corrente

If you haven’t read this, you must. "What I Heard About Iraq" by Eliot Weinberger. Really, you must. Copy it and send it to others. It’s a rundown of actual quotes from The Gang That Couldn’t Lie Straight, and their own words are more damning than any editorial. During the ’04 campaign, I kept wondering when the Dems were going to use something like this, just a compendium of their own words, to hang ‘em up to dry. It didn’t happen. Alas. But with ’06 coming up, and Jebbie (“culture of life with a pistol if you feel threatened”) waiting in the wings, well…

Weinberger avoids editorializing and lets them tell their own story in chronological order. I mean, who can forget such gems as:

I heard Dick Cheney, then Secretary of Defense, say that the US had been wise not to invade Baghdad, since it would have meant getting "bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq." I heard him say: "The question in my mind is: How many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is: Not very damned many."

Or:

I heard the President tell Congress, "The danger to our country is grave. The danger to our country is growing. The regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material, could build one within a year."

And that same day, I heard him say: "The dangers we face will only worsen from month to month and from year to year. To ignore these threats is to encourage them. And when they have fully materialized it may be too late to protect ourselves and our friends and our allies. By then the Iraqi dictator would have the means to terrorize and dominate the region. Each passing day could be the one on which the Iraqi regime gives anthrax or VX-nerve gas-or some day a nuclear weapon to a terrorist ally."

Or:

I heard Donald Rumsfeld say he would present no specific evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction because it might jeopardize the military mission by revealing to Baghdad what the United States knows.

I heard the Pentagon spokesman call the military plan "ADay," or "Shock and Awe." Three or four hundred Cruise Missiles launched every day, until "there will not be a safe place in Baghdad," until "you have this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but in minutes." I heard the spokesman say: "You're sitting in Baghdad and all of a sudden you're the general and thirty of your division headquarters have been wiped out. You also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power, water. In two, three, four, five days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted." I heard him say: "The sheer size of this has never been seen before, never contemplated."

Or:

I heard an American soldier say: "We get rocks thrown at us by kids. You wanna turn around and shoot one of the little fuckers, but you know you can' t do that."

I heard the Pentagon spokesman say that the US did not count civilian casualties: "Our efforts focus on destroying the enemy's capabilities, so we never target civilians and have no reason to try to count such unintended deaths." I heard him say that, in any event, it would be impossible, because the Iraqi paramilitaries were fighting in civilian clothes, the military was using civilian human shields, and many of the civilian deaths were the result of Iraqi "unaimed anti-aircraft fire falling back to earth."

I heard an American soldier say: "The worst thing is to shoot one of them, then go help him," as regulations require. "Shit, I didn't help any of them. I wouldn't help the fuckers. There were some you let die. And there were some you doubletapped. Once you'd reached the objective, and once you'd shot them and you're moving through, anything there, you shoot again. You didn't want any prisoners of war."

Go. Read. Pass it on. Ask people, “Remember when (lying Bu’ushite) said ____________?”