You can find it here. In case you're too young to know what the crack about "the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat" refers to, that's where he said "we know where the weapons of mass destruction are." In case you're too young to know what Weapons of Mass Destruction™ is all about, that's why the U.S. invaded Iraq, because of the Imminent Threat™ posed by the Weapons of Mass Destruction™ which in fact did not exist.
The entire campaign for war was based on an edifice of lies, generated by Rumsfeld and R.B. Cheney, to justify what they intended to do even before the 2000 election. They also intimated that Saddam Hussein had something to do with al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 attack, which was approximately the opposite of the truth since Osama bin Laden despised Saddam as an apostate.
If you read the European press at the time, as I did, you would know that this was all lies because the European news agencies and publications said so. In the U.S., however, anyone who tried to make that claim was shouted down by a furious mob of pundits and academic "experts" as a traitor and Objectively Pro-terrorist™. The biggest cheerleader for the war, and key purveyor of propaganda, was the New York Times. The way it worked was that Cheney would tell "reporter" Judith Miller a lie, which the Times would then dutifully print without attribution as a fact, whereupon Cheney would say in public, "You don't have to believe me, it's in the New York Times."
What is hard to believe is that they launched the invasion with absolutely no plan as to what was supposed to happen next. The result was years of chaos and violence in which by the high estimate something like a million people died. I'm not going to read the New York Times obituary.
Well yes, I do generally have a low opinion of mass murderers. I fully own that.
2 comments:
Sometimes I think it would be good if the New York Times had an obituary! The problem, of course, is that as staid and non-progressive as they are, they have some journalists who write amazing articles. But except for Paul Krugman, they don’t seem to have many staff members who perceive that our country’s Machiavellian machinations have lethal consequences around the world and at home for people with darker skin tones. Or worse yet, and probably the truth in most cases: they know, and don’t give a shit.
I have always been way too far down the food chain to matter but I knew a number of SMEs who were tearing out their collective hair over this insane shit. Most of us opposed invading Afghanistan as well, arguing that we could "solve" the AQ problem with one MEU and one SEAL Team. Sadly, most of my comrades still don't understand they were psyop'd.
Rot in hell, Rummy; even your detail hated you.
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