Posted on by lhl

HAIL TO THE THIEF – yeah, it’s good.

Random thought while linking: pb has done more for microcontent than anyone else thus far. All hail the father of the permalink.

Related musings: why are there no fragment search engines/bookmarkers? (XPath might work) Would be interesting to see how Google News does article parsing (a supersmart algorithm? or a mind-numbing array of regexs (not mutually exclusive, I know))…

Posted on by lhl

“While we hoped that popular revolt would topple Saddam, we did not wished to see the breakup of the Iraqi state. Extending the war into Iraq would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Unilaterally exceeding the U.N.’s mandate would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.”

–From “Why We Didn’t Remove Saddam” by George Bush [Sr.] and Brent Scowcroft, Time Magazine (2 March 1998)

Posted on by lhl

Recently, I’ve been reading a lot of jmm’s Talking Points Memo. Really good stuff. Definitely worth reading, but here’s some choice links culled:

  • The New Yorker: Annals of National Security: Offense and Defense
  • The Oregonian, Interview with Gen. Merrill A. “Tony” McPeak, retired former chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force

    • What they’ve got going for them is that our maladroitness politically and diplomatically has put us in a real bind. There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein is an unpopular guy in Iraq, but he’s running against George Bush. If you’re an Iraqi, you’ve gotta decide who you’re going to vote for here.

  • The Washington Monthly: Practice to Deceive – Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks’ nightmare scenario–it’s their plan. by jmm, in short from Talking Points:

    • This war isn’t really about Iraq or deposing Saddam or even eliminating his WMD, though each of those are important benefits along the way. Nor is it something so mundane as a ‘war for oil.’ The leading architects of this war in and out of the administration see this war, and have pursued it, as an opening blow in a far broader war against political Islam. They see it as the first in a series of wars and near-wars which will lead eventually to the overthrow of most of the current governments in the Middle East, the establishment of western-oriented democracies throughout the Arab world, and the destruction of nothing less than the political world of Islamic fundamentalism.

  • ABCNEWS: Mixed Blessing: Even as Aid Arrives, Iraqi Town Curses U.S. Troops

    • “No. No. No. We are not happy,” he said. “You have humiliated us more than our enemies.”

  • The Washington Monthly: Confidence Men – Why the myth of Republican competence persists, despite all the evidence to the contrary. also by jmm.

    • While no one bats a thousand in politics, it’s actually difficult to think of one thing the vice president has been responsible for that has not ended in muddle or disaster. Yet his reputation for competence has survived.