This reflects on more than a Bush family shortcoming. Americans, by and large, choose not to learn from the past and not to look too far into the future. Instead, the business mentality rules most aspects of our lives: how will it look in tomorrow's paper (well, on the cable newscast) and on the next quarterly bottom line.
"One Market Under God," as Tom Frank put it so well. The Market is a short-term god.

I'd rather put it to the fact that the problems of the world are becoming increasingly intractable. Not to mention the Bushes had a part to play in that.

Note the increasing transfer of CIA power to the Pentagon on their watch. The significance? Conventional Intelligence is built on long-term planning the results which would take longer periods to come to fruition. Battlefield intelligence is more often about the current conflict at hand, with planning after left over to the intelligence hands. I have a good bet that up there NO ONE REALLY KNOWS what to do because American Republicanism has become all but a buy and sell, wheel and deal establishment in the hands of many private interests.

If the cruel and feckless take part in this system, it is only because this system will only allow those this vacant to rise to the top. This is what has displaced even the already cynical practices of Expediency or Realism.

The ROOT of OUR present dilemma lies in OUR FAILURE as a Nation to arrest and try Nixon for his crimes. Surely during such a trial the names of Cheney, Rumsfeld, et. al (possibly HW Bush)(and some dems) would have come out and their hand exposed, we will NEVER know. WE have a second chance to learn at this time, to get the full story and take advantage of OUR new teaching moment. It all starts with IMPEACHMENT.

What Mike Meyer said.

Heh. They fed Saddam trumped up information on Iran, stuffing Saddam's head with nonsense, to make conditions look better than they were to encourage him to go. It would be a breeze. Thank God our leaders are completely... er, nevermind.

I knew about the the gunships, the refusals of humanitarian assistance, the captured arms, but the allegation at minute 31 that US helicopters landed and set up a road block to stop an Iraqi march on Baghdad is really... Well. I don't remember the words that described how I felt when I learned about each of the others, and I can't express it now.

It can't be "betrayed", as I was not betrayed, and I didn't betray anyone, so it's not really "guilt", but "disappointment" doesn't even get us off the starting block.

I'm not sure if I agree. On one hand I am continually amazed at the apparent dunderheadedness of many foreign policy bigshots, and not just since GWB became president. On the other hand, for Bush,sr to decide to go to war with Saddam to extricate Kuwait from his grasp and slap him down, yet also decide to send him a winking message that it was "ok" to reassert his control of the country makes a lot of (admittedly coldblooded) sense.

I remember Schwartzkopf carrying on in interviews about how he was "hoodwinked" into a treaty that allowed Saddam to keep flying helicopter gunships-- it was the closest I came to ever guffawing, even though I was still in my 20s in 1991.

Didn't you once write an ATR piece(a pretty good one) called "Now more than ever, it's important we learn nothing from history?"

uh, unless that's your whole point...

I think maybe I've pinned it down.

The late Douglas Adams had a story, I forget which book it was in, about a planet called Krikit, which was surrounded by a dense dust cloud such that when Krikits looked up to the sky - which they rarely did - there was nothing but impermeable blackness. As such, they never developed the concept that there was a larger universe beyond the ground beneath their feet. Happenstance had it that one day a spaceship crashed into an outhouse, and, reverse engineering the craft, the first Krikit astronauts blasted off into the nothingness.

When they passed the periphery of the dust cloud and caught their first glimpse of the incomprehensibly insulting stars and galaxies beyond, their first and last thought was, "It'll all have to go."

And that's something like it.

buermann: It all served to bring YOU AND ME to this point. How can you say you were not bertayed? And look apon the Iraqi people, How can you say you didn't betray anyone? Just like ME, YOU PAID FOR IT TOO.

LOOK at OUR military and tell me, WE, You and I, ain't betraying someone RIGHT NOW.

Mike, I was 13, a mere dependent and, we suppose, some sort of corresponding beneficiary.

Also: was there something cut of at the start?

It was somewhat abrupt and I was curious that they didn't touch on the Carter administration. To abbreviate what I've heard about it:

Author Kenneth R. Timmermann and former Iranian President Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr argue separately that Brzezinski met with Hussein in July 1980 in Amman, Jordan, to discuss joint efforts to oppose Iran. Hussein biographer Said Aburish writes that the Amman meeting did take place, but that Hussein met with three CIA agents, not Brzezinski. Former Carter official Gary Sick denies that Washington directly encouraged Iraq's attack, but instead let "Saddam assume there was a U.S. green light because there was no explicit red light."

That's Larry Everest:

http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=c33335175cc184e56416dbb1d1ebc595

And Robbert Parry reported back in '96 about a declassified 1981 memo written by Secretary of State Alexander Haig to Reagan, stating "It was also interesting to confirm that President Carter gave the Iraqis a green light to launch the war against Iran through Fahd."

http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile5.html

“We had wonderfully prepared combat activities,…”

???

