Antiwar.com Blog

From Think Progress, here is a brief, but very well done, examination of what the architects of the Iraq war are doing now. Covered are Wolfowitz, Feith, Hadley, Perle, Abrams, Wurmser, Natsios, Bartlett, Daniels, Tenet, Powell, Rumsfeld, Rice, Cheney, and Bush.

An ambassador – his name happens to be Timothy Carney – an Iraqi, and a penguin walk into a bar. The bartender asks how the Iraqi will ever possibly pay for his drink. The ambassador replies:

“The point to make there is that Iraq is basically a rich country; that in fact there’s been a successful effort to mightily reduce the debt that Iraq had incurred during the Saddam Hussein era. I would argue that as Iraq returns to its former levels of 3 million-plus barrels a day of oil exported, that you’re going to find as much money as the country needs for the major portion of this effort at maintenance and sustainment as you’ve defined it.”

Oh wait, I think I’ve already heard this joke before; but back in March 2003, it went like this:

A Deputy Secretary of Defense – his name was Paul Wolfowitz – an Iraqi exile, and a penguin walk into the House Committee on Appropriations. A Congressman asks how the invasion and occupation the Bush administration has just launched will be paid for. The Deputy Secretary of Defense replies that our “Second Iraq War” won’t be “overly expensive for American taxpayers”: “There’s a lot of money to pay for this that doesn’t have to be U.S. taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people… and on a rough recollection, the oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years… We’re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.”

Oh, and ambassador Carney, who is officially in Baghdad as the “coordinator for Economic Transition in Iraq,” offered his gem on how the Iraqis could take over paying for the “reconstruction” of their country in a March 9th, 2007 Department of Defense briefing in the Iraqi capital.

When you hear jokes like this repeated almost four years later, head for the exits… fast.

Nazi propaganda poster, 1944. Hey, it’s no more ridiculous than the typical wingnut’s vision of a Sunni-Shia-Papist-Iran-Saddam-al Qaeda-Jacques Chirac-Michael Moore-Pat Buchanan-Dixie Chicks-Kim Jong Il-Antiwar.com axis of evil.

Via Jesse Walker.

Leon Hadar, foreign policy analyst and author of Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East, discusses the difference between what the neocons were trying to accomplish, the sad facts of what’s happened and the way things could have been instead.

MP3 here. (38:16)

Dr. Leon Hadar is a former United Nations bureau chief for the Jerusalem Post, he is the Washington correspondent for Singapore Business Times and a contributing editor for the American Conservative magazine. Hadar has written for numerous newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy and has been interviewed by broadcasting outlets like CNN, BBC and FOX News. He has taught at American University and Mount Vernon College and has been affiliated with think tanks such as the Institute on East-West Security Studies and the Center for International Development and Conflict Management. A graduate of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Hadar earned his MA degrees from the schools of journalism and international affairs and the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, and his Ph.D. in international relations from American University. He is the author of Quagmire: America in the Middle East (Cato Institute, 1992) and of Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

Bill Minutaglio, author of First Son: George W. Bush & The Bush Family Dynasty and The President’s Counselor: The Rise to Power of Alberto Gonzales, discusses the story of attorney general and his relationship with the President and his likely future.

MP3 here. (15:45)

Bill Minutaglio has distinguished himself as an award-winning Texas journalist with the Abilene Reporter-News, San Antonio Express-News, Houston Chronicle, and Dallas Morning News, where he has worked since 1983 as a special writer. His work has appeared in many national publications including Talk, where he is a contributing writer, and the New York Times. He has coauthored two books and served as a contributing author to three others. He lives in Austin with his two children and his wife, Holly.

Today’s spotlight viewpoint is by George Soros, and I think it’s very good, for the most part. But it inspires Jonathan Schwarz to fact-check Slick Willie.