It has been a long time, but just in case you feel like reliving the anger and amazement at the howling stupidity of your fellow citizens all over again the CIA declassified the ration of shit / document used to justify the Iraq War.
I don't see why this would be especially newsworthy.
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It's not like there's anything to be learned from that experience.
doug says:
move along nothing to see
Tim H. says:
Odd, don't they usually wait until all the perpetrators have no future political career?
Skipper says:
But if you refuse to believe the official government story in something, you're hooted down as a crazy "conspiracy theorist" or a "truther." Our government has been lying to us for more than half a century. Don't believe anything they say and you will have a 90 percent chance of being right.
Chicagojon says:
And we've lifted our self-imposed sanctions for military aid to Egypt. Apparently they weren't killing dissidents and expanding their military as a proxy threat to Israel fast enough without our billions/year.
Another day, another shitstorm. Gotta love the military industrial complex
Xynzee says:
Now if only the actors would be tried for war crimes we can put this to bed.
Mo says:
Speaking of expurgated history, I used to wonder as a kid why the peasants and slaves and millworkers never rioted or revolted or killed the gentry or deserted the armies.
And then I learned that they did…and were massacred. While the gentry carried on with no consequences.
I, for one, welcome our robot overlords. They cannot do worse.
Robert says:
Mo, I remember reading how the International Workers of the World (Wobblies) responded to WWI. Their proposal was for everyone sergeant and below to bayonet every officer and just go home.
That would have made a difference right there.
Skippper says:
@Robert. They should have bayoneted the politicians. I've become fascinated lately with WW1. What a clusterfuck. There was absolutely no reason for the war except for the stupidity, hubris, and machismo of the politicians — who sold the war to the people.
The Kaiser and the Tsar were not the brightest bulbs on the porch. The Austro-Hungarians were just pompous jerks.
The interesting thing is that while most people think that the war was over the murder of Franz Ferdinand, it was really over what Vienna saw as an insult, rather than over the archduke. Nobody liked him at all — especially the emperor. There was no official mourning in Vienna, not even on the day of his funeral — which lasted all of 15 minutes. Afterwards, all the "mourners" went off and did fun stuff.
The war all started because everyone was amped up to fight and had been for years. They were just waiting for an excuse. The assassination gave them the excuse.
Of course, WW2 was just Act 2 of WW1 and the crap going on in the Middle East today all stems from the Ottoman campaign of WW1. So, basically, we're still fighting it.
It's the same as the neoliberals in the US were waiting for an excuse to invade Iraq and Afghanistan as well as shred the Constitution in the US and enact the Patriot Act, which had been drawn up and was waiting on a shelf. 9-11 gave them that excuse.
HoosierPoli says:
@Skipper
It's not that they all WANTED to fight, exactly. It's that everyone was EXPECTING to fight, saw war as a forgone conclusion, and assumed that the murder of the Archduke would be the pretext by which one power or another would make its power grab, and decided to head to war pre-emptively to prevent the (Germans, Russians, French, Serb nationalists, etc) from getting the jump on them. It's a great example of how ideas influence behaviors in world politics – some ideas are just seen as inevitable, when that very perception is the only thing that truly makes such things inevitable.
Juche Corea says:
Related
http://www.vice.com/read/nobody-knows-why-we-still-call-them-freedom-fries
Xynzee says:
@Skipper: it wasn't until I watched the "Blackadder Goes Forth" series that I finally understood what the hell was going on, at least on the English side.
It had to do with the British nobility system. You could have two people of equal rank: one of whom had put in the hard yards, worked their way up and learned how to make good strategic decisions; the other had an extra piece of title in their name ie Lord Chinless, who one wouldn't trust to organise breakfast, let alone a military operation.
Guess who everyone listened to.
I'd hate to be in Prince Harry's unit. Talk about being a magnet for a shelling. At least William is in the navy, and you're all on the ship together.
LA Joe says:
We would be better served by reading the pronouncements that came from the Project for the New American Century pre-2001 than these redacted scripts of dubious worth in order to get a true assessment of run up to the Iraq War Part Deux.
el mago says:
Skipper nailed it.
BruceFromOhio says:
It's not like there's anything to be learned from that experience.
Satire, or Irony? Discuss.
Skepticalist says:
Gore Vidal was right.
God we're dumb.
Mo says:
Another thing I used to wonder as a kid was why people believed such delusional things that set them to killing off their neighbors, going to war, taking religion seriously…
And then it was if the very air congealed around me after 9/11, making me feel like a fly caught in jello, trying to beat tiny wings that were now stuck fast.
Anger and amazement at the howling stupidity of your fellow citizens, indeed.
I still haven't recovered from the horror of trapped impotence when your society careens toward the cliff. Because we're still on two wheels at the edge, I guess.
mothra says:
Mo, I think we're hanging by just a couple of treads on the edge at this point…
LA Joe says:
I blame air conditioning.
Skepticalist says:
Good Point, Joe.
Robert says:
Skipper, Archduke FF was not the Emperor's first choice, true. Franz Josef had lost his only son to suicide, one younger brother to Benito Juarez, another brother to typhus (IIRC). FF was the next in line, but hadn't become heir presumptive until FJ was in his sixties. After a couple decades of trying to polish him into a proper Habsburg, some Serbian git up and shoots him.
When FJ finally did die, while the Empire was also dying, a grandnephew wound up being the next Emperor just long enough to abdicate and end Austria-Hungary – which was exactly what FJ had been hoping to avoid. Prewar Europe was a game of pick-up sticks made out of rifles and swords, complicated by the previous two decades of plotting and scheming. The destruction of three, count 'em three, imperial dynasties in one war was exactly the kind of destabilization European powers had dreaded for generations.
Rich says:
I don't know what makes me more angry, the fact that Bush got away with this crime, or the way most Americans just do not seem to care. They didn't care when the war was being fought, they don't care about the problems many vets are having today, and they don't care about new evidence such as this NIE.
eau says:
This blog is the only place I have come across any reference to this declassification. Anywhere. And I'm a bit of a news junky. Can we blame anyone else for not knowing about it, let alone caring?