Quote of the Day +

By Ron Beasley

Spencer Ackerman has the best synopsis of the seven and a half years that Bush, Cheney, the neocons and what passes as conservatives have been in power.

These people have plunged the country into two failing/failed wars and killed hundreds of thousands of people. (Also, they pulled off a housing crisis and a healthcare crisis and an environmental crisis and when an entire city drowned the administration left the black people to die.) There’s no alibi: when conservatism had its chance to govern, this is what it yielded.

Shortly after the invasion and occupation of Iraq Juan Cole and others predicted that the ultimate winner there would be Iran. There can now be little doubt that is exactly what has happened.  Cernig discussed the most recent example that Iran is fully in charge of Iraq - the second deal they have brokered between al Sadr and the al Maliki government in a month. 

News reports and statements from Iraqi government members say that once again Iran played a big role in getting Maliki to back off from wiping out his main political rival, through pressure on Sadr as well as on the ISCI and Dawa parties. The deal thus consolidates Iran as the main Big Brother neighbour for Iraq's Shiite majority and makes it's influence there well-nigh unshakeable. Witness Maliki's back-pedalling on U.S. claims of Iranian weaponry.

Yes the war is over and we have a winner - Iran.  Iran is calling all the shots in Iraq and the US is propping up and supporting Iran's proxy government there.  Perhaps it's time to let Iran prop up their government with their blood and treasure.  So the US toppled Iran's chief nemesis in the area, Saddam, and then placed in power and continue to prop up an Iranian friendly junta.  It would appear the Bush administration is a pretty good enemy to have. As I noted below nearly 40 percent of active and retired military officer see Iran as the winner.   But of course it doesn't end there.  The administration did exactly what Osama bin Laden or who ever is really running the show could have wanted them to do.  When they invaded and occupied Iraq the took resources away from going after the bad guys who actually did kill American's on 9/11.  At the same time the invasion inflamed the Islamic world and became the center of a successful recruiting campaign for al Qaeda.  Once again the Bush administration was a very useful enemy.

As Spencer Ackerman said "There’s no alibi: when conservatism had its chance to govern, this is what it yielded."

Comments

[anderson]

Here's another good one:

It’s September 12, 2001. You’re sitting in front of a TV, watching footage of the World Trade Center collapse over and over and over again.

All of a sudden, someone from seven years in the future walks out of a tiny temporal vortex, and tells you: George W. Bush is going to fuck this up so badly that in 2008, the United States of America will likely elect as president a black man whose middle name is Hussein and whose father was Muslim. Oh, and he also admits he’s used cocaine.