When you put an idiot in charge

I know, you are wondering why I continually chose to write on Brad Warthan, VP and Editorial Page Editor at The State newspaper (the paper in my area).  Simply, to illustrate the thought process of those in charge of print in a GOP state — South Carolina — and, to provide comic relief, in a way.

So, here is more of what you get when you put an idiot in charge…

Want a laugh?  Go read this diatribe by Brad Warthan at his blog on The State’s website found here.  Below is the email I sent, to him, everyone at The State who I have an email address for, and anyone else I wished to expose Mr. Warthan’s idiocy to, as well.

Brad Warthan, Editorial Page Editor and VP at The State newspaper, never disappoints in showing his ignorance.  Obviously I am not the only person who reads Mr. Warthan and finds his thoughts not only disturbing, but, lacking any relation to reality.  How Mr. Warthan continues to maintain his position at The State newspaper is beyond me.  How Mr. Warthan is allowed to continue writing in a public venue without anyone from the Democratic Party, be it politician or Party headquarters, taking Mr. Warthan and The State to task is equally as baffling.

Mr. Warthan wrote:  “I know lots of people look upon our involvement in Iraq with “horror.” I don’t, but I know other people do. The NYT editorial wasn’t about anything like that.”

Mr. Warthan, a Vice President at The State newspaper, doesn’t look upon our involvement in Iraq with horror?  Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi’s dead, tens of thousands imprisoned to include over a thousand children, millions displaced, United States soldiers involved in torturing and humiliating prisoners while documenting the abuse with “trophy” pictures doesn’t make Mr. Warthan horrified?  What then, will?  If it was his son, his father, that was being abused in that manner and not some foreigner in another country?  If it was his community, his town, that was totally brought to the ground such as our military did to Falluja?  

Then, to compound his total lack of compassion, Mr. Warthan then tries to explain why he is not horrified.  I will post Mr. Warthan’s words, and my rebuttal to each statement, in an orderly manner.

“It has nothing to do with WMD. I realize it did for an awful lot of people, but not for me. So while I saw not finding the WMD (which we all know had been there, because Saddam had used it) as a big setback, it didn’t change anything about why I saw us needing to go in there.”

We “knew” Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction because he used them.  What Mr. Warthan fails to mention is that Saddam Hussein used his chemical weapons in the 1980’s, during President Reagan’s and Vice President George H. W. Bush’s administration.  His “weapons” use was over 20 years old.  He also fails to mention that the United Nations inspector teams had accounted for the vast majority of the weapons.  The biggest failure of Mr. Warthan comes from the fact that he conveniently leaves out the WMD’s President Bush and Dick Cheney used to scare the public were nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons programs, or, doesn’t Mr. Warthan remember Condeleeza Rice and her “mushroom clouds” rhetoric?  Mr. Warthan also fails to mention that this rhetoric was a flat out lie as the Bush administration knew months prior to our invasion didn’t exist.  We know this for a fact thanks to Tyler Drumheller who worked with the CIA and gave interviews attesting to this this in fact.

“Either you look at the situation we had in the world at that time and agree with me, or you don’t. It’s very hard to bridge the gap. I looked at a lot of things, and that’s what it added up to for me. Other people look at the same things and don’t arrive there at all. Part of it is that I am by nature inclined to intervention. I think we were right to intervene in the Balkans, and wrong not to in Rwanda and Darfur. I think we were wrong to leave Somalia in 2003. I believe when you’re the most powerful nation in the world — economically, militarily, just about any other way — you have an obligation to act when people are suffering and being oppressed. Anti-war people think that’s arrogant. I think it’s cold NOT to want to do what we can. And the fact is, if we want to, we can do a great deal.”

So, in Mr. Warthan’s warped mind, it’s “cold” not to act to help a people who are suffering or oppressed, but, he isn’t horrified that we’ve tortured Iraqi’s, killed hundreds of thousands of its people, displaced millions more, and thrown tens of thousands more into prisons, again, including children?  So, Mr. Warthan still believes we were helping the people of Iraq by killing them, torturing them, and imprisoning them?  

