Breakdown At The Iraq Lie Factory:Robert Dreyfuss

[malaise]

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/02/15/breakdown_at_the_iraq_lie_factory.php

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Breakdown At The Iraq Lie Factory
Robert Dreyfuss
February 15, 2007



Robert Dreyfuss is an Alexandria, Va.-based writer specializing in politics and national security issues. He is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books, 2005), a contributing editor at The Nation and a writer for Mother Jones, The American Prospect and Rolling Stone. He can be reached through his website, www.robertdreyfuss.com.

It was, President Bush must have been thinking, a heck of a lot easier five years ago. Back in 2002, the president had a smoothly running lie factory humming along in the Pentagon, producing reams of fake intelligence about Iraq, led by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith and his Office of Special Plans. Back then, he had a tightly knit cabal of neoconservatives, led by I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, based in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, to carry out a coordinated effort to distribute the lies to the media. And he had a chorus of yes-men in the Republican-controlled Congress ready to echo the party line.

In 2007, Bush stands nearly alone, and he never looked lonelier than during a bumbling, awkward news conference on the Iraq-Iran tangle Wednesday.

Feith is long gone, and last week his lie factory was exposed by the Pentagon’s own inspector general, who told Congress that Feith had pretty much made up everything that his rogue intelligence unit manufactured. Libby is long gone, apparently about to be sentenced to jail for lying about Cheney’s frantic effort to cover up the lie factory’s work. And the congressional echo chamber is gone: In six weeks, the Democrats have held more than four dozen hearings to investigate the White House’s catastrophic Middle East policy, and even Hillary Clinton is warning that Bush had better keep his hands off Iran, saying: “It would be a mistake of historical proportions if the administration thought that the 2002 resolution authorizing force against Iraq was a blank check for the use of force against Iran.”

Without his Orwellian apparatus behind him, the president spent most of his hour-long news conference yesterday shrugging and smirking, jutting his jaw out with false bravado, joshing inappropriately with reporters asking deadly serious questions and stumbling over his words. It was painful to listen to him trying to justify the nonsensical claims that Iran and its paramilitary “Quds Force” are somehow responsible for the chaos in Iraq:

[Emit]

1. Thanks, malaise. Good read.

Here's another excerpt from your article worth posting, if I may:

There is, of course, no basis for arguing that the civil war in Iraq is caused by Iran. And there is no basis—“not supported by underlying intelligence,” as the Pentagon I.G. said about Doug Feith’s 2002 work—to argue that Iran is responsible for a significant part of American deaths in Iraq. Nearly all of the U.S. casualties in Iraq are caused by the secular-Baathist Sunni-led resistance and religious Sunni extremists fighting the occupation, and none of the forces allied with the resistance have ties to Iran. Even the anonymous briefers at the dog-and-camel show in Baghdad admitted that Iran is helping the Shiite militias, not the Sunnis; in other words, Iran is helping the self-same militias that are being trained and armed by the United States.

[malaise]

2. Dreyfuss is always on point

I love TomPaine.com.

Bushco no longer remember their own spin. One of my grandma's used to say LIARS must have good memories or else. Larry Johnson is saying the same thing from the snip you posted on KO as I type.

[me b zola]

4. Yeah, Larry Johnson blew that lie all to hell tonight on KO

If you missed it, I recommend watching Olbermann tonight.

[Emit]

5. Thanks for the heads up -- it comes on in less than an hour my time n/t

[cui bono]

3. I just watched yesterday's press conference. He's a mess.

And he got really aggravated when someone was asking him how we can trust that they got the intelligence right this time. Around 25 minutes in if you want to see.

[malaise]

7. A mess is a euphemism

He is bat shit crazy.

[ftr23532]

6. K&R

and a :thumbsup: for Dreyfuss's work.