Now there is no more corrupt institution than the university system at the graduate level - more dishonest, operating farther from its professed values. And more corrosive to the well being of the country. Witness for instance the courage of Near East Studies departments in opposing this war, which has destroyed the great libraries and museums of Iraq, and erased much of the archaeological heritage of the human race, not to mention the human cost, or the clarity with which the Economics departments have been warning us about the dangers of Collateralized Debt Obligations and the other games the financial markets have been playing with our lives and future. But their blindness is intentional - it is not stupidity, it is willful ignorance, and moral cowardice.

But when it comes to a man like Bremer who made the handful of decisions at the fall of Baghdad which made it certain that Iraq would be destroyed, I don’t see willful ignorance and moral cowardice. He made these decisions in the face of absolutely clear and forceful advice. He worked against the institutional context - against the opinions of Garner and the rest - in disbanding the army and police, and expelling members of the Baath from government, stripping Iraq of all security and the middle class technocrats who made society run. The failure to secure the former regime’s arms depots might have been incompetent, but the institution of a sectarian political system was not.

Bremer is Kissinger’s man. No one who has been around since the sixties would call Kissinger stupid, I think. Twisted perhaps, but not stupid. Not naive, to understate it. It is not possible to imagine him believing that the Iraqis would welcome us with flowers and sweets (however much others might have). It is not possible to believe that he believed that the Iraqis, after we had devastated their country in the first Gulf War, then killed a million of their people and wrecked their middle class with sanctions, then devastated their country again, then thrown their army and police and middle class out on the street, and instituted a sect based political system that had no basis in Iraqi history - would love us. Not Kissinger. And not Bremer.

As for the why - as I have posted before - in my view the long term interests of the military industrial complex/national security state, the most irredentist of the Israeli right, and the dominionist wing of the evangelical movement all come together here. Add the acceptable, if vicious, anti-muslim and anti-arab racism, American exceptionalism, institutional self interest, and you have a situation where a very small group of people at the center of power can set forces in motion that determine events on a global scale.

So when we talk about ‘Washington’ and ‘them’ I believe that it is essential to discriminate to some extent at least among the many groups and interests contained in those categories. Some are stupid and incompetent, some are venal and racist, some are fighting the good fight against huge odds, and some are truly evil.

Why did Clinton do these things, support these ignominious actions?

So, thanks, it helps me make a better decision about the candidates.

The problem is we’ve had stupid morons making decisions in regard to Iraq, let’s see what happens when smart people are put in charge.

The idea, of course, is to remove US troops, eventually, it is a matter of how, in a way that is fair to the Iraqi people, while maintaining US strategic position.

The American military isn’t in Iraq to support a small group of illegal arms dealers, or Dick Cheney’s business friends.

Hillary Clinton voted against the Feinstein-Leahy amendment restricting U.S. exports of cluster bombs to countries that use them against civilian-populated areas

http://fromtheleft.wordpress.com/2008/02/04/ten-reasons-not-to-vote-for-hillary-clinton/

The article indicates that Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE) visited Iraq in June 2005 where he spoke privately with military and intelligence officials on the ground. Upon his return he reported that a disproportionate number of the foreign insurgents in Iraq were from Saudi Arabia.

Well, it makes PERFECT sense to ME why Joe Biden chose THAT date to visit Iraq.

The article also talks about two Saudi banking families — Kamel and al-Rajhi. KAMEL is also a wonderful name for the husband of a woman from “Jordan” who had five female children but decided to return to Saudia Arabia with her husband. It seems this woman also had several siblings who kept going back and forth from Jordan to Saudi Arabia. And RAJHI is such a wonderful name for a Persian Cat!

Actually, Obama’s plan regarding Iraq is pretty much the same as Hillary’s - start reducing the number of troops within a month or two, reduce them by 1-2 brigades a month, which would leave 40,000-70,000 troops at the close of 2009 to, in Hillary’s words, continue the United States’ “military as well as political mission”, which includes its mission against “Al Qa`eda in Iraq” (read combat), countering Iran’s influence (probable combat sooner or later), supporting Iraq’s military (would inevitably involve combat), protecting the Kurds (would probably involve some combat), “preventing a failed stated” (read continuing the imperial project), and of course, keeping the Baghdad Regional Imperial Command and Control Center - oh, sorry, “embassy” - safe (possible combat).

That’s both Hillary’s and Obama’s version of “bringing the troops home”.

That amounts to continuing the occupation with a reduced force.

Or are you limiting the blame for this mess to Bush, and no one else, “institutionalized” being the key word?

And “they” and “Washington” aren’t meaningless categories, the level of corruption, and intellectual mediocrity is endemic in BOTH parties, all are to blame, period, most of the decision making deriving from the level of ivy league you mentioned, ie Bremer. It took a long time to get to this level of corruption,(how did it happen, why?) a Washington bubble so removed from American life it forgot it was to represent the people, a functioning representative government, as opposed to K Street. This stems to the farm system, even. Look at Obama, Obama’s connections to Rezko, who is connected to the billionaires connected to 9.11, and men like Hastert, and Grossman. Is this the new Congressional farm team? See a problem, or do you simply dismiss it as an aberration?

Why, for instance, are lobbyists writing legislation, legislation that in the end is harmful to the country, harmful even to the survival of the corporate ecosystem, theirs?
This problem isn’t isolated to Bush, it is bipartisan, again, government by mediocre pac, via Harvard. Are you impressed with the level of output in Washington, or do you feel this is simply Bush’s problem? Why haven’t Cheney and Bush been impeached, despite grievous offense to the Constitution? Why haven’t the democrats made any significant changes since regaining Congress? By choice? To me, with all due respect, you are either disingenuous, or uninformed. These problems will not go away, or improve, until they are addressed.

