Condoleeza Rice: Supreme NEOCON
Bob Woodward has been writing articles in WashPost all week stemming from his upcoming book and the interviews he conducted to write it. Today, he has an article up where he writes about his discussions with Condoleeza Rice about the Iraq war.
Woodward quotes Rice as saying in May of '08, "I have believed from day one that Iraq was going to change the face of the Middle East." This is the central tenant of the Neocon ideology... put democracy in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East will follow. Woodward should have followed up with the question, "At what cost?... is no cost too great to have overthrown Saddam on a belief that deomocracy would flourish in the Middle East?"
She ends her interview with Woodward saying this, "There are a lot of things , if I could go back and do them differently, I would. But the one thing I would not do differently is, we should have liberated Iraq. I'd do it a thousand times again. I'd do it a thousand times again." This answer from Rice is very telling... it doesn't say anything about WMD or Al Quada or talk about a threat to our national security, it was all about liberating Iraq, a sovereign nation, albeit an evil one, and planting a flag of democracy in the Middle East. Bush 2.0's problem was finding justification for the Neocon ideology of liberating Iraq that his key advisors shared. 9/11 set the table but the question of WMD and the PR offensive of the White House sold us on this bill of goods. If, on the other hand, Bush 2.0, Rice and others were honest with the American public and said that liberating Iraq was in the interest of our national security and the safety of the world, we could have had an honest debate. But the Neocons didn't want that debate because they knew they wouldn't win it. So we got spin, fear and scare tactics.
I would have loved to have followed up with the question to Rice regarding the things she would have done differently: "Would you have given the weapons inspectors three to six more months they needed on the ground in Iraq to finish their job before launching an invasion?" She, nor Bush 2.0, Rummy, Feith, Pearl, Wolfowitz or Cheney would have given that time cause that would have killed their rationale for the war in the first place.
Woodward quotes Rice as saying in May of '08, "I have believed from day one that Iraq was going to change the face of the Middle East." This is the central tenant of the Neocon ideology... put democracy in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East will follow. Woodward should have followed up with the question, "At what cost?... is no cost too great to have overthrown Saddam on a belief that deomocracy would flourish in the Middle East?"
She ends her interview with Woodward saying this, "There are a lot of things , if I could go back and do them differently, I would. But the one thing I would not do differently is, we should have liberated Iraq. I'd do it a thousand times again. I'd do it a thousand times again." This answer from Rice is very telling... it doesn't say anything about WMD or Al Quada or talk about a threat to our national security, it was all about liberating Iraq, a sovereign nation, albeit an evil one, and planting a flag of democracy in the Middle East. Bush 2.0's problem was finding justification for the Neocon ideology of liberating Iraq that his key advisors shared. 9/11 set the table but the question of WMD and the PR offensive of the White House sold us on this bill of goods. If, on the other hand, Bush 2.0, Rice and others were honest with the American public and said that liberating Iraq was in the interest of our national security and the safety of the world, we could have had an honest debate. But the Neocons didn't want that debate because they knew they wouldn't win it. So we got spin, fear and scare tactics.
I would have loved to have followed up with the question to Rice regarding the things she would have done differently: "Would you have given the weapons inspectors three to six more months they needed on the ground in Iraq to finish their job before launching an invasion?" She, nor Bush 2.0, Rummy, Feith, Pearl, Wolfowitz or Cheney would have given that time cause that would have killed their rationale for the war in the first place.
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