By Michael Callaway
June 10, 2008
On June 5th, 2008, the US Senate issued a report saying that the Bush administration misused intelligence in the run up to the Iraq war. It goes on to say that the administration selectively declassified information to bolster the case and misled the public about contacts between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. While the report does not say the President lied, it sure seems to come close.
In 2002 and 2003 when Dick Cheney and others were making it seem like the war was going to be easy and it was absolutely necessary I knew that we were going to be in trouble. There was no way that we were going to be greeted as liberators, oil was not going to magically pay for everything and it was going to take a long time. To set it up as anything less was asking for it.
I remember thinking at the time there are one of two possibilities here, either they are lying or they are incompetent. Some people are like Tom Cruise, they want the truth. I am more like Jack Nicholas; I believe that you can’t handle the truth. My thought was this, if you go to a restaurant and they tell you that you will be seated any minute and you wait for thirty you are going to be angry. On the other hand, if they say it is going to be an hour wait and you only wait thirty minutes you are thrilled.
Wars are never easy, there is always something that can go wrong and people are always going to question you. Even during World War II there where people who thought that we should not get involved and people like Pat Buchanan who still think we should have stayed out. Making the case based off of worst case intelligence and best case scenarios was clearly going to be a set up for failure.
You see, lying is not all that bad, incompetence is. Imagine that you are about to hit a milestone birthday, all your friends and family say that they can not make it because they have work, school or anything else. Now imagine that you come home and surprise, they are all there. Would you be mad that they lied? No. Now let’s supposed they all told you the truth that they were going to be a party for you but then had no idea how to find your house. Which would you prefer, honesty or competence?
For the past couple of years I was very worried that it was the incompetent verdict, everything kept pointing toward it. The announcement on the aircraft carrier saying mission accomplished, how they keep saying that the insurgency was in its last throws and then constantly justifying the war by saying, “is there anyone that feels like the world would be safer if Saddam were still in control?”
While it is true that Saddam was a bad guy, there are a lot of bad guys in the world, Kim Jong-il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and everyone responsible for the horrors of Darfur. We can not simply go in and kick butt and take names in every bad part of the world, there are just too many of them.
I was coming close to the verdict of incompetence, and just when things seemed like they could not get any worse, this report came out, and totally redeemed himself. I feel a whole lot better now, because if they had really believed all those things we would be in a world of trouble. So, for all you haters out there who were saying Bush is incompetent, who looks ridiculous now?
© 2008, Michael Callaway. All rights reserved.
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Basically, what this means is that they lied in the run-up to the war (about the WMDs, about the intelligence, about how easy and quick it would be), and then demonstrated massive amounts of incompetence afterward (in putting all the Baath Party members out on the streets, not providing enough troops, allowing museums and such to be looted, and outsourcing security to private firms). The worst of both worlds.
In a perfect world, we would have honest and competent. That would be the first choice.
Second, dishonest and yet competent, while I would like the honesty, it is not needed, the competence on the other hand is a must.
Third, honest and yet lacking in the competent department. I love the fact that you are not lying, but I would miss the fact that you have no clue.
Forth, the worst one, both lying and incompetent. Yeah, that one is bad, because not only did you do it wrong, you lied about it too.
With Bush, we are looking at either door number two or door number four. I really am hoping for two but to be fair, I do not think we will know for many years. However, the points that Scott brings up are valid.