Bill Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Paul Bremer, and Doug Feith were the Bush-era, neocon cheerleaders architects that pushed the 2003 invasion of Iraq over the airwaves. Collectively, these guys swore that Saddam hussein was developing nuclear capabilities and that the regime had massive WMDs. Well, all of that turned out to be untrue.
There were no WMDs and there were no nuclear capabilities to speak of in Iraq. Now that violence is flaring in Iraq once again, the mainstream media is asking these men what they think of the state of affairs in Iraq. What’s worse, these men are hardly being questioned or held accountable for their lies told over a decade ago. It’s as if everyone just forgot how badly they botched the Iraq situation.
Weeks leading up to the 2003 invasion, Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy, said we should attack Iraq because of “terrorist organizations, state sponsors, and WMDs.” None of those things, of course, were not true and turned out to be flimsy reasons concocted by an administration scraping for reasons to go to war.
In 2008, 60 Minutes interviewed Feith about the Bush administration’s pretenses for invading Iraq. Feith was one of the Pentagon insiders who insisted that Hussein had WMDs. However, during the interview, he said that the Iraq invasion was merely “anticipatory self-defense.” Feith also said that we didn’t need to use the perceived threat of WMDs as a reason to have invaded Iraq, despite him saying the opposite five years before the 60 Minutes interview.
Feith is just one of the multiple pro-Iraq war neocons. Paul Bremer’s blunder was disbanding the Iraqi army at the very beginning of our occupation. The move displaced 400,000 Iraqi troops and resulted in a surge of sectarian violence and insurgent attacks. Bremer effectively caused the steady, resurging violence that took place in Iraq. He was discredited, but did the media decide to ignore him because he was wrong? Nope, it sure didn’t.
Bremer was on “Morning Joe” just yesterday calling for “troops on the ground,” and the Wall Street Journal gave him a little space to talk about how the country needs to intervene in Iraq again.
Wolfowitz made predictions and assertions about the invasion that were not only untrue, but actually saw the exact opposite. He told Congress in 2003 that “it’s hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces.” The exact thing that Wolfowitz said couldn’t happen, in fact, happened.
This past Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Wolfowitz, former Deputy Defense Secretary, was asked by host David Gregory what we should do in response to the current Iraqi turmoil. But to Gregory’s credit, he did try to corner Wolfowitz and hold him accountable for his incorrect and stupid handling of the war in 2003.
Kristol’s media appearance on ABC’s “This Week” is perhaps the most nauseating. He once declared that America had a “decisive and honorable victory” in Iraq, but then goes on to blame the violence on Obama’s “ridiculous and total withdrawal from Iraq.” Of course, he believes that everything that has gone wrong is completely Obama’s fault, even before he took office.
This motley crew of failed officials and political blunders was proven wrong years ago. Their actions, alongside many others in the Bush administration have damaged our economy, destroyed our reputation on the international stage, and costs the lives of thousands of Americans and Iraqis. But, they still get airtime from news people who just need to have their opinions. They’re not experts. They’re morons.
