Batman: do you have the courage to read a book that actually contains facts and evidence about the war? [rquoter]If you want to read a serious book about the intervention in Iraq, look to Douglas Feith. By Christopher Hitchens Posted Monday, June 2, 2008, at 11:40 AM ET War and Decision by Douglas Feith When Bush's Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill defected from the Cabinet in 2002 and Ron Suskind told O'Neill's story of being surrounded by fools, Michael Kinsley observed that the president deserved all he got from the book. Anyone dumb enough to hire a fool like O'Neill in the first place ought to have known what to expect. So it goes with the ludicrous figure of Scott McClellan. I used to watch this mooncalf blunder his way through press conferences and think, Exactly where do we find such men? For the job of swabbing out the White House stables, yes. But for any task involving the weighing of words? Hah! Now it seems that he realizes, and with a shock at that, that there was a certain amount of "spin" or propaganda involved in his job description. Well, give the man a cigar. Beyond that, the book is effectively valueless to the anti-war camp since, as McClellan says of the president, "I consider him a fundamentally decent person, and I do not believe he or his White House deliberately or consciously sought to deceive the American people." Bertrand Russell's principle of evidence against interest—if the pope has doubts about Jesus, his doubts are by definition more newsworthy than the next person's—doesn't really justify the ocean of coverage in which the talentless McClellan is currently so far out of his depth. For one thing, he doesn't supply anything that can really be called evidence. For another, having not noticed any "propaganda machine" at the time he was perspiring his way through his simple job, he has a clear mercenary interest in discovering one in retrospect. If you want to read a serious book about the origins and consequences of the intervention in Iraq in 2003, you owe it to yourself to get hold of a copy of Douglas Feith's War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism. As undersecretary of defense for policy, Feith was one of those most intimately involved in the argument about whether to and, if so, how to put an end to the regime of Saddam Hussein. His book contains notes made in real time at the National Security Council, a trove of declassified documentation, and a thoroughly well-organized catalog of sources and papers and memos. Feith has also done us the service of establishing a Web site where you can go and follow up all his sources and check them for yourself against his analysis and explanation. There is more of value in any chapter of this archive than in any of the ramblings of McClellan. As I write this on the first day of June, about a book that was published in the first week of April, the books pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Boston Globe have not seen fit to give Feith a review. An article on his book, written by the excellent James Risen for the news pages of the New York Times, has not run. This all might seem less questionable if it were not for the still-ballooning acreage awarded to Scott McClellan. Feith was and is very much identified with the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party, and he certainly did not believe that Saddam Hussein was ever containable in a sanctions "box." But he is capable of separating his views from his narrative, and this absorbing account of the interdepartmental and ideological quarrels within the Bush administration, on the Afghanistan and Guantanamo fronts as well as about Iraq, will make it difficult if not impossible for people to go on claiming that, for instance: 1. There was no rational reason to suspect a continuing Iraqi WMD threat. Feith's citations from the Duelfer Report alone are stunning in their implications. 2. That alternatives to war were never discussed and that the administration was out to "get" Saddam Hussein from the start. 3. That the advocates of regime change hoped and indeed planned to anoint Ahmad Chalabi as a figurehead leader in Baghdad. 4. That there was no consideration given to postwar planning. It's also of considerable interest to learn that the main argument for adhering to the Geneva Conventions was made within the Pentagon and that the man who expressed the most prewar misgivings concerning Iraq was none other than Donald Rumsfeld. Feith doesn't deny that he has biases of his own. One of these concerns the widely circulated charge that his own Office of Special Plans was engaged in cherry-picking and stovepiping intelligence. Another is the criticism, made by most of the neocon faction, of Paul Bremer and the occupation regime that he ran in Baghdad. In all instances, however, Feith writes in an unrancorous manner and is careful to supply the evidence and the testimony and, where possible, the actual documentation, from all sides. Without explicitly saying so, Feith makes a huge contribution to the growing case for considering the Central Intelligence Agency to be well beyond salvage. Its role as a highly politicized and bewilderingly incompetent body, disastrous enough in having left us under open skies before Sept. 11, 2001, became something more like catastrophic with the gross mishandling of Iraq. For these revelations alone, this book is well worth the acquisition. (I might add that, unlike McClellan, Feith is contributing all his earnings and royalties to charities that care for our men and women in uniform.) I don't know Feith, but I can pay him two further compliments: When you read him on a detail with which you yourself are familiar, he is factually reliable (and it's not often that one can say that, believe me). And his prose style is easy, nonbureaucratic, dry, and sometimes amusing. If a book that was truly informative was called a "tell-all" by our media, then War and Decision would qualify. As it is, we seem to reserve that term for the work of bigmouths who have little, if anything, to impart.[/rquoter]
So do you believe Sott McClellan's book is not factual? Why hasn't anybody denied the claims in it? Instead they just attack Scott.
