Author: Jonathan Schwarz

Arthur Silber throws some useful cold water in everyone’s face:

Let us start with the most crucial point. The reaction from all quarters to the NIE relies on several interrelated central assumptions, ones that are regarded as so unquestionably true that no one thinks they need to be stated: that major policy decisions, including decisions of war and peace, are based on intelligence in the first place; that a decision to go to war is one made only after cool and careful rational deliberation; and that nations go to war for the reasons they announce to the world.

ALL OF THIS IS ABSOLUTELY, UNEQUIVOCALLY FALSE.

Read it all.

I agree mostly, but not completely, with Arthur’s take. Certainly the new NIE changes nothing about the bipartisan policy that we must run the middle east, which in turns means we must crush Iran. However, it may change the cost/benefit ratio perceived by our sane evil leaders about how we go about the crushing. It also strengthens the hand of our sane evil leaders vis a vis their insane evil rivals. Strangling and subversion may become more likely and direct military assault less so.

link

Iraq as a Pentagon Construction Site
How the Bush Administration “Endures”
By Tom Engelhardt

The title of the agreement, signed by President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki in a “video conference” last week, and carefully labeled as a “non-binding” set of principles for further negotiations, was a mouthful: a “Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship Between the Republic of Iraq and the United States of America.” Whew!

Words matter, of course. They seldom turn up by accident in official documents or statements. Last week, in the first reports on this “declaration,” one of those words that matter caught my attention. Actually, it wasn’t in the declaration itself, where the key phrase was “long-term relationship” (something in the lives of private individuals that falls just short of a marriage), but in a “fact-sheet” issued by the White House. Here’s the relevant line: “Iraq’s leaders have asked for an enduring relationship with America, and we seek an enduring relationship with a democratic Iraq.” Of course, “enduring” there bears the same relationship to permanency as “long-term relationship” does to marriage.

The rest.

You may have seen National Review has gotten in trouble for publishing some glaringly false stories about Lebanon. If not, Thomas Edsall has written up the basics here; there’s also more from Glenn Greenwald and Ken Silverstein.

Now I’ve posted my own complaints at Mother Jones: first, about my personal experience with National Review online editor Kathryn Jean Lopez, and second, about the Arab “tendency to lie”.

Bob Fertik has a very good question for Peter Osnos, publisher of the book by Scott McClellan set to come out next year.

With John Howard’s defeat in Australia, now’s a good time to look back at the shameless lies he told about Iraq and WMD. I’ve put the details over at Mother Jones.

Farewell, John Howard. Say hello to history’s scrap heap for us.