So, Juan Cole has provided a reputed transcript from a Spanish newspaper of a meeting on February 22, 2003 between Bush, Rice, and Spanish PM, Aznar at the Crawford ranch. Two claims from this are that Bush declared that he would invade Iraq even if the UN refused to approve it, and, more significantly, there was an offer on the table from Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq, being negotiated by the Egyptians. Price was one billion dollars plus Saddam taking out some documents on WMD (Cole speculating these were ones showing previous US funding and support for chemical weapons development, which the US did when Saddam was fighting Iran in the 80s with Rumsfeld famously shaking his hand back then).
So, Bush has gotten us a million dead and a trillion dollars spent, when he could have spent one billion. This is way beyond being impeachable and well into war crimes territory. (The only blog I have seen mentioning this besides Cole, so far, is marginal revolution, where Tyler Cowen made a comment about the Coase Theorem, and most of the commenters somehow thought that this was all evidence that the "skeptics" on Iraqi WMD were wrong and should now be embarrassed. Ack!)
TPM flagged the El Pais article and transcript a few days ago. This falls into the category of "nothing we didn't already know." Everything is a "conspirarcy theory" until the smoking blue dress is produced and then it becomes "nothing we didn't already know." Pelosi: impeachment is not on the table.
ReplyDeleteJaun Cole also has a link to a lovely slide show of Teheran: a modern city full of beaufiul people, per the slide show. It fits with my very old memory of the city. I found it heart breaking, given what we have done to Iraq.
ReplyDeleteanonymous,
ReplyDeleteReally? Exit by Saddam was not sufficient. There were no WMD to turn over. He was going in irrespective of the UN. Just what were the circumstances that would have led Bush in late Feb. 2003 to have not gone in? He was debating with Blair over March 10 or 14, with "good cop" Blair holding out for the later date.
Get real, anonymous. This is war crimes territory. That is why what Pelosi says about impeachment is irrelevant. We are beyond impeachment with this garbage.
Well, what's to be said? So here is another bit of evidence that the President is belligerent and less than forth coming with the American population. Like the WH spokesman said, That was 2003. They've got the present to worry about. Fifty billion? So much for effective cost assessment. Only off by a factor of ten. And lilfe and limb? Who's to care about that? He's sure of himself, then and now.
ReplyDeleteNone of it matters unless we put an effective opposition into power in 2008. Pelosi and her ilk have shown no inclination to hold anyone responsible for any thing. It's not just George, or his evil twin. It's the entire Congress that sits on its hands asking quizickly, "What, me worry?" Try not to forget all this when November, '08 rolls around.
jack
ReplyDeletei am not likely to forget. but i wonder just where this effective opposition is going to come from.
Juan Cole has been a major thorn in the neocons side for the past five years. I guess the main problem that the neocons have with Professor Cole is his nasty habit of actually getting right what's happening in the Middle East.
ReplyDeleteKen Silverstein also translated the story from El Pais. Silverstein has an excellent post on the Democrats and impeachment.
ReplyDeleteIs the US suffering from the same malady as Australia? The irrelevancy of the two-party system of Government and the culpability of mainstream media in supporting and promoting illegal wars of premption and other crimes.
ReplyDeleteOr could it be simply the demise of the world industrial economies (both socialist AND capitalist alike)?
State coercion, bureaucratic degeneration, personal corruption, failure to economise on energy or avert the long-predictable climate change, rising debt, electoral fraud. Systemic problems not being addressed.
The US economy is structured around the military. War and looting appear to be regarded as far more desirable than structural reform.
Impeaching Bush. Yeah, but after that?
brenda
ReplyDeletei don't think i'd look for the grand solution...except maybe here among friends for something to talk about.
economies have always been about war.. and bureaucratic degeneraton and personal corruption follow pretty closely on the heels of that.
we hav seen that bush is not going to be impeached.
it may be doing some good to keep making noise about the war, and about global warming, but even there the politicians will follow, not lead. and the people won't do anything they don't have to do.
"i don't think i'd look for the grand solution...except maybe here among friends for something to talk about."
ReplyDeleteThe failure to present a grand solution, Coberly, is likely to result in a grand catastrophe in the very near future. In the economic and environmental sphere, we may be already too late for avoiding revolutionary change. Almost certainly.
There has been a loss of 20% of the Greenland ice-cap in the last two years and the boom in credit has exploded electronic balances to many times the real value of wealth on the planet. It seems the two are intimately related. The massive rise in debt has pushed 'entrepreneurs' and governments to avoid environmental stewardship and the degradation and depletion of natural capital has resulted in our living beyond our means, thus the inducement to increase financial debt to sustain expectations of a 'normal' way of living.
Brenda
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about the problem. I just don't see anyone working on the solution. And I guess I am saying that no one will take such big bites as you call for. Lots of little bites are needed first.
i am probably an ignoramus, but huge debts don't worry me. at any given time the debtors can just walk away, the creditors can keep their paper or eat it and their lives will be exactly the same as before, without the visions of sugarplums.
brenda,
ReplyDeletenot unlike a a series of leveraged buyouts of the entire planet with each new ownership trying to exact maximum possible profit by running down plant and equipment, forcing greater intensity of labor while advertising long term overall and real retrogression as progress
finally though, such destructive creation cannot be sustained and the whole set of necessarily self-destructive relations must be scrapped
Coberly,
the capital system cannot be solved but more or less understood. this system eats reforms and discharges still more social, individual, natural damage... it fertilizes its own demise but 'it' is we and 'we' is the world