Death of Michael Ledeen, maker of the phony case for the invasion of Iraq

“Palestinians didn’t kill as many babies or do as many rapes as people say they did” does not cut as deep as you seem to think it does. The Oct 7th atrocities were atrocities, in the fullest sense of that word.

The original statement is that 40 infants were murdered during the Oct 7th massacre and infants were beheaded, no number given. This somehow mutated into the claim that all 40 murdered infants were beheaded so the claim could be ridiculed.

Edit: I say subtle in the sense that those being manipulated are not particularly aware of being manipulated.

There has never been a representative democracy. Not in the US, not anywhere. So it’s impossible to say whether it’s a goal that’s with pursuit.

The idea that one ever existed is also a fairy tale to be clear. This is the most globally “representative” system ever, if for no other reason than for the existence of global mobility. Despite global border protection, if you’re determined enough you can get anywhere. Truly.

People will argue in a mealymouth way about whether any form of democracy is functional and “best of all bad systems” is typically the masters level refrain.

It’s worth thinking beyond 20th century concepts like states

We quickly get into the "communism was never implemented properly" type of argument too. Sure a theoretical benevolent dictator might be better than a flawed democracy, the problem is that it never happens in real life

It's not easy to give cliff notes, because there's too much to say. But in general, this was at the time when the USSR had still only relatively recently fallen and the US was not only essentially the king of the world, but had 0 meaningful competition for said claim. The goal of PNAC, and of the US political establishment, was to take this scenario, expand it, and perpetuate it. So the primary point was to prevent the rise of any other power and to essentially dominate the world primarily through being seen as the unquestioned premier military power, which would entail dramatic increases in military spending, regular demonstrations of power including preemptive and unilateral attacks on other countries if necessary, and so forth, wrapped in a tidy package of 'spreading democracy and freedom.'

Most famously they acknowledged that all of their goals would be quite difficult without, in their own words, something like a new Pearl Harbor: "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor." 9/11 happened less than a year later, and everything went into overdrive, a trend that continued long after Bush was but a fading memory.

[1] - https://archive.org/details/RebuildingAmericasDefenses

I was in the offices of WNET/Channel 13 in Manhattan the day the news began moving among insiders that an invasion of Iraq was imminent. All these middle aged producers were stoked. If that was PBS you can only imagine what the vibe was like everywhere else.

Of course within a week people like this and their reporters were basically competing to get “embedded” with invading troops and tell an approved story. Wild times.

Both of them knew how to work the DC machine, but neither of them were ever bothered by little things like "facts". I don't think we'll ever know what they really believed.

The Iraq invasion was wrong, but the occupation was worse.

Not really and not for long enough to say traditionally. It's way more traditional for the British and French to be poking their noses into the region.

Saddam was, without any doubt, an at-times brutal tyrant. Yet not only was Iraq vastly more stable and peaceful under his reign, but so too was the entire Mideast. That war set off a chain reaction of events that led to a complete destabilization in the Mideast and created a fertile ground for extremist groups to recruit, operate, and generally thrive.

So I don't think so. Like in most contemporary wars, the only real winners are the arms dealers, and the people getting rich off death and destruction.

Basically, Iraq went straight to hell, and whatever minorities etc. didn't flee got murdered.

I interpret it as something along the lines of Saddam Hussein's government caring about having a strong or at least functional country enough that they only wanted to kill Kurds and Iranians.

Baathists are better than sectarian madmen, and I suspect we'll see some kind of idiot outcome in Syria as well.

It's never a bad idea to create a power vacuum by overthrowing a dictatorship and then utterly fucking up your occupation and handling of the peace.

It's not clear if any invader and occupier could have handled that part well, but it is absolutely clear that the ghouls running the Bush regime were completely incapable of it. That those architects are still part of civilized society, and didn't spend the rest of their worthless lives breaking rocks with their teeth in a chain gang never fails to boil my blood. They put the lie to every principle of freedom and liberty that western democracies claim to stand for.

Similar horrors were inflicted on Libya by the Obama administration in particular and NATO in the general, but they were smart enough to not even sully their hands with making any effort to occupy and nationbuild after the fact. And guess what happened? Also ISIS and also a decade of civil war, and while it's died down a bit, there are still violent clashes between warlords and a humanitarian disaster nobody gives two shits about going on in the background.

Under Qadaffi, Libyans weren't free. But they weren't hungry, either.

I really think we're still recovering from the damage caused by Bush administration.