“Here are two of those reasons, which make all the sense in the world to me, but not to antiwar people: — Until 9/11, the U.S. policy toward the region had been maintaining the status quo. What that had meant was backing current regimes, however horrible — or at least leaving them alone — so as to keep the oil flowing. Don’t rock the boat. The 1991 Gulf War was a perfect example of this old strategy: Saddam had attacked Kuwait and was threatening the much bigger target of Saudi Arabia. We sent an overwhelming force to preserve the status quo ante — pushing Saddam back “where he belonged,” and restoring the previous government in Kuwait, and protecting the Saudi regime. We didn’t want to take Baghdad then because that might have created a vacuum into which Iran, and to a lesser extent Syria and Turkey, might flow. That would upset the apple cart, and we didn’t want to do that. (We should have, because at that time we had something we didn’t have 12 years later — overwhelming force, enough to occupy and stabilize Iraq. I understand why we didn’t — but that calculation was based on the old, pre-9/11, policy of preserving the status quo.)”

First of all, Mr. Warthan’s attempt to justify invading Iraq because of 9/11 conveniently forgets that Iraq wasn’t where the terrorists trained, lived, planned, or, at the least, their nationality.  This “9/11 changed everything” is an old, tired, right-wing GOP talking point.  Second, Mr. Warthan’s claim that in 1991 we had the overwhelming force, enough to occupy and stabilize Iraq, is simply false.  Dick Cheney, who was Secretary of Defense during the war in 1991, stated in a 1994 interview that we did not invade Baghdad at that time because doing so would “create a quagmire” (his own words).  The United States increased the troop strength in 1991 to 475,000 troops.  General Shinseki, who was the Commander of the peacekeeping operation in Bosnia, advised in 2002 that it would take 750,000 troops in order to invade, occupy, and stabilize Iraq.  The “power vacuum” that Mr. Warthan states “might have” happened in 1991 has, in fact, occurred as Iran has gained entrance into Iraq’s politics — the exact fear that kept us from invading in 1991 — and, it is in fact a quagmire for our military.

“9/11 changed this equation, because it showed us that preserving the status quo — one in which oppressive regimes produced political frustration and encouraged Islamic militantism — was extraordinarily dangerous to us. The 9/11 hijackers were the result of the old policy of supporting the status quo. We needed to begin the process of changing the region, and Iraq was a good place to start. Succeed there (and the problem in Iraq is that so many things were done wrong in the first years that it took far too long to succeed), and you encourage liberalizing, democratizing forces in all middle eastern countries. We saw the beginnings of that in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Libya — although much of it was set back by the increasing violence that was only quelled after the Surge began at the start of 2007. Much of that good effect has yet to be seen, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still happen.”

This paragraph by Mr. Warthan proves just how ignorant Mr. Warthan is of history and reality.  America tried to “change the region” when the CIA pulled the coup in Iran in 1953 deposing a democratically elected leader simply because he wasn’t “as friendly to the United States as we would have liked due to the oil.  That “change” put Iran’s people under a brutal dictator for 26 years until the 1979 revolution in Iran.  The oppressive regimes that produced and encouraged Islamic militantism were regimes that we either put in place ourselves or supported and encouraged.  Yet, for all of our interference in the region, there was only one terrorist act against our troops; the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983.  It wasn’t until after we stationed troops in Saudi Arabia and refused to remove them from the region that terrorist attacks against the United States began being perpetrated.  In 1993, the WTC was bombed for the first time.  In 1996, the Khobar towers in Saudi Arabia were bombed.  In 1998, our embassies in Africa were bombed.  In 2000, the USS Cole was attacked.  In 2001, 9/11, the WTC was bombed for the second time.  It wasn’t until April 2003 that the United States announced it was removing our troops from Saudi Arabia, a month after our invasion of Iraq, because we were in the process of invading Iraq with the intent of occupying with those same troops.  Once the United States got our military into the Middle East in 1990, a foreign policy objective since the 1950’s, we have never left.