Mmmm, sounds delicious. Are sure this guy is not the Galloping Gourmet? Sauté your onions for 5 minutes in olive oil, add some garlic with a pinch of salt and viola! A wonderfully prepared combat activity, serve over noodles or decapitated heads for variety.

Rob Payne: one word -- brilliant!

My sense is that oil men are quite the opposite. They plan for the future far better than most of us can imagine.

As long as the oil sits in the ground it's like a gold mine. The people living above the oil kill each other? It doesn't affect the oil. Better to completely fracture the people and the society above them, let the country crumble and they will be less likely to organize against the corporation when it sticks the straw into the ground.

I don't know exactly what goes through Dubya's mind, but his mind has little to do with what is really going on here. Better to look beyond him, to his handlers. Shia deaths? Sunni deaths? Gassing Kurds? Whatever, as long as they don't ultimately control the oil.

I guess I'm missing something in the " If Only We Had Impeached Nixon" scenario. Let's say we had impeached our own Richard III imitation. Would that really have turned into a nationwide cathartic kind of experience? I doubt it. The "America, Love It Or Leave It" types would not have understood or acknowledged their engagement with Tricky and his gang. They gave Tricky the gigantic landslide victory in 1972. "We were with him, but he betrayed us." Bullshit. We are a nation of salesmen, and Tricky sold the snakeoil of Anti-Communism and himeself as a "little guy," and the people bought it. And they have been eager to buy similar cures from RR and those after him. The myth of the "good American people, and tbe stab in the back legend of their politicians must be kept alive.
Impeach. It would be fine with me. But it won't change the system and it won't change what Americans are willing to see or do.

sorry--typos

"himself" ; "the" for "tbe"

donescobar: Giving up so early in he game? That's no way to win. Come on , the FUN's just begining. When we invade Iran it will be ever more of a cathartic experience.(and WE WILL be invading unless WE IMPEACH) It's not some touchy feely warm fuzzy glow we are talking about, it's the avoidance of rolling in the next big pile of shit we run across. It's called LEARNING FROM YOUR MISTAKES. Well, to learn, WE need the INFORMATION to learn from and with. In these cases that information comes only through the TRIAL PROCESS.

Mike, it's not so much that I'm not responding, so much as my response remains stuck in moderation.

Jon must have some sort of inexcusable life beyond blogging.

What "mistakes" have WE learned from? Or, which one(s) have we NOT repeated?
The one country I know, from studying it and living there, that learned from its hitory is Germany. But, look at the price of that "learning experience," for them and the world.
But, maybe only then. Melncholy thought.

What "mistakes" have WE learned from? Or, which one(s) have we NOT repeated?
The one country I know, from studying it and living there, that learned from its hitory is Germany. But, look at the price of that "learning experience," for them and the world.
But, maybe only then. Melancholy thought.

What "mistakes" have WE learned from? Or, which one(s) have we NOT repeated?
The one country I know, from studying it and living there, that learned from its hitory is Germany. But, look at the price of that "learning experience," for them and the world.
But, maybe only then. Melancholy thought.

racrecir: I MUST AGREE. Whenever besiegeing a large city (as well as a large nation) It's always best to starve 'em out before you batter down the main gate or torch the place.

Let's think back to that Gulf War time.

The first rule of warfare is to not attack strong countries if you can help it. It's much better to attack weak ones.

Iraq had been being softened up for years but even after Desert Storm the time was still not quite ripe to invade and occupy Iraq.

One way to continue devastating Iraq may have been to urge the troublesome Shiites in the south to rise up, stand back, let Saddam do your dirty work for you and then later blame Hussein for "killing his own people".

Nobody thought for a moment that Bush Sr. would lose the next election but lose he did.

Clinton hinted at normalizing relations with Iraq and shazaam - Bush Sr. is "almost" assassinated in Kuwait. No sitting president would dare lift sanctions or normalize relations under those supposed circumstances so the situation in Iraq was frozen until Bush could resume the takeover in 2000. Remember - soon after the inauguration Iraq was bombed by UK Hornets, the first shot over the bow.

Let's think back to that Gulf War time.

The first rule of warfare is to not attack strong countries if you can help it. It's much better to attack weak ones.

Iraq had been being softened up for years but even after Desert Storm the time was still not quite ripe to invade and occupy Iraq.

One way to continue devastating Iraq may have been to urge the troublesome Shiites in the south to rise up, stand back, let Saddam do your dirty work for you and then later blame Hussein for "killing his own people".

Nobody thought for a moment that Bush Sr. would lose the next election but lose he did.

Clinton hinted at normalizing relations with Iraq and shazaam - Bush Sr. is "almost" assassinated in Kuwait. No sitting president would dare lift sanctions or normalize relations under those supposed circumstances so the situation in Iraq was frozen until Bush could resume the takeover in 2000. Remember - soon after the inauguration Iraq was bombed by UK Hornets, the first shot over the bow.