Friday, October 21, 2005

Salon's "New Pentagon Papers"

     So far, it is mostly name-dropping and allegations.  I get some credit for having mentioned Feith and Luti in the same sentence a lot.  Luti spent a lot of the post-war period completely out of the news.  A few telling details, which aren't truly surprising, like "These internal talking points seemed to be a mélange crafted from obvious past observation and intelligence bits and pieces of dubious origin. They were propagandistic in style, and all desk officers were ordered to use them verbatim in the preparation of any material prepared for higher-ups and people outside the Pentagon." are included.  I suppose this is the money quote, but this isn't a "new pentagon papers" because there is no internal source material or leaked minutes/notes, at all...

Certainly, the neoconservatives never bothered to sell the rest of the country on the real reasons for occupation of Iraq -- more bases from which to flex U.S. muscle with Syria and Iran, and better positioning for the inevitable fall of the regional ruling sheikdoms. Maintaining OPEC on a dollar track and not a euro and fulfilling a half-baked imperial vision also played a role. These more accurate reasons for invading and occupying could have been argued on their merits -- an angry and aggressive U.S. population might indeed have supported the war and occupation for those reasons. But Americans didn't get the chance for an honest debate.

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