfortunately, the creative process I’ve settled into over the years just doesn’t lend itself to travel very easily. Between the weekly deadline and family responsibilities, it’s just not that easy for me to take off for extended chunks of time. I have a pretty good job, but unfortunately, I don’t have the freedom of time or movement of, say, a filmmaker or a musician.
This tour ended up focusing on the West Coast, mostly because of the parameters I set out for the publicist: I could afford to take one week off, max, and to get the most out of that time, I wanted to have a booksigning appearance every night. They were, for reasons I’m not entirely clear on, determined to send me to Los Angeles, and the rest developed from there.
Anyway, no one should feel slighted. It’s not like we had a meeting at the publisher’s office in which I sat around saying, “No way am I going to that shithole!” as various locales were suggested. When you have about 45 minutes of unscheduled time in any given city, tourism isn’t really the main consideration.
Andrew Sullivan’s attempt to defend himself for his support of George Bush is infuriating. Like so much of what he writes, the lesson is that if Andy does something, it’s because he’s carefully considered both sides of an argument and made a reasonable, informed decision. When liberals come to the exact same conclusions, it’s because they’re petty, ignorant, hyper-partisan and motivated by nothing other than a blind hatred for all things Bush :
[Krugman] has one decent point: yes, I lionized George W. Bush for a while after 9/11, and, in retrospect, my attempt to place trust in him at a time of national peril was a misjudgment. But then, in times of peril, some of us feel that supporting the president, whoever he is, and hoping he gets things right, are not contemptible impulses. I should have been more skeptical. In less dire circumstances, I might have been. But some of us, in the days after 9/11, did not immediately go into partisan mode, put aside some of our other objections (like the fiscal mess and the anti-gay policies), and rallied behind a president at war.
Andy, do us all a favor and cut the bullshit about “some of us…did not immediately go into partisan mode”. I don’t know anyone who didn’t to give George W. Bush the benefit of the doubt after 9/11. Anyone. Even those I knew who hated Bush with a passion were willing to give the illiterate goob a second chance. Everyone I know was hit with the same soul-crushing despair on 9/11 and was desperate for a leader to unite behind.
But remember back to those confusing days after the attacks, you may recall that George W. Bush wasn’t anywhere to be found. So all the goodwill was going to the guy who stepped up and did his job for him, Rudy Giuliani. Hell, Bush wasn’t even the first President to step up to the plate :
Over now familiar refrains of “that’s unreal,” and “I can’t believe it,” and pregnant moans of “wow,” a spectacle of a different kind captured unblinking New Yorkers yesterday afternoon. Out of Manhattan’s Union Square came a welcome and commanding sight: former President Bill Clinton, surrounded by a growing mass of people.
. . .
“We need to just bolster people’s spirits right now, and support the president and the government,” he said between handshakes. “They’re going to need some time with this.”
Clinton, who was in Australia when New York and Washington, D.C., were attacked, said he had spent the previous 24 hours flying to New York on an Air Force plane. He was kept informed of developments by his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).
. . .
Many said Clinton’s short appearance both magnified and made up for what they called President George W. Bush’s shortcomings during this crisis. The White House announced that the president would visit New York, for the first time, today.
“So far he has not been a comforting presence,” said Emily Vacchiano, 26, who lives in SoHo. “He has not conveyed compassion or strength. Just the sight of him [Clinton] cheered everyone up today.”
But even with this leadership void and the President leaving all the heavy lifting of comforting a shell-shocked nation to Rudy and Bill, all of the lefties I knew were willing to heed Clinton’s advice and give the Administration some time. Even with the President giving the best speech of his life a week later, actions speak louder than words.
And that’s where most of us got off the bus. Andy may be proud to pat himself on the back for putting aside his objections to “the fiscal mess and the anti-gay policies”, but where was the sense of bipartisanship and sacrifice in the President’s actions after 9/11? I’m all about compromise, but the President’s agenda didn’t change one iota after the attacks on New York and Washington D.C.
To use the examples cited, Bush was [s]elected ten months earlier against the backdrop of a booming economy with the promise to cut taxes and give Americans “their” money back. With the attacks sure to have a heavy economic toll, the centerpiece of Bush’s agenda suddenly became a one-size-fits-all solution that would reinvigorate the economy. Booming economy? Tax cuts. On the eve of a recession? Tax cuts. With a few million $300 checks in the mail, a lot of us were left asking “Are you sure you don’t need that money to, say, go after Osama bin Laden?”. Doesn’t wartime require a sacrifice of some sort?
The “anti-gay policies” was an even bigger indicator that 9/11 didn’t anything about the President’s plans for the country. In post-attack America, that was unified and bracing for war, the President could have easily issued an executive order overturning the absurd “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy with a statement like “anyone willing to die for his or her country has earned the right to defend the nation without being judged”. As a result of the result of the President being perpetually stuck in “partisan mode”, we’ve seen hundreds of people discharged since 9/11 (including at least 7 Arabic translators).
So spare me this crap about liberals being overly partisan following 9/11. The President got everything he wanted after the attacks (the PATRIOT Act being the best example), but once it was clear that the spirit of bipartisanship and compromise was only going to be one-sided, Americans of all stripes started to realize that the President couldn’t be taken at his word. With an event as jarring as what we experienced, a lot of us were hoping the catchphrase “9/11 changed everything” would be…well..true. But it wasn’t. The only thing 9/11 changed was the justifications for the actions the President already wanted to take.
The fear of been criticized can be paralyzing. Just look at the way so many Democrats caved in the run up to the war. In 2003, a lot of us were saying, where is the link between Saddam and bin Laden? What does Iraq have to do with 9/11? We knew it was bullshit. Which is why it drives me crazy to hear all these Democrats saying, “We were misled.” It makes me want to shout, “Fuck you, you weren’t misled. You were afraid of being called unpatriotic.”
Five minutes is all it takes, really. Less, if you’re not that chatty. In five minutes, you can speak up for the rule of the law. In five minutes, you can put your own footprint in history, as one of the mass of millions who advocated for the censure of a President who broke the law. Years from now, no matter what the outcome, you can look back and say you stood up when Congress stood down, you pushed your party forward no matter how much it wanted to cower back in the shadows. Are you ready?
Today, I ask each of you to take a few minutes and contact your Senator and ask them to sign on as a co-sponsor to Senator Russ Feingold’s censure resolution. You can find your Democratic Senator’s full contact info, including fax and local numbers, here. If you don’t have any Democratic Senators, please call Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid– he’s your leader too, and ask him to help hold the President accountable for his crimes.
