"Bryon Daly" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote
Seriously, if the admin actually was trying to craft a believable
lie that would not blow up in their faces, don't you think they'd
do a better job of it, and have all their ducks lined up, i's
dotted, t's crossed, etc.?
Please tell me why the Administration did not have the US Army search
through its then list of feared sites in the latter part of April?
It is this lack of a search that leads many people to think the
Administration was not being competent. This is the problem.
John, rather admirably, says that the lack of search was because the
Administration judged it more important in the latter part of April
and May to protect Iraqis from looters and such than to protect
Americans in Washington, DC, where he lives, or in Kalamazoo, MI.
Perhaps John is right, but I find that argument hard to believe.
The lack of search meant the sites were open to enemy guerilla
soldiers. According to the Pentagon, as of 30 May, the US still had
not searched 700 sites on its then list.
At the moment, we don't know whether the Administration's judgement
was right or wrong.
Suppose that long after the current situation quiets down some Iraqi
Shiites die of anthrax? One possibility is that they handled wool and
caught natually occuring anthrax. But what if a guerilla group claims
that the deaths are retaliation for the Shiites support of invaders?
Hopefully the Administration was wrong before the war, or was lying.
Hopefully there was nothing dangerous in those sites, or anywhere
else.
Suppose the Administration were not lying -- Gautam keeps saying this.
Suppose the Bush Administration were telling the truth, as best they
understood it.
If this is true, then we have a different question: perhaps the
Administration is not poor at lying -- an inadequacy we would expect
of honest men and women -- but is simply incompetent.
Suppose the Administration was truthful. That does not take away the
problem. We still have the very serious questions of why the Army did
not search the sites on its list in the latter half of April, why US
took so long to create a new local government after its first attempt
failed, why it has taken so long to admit to and get a handle on the
guerilla war, and why the cost of the occupation is higher than said
before. (The cost is now running at nearly a billion US dollars a
week -- an amount that is greater than the humanitarian money the US,
according to John, is supplying to Afganistan over the year.)
(It goes without saying that no one expects perfection. Everyone
makes mistakes. That is why you nurture organizations and critics and
independent people within them to detect problems and learn quickly.
That is why you have Plans B, C, and D. But regardless of that,
politically, the point in choosing one set of people over another for
an Administration is that the better set is supposed to make fewer big
mistakes.)
If you and Gautam are right, the question is not whether the Bush
Administration were telling the truth as best they could, but whether
they are sufficiently competent enough to `build nations' and
otherwise defend the US.
--
Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises
http://www.rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
http://www.teak.cc [EMAIL PROTECTED]
_______________________________________________
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
