Frank Rich: Is Condi hiding a smoking gun?
New York Times
If, as J.F.K. had it, victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan, the defeat in Iraq is the most pitiful orphan imaginable. Its parents have not only tossed it to the wolves but are also trying to pin its mutant DNA on any patsy they can find.
George Tenet is just the latest to join this blame game, which began more than three years ago when his fellow Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Tommy Franks told Bob Woodward that Douglas Feith, the Pentagon’s intelligence bozo, was the “stupidest guy on the face of the earth” (that’s the expurgated version). Last fall, Kenneth Adelman, the neocon cheerleader who foresaw a “cakewalk” in Iraq, told Vanity Fair that Mr. Tenet, General Franks and Paul Bremer were “three of the most incompetent people who’ve ever served in such key spots.” Richard Perle chimed in that the “huge mistakes” were “not made by neoconservatives” and instead took a shot at President Bush. Ahmad Chalabi, the neocons’ former darling, told Dexter Filkins of The Times “the real culprit in all this is Wolfowitz.”
And of course nearly everyone blames Rumsfeld.
This would be a Three Stooges routine were there only three stooges. The good news is that Mr. Tenet’s book rollout may be the last gasp of this farcical round robin of recrimination. Republicans and Democrats have at last found some common ground by condemning his effort to position himself as the war’s innocent scapegoat. Some former C.I.A. colleagues are rougher still. Michael Scheuer, who ran the agency’s bin Laden unit, has accused Mr. Tenet of lacking “the moral courage to resign and speak out publicly to try to stop our country from striding into what he knew would be an abyss.” Even after Mr. Tenet did leave office, he maintained a Robert McNamara silence until he cashed in.
Satisfying though it is to watch a circular firing squad of the war’s enablers, unfinished business awaits. Unlike Vietnam, Iraq is not in the past: the war escalates even as all this finger-pointing continues. Very little has changed between the fourth anniversary of “Mission Accomplished” this year and the last. Back then, President Bush cheered an Iraqi “turning point” precipitated by “the emergence of a unity government.” Since then, what’s emerged is more Iraqi disunity and a major leap in the death toll. That’s why Americans voted in November to get out.
The only White House figure to take any responsibility for the fiasco is the former Bush-Cheney pollster Matthew Dowd, who in March expressed remorse for furthering a war he now deems a mistake. For his belated act of conscience, he was promptly patronized as an incipient basket case by an administration flack, who attributed Mr. Dowd’s defection to “personal turmoil.” If that is what this vicious gang would do to a pollster, imagine what would befall Colin Powell if he spoke out. Nonetheless, Mr. Powell should summon the guts to do so. Until there is accountability for the major architects and perpetrators of the Iraq war, the quagmire will deepen. A tragedy of this scale demands a full accounting, not to mention a catharsis.
(Continued here.)
If, as J.F.K. had it, victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan, the defeat in Iraq is the most pitiful orphan imaginable. Its parents have not only tossed it to the wolves but are also trying to pin its mutant DNA on any patsy they can find.
George Tenet is just the latest to join this blame game, which began more than three years ago when his fellow Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Tommy Franks told Bob Woodward that Douglas Feith, the Pentagon’s intelligence bozo, was the “stupidest guy on the face of the earth” (that’s the expurgated version). Last fall, Kenneth Adelman, the neocon cheerleader who foresaw a “cakewalk” in Iraq, told Vanity Fair that Mr. Tenet, General Franks and Paul Bremer were “three of the most incompetent people who’ve ever served in such key spots.” Richard Perle chimed in that the “huge mistakes” were “not made by neoconservatives” and instead took a shot at President Bush. Ahmad Chalabi, the neocons’ former darling, told Dexter Filkins of The Times “the real culprit in all this is Wolfowitz.”
And of course nearly everyone blames Rumsfeld.
This would be a Three Stooges routine were there only three stooges. The good news is that Mr. Tenet’s book rollout may be the last gasp of this farcical round robin of recrimination. Republicans and Democrats have at last found some common ground by condemning his effort to position himself as the war’s innocent scapegoat. Some former C.I.A. colleagues are rougher still. Michael Scheuer, who ran the agency’s bin Laden unit, has accused Mr. Tenet of lacking “the moral courage to resign and speak out publicly to try to stop our country from striding into what he knew would be an abyss.” Even after Mr. Tenet did leave office, he maintained a Robert McNamara silence until he cashed in.
