Color me slow on the uptake

[Elidor]

Sometimes I'm afraid I'm becoming too cynical, but now I see that I'm not cynical enough. A half-formed thought that occured to me over a year ago has finally percolated through my gray matter to land with a thud at the front of my mind:

They attacked Saddam, not because he was a threat, but because he was weak.

It was obvious he was weak before the invasion, but I foolishly tried to wonder how the neocons could con themselves into seeing him as a threat. Any fool could see that a country we routinely bombed at will for 12 years was not a threat. If Saddam couldn't regain control of northern Iraq from the Kurds, what were the chances he could successfully attack the U.S. or Israel? The strange disconnect between Saddam the global menace and Saddam the local thug ultimately led me to conclude that blind ideology was the cause of their inability to see the truth, and lust for oil and power was the cause of their inability to speak the truth.

The truth, however, is that they saw a very different truth: Saddam was sitting on top of the neocons' geopolitical futures, and he was not strong enough to fend them off. Like any smart bunch of mafiosi, Bushco saw a weak rival ripe for takedown.

The contrast in administration attitude between Iraq and North Korea should have clued me in to all this, but there was too much to digest, and the demands of ordinary life distracted me from seeing the forest for the trees.

They made him out to be a threat, but their own rhetoric in the lead-up to invasion gives away the truth: they saw him as no threat. And the whore media rarely questioned how someone who was supposed to be so dangerous could be toppled so easily.

I'm going to go practice being more cynical now. I've got a lot of catching up to do.

[Insider]

1. hello hardhead

:hi:

your post made me smile. that's all.

(ps - you don't seem slow at all)

[BlueEyedSon]

2. Yes, Saddam was a good target because....

1. he was a weak foe, whom we could defeat easily (and we did, it's the after-planning that is the difficult part).
2. he was secular, so we might be less likely to inflame Muslims (the Arab street).

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Remember what Lily Tomlin said.

No matter how cynical you are, it's hard to keep up.

[BlueEyedSon]

4. Did she say "hard" or "impossible"?

:)

[reprobate]

6. JR, a suggestion for your photo.

Photoshop the "burger king" to "Bungler King".

Far more appropriate.

[Jackpine Radical]

9. I love the idea

but rely on others to do the artwork.

[LividLiberal]

14. Or Burgler King

[Madrone]

20. nahh... it's BOOGER KING, BABY!

[LividLiberal]

21. YUK! LOL!

Perfect!

[K-W]

5. The neocons wanted him out the minute he ceased to be useful.

He used the power that we helped give him to control Iraq and he wasnt under our control. We couldnt let a man acting for his own and his countries interests control that much oil or that much land in that region. We felt he was too powerful, we found our excuse in Kuwait and we decimated him. With sanctions and bombings we made sure Iraq could never become a local power or control its own economy. Since such an arrangement couldnt last indefinately, we had 2 choices, pull out of Iraq or take Iraq over.

We know what the neocons thought the right choice was.

[dawg]

7. meanwhile ....

North Korea continues building nuclear warheads and long-range missiles.

[BlueEyedSon]

8. Well of course we won't touch them, they could fight back!

[central scrutinizer]

13. that is exactly the mesage we sent

get nuclear weapons as fast as possible or you are next.

[Redleg]

10. The PNAC said just that. Take out Saddam to send a signal

to other leaders in the region. They knew we would win the conventional part of the war easily. They were just like the school bully- pick on the weakest kid in class to scare the other ones off.

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. Unfortunately the forces of evolution came into play

by taking out the weakest of the herd, Bush has just forced others, like North Korea, to become stronger. But you wouldn't expect a creationist to have thought that through, would you?

[library_max]

11. Sure, it's an old strategy.

Bully on the beach wants to make an impression. So he picks on the weakest guy around, pounds the crap out of him, and then makes it clear that he'll do the same to anyone else who crosses him. That's exactly what Bush and the PNAC crowd were/are up to in Iraq.

Hell, we had Saddam completely contained militarily. He couldn't so much as put an airplane in the sky. That's how much of a threat he was. Among other advantages, we had tons and tons of intelligence on his military capabilities. We were practically occupying Iraq before the war.

[LividLiberal]

15. Exactly. Saddam was a target because he was weak.

[Elidor]

16. Sad that it took me so long to see that.

But then, I've spent the last year in a new relationship, and haven't had as much time to keep up with the news. I'm lucky if I get 15 minutes a day to read the "papers."

[LividLiberal]

17. This was pointed out in a couple books I read, that the target had

to be a weak one.

And I wish I were too busy in a romance to be aware of the last couple years. Ignorance is bliss......

[charlie]

18. Yup. Iraq was low-hanging fruit

As a demonstration of US might and resolve for the crimes of 911, it fooled no one. It was Moe slapping Larry because he's closer, when he's really mad at Curley. Now we look like blustering jackasses.

[Elidor]

19. "Low-hanging fruit"

I like that analogy.

[Elidor]

22. Meanwhile, it's been about 950 days since Osama

Attacked us. Apparently, being the most wanted man on earth is not particularly demanding or dangerous. Not with Chicken George on the case. He'll stick to fights he can win. Osama is a free man as Bush sits trapped in a prison of his own devise, useless except for attacking pathetic has-been tyrants and other toothless tigers; in his spare time, he kidnaps heads of state at gunpoint and funds opposition to populist leaders the world over.

But he's scared of Osama, because he doesn't know how to fight him. All he can do is rage helplessly at easier targets. As Rumsfeld said, "There are no good targets in Afghanistan."

[bvar22]

23. Saddam was weak, and would have fallen without our help.

As we find out more about the latter days of Saddam's regime, it becomes clear that he was falling. He resembled Hitler during the last days of the 3rd Reich giving orders to imaginary armies, boasting of non existent weapons. None of his top military officers were following his orders. He was either delusional or on drugs, and was spending his time writing bad romance novels. We all saw the miserable wretch that was pulled out of the spider hole. This man was in command of nothing. He certainly wasn't organizing the resistance of the Saddam loyalists.

The only question that remains, who would have replaced Saddam after the inevitable coup? Perhaps the fact that Saddam was in free fall provided the urgency for the invasion....so that the USA could step in to the power vacuum?????

[Elidor]

25. You have summed up Saddam's menace perfectly:

He was writing "bad romance novels."

[Cleita]

24. Good assessment.

We would never go after anyone who could really fight back, no matter what axis of evil they belong to. This is what cold wars are for. So any ideas who may be the next terrorist nerd in the world we can bully?