Bob Herbert in the NYT: "The Iraq War Enablers"

[Stephanie]

Why should Clinton be given a pass on this while Lieberman's on the hot seat?

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/tsc.html?URI=http://select.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/opinion/07herbert.html&OQ=_rQ3D1&OP=82bc16dQ2FRQ3FQ5BSRQ20LT66Q20RU33HR3@R3jR6xZQ3BZ6Q3BR3jQ25Q5BTSQ5BTQ20Q7CQ25Q20g_

The Iraq War Enablers
By BOB HERBERT

So there was Hillary Rodham Clinton grandstanding for the television cameras last week, giving Donald Rumsfeld a carefully scripted chewing out for his role in the Bush administration’s lunatic war in Iraq.

Casual viewers could have been forgiven for not realizing that Senator Clinton has long been a supporter of this war, and that even now, with the number of pointless American deaths moving toward 2,600, her primary goal apparently is not to find an end game, but to figure out the most expedient political position to adopt — the one that will do the least damage to her presidential ambitions.

Mrs. Clinton is trying to have it both ways. A couple of months ago, she told a gathering in Washington: “I do not think it is a smart strategy either for the president to continue with his open-ended commitment, which I think does not put enough pressure on the new Iraqi government.” She then added, “Nor do I think it is smart strategy to set a date certain.”

Slick Willie has morphed into Slick Hilly, as the carnival of death in Iraq goes on.

Mrs. Clinton is just one of the many supporters of the war who should have known better from the beginning, and who are now (with the wheels falling off the Iraqi cart and public support for the war plummeting) engaged in the tricky ritual of rationalization.

***

This was a war that never should have happened. There was a legitimate war for the United States to fight in Afghanistan, but that was not enough for the administration. The Bush gang wanted a war with Iraq, and less-than-courageous politicians like Mrs. Clinton and many others lined up as enablers to help make that war happen.

***

Despite the rationalizations now suddenly on the lips of so many, the problem with the current war in Iraq is not the way it was conducted, but the fact of the war itself. It was launched amid blinding, billowing clouds of deceit. There was never any legitimate reason for the war. Iraq had not attacked the U.S. and there was no imminent threat of attack.

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[mazzarro]

1. I Love This!

BH keeps making the hits - IT IS THE FACT THAT THE WAR ITSELF WAS WAGED! And damn the enablers - all of them.

[Stephanie]

6. The enablers want to critique the way the war is waged, not the war itself

it's a disgusting obfuscation

[gratuitous]

2. "A war that never should have happened"

Well, that's quite a departure for the New York Times, erstwhile employer of one Judith Miller, whom I am sure comes in for some serious criticism in Mr. Herbert's column, right?

{Crickets}

Uh huh.

[Stephanie]

5. So if he doesn't include Judy he can't write about enabling Dems?

So every criticism of Bush and his illegal war should also mention Judy Miller? What's your point?

[gratuitous]

8. My point?

Well, that the New York Times was one of the leading media cheerleaders for this invasion. I'm glad that Mr. Herbert is writing some tough stuff about it, but if he's going to write about "enablers" in the minority political party, there's really a lot of folks who were in far more influential positions who did far more to "enable" the Bush war machine.

And those enablers (to wit: Ms. Miller) had nothing to lose from telling the truth, and a lot more to gain. The Democrats Mr. Herbert scores at least had the lousy good excuse of having to worry about re-election in 2002, and their own political career prospects. And the reason quite a number of minority party Democrats signed onto Bush's hare-brained scheme in 2002 and 2003 was because of pressure in the popular media, which helped the Republicans immensely in selling the idea that invading Iraq was a noble endeavor designed to blunt international terrorism.

So, for a columnist in the self-styled newspaper of record to give Democrats some well-deserved grief over their past support for Bush's blunder and yet exempt his employer and that employer's own sorry record seems disingenuous at best, opportunistic at least, and downright dishonest when considering the big picture.

[Stephanie]

11. I don't see that he's exempting them

He's not required to recite the whole litany of liars in every column he writes about the war. This one is focussed on the Senate enablers.

[gratuitous]

12. Yes, but . . .

In his litany of liars, Mr. Herbert notes several folks in the Bush administration by name who misled the public, even notes that a lot of politicians paid a political price for opposing Gulf War I, yet somehow all of this fear of a political price to be paid materialized out of thin air. Mr. Herbert is very careful not to mention the media hysteria of late 2002/early 2003 that contributed heavily to the war fever that convulsed the nation.

Then he has the stone cojones to note that quite a nunber of people also opposed the Iraq invasion at that time, and makes the startling pronouncement that the invasion was "guaranteed" (emphasis by Mr. Herbert) to fail because of the incompetents prosecuting it. Strange that the Times, in its real-time coverage, never breathed a word of how this was all going to come a cropper. No, the Times was right out front, pom-poms in hand, pleated skirt bouncing with the jumps, cheering on the Bush administration and its righteous crusade into the very heart of world terrorism.

Mr. Herbert has a lot of hard things to say (mostly about Hillary Clinton) and many of his targets deserve a little calling out. But to completely fail to mention anything about the media feeding frenzy that was going on at the time is to focus on a very small detail of a much larger and more complicated picture. A picture that doesn't show his own newspaper in a very good light. It's as if all the blame for Bonnie and Clyde's bank robberies fell on Henry Methvin.

[Stephanie]

13. gotcha

I hold the Op-Ed writers separate from the NYT editors as far as responsibility for those lies, but you do have a point.

[pretzel4gore]

3. something doesn't make sense

why would clinton, a liberal, support a cruel, unnecessary war against an innocent people? saddam was just a 'lee harvey oswald' character (lee harvey was an active duty 'office of naval intelligence' agent at the time of jfk murder, which made him perfect patsy for the dulles/hoover/mcoy/ellsworth bunker/bush(?) crowd who staged the murder; saddam was a cia agent/asset who was forced to roleplay the monster for western public consumption) and clinton would have known that. how much treasure has been lost over, what, a new phase of the rich, ie the pig's, class war against humanity? hillary knows there's a vast rightwing conspiracy, yet she roleplayed along with all the rest?
maybe chelsea? remember limbah humbug's etc threats to chelsea?
it defies understanding.....

[pretzel4gore]

4. a point of order called for here...

if the busheviks stole the 2k election, aided by pigmedia, and if the fact was to become known when the NORC results were published in sept/01, thus necessitating the wtc disaster, which necessitated the 'war' against a helpless afghanistan - which got the gopigs and their lying liar media helpmates in so deep that, hell, vandalising iraq and lebanon and soon were just more of the same. they were death row bound if caught anyway, and america is a proven stooge, so why not just murder the child after raping and robbing it?
i mean, why not!

[Stephanie]

7. kick

.

[kentuck]

9. If it was only about the war...

Hillary would lose also. But it is the general support for George W Bush and this Administration, including the war, that has Joe and Republicans in so much quicksand.

[Stephanie]

10. it's not just about the war

it's about the death penalty, marriage equality, corporate power, health care, and Rupert Murdoch.