Satisfying though it is to watch a circular firing squad of the war’s enablers, unfinished business awaits. Unlike Vietnam, Iraq is not in the past: the war escalates even as all this finger-pointing continues. Very little has changed between the fourth anniversary of “Mission Accomplished” this year and the last. Back then, President Bush cheered an Iraqi “turning point” precipitated by “the emergence of a unity government.” Since then, what’s emerged is more Iraqi disunity and a major leap in the death toll. That’s why Americans voted in November to get out.
The only White House figure to take any responsibility for the fiasco is the former Bush-Cheney pollster Matthew Dowd, who in March expressed remorse for furthering a war he now deems a mistake. For his belated act of conscience, he was promptly patronized as an incipient basket case by an administration flack, who attributed Mr. Dowd’s defection to “personal turmoil.” If that is what this vicious gang would do to a pollster, imagine what would befall Colin Powell if he spoke out. Nonetheless, Mr. Powell should summon the guts to do so. Until there is accountability for the major architects and perpetrators of the Iraq war, the quagmire will deepen. A tragedy of this scale demands a full accounting, not to mention a catharsis.
(Continued here.)
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1 Comments:
Finally, somebody recognizes that Rice deserves the blame.
She has been wrong from the get-go. Nobody asked questions. Consider this exchange from Sept. 28, 2003 … five months after the invasion.
MEET THE PRESS : Why did the administration so dramatically underestimate the cost of this war?
DR. RICE: We did not have perfect foresight into what we were going to find in Iraq. The fact of the matter is that this deteriorated infrastructure, one that was completely covered and covered over by the gleaming pictures of Baghdad that made it look like a first-world city …
Why didn’t someone ask the UN Inspectors what the level of electricity was in the country ? They were on the ground and would know what was going on.
Rice’s statement last Sunday the “The question of imminence isn’t whether or not somebody is going to strike tomorrow” seems counter to the National Security Strategy of 2002 which argued “We must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilites and objectives of today’s adversaries.”
And even if it is accepted that intelligence errors before the war were “worldwide” while discounting IAEA ElBaradei and Germany’s intelligence service comments, the fact is that even IF everyone from Bill Clinton to Jacques Chirac believed the WMD capablities of Saddam, they DID NOT invade Iraq on that basis. Monitoring of activities and UN Inspections should have proceeded.
Rich points out the administration’s line portraying Iraq’s current violence as a Qaeda plot hatched by the Samarra bombing of February 2006.
Why didn’t Rice realize that when the Jordanian Embassy was bombed in August of 2003 and then less than two weeks later, the UN Headquarters, that there were serious problems? Wasn’t the other key turning point the mutilation of American private contractors in Fallujah in April of 2004? Those events happened long before the Samarra bombing. Isn't this evidence that the problem was ex-Batthists and displaced Sunnis then al Qaeda?
Remember that on October 6, 2003 President Bush assigned his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, the authority to manage postwar Iraq naming her as head of Iraq Stabilization Group. On November 10, 2003, she said “We must stay this course. Our will will not be broken. And we are fighting back. You hear about what happens to American men and women in uniform. But this is a very active strategy, too, of going into these areas, rooting out these remnants. We, on any given day, make many, many arrests. We are killing a number of the enemy. But the key is that the United States and the coalition increasingly has Iraqi partners who are involved in bringing security to Iraq. And I just want to say one other thing -- I just want to say one other thing, 93 percent of the incidents are in an area of the country around Baghdad, Fallujah, Tikrit -- the long-known-to-be-stronghold-of-Baathism. Most of this country is stable. Most of this country is getting back to normal. We will get a handle on this security situation and resolve the problem..”
That’s the crux of the problem … she failed.
Doesn’t every military leader agree that the solution is not a military but political. Rice has failed BIG TIME on the diplomatic side.
I have said if since 2003, Rice has preformed horribly yet get virtually no blame
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