Clearly Baghdad is in tough shape. Undoubtably “mission accomplished” was a foolish PR stunt and Bremer was a disaster. What’s the old saying, “The battle plan never survives first contact with the enemy.” Very true in this instance. Either way, the battle continues — one hopes, for the better. Certainly lessons learned will fill many books.

I think we can all join in wishing that success will come from the coalition efforts in Iraq and that some kind of arrangement will be reached by which that war-torn country can find peace.

Bad and/or misinterpreted intelligence failure (although I noticed Bolton on Lateline last night still conflating WMD’s, terrorists and Saddam Hussein in a single sentence - perhaps he hasn’t got the memo yet). Even the US administration admitted fault with this one.

Administrative failures resulting in the Rumsfeld sacking. Helluva job rummy.

Repeated failure to listen to defence personnnel resulting in too few troops.

“Mission Accomplished” - Very reassuring.

“…months, not years…” - How’s that prediction working out for J.Howard?

Still no Osama Bin Ladin.

Man up and grow a pair Kevin and whyisitso. Something you both obviously hold dear to your hearts has failed. Deal with it and move on.

“I” “we” of course being the all-knowing, all-wise, all-moral, Left. Just how are “we” going to solve the problem for and on behalf of the Iraquis, other than the Iraquis once the coalition are gone? Just who the hell is this arrogant “we”?

…by the Left.

This brings me to my main annoyance, which is the pretense to existential knowledge about the inner working of the current US administration and the various agencies of the US government involved in the Iraq war. I submit that I don’t know exactly what went on, and nobody else does either. What the public believes generally falls into the following categories…

Kevin, it’s now irrelevant what the public thinks might have been the motives (noble or otherwise) of the instigation of Iraq War II. What is relevant is that it has finally publically been acknowledged as a failure (except, of course, by the Howard government). With the myth of success out of the way, perhaps some constructive way forward can be found. Judging by the actions of the Blair, Howard and Bush governments in this fiasco, it is also obvious that they are part of the problem and must also be removed before a constructive solution can be found.

I certainly no longer care much why they did it. I just want them gone so we can start fixing it.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200702/s1854662.htm

Yeah, I guess I’m just too emotional. The Egyptians have every right to protect their culture without disapproval from Westerners!

There’s nothing sinister in my efforts. On the matter of Islamism, its threats and realities, I simply would like to know what is going on. The dialogue available through the ClubTroppo population is my current favorite way of both finding the cracks in the arguments to which I’ve been exposed and getting exposed to new arguments which test my overall conceptions of the conflict.

I think some information sets are inherently “emotional.” If one is to approach reality with an open mind, there must be an intersection with the inherently unspeakable. Obviously, some people can not or will not address certain issues. I consider no issue out of bounds.

I have a fascination with the spread of memes and propaganda and how they are used not merely to garner votes, but also to protect or destroy the powerful who contend for the valuable resources of the world, and to warp the minds of the sympathetic to create ideoogical foot soldiers for the “cause”. Tracing these memes back to their sources is quite a task. But once one spends a great deal of time in the effort, certain encountered thought patterns begin to be categorizable and, to some degree, source-able. I include some of my own thoughts as well.

This brings me to my main annoyance, which is the pretense to existential knowledge about the inner working of the current US administration and the various agencies of the US government involved in the Iraq war. I submit that I don’t know exactly what went on, and nobody else does either. What the public believes generally falls into the following categories…

1.) Statements put out by the US government that are either true, false, or partially true.
2.) Leaked information from the US government that is either true, false or partially true.
3.) Narratives put out by Think Tanks and Connected Authors that strive to arrive at truth, but nevertheless contain some falsehood and partial truth.
4.) Narratives put out by ideologically-driven periodicals, websites and other information networks that provide some subset of available facts and rumors which confirm the ideological narrative to which the source and its consumers subscribe.
5.) Narratives offered by Foreign Governments in public statements that are either true, false, or partially true.
6.) Leaked information from all other sources outside the US that is either true, false or partially true.
7.) Simplified Narratives put out by Media Outlets and Unconnected Authors that contain sensationalized versions of the various Narratives and Fact Sets available on short notice.
8.) Personal Experience Testimony which, although Irrefutable (unless character is an issue, or co-witnesses dispute the testimony), is by definition subjective and thus de-contextualized.

Now, if there is some agreement that the above categorizations resemble the reality of our information culture, it will be obvious that there is precious little confirmable “truth” available to be had.

If I were to pick a source set to hang my hat on, it would be number 3 in my above list. When those in government now (1s and 2s and possibly 8s) get their chance to be number 3s, then I will feel like I really know what the hell happened. Until then, I’m just asking questions and positing answers for the sake of argument.

