I missed this one. The "Vulcans" (Perle, et al.'s self-denomination) thought (think?) of themselves as heirs to the Roman Empire. In Roman times, leaders who failed this catastrophically wouldn't have the nerve to back asking for a blank check to keep the mess they made out of admitted ignorance and stupidity from blowing up completely. They'd be expected to go home and open a vein in a hot bath. Some old customs are worth bringing back.
--- CactusPat <cactuspat at tds.net> wrote:
>
>
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_perle/2007/05/it_doesnt_matter_how_we_got_he.html
>
> We had the very best of intentions
> I failed to convince the Hay audience with my
> defence of US foreign policy.
> Richard Perle
> May 30, 2007 2:30 PM
>
> .... Last night Philippe Sands and I discussed Iran,
> Iraq and related issues in a tent nearly filled with
> a thoughtful, engaged audience of five or six
> hundred people who had come, I suspect, to hear what
> could possibly be said in defence of American policy
> in Iraq. I tried to oblige. Judging from the
> questions from the audience, the Guardian readers in
> attendance (I didn't see a single copy of the
> Telegraph, no sign of the Sun, not even an FT)
> remain largely unconvinced. So I'll try again here,
> briefly.
>
> After the attacks of 9/11, the dreaded Bush
> administration asked itself what other act of terror
> might be in store for us. Little was known about the
> extent of al-Qaida's ambition, but it was believed
> that al-Qaida's planning cycle was 18 to 24 months
> so preparations for further attacks might well
> already be underway.
>
> Not surprisingly, the greatest concern was that the
> next attack might include the use of chemical or
> biological weapons or nuclear material. So it seemed
> reasonable to draw up a list of how such an attack
> might be undertaken, with an emphasis on identifying
> the sources of weapons of mass destruction from
> among those states which had ties to or harbored
> terrorists and who hated the United States.
>
> Saddam Hussein's Iraq topped the list. So the US
> went to the United Nations to demand, for the
> umpteenth time, that Saddam account for those WMD
> that the UN had concluded he once possessed but
> whose disposition was unknown. (Remember the UN
> inspectors had been withdrawn, affording Saddam
> ample opportunity to move and hide anthrax, nerve
> agent, and the like.)
>
> The UN voted to demand an accounting. At the last
> minute, Saddam handed over thousands of pages that
> he claimed was responsive to the UN demand. But
> there was nothing new in his submission, no real
> accounting, no evidence of when, where or how his
> stockpiles had been destroyed. Every intelligence
> organisation in the world drew what seemed an
> obvious conclusion: he was hiding WMD. The rest is
> history. An invasion in which an unspeakably vicious
> mass murderer was brought down, his regime toppled
> in 21 days with a small number of casualties.
>
> We should have handed political authority in Iraq to
> an interim Iraqi government the day Baghdad fell.
> With the best of intentions, though, we embarked on
> an ill-conceived and catastrophically flawed
> occupation aimed at bringing a decent,
> representative government to the long-suffering
> Iraqis.
>
> We didn't know how to do that. By trying, and
> failing, we unwittingly provided the ground for a
> horrific insurgency which began to develop after
> several months of occupation.
>
> So today, even after the Iraqis risked their lives
> to vote for a government of their choosing, an
> insurgency continues to target innocent civilians
> and continues to try to incite a full-blown
> sectarian civil war.
>
> We did not go into Iraq to impose representative
> government on the Iraqis. We went there to manage a
> threat to our own safety. But now that we are there
> we are trying to help an elected government achieve
> a level of safety for its citizens that will allow
> to function.
>
> There are people out there who hope we fail. Some of
> you may even be reading this, and there surely were
> one or two in the tent in Hay last night. (You know
> who you are.)
>
> But, the price of failure will be enormous. There
> will be unimaginable carnage in Iraq, even worse
> that what we are seeing now. And the terrorists
> whose attacks we hoped to prevent will be encouraged
> to believe they will prevail. They will increase
> their numbers and redouble their effort to obtain
> WMD. We will block them many times, but with WMD in
> hand, they need succeed only once.
>
> No matter what you think about how we got here,
> think hard about what we must now do to protect
> hapless Iraqis and the rest of us from the holy
> warriors who believe they have a mandate from Allah
> to destroy a world in which people can gather in a
> tent and discuss their differences.
>
> All our blogs from Hay will be collected here.
> Guardian Books will feature the latest news from
> Hay, literary blogs and a daily podcast.
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
____________________________________________________________________________________ Take the Internet to Go: Yahoo!Go puts the Internet in your pocket: mail, news, photos & more. http://mobile.yahoo.com/go?refer=1GNXIC