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i'm not sure that the interpretation being given this video clip is right.
first off, when was this clip made? i havent researched it for lack of time at the moment.
cheney is talking about the first run of the iraq debacle and seemingly from a position actually took account of the rules that were fashioned for military action at the time--there was no mandate for an invasion of iraq given by the un in the context of the first gulf war. given that there was no mandate, it was possible for cheney to have a more coherent view of what would happen were the americans to invade because such an invasion was off the table in 1991.
in the interim, he seems have decided that--for whatever reason--the more bizarre neo-con interpretation of 1991 was correct and that the mighty american phallus had been unduly limited in its manly self-assertion by the wimpy united nations. this transformation took place well before 9/11/2001--cheney was a signatory to the project for a new american century and pulled himself into line with that whackjob faction of the neocons well before.
none of which explains how it came to pass that the administration--whcih is more than dick cheney, as much as i detest the guy--decided that the wolfowitz "plan" was rational. but even if that plan was understood---somehow--as rational by the administration, it still does not explain the wholesale abdication of oversight functions on the part of the congress that approved the war in iraq.
because the "plan" was never rational.
there was not even a minute during which it was.
any idiot could see that---unless you were blinded by macho posturing and rightwing happyface claims.
what has happened in iraq followed in a staight line: the "plan" was revealed as bullshit almost as soon as it was "implemented"--even faster than were the claims that "justified" it's implementation.
so i am not sure that i see any sudden jerk in cheneyviews following on 9/11/2001--his position modified well before that. which would mean that the consequences of the debacle in iraq cannot be excused by referencing the post 9/11/2001 hysteria and the neofascist political narrative that shaped and extended that hysteria.
rather it seems like iraq was the result of deliberate political calculation on the part of cheney and the rest of the bush squad and that they are fully, unalterably and unavoidably responsible for everything that has happened there.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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