Having said all that, the case for a French and Russian effort to derail the Iraq invasion is very compelling to me. Derrida Derider’s protestations notwithstanding. There are quite enough clues, suggestions, facts, business connections, motives, news stories, indictments, etc. to at least begin an inquest. Unfortunately, the fact that spy agencies of foreign governments are involved makes clarity on the matter a near-impossibility. And the US has enough of a problem on our hands without calling out Russia and France, (as some “insider” books have remarked). Especially with the American media, in my humble opinion, being against the administration and Republicans in general and generally in favor of French-centric “Old European” cafe society and faux civility. (The independant studies about the partisan composition of US news agencies seems to support this suspicion.)

In light of all that I have written above on the vagaries of our information culture, I should have written that “Russian and French involvement in derailing the Iraq war is a common suspicion” rather than a bit of “common knowledge.” What can I say, nobody’s perfect.

P.S. The Soviet Union was very very very bad.

Kevin is devoting lots of time to trying to sort us out. I’m not sure why, but various people - like me occasionally get drawn into his net.

There’s a lot to be said for hearing these positions expounded every now and again, occasionally you hear an interesting point you might not have considered. Perhaps I do take “the threat of Islam” too lightly, but every muslim I ever met seemed pretty reasonable to me. (although I’ve only met them in Lakemba).

Silly sentence, going absolutely nowhere. Totally true, of course, and totally justified. If I were American I’d be taking it damned personally too and feeling damned emotional, just as Londoners more than likely took The Blitz personally and felt emotional about that.

Of course Bali was an attack on Australia, and a lot of us still feel highly emotional about that even if Nick thinks that’s beneath himself and his icy rationality. But I do think most of us would feel a hell of a lot more emotional if the attack was on an Australian city. Funny how being attacked in your own home gets people worked up! Not very rational, but that us humans for you (at least some of us more irrational ones)!

His interventions leave me with several impressions.

1 - he’s very emotional. You can’t argue with him without paying obeisance to his list of baddies. And yes Kevin, I think most of your baddies are my baddies too - like the Soviet Union. Corrupt states.

2. - he’s American (Well I presume he is). That’s great by the way - I like America and Americans. But like all us nationalities they have their failings. I’ve been struck by how the Americans take 9/11 as some kind of personalised attack on them. Well of course it obviously was. But the Bali bombings were an attack on us and the West and produced a roughly proportional loss of life compared with our population. But we tend to think of what happened as the result of crazies. We think we should do what we can to fight them but I think there’s a much greater appreciation that it will be hard to fight them because they’re guerillas and they’re crazy. So getting emotional about it and ensuring we’ve bombed someone - even if it is the wrong people - well we don’t have the power to do it anyway, so we don’t make that kind of mistake. I remember someone I didn’t know in America emailing me with SHOUTING capitals saying he was a liberal too, but people in his neighbourhood had been killed in 9.11 and HOW WOULD I LIKE IT. Well I wouldn’t like it, (and I knew someone killed on 9/11) but you’ve got to try to stay rational and do what you can - not charge around like a Bush in a china shop.

4. I have little sympathy for Boulton himself and for the Republicans trashing of anything that gets in the way of their class/culture war. I thought Bush’s almost threatening lecture to the UN was a disgrace. But that’s in the same way that I would regard discourtesy to a judge even if I thought the Judge was a lousy judge or discourtesy to a house of parliament. I think if we have the UN it is important to show it some respect. On the other hand (like a bad or even a corrupt judge) that’s quite different from coming out and speaking the truth - which is where I support Kevin. In many ways the UN is a massively dysfunctional institution and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. I note Fukyama’s observation that the neo-cons were big on trashing the UN with little to offer in its place while trashing Clinton Admin efforts to do something of that kind with the Community of Democracies or whatever it was called. Anyway Kev, you’d know more about the details than I do and no doubt you’ll fill me in plus some.

And I just want to say in closing that the Soviet Union was very very nasty indeed. Very nasty.

Yet another straight lie that the war party has tried to make “common knowledge”. As a matter of public record the biggest single contributor, by far, to the corruption of the oil-for-food scheme was the Australian Wheat Board - read the Volcker Report if you don’t believe me (the same report implicates plenty of American firms too, BTW). As for arms, the Americans were shot at mainly by old Russian and British hardware, with a relatively small amount of new Chinese stuff smuggled from Syria. If the Europeans had been selling arms on any scale to Saddam he’d have killed a lot more GIs.

Friend, the French and Germans opposed American adventurism with the clear understanding that unprovoked aggression founded on a crock of lies would be very likely to end in tears. Why can’t you accept that events have proven them dead right?

And the stuff about Islam is also simplistic bullshit. You’ve clearly been reading too many right-wing blogs.