Or we can take General Tommy Franks assessment, who did know him and work with him. "The f-king stupidest guy on the face of the earth"
so, according to this guy, the writer of the article not the book, mcclellan is right when he says bush is a decent person but he's stupid when writes his book. ummkay
Feith's interview on the Daily Show. long, but worth listening to. <embed FlashVars='videoId=168543' src='http://www.thedailyshow.com/sitewide/video_player/view/default/swf.jhtml' quality='high' bgcolor='#cccccc' width='332' height='316' name='comedy_central_player' align='middle' allowScriptAccess='always' allownetworking='external' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' pluginspage='http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer'></embed> <embed FlashVars='videoId=168544' src='http://www.thedailyshow.com/sitewide/video_player/view/default/swf.jhtml' quality='high' bgcolor='#cccccc' width='332' height='316' name='comedy_central_player' align='middle' allowScriptAccess='always' allownetworking='external' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' pluginspage='http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer'></embed>
Feith (aside from having a role in WMD lies & Abu Ghraib) headed the Office of Special Plans, which had as its immediate responsibilty the postwar planning for Iraq Let me think of things I would rather have on my resume: Hindenburg pilot Titanic Iceberg Checker Head of security for the Texas School Book Depository Bernard Kerik's Ethics Advisor Michael Vick's Dog walker Personal Assistant to Karl Malone
In the first thread on this topic I posted a couple of rebuttals from Karl Rove that were just factual observations (i.e. "my office was 20 feet from Scooter Libby's office" and "we met 3+ times per week") that "you guys" just ignored. I've not attacked McClellan. If you respond to the responses that you think are hysterical, you are just taking the conversation in a hysterical direction.
I didn't ignore it, but Rove talking about those meetings with Libby doesn't really change anything in the book.
It does if it's true. Part of Mac's allegation is that Rove and Libby never met and hardly saw each other save this one time and that's why it stood out so much in his mind. Rove saying they worked very near each other and met multiple times a week sort of weakens the credibility of the above argument if it's true.
Why would you ever read a book by a man like Feith who is attempting to defend his discredited legacy and believe it is anything but a spin job? To even approach his book as though it is anything but a spin job just strikes me as the stupidist, most gullible things I've ever heard you put forth, basso. I hope you are just climbing onto the spin machine and don't really believe that this is worthy of being described as 'the true and final word'. Did you read, "My Life" by Bill Clinton and think it was a hard-hitting, honest look at the life of Bill Clinton?
it's exhaustively documented and footnoted, lots of supporting evidence. what are you afraid of? you might learn something new.
Credibility? Hypothesizing? It doesn't challenge everything but it sure puts it in more of a speculative light. Where does that end.... and begin?
Colin Powell's speech before the UN was exhaustively documented and footnoted with wonderful documents like the Yellow Cake/Niger report. That doesn't make the lies he told before the UN any more true. That is kind of the problem here - information sourcing from reliable sources. I can footnote a bunch of reports to 'Prison Planet' about how Osama bin Laden is frozen in government labs. Again, the fact that it can be footnoted doesn't make it true. I tell you what. I'll provide you with a list of books to read. You read those, and I'll read yours. But if you aren't willing to follow your own advice, then I get to make fun of you for being afraid of all the leftist liberal truth. Ok? Alternately, you can just admit you don't want to read my trash propaganda, any more than I wish to read yours.
I think it only goes to point out that they may have met informally because of their close proximity, but doesn't really point out more formal meetings like those referred to by Scotty Mac's book. It may point to McClellan's accusation that they hardly saw each other as being false, or a great exaggeration.
So was "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them," but I seriously doubt you have read that one. Are you afraid to learn something new or are you just allergic to the facts?
Why does basso get to demand that people read books that challenge their beliefs while he gets to blow off any book that challenges his (like General Sanchez's book)? Don't you need to climb the mountain of reading such a book before you can claim that moral high ground?
to my knowledge, Powell did not cite the forferies inhis speech, nor were they the basis of the "16 words."
I wonder if McClellan's book really distinguishes between informal and formal meetings. How would he know the difference?