Do you even see a problem?

Bremer and Brown function at a level of denial that disallows achievement, they are both uninformed, neither critical thinkers. They don’t understand what they purport to have mastered. Do you think, in it’s own way, Iraq is New Orleans, Bremer is Brown, except Bremer got Iraq, and Brown got FEMA? Each rose to their level of incompetence, and hundreds of thousands died. Each was criminally negligent. To me, those are stupid men, one via Harvard, one via OK state.

Both were shockingly ignorant in their inability to recognize and assess the problems they faced, and for Bremer, this is even more inexcusable (he went to Harvard, right?), both highly incompetent and unsuited for their jobs. Why didn’t Bremer first provide for the infrastructure in Iraq? Why wasn’t a plan for reconstruction presented? But because Bremer, or Addington, went to Yale, we say it’s “misjudgement” as opposed to “they’re the fucking morons” out of OK State?

Stupid is stupid.

The ability to recite facts or throw a lot of spin without the ability to really understand ideas or implement them means nothing.

Invade Iraq? And which Harvard or Yale genius thought that was a good idea?

Feith, Addington?

And which opposition Harvard or Yale genius, other than the usual, stopped this plan?

None.

It would seem most of Washington cannot really grasp the complexities of the situations in front of them, and none seem to do anything but follow a tracked, well worn path of ideological, predictable tripe.

Why do we fight asymmetric war this way, for instance? “Well I took a course and it said…” They accept clearly unworkable solutions as gospel, they don’t even question what they see.

Cheney is an idiot. If one, for instance, makes a decision to take on the CIA, thinking he can win, in an attempt to remake the Constitution (the fourth amendment, say) he’s stupid. If one feels the only way to handle the crisis in the middle east is with bombs, he’s stupid. If he feels torture, or force, will bring about compliance, he is stupid, he might as well be Michael Brown. Ignoring greenhouse gases? That will destroy the world left unchecked, that’s stupid. So how are these men different?

Courageous people who have the ability to think and problem solve in a creative manner are ideal, and they are in the ivy league, too, we just have had a bad crop due to certain cultural changes over the past thirty years, manifesting in current day Washington. We seem now to have an ivy league full of tracked thinkers, like John Yoo, or Bremer, both of whom can’t, or won’t, find their asses with both hands, unless everyone else is doing it, and Mark Penn took a poll, and Bill Kristol said it was OK, and Tony Rezko funded it.

I see the choice to be corrupt, to involve oneself in corruption, as inherently stupid, a fully informed choice.

The lack of empathy is appalling, smug identity being invested in a Phd, all of it screaming, “I am insecure, and have no sense of real identity, or integrated richness of intellect. Please love me.”

No.

And no shit.

And, really, how do you explain Washington’s lack of leadership, as a whole?

What is your reasoning for this lack of leadership, this lack of political brilliance, for the corruption, and the decline?

And I’m pushing you, I see a big problem, just playing devil’s advocate, in part, something to think about, no offense meant.

9/11 inquiry head ‘tried to shield George Bush’

By Tom Leonard in New York

The book says Mr Zelikow, a former academic, once tried to push through wording in a draft report that suggested a greater tie between Osama bin Laden and Iraq, in line with White House claims but not with the views of the commission’s staff.

The book seeks to raise new questions about the independence of the bipartisan commission, which was created in 2002 to investigate government mistakes that led to the Sept 11 attacks.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/05/winquiry105.xm

For eight years Bill Clinton and Al Gore and their administration, with Hillary Clinton’s unwavering support, tortured by means of systematic starvation and deprivation of the basic human necessities (including but not limited to water, electricity, vaccines, medicine, education) millions of Iraqi children. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children under the age of five years died as a result of this form of torture, which was conducted and maintained as a means of “regime change”.

Israel also has a decades-long documented history of imprisoning and in some cases torturing children as young as ten years old. Where have Bill, Hillary, and Al been while their ally Israel has been torturing those Middle Eastern children?

Hillary Clinton has for decades been a strong supporter of Israel’s systematic torture of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children, most recently by imprisoning them in Gaza without access to food, medicine, electricity, and water, among other necessities of life. I believe the silence from Bill and Al while this is going on has been deafening.

Hillary Clinton gave her full support to Israel’s 33 day torture of Lebanese children during the summer of 2006, and the ongoing torture they suffer as a result of the destruction of vital infrastructure and homes, and medical facilities. I don’t recall hearing a single squeak from Bill or Al. To the best of my knowledge, none of them - not Bill, not Al, not Hillary, found any problem at all with Israel’s spending two days carpeting southern Lebanon with millions of cluster bomblets - the gift that keeps on killing and maiming mainly children for years - AFTER the ceasefire had been agreed upon.

I also do not recall hearing even the tiniest squeak of a suggestion from Bill, or Al, or Hillary that maybe, just maybe, it would be kind of nice if Israel would provide mine removal teams with a map showing where they planted landmines - another gift that keeps on killing and maiming mainly children - during their 18 year occupation of southern Lebanon.

So, you will understand, I hope, why I have a great deal less confidence in the likelihood that Hillary will suddenly start caring enough about Middle Eastern children to stand up to anyone when they are tortured, starved, or deprived of the basic necessities of life.