I have just read the Seymour Hersh
piece .
It's tempting to just say, of course.
This is the gist of it all:
George W. Bush’s re-election was not his only victory last fall. The President and his national-security advisers have consolidated control over the military and intelligence communities’ strategic analyses and covert operations to a degree unmatched since the rise of the post-Second World War national-security state. Bush has an aggressive and ambitious agenda for using that control—against the mullahs in Iran and against targets in the ongoing war on terrorism—during his second term. The C.I.A. will continue to be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as “facilitators” of policy emanating from President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. This process is well under way.
Despite the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, the Bush Administration has not reconsidered its basic long-range policy goal in the Middle East: the establishment of democracy throughout the region. Bush’s re-election is regarded within the Administration as evidence of America’s support for his decision to go to war.
That notion of that last sentence has been bothering me since the run-up to the elections. I'll first say,
what the fuck were Bush voters hoping for? Rebuilding the UN?
I had been saying for some time to anybody who supported Bush that they were missing a huge point by seeking to return him to office. Iraq has been GWB's signature move; it's essentially the only thing he has done, except for the massive tax cuts. Afghanistan doesn't count, any presiding CiC would have done the same thing, even Clinton: somebody had to pay, they paid. Amen.
When the Kerry-Edwards ticket were piss-willing around the Iraq issue, especially that Wednesday, the Zell from Hell Wednesday, I listened to the Kerry-Edwards "kids" pitching "the issues" the ticket thought were important, I realized they too were missing the point. I kept wanting to say, why the hell aren't you attacking this fucker (Bush). Why the piss-willy stuff? Student loans/grants, whatever, I could care less right now. This guy lied to go to war. And continues to lie.
They should have been singing one song and one song alone: Vote GWB out, because he deceived his people, both congressional houses, and allies to take the country to war. There is not one decision that is more important than sending the country to war; in fact all of the decisions he will ever have to take, together, will never be as important. And yet, GWB lied systematically in order to send his country to war. Forget the bullshit about, Iraq was the right decision, but badly executed. This is why Democrats lost both integrity and the election: they did not have the cojones to say, kak, Iraq was wrong: this is not the country we want to be. But Kerry and crew were saying, at least publically, going to Iraq was okay, the world is better off without Saddam yadi yadi yada, but the post war was badly planned, ill-managed.... In other words, Bush & Co are fighting the right war, but fighting it badly. Wrong. Kerry is still calling for Bush to fire Rumsfeld, in that same spirit. Pointless.
I hope they didn't really believe the war was right. They couldn't have, surely. Iraq was spontaneously combusting, the Kerry-Edwards Ticket didn't see it necessary to have to pour salt on the wound of it. Wrong. The entire election was about Iraq war, the rightness or wrongness of that war, and that alone. Yet, you would have never have known this that Wednesday, or indeed most times during the election campaign, (even on the Bush side). When one student, asked the Kerry-Edwards "kids"
"you have said a lot of things here this afternoon, what is the one thing you want me to take away from this, just ONE THING?"
