Lying Liars

Juan Cole has an excellent post on the Pentagon's attempts to cherry-pick intelligence in order to foment war fever. In it he disassembles the lies told by Douglas Feith in a CNN interview. Reading the whole thing is informative, but here's the money quote:

Former No. 3 at the Pentagon under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, has been found guilty by the Inspector General of "inappropriate" behavior in setting up a rogue unit inside the Pentagon to cherry pick intelligence so as to get up a war. Of course, the Inspector General was careful to say, this treasonous activity was not "illegal." Lying about sex is illegal. Lying the country into a war that kills or wounds 25,000 US troops is just "inappropriate."

This group of charlatans is probably not going to get taken down like the Nixon administration was, and yet the more that is revealed about how the operate the more I think they are going to leave a taste of Watergate cynicism in our mouths.

More Embarrassing Quotes

Juan Cole has another zinger from one of the Iraq war architects, Douglas Feith as he conversed with an unnamed State Dept. Official:

State Dept. Official: "Doug, after the smoke clears, what is the plan?"
Feith: "Think of Iraq as being like a computer. And think of Saddam as like a processor. We just take out the old processor, and put in a new one--Chalabi."
State Dept. Official: "Put in a new processor?"
Feith: "Yes! It will all be over in 6 weeks."
State Dept. Official: "You mean six months."
Feith: "No, six weeks. You'll see."
State Dept. Official: "Doug."
Feith: "Yes?"
State Dept. Official: "You're smoking crack, Doug."
Feith: "Oh, so you're disloyal to the President, are you?"

This is pathological, this is beyond optimism, this is beyond wishful thinking. Feith was (is?) in some completely other dimension. He thought that he could pull off this whole thing in six weeks?! Most mail-order places tell you to allow four to six weeks for shipping. The other striking feature about this was that Feith seems utterly unconcerned with this whole democracy in the Middle East thing - just replace on thug with another - it's nice to know that freedom was just a marketing thing. I feel sick for every soldier sent to Iraq, for everyone living there.