“– Iraq was the place to start because we had every reason to go in and take out the regime there. Saddam had violated terms of the 1991 cease fire for 12 years. He was shooting at our planes enforcing the no-fly zone. In 2002, the UN passed the resolution authorizing force unless Saddam met certain conditions — which he failed to meet. Some significant UN members balked at acting upon the resolution — France, Germany, Russia — but plenty of others, including most European powers, actually joined that “coalition of the willing.” And why not? Saddam had spent the last decade and more cementing his reputation as an outlaw regime.”

Mr. Warthan continues to live in ignorance of history and reality with this paragraph.  First of all, the United Nations never sanctioned the “no-fly zones” in any of their resolutions.  United Nations resolution 688 was the resolution used by the United States, Britain, and France to justify the “no-fly” zones in Iraq.  I challenge Mr. Warthan to read UN res 688 and explain exactly where a United Nations mandated “no-fly” zone is stated in it.  In fact, UN res 688 states, “Reaffirming the committment of all member states to respect the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of Iraq and all states in the region.”  That Iraq fired upon our planes during the time of the U.S. imposed “no-fly” zones was no more a violation of the UN resolutions than it was for the United States to refuse to adhere to the resolution calling on us to respect Iraq’s sovereignty and territorial borders.  United Nations resolution 1441, used by President Bush as justification to invade Iraq, and further referenced by Mr. Warthan states, “Recalling that its resolution 678 (1990) authorized Member States to use all necessary means to uphold and implement its resolution 660 (1990) of 2 August 1990 and all relevant resolutions subsequent to resolution 660 (1990) and to restore international peace and security in the area.”  However, invading Iraq did not implement resolution 660, it removed Saddam Hussein from power, which directly contradicts this statement from the same resolution, “Reaffirming the commitment of all Member States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq, Kuwait, and the neighbouring States.”

“Anyway, that’s PART of my thinking on the subject. It doesn’t make sense to people who agree. It DOES make sense to some who do, such as the New York Times’ Tom Friedman.”

Mr. Warthan, in his ending, references Thomas Friedman, the man who started the “Friedman Unit”, as someone who “gets” Mr. Warthan’s warped sense of history.  This is the same Thomas Friedman who said, “You don’t think, you know, we care about our open society. You think this bubble fantasy, we’re just going to let it grow? Well, suck on this, ok. That Charlie, is what this war was about. We could have hit Saudi Arabia, it was part of that bubble. Could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could. That’s the real truth.”  

We hit Iraq because we could?  The 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Al-Qaeda training camps were in Afghanistan.  But, Mr. Warthan touts the man who said we hit Iraq BECAUSE WE COULD?  Or, how about these statements from Mr. Friedman?

“The next six months in Iraq-which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there-are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time.” (The New York Times, November 30, 2003)

“What we’re gonna find out, Bob, in the next six to nine months is whether we have liberated a country or uncorked a civil war.” (CBS’s Face the Nation, September 3, 2004)

“I think we’re in a six-month window here.” (NBC’s Meet the Press, September 25, 2005)

“The only thing I am certain of is that in the wake of this election, Iraq will be what Iraqis make of it-and the next six months will tell us a lot.” (The New York Times, December 21, 2005)

“Well, I think that we’re going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six months-probably sooner-whether a decent outcome is possible there.” (MSNBC’s Hardball, May 11, 2006)

Six months.  For Thomas Friedman, every six months was a Bill Murray “Groundhog Day”.  That is the “smart man” who “gets” the Iraq war Mr. Warthan touts?  Thomas Friedman has been wrong every six months since 2003, or, 5 years!  So, in Mr. Warthan’s “opinion”, it should be just another 6 months before we “win” in Iraq, the facts be damned, like, we’ve been stuck in the quagmire that is the Iraq war for over 5 years now — a quagmire that even Dick Cheney as Secretary of Defense said it would be in 1994?

Face it, Mr. Warthan lives in an alternate universe where facts, history and reality have no place for him.  As Editorial Page Editor at The State newspaper, he continually reprints conservative journalists and touts them as “smart men” — people who are as continually wrong on every subject they chose to opine as Mr. Warthan has been.

Now you understand why Mr. Warthan banned me from his blog — he couldn’t handle someone who could prove how much of an idiot he was having a voice.