Jonah Goldberg's Unadulterated Chickenhawk Sh*t (Admits War A Mistake)

[Hissyspit]

Wow, he manages to say the Iraq war was a mistake and STILL fill his column full of garbage and lies! Bizarre.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-goldberg19oct19,0,7413953.column?coll=la-home-commentary

Jonah Goldberg: Iraq Was a Worthy Mistake
We know now that invading Iraq was the wrong decision, but that doesn't vindicate the antiwar crowd.
October 19, 2006

THERE'S A STRICT taboo in the column-writing business against recycling ideas. So let me start with something fresh: The Iraq war was a mistake.

I know, I know. But I've never said it before. And I don't enjoy saying it now. I'm sure that to the antiwar crowd this is too little, too late, and that's fine because I'm not joining their ranks anyway.

In the dumbed-down debate we're having, there are only two sides: Pro-war and antiwar. This is silly. First, very few folks who favored the Iraq invasion are abstractly pro-war. Second, the antiwar types aren't really pacifists. They favor military intervention when it comes to stopping genocide in Darfur or starvation in Somalia or doing whatever that was President Clinton did in Haiti. In other words, their objection isn't to war per se. It's to wars that advance U.S. interests (or, allegedly, President Bush's or Israel's or ExxonMobil's interests). I must confess that one of the things that made me reluctant to conclude that the Iraq war was a mistake was my general distaste for the shabbiness of the arguments on the antiwar side.

WTF?????? He rejects a false dichotomy using a different false dichotomy?

But that's no excuse. Truth is truth. And the Iraq war was a mistake by the most obvious criteria: If we had known then what we know now, we would never have gone to war with Iraq in 2003. I do think that Congress (including Democrats Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Jay Rockefeller and John Murtha) was right to vote for the war given what was known — or what was believed to have been known — in 2003. And the claims from Democrats who voted for the war that they were lied to strikes me as nothing more than cowardly buck-passing.

The failure to find weapons of mass destruction is a side issue. The WMD fiasco was a global intelligence failure, but calling Saddam Hussein's bluff after 9/11 was the right thing to do.

A side issue? WTF?????

Washington's more important intelligence failure lay in underestimating what would be required to rebuild and restore post-Hussein Iraq. The White House did not anticipate a low-intensity civil war in Iraq, never planned for it and would not have deemed it in the U.S. interest to pay this high a price in prestige, treasure and, of course, lives.

MORE CONVOLUTED REVISIONIST GARBAGE AT LINK

[PA Democrat]

1. What an idiot. I think he has finally gone completely over the edge

because that is the most arrogant, moronic, inane, illogical, delusional piece of bullshit I've ever read.

WTF, indeed.

[trumad]

4. "The White House did not anticipate a low-intensity civil war in Iraq"

That's funny Johah...cause anybody with a since of history could have predicted that.

It's just the kool-Aid drinking fools who are now doing their V8 head slap.


What a fucking idiot.

[BootinUp]

2. They didn't vote "for the war"

It was not a Declaration of War. That frame is wrong and those on the right and the left that use it to attack the Dem Senators who tried to craft an authorization with diplomacy requirements in it are only hurting our own.

[DoYouEverWonder]

3. Another delusional Bushbot

Nothing but a list of excuses.

The President and his misadministration lied about Iraq and their supporters like Goldberg knowingly spread those lies.

[ixion]

5. Mr. Goldberg: Please do not tell me what I believe. You are far off base.

• I do NOT support killing anywhere for any reason, with the possible exception of consenting adults who want to kill one another.
  
  
• The other problem with the illegal invasion of Iraq is that it was just that: an ILLEGAL invasion. Not a mission to try and stop genocide or starvation. It was an aggressive invasion of a sovereign nation, and nothing more.
  
• Shabby is a funny word to use to encompass the entire anti-war crowd, considering the pro-war crowd has never once used a rational argument for justifying the illegal invasion.
  
• Just because you say it and provide a (lame) straw man to knock down doesn't make it 'fresh' thought.
  

[PA Democrat]

6. K & R because everyone must see this display of idiocy.

[HamdenRice]

7. I hate the "global intelligence failure" lie

There were many people who said, and many journalists (like Sy Hersh) who reported that Sadam did not have WMDs. It was not an intelligence failure. It was a lie.

Bush, Cheney and the rest of the junta did not believe there were WMDs. They knew there were no WMDs and they lied the country into this war.

[gratuitous]

8. Total gibberish

Just the statement that the pro-war/anti-war debate is "dumbed-down." Really, Mr. Goldberg? And who dumbed this down? Which side accused the other of insufficient patriotism? Which side called the other naive, or pansies, or traitors? Which side mocked the other for talking about subtleties and nuance in dealing with volatile situations? And which side declared mission accomplished on May 1, 2003? And which side then lied about it?

Because it sure as hell wasn't the anti-war side, you self-serving overprivileged wanker. Shove it up your ass. And then go enlist. A guy from my area just bought it yesterday from an IED. He was a 53-year-old Army reservist, who was called up for active duty after being an inactive reservist for 13 years. Not that you give a flying fuck, Mr. Goldberg, but his name was Ronald Paulsen.

[Submariner]

9. Is Goldberg the guy who sells his mommy's Linda Tripp tapes on eBay?

Isn't his 15 minutes up yet?

[Hissyspit]

10. Apparently he has a regular space in the L.A. Times

Only God knows why.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. "calling Saddam Hussein's bluff after 9/11"? Huh?

You might be able to say that getting the weapons inspectors in was 'calling Saddam's bluff' - he claimed that he had given up WMD, but his population may have feared he really did have some they might use against them if the rebelled, so we said "show us". But invading wasn't 'calling his bluff'. It was "we're now sure he hasn't any WMD to hurt us with, so it's safe to invade".

And WTF has 9/11 to do with Iraq? Nothing, apart from GOP talking points. Goldberg is still a complete wanker.