The Neocons' Blunders

http://zfacts.com/p/175.html

The Neocons' Nine Spectacular Mistakes

They claim to be hard-headed realists who see more clearly than others. But, in every case, the traditional realists in the State Dept., Pentagon, and CIA got it right and the neocon academics got it wrong. For example, Scott Ritter, the American Marine major who led the U.N. inspection team, said over and over there were no WMD. He was ridiculed by Wolfowitz, but the guy that got his hands dirty was right, and the clever academic was "dead wrong".

Four Generals: The Iraq Mistake / Why Rumsfeld Should Go

The Neocons:

1. Sold us the WMD story. They loved Chalabi.
> Chalabi was peddling fabrications. No WMD existed. No WMD programs.

2. Said U.N. sanctions had failed and the inspectors were deceived.
> Sanctions ended WMD programs in 1991. Neocons misread Saddam.

3. Said we needed only 100,000 troops to keep the peace.
> After a year of trying to keep the peace Bremmer said that was worst mistake.

4. Said Chalabi’s forces would rise up and help our troops and take power.

> Chalabi's force could barely function.

5. Said major hostilities would end in about five weeks.
> The third year is worse than the first.

6. Said Chalabi was the best bet to lead Iraq.
> A 2004 poll of Iraqis showed him to be most distrusted with Saddam a distant second.

7. Said Chalabi was one of us.
> He betrayed the US to Iran by giving them highly classified information.

8. Said no need to prepare for occupation.
> The occupation was 90% of the challenge and has been a disaster.

9. Said Saddam's Baathists should be completely purged.
> Sacking the army may have been the single worst mistake of the war.

popNote contents below

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."
—White House.
Pride goeth before a fall.
—Proverbs.

Source of "reality-based" concept:
Without a Doubt
By RON SUSKIND (NYT) 8405 words, Published: October 17, 2004

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. ...

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

http://zfacts.com/p/175.html | 01/18/12 07:20 GMT