TPM Reader BY …

Talk like Stanley Kurtz[‘s] misses the central point: there wasn’t enough support to do the things he says and there never would’ve been. That’s the central argument against doing it!!! It simply wasn’t worth the cost to America and the world to undertake a mission with such a crushing ratio of required effort to possible success. Sure, sure, if the entire world agreed that taking out Saddam Hussein was a central point of emphasis for the world’s political infrastructure, it would’ve had a greater chance of success. But the Bush Administration knew it could never make that case, so it deliberately concealed (possibly from itself, even, but certainly from the outside world) how costly it would be. Simply put, if they were honest about the potential costs, they never, ever would’ve gotten enough political support to invade. Only by grossly exaggerating the danger of Saddam and grossly downplaying the difficulty of the mission could they get the political support to do what they did.

It was a stupid idea from the beginning for that very reason, and to treat it now like that’s some little miscalculation in planning is disingenuous in the extreme. Or delusional.

This is a central, perhaps the central issue in the whole shambling, tragic, dingbat debate. But we don’t return to it often enough. Saying the American people don’t have what it takes to finish the job, or come up with a new job or, really, figure out a way to help George W. Bush keep his job in Iraq amounts to blaming the public for the lies this White House told to get the country into the war. It’s really that simple.

The American people probably also don’t have what it takes to terraform Mongolia, remake it into a summer vacation paradise and annex it to the United States to benefit from all new tax revenue. But do we really need to? Not a perfect analogy, I grant you. But not that far off either.

Consider a thought experiment. Let’s go back to late 2002 and early 2003. Assume that the build up on the WMD front is more or less as it transpired. But assume, for our counterfactual, that the costs of what we were getting into had been made pretty candidly clear. Half a million troops to secure the place, maybe years of occupation and nation-building. Then you get to early 2003 when it was clear that even if there was some mustard gas hidden away somewhere, that beside those lamo rockets the inspectors found, there really weren’t any big WMD programs or stockpiles. Remember, that was clear, before the war started. Once that was clear, and if people knew the costs of what we were getting ourselves into, is there any way the president would have had any support for still going to war, pretty much just for the hell of it?

This is the key. Yes, the American people probably won’t support what it takes to make this happen. That’s because they make a perfectly rational calculation that so much blood and money for no particular reason just isn’t worth it. They’re only in this situation because President Bush and his advisors gamed the public into this war on false pretenses knowing that once they were it would be almost impossible to get back out.

From TPM Reader JS, one of our longtime readers …

I have a slightly different take on this.

I think Bush sought out Webb–who was rather obviously avoiding Bush–to symbolically spit in his face. “How’s your boy?” was Bush’s code for, “You may think you’re hot spit because you have a chestful of medals and won running against me and my war, but I’m the Decider, see, and you don’t have a damn thing to say about when your precious son, or any of the other troops, are going to leave Iraq. They’ll stay there until I say they can go and not before. The only way your boy’s getting out of there any earlier is on a stretcher or in a body bag. How do ya like *them* apples, tough guy?”

Bush intended for Webb to get it and be humiliated because he wouldn’t dare answer back confrontationally in the context of a celebratory presidential reception.

Webb *did* get it, but he refused to knuckle under. It wasn’t Bush’s petulant response to Webb’s statement about Iraq that got Webb’s back up, it was the initial patently insincere inquiry about his son. The exchange
was hostile right from the start.

Thoughts?

Another update on Florida’s 13th. The results are in — Florida election officials attribute the discrepancies on the first run of tests of electronic voting machines to human error.

It really does seem as though the cardinals of DC punditry are constitutionally incapable of believing that George W. Bush has ever — in the real sense — gotten anything wrong or that they, the Washington establishment, has gotten anything wrong over the last six years.

I don’t like to use such words but I can only think to call the denial and buck-passing sickening. I can’t think of another word that captures the gut reaction.

Here’s the lede to Mort Kondracke’s new column in Roll Call (emphasis added) …

All over the world, scoundrels are ascendant, rising on a tide of American weakness. It makes for a perilous future.

President Bush bet his presidency — and America’s world leadership — on the war in Iraq. Tragically, it looks as though he bit off more than the American people were willing to chew.

The U.S. is failing in Iraq. Bush’s policy was repudiated by the American people in the last election. And now America’s enemies and rivals are pressing their advantage, including Iran, Syria, the Taliban, Sudan, Russia and Venezuela. We have yet to hear from al-Qaida.

Let’s first take note that the ‘blame the American people for Bush’s screw-ups’ meme has definitely hit the big time. It’s not Bush who bit off more than he could chew or did something incredibly stupid or screwed things up in a way that defies all imagining. Bush’s ‘error’ here is not realizing in advance that the American people would betray him as he was marching into history. The ‘tragedy’ is that Bush “bit off more than the American people were willing to chew.” That just takes my breath away.

Now come down to the third graf. Bush gets repudiated in the mid-term election … “And now …” In standard English the import of this phrasing is pretty clear: it’s the repudiation of Bush’s tough policies that have led to the international axis of evil states rising against us. Is he serious? The world has gone to hell in a hand basket since the election? In the last three weeks? The whole column is an open war on cause and effect.

This is noxious, risible, fetid thinking. But there it is. That’s the story they want to tell. The whole place is rotten down to the very core.

Jews for Junkets (from The Forward) …

Two of America’s most influential Jewish organizations are gearing up for their first direct confrontation with the incoming, Democratic-led Congress. The topic: Democratic proposals for congressional ethics and lobbying reform.

At issue are two key congressional perks, targeted for elimination, that Jewish organizations rely on to achieve community goals: overseas junkets, including dozens of trips to Israel each year, funded by Jewish organizations; and an estimated $25 million a year in earmarked funds for Jewish communal projects. Both the trips and the earmarked funding face possible elimination as part of the Democrats’ pledge to fight corruption on Capitol Hill.

Bertolt Brecht presaging/satirizing the Bush shills fifty years ahead of time ….

… the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

Courtesy of TPM Reader FP.

It’s official: Electronic voting machines mostly suck. That and other news of the day in today’s Daily Muck.

Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) tapped as chairman of House intelligence committee.

Back in the 1980s, when I was a teenager, and then when I was home from college, I used to listen to a Sunday night radio show called Religion on the Line. The show had a priest, a protestant minister and a rabbi. And they’d discuss issues of the day and how different religions dealt with various questions. The host of the show was Dennis Prager. Prager was always the most self-satisfied voice on the panel. And always a bit pretentious. But for those of you who know Prager now as hate-ranting whack-job that he’s become, I can only say that back then he was or seemed far more sane. In any case, if you have yet heard of his latest sick anti-muslim outrage, MJ Rosenberg will bring you up to speed.

Once it only endangered Americans’ civil liberties. Now it endangers the White House who authorized it. Over 50 probes, lawsuits, reviews and audits have been launched at the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program, or are expected to begin soon.

Which one will expose the truth of the program? Will it bring down a president? At TPMmuckraker, Justin Rood gives a pocket-sized rundown of the many assaults on the NSA.