Hubris and Folly
The Infinite Echo
B. Thomas Cooper
Editor
Just two of the words used by Thomas E. Ricks, senior Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post to describe the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq and its management of the war and subsequent occupation.
And those were the nice words.
In his new book, Fiasco, Ricks also accuses George Bush of being misguided, and incompetent, providing a plethora of disturbing detail, guaranteed to cause the reader great anxiety.
“President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 ultimately may come to be seen as one of the most profligate actions in the history of American foreign policy,” Mr. Ricks warns. “The consequences of his choice won’t be clear for decades, but it already is abundantly apparent in mid-2006 that the U.S. government went to war in Iraq with scant solid international support and on the basis of incorrect information — about weapons of mass destruction and a supposed nexus between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda’s terrorism — and then occupied the country negligently. Thousands of U.S. troops and an untold number of Iraqis have died. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent, many of them squandered. Democracy may yet come to Iraq and the region, but so too may civil war or a regional conflagration, which in turn could lead to spiraling oil prices and a global economic shock.”
Indeed!
This as members of Congress prepare to sue the president over his liberal use of so called ‘Signing Statements, believed by many, including myself, to be in direct violation of constitutional restraints preventing erosion of the balance of power.
Meanwhile, Iraqi civilians continue to die at an average rate of one hundred per day, as has been the case since early May. I certainly hope they all enjoyed their brief dance with Democracy.
The Infinite Echo
http://theinfiniteecho.blogspot.com/
B. Thomas Cooper
Editor
Just two of the words used by Thomas E. Ricks, senior Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post to describe the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq and its management of the war and subsequent occupation.
And those were the nice words.
In his new book, Fiasco, Ricks also accuses George Bush of being misguided, and incompetent, providing a plethora of disturbing detail, guaranteed to cause the reader great anxiety.
“President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 ultimately may come to be seen as one of the most profligate actions in the history of American foreign policy,” Mr. Ricks warns. “The consequences of his choice won’t be clear for decades, but it already is abundantly apparent in mid-2006 that the U.S. government went to war in Iraq with scant solid international support and on the basis of incorrect information — about weapons of mass destruction and a supposed nexus between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda’s terrorism — and then occupied the country negligently. Thousands of U.S. troops and an untold number of Iraqis have died. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent, many of them squandered. Democracy may yet come to Iraq and the region, but so too may civil war or a regional conflagration, which in turn could lead to spiraling oil prices and a global economic shock.”
Indeed!
This as members of Congress prepare to sue the president over his liberal use of so called ‘Signing Statements, believed by many, including myself, to be in direct violation of constitutional restraints preventing erosion of the balance of power.
Meanwhile, Iraqi civilians continue to die at an average rate of one hundred per day, as has been the case since early May. I certainly hope they all enjoyed their brief dance with Democracy.
The Infinite Echo
http://theinfiniteecho.blogspot.com/
posted by B. Thomas Cooper | 9:04 AM
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