Bi-Partisan Screw Up of The Century: Free Wars
Atrios makes a good point:
I’ll leave semantic discussions to others, but lost in all of this discussion is the cost of the surge. Wars have become free, with neither the dollar cost nor cost in lives subject for polite conversation anymore.
The troop escalation was announced in January of 2007. Since that time over 1100 US troops lost their lives. Obviously not all of those losses are attributable to the presence of additional troops in Iraq, but they are all attributable to the continuing presence of the US in Iraq.
Our new “free war” mentality is something that both parties deserve blame for.
Thanks Mike Castle, Joe Biden and Tom Carper !! You guys suck.
At least Joe Biden has owned up to his mistake. Castle and Carper are unrepetant.
I gotta give some credit to Colin Powell. The Powell Doctrine would likely have resulted in few US deaths, because we wouldn’t be there any more. If Powell-1993 were Secretary of State, instead of Powell-2003, we would have either gotten a real mandate from the UN and the world community, or we wouldn’t have gone.
And if we had gone, the costs (in treasure and blood) would have been spread out and would have been short-lived. Our troops would have been home for weddings and holidays, instead of just funerals.
cough OMG cough…Powell had a plan: to chose personal over public service while in public service…he fricking led the country into the lie in the worst way because he was the only person many people actually trusted.
Biden had THE plan later adopted by James Baker’s crew in the endless spin/delay spin/delay spin/delay of Bushie’s world.
You are talking about Powell 2003. You get no argument from me on that.
If its any excuse, I think Powell felt bad about being coerced into the lies. It looks like one of those experiences where he truly thought, “What the fuck was I thinking?” I mean, how many of you have woken up with a stranger whose name you don’t remember and the first words out of her mouth are, “You mind if I stay a couple days?” We’ve all been there.