Snow Shrugs Off Post-War Failures: ‘Everybody Gets It Wrong At The Beginning Of A War’

[babylonsister]

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/01/13/snow-maher/

Snow Shrugs Off Post-War Failures: ‘Everybody Gets It Wrong At The Beginning Of A War’

Yesterday, former White House spokesperson Tony Snow was interviewed on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher.

Maher discussed how woefully unprepared the Bush administration was for post-invasion Iraq. “People paid in blood for him to learn” that more troops were needed for post-Saddam Iraq, Maher said to applause and cheers from the audience. “Even if this did work,” he said, referring to the surge.

Snow tried to shrug off Maher’s statements, declaring that “everybody gets it wrong at the beginning of war”:

MAHER: In fact, the smarter people in his administration said to do just that. “We need more boots on the ground. We need more security.” But because he’s stubborn and stupid, he said, “No, let’s do it Rumsfeld’s way. Let’s do it the light way.” So it took him five years to come around to what should have been done five years ago. And — and while he was learning on the job, people paid for that in blood. {…}

SNOW: Well, wait a minute. Look, I don’t know where to start, but I’ll start at the beginning. Number one, when it comes to the war, everybody — it’s great to be a backseat general, and everybody gets it wrong at the beginning of a war. But there were plenty of — no, it’s true.

Watch a portion of the show at link~

Snow added, “I think it’s impossible for anybody to get their arms around the whole thing. Anybody.” “Including the administration?” responded Mark Cuban. “Including you, me, yeah,” said Snow.

Snow seems to believe that no one could have predicted that fallout from the invasion, an attempt to exonerate the administration’s rosy view of post-invasion Iraq. Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi responded, “I didn’t get it wrong. We shouldn’t have gone.”

Not everyone got it wrong — just everyone in the Bush administration did.

[angstlessk]

1. I recon if we stay in Iraq for 1,000,000 years the first 8 years could be called 'the beginning'

they got it wrong from day one till TOfuckingDAY!

[Yael]

2. "Well, we got that right too"

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/08/16/daily-show-1994-dick-cheney-vs-post-911-dick-cheney/

[Neshanic]

3. I saw that, and that response was the defining moment of Snow and his masters.

A war that that nobody can understand or comprehend, not even Tony Snow, and it's like marketing a new soft drink. "Everybody gets it wrong."

Do they teach that at the military schools like West Point?

War Inception 101
"Discussions and study sessions on the well known military fact that societies that start a war get it wrong at the begining. Guest lecturers are from the private civilian world of draft dodgers, Neocon Republicans, White House Spokesmodels and world known ad agencies".

Required reading:
"Alice In Wonderland"
"My Life Of Brush Clearing, Musin's From The Decider" by George Bush
"My Last Neocon Party Invitation" Andrew Sullivan
"War And Mortgages" by Angilo Mozilo

[mudesi]

4. And yet he was all for it before it began

So if everybody gets it wrong in the beginning, but are still all for it, what does that make them?

[Richard Steele]

5. Bullshit, Tony. Hundreds of millions of us got it right, you lying sack of shit. nm