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Friday, February 5, 2010

See! I Told You So. Part 2

And people wonder how I was so prescient about the Iraq Attaq.

• I told everyone there were no WMDs.
  
• I told everyone that Saddam Hussein had no collaboration with Al Queda.
  
• I told everyone that invading Iraq meant breaking Iraq, and that a broken Iraq would be a nightmare.
  
• I told everyone that Rumsfeld's prediction of "5days, maybe 5 weeks, certainly not 5 months" was off by a power of ten - or more.
  
• I told everyone that Wolfowitz's claim of "less than 3 billion dollars" was wrong by a factor of at least a hundred. OK, I was wrong on that: I should have predicted a factor of a thousand.
• I cringed (out loud) when Mighty Warrior George Bush proclaimed "Mission Accomplished" and followed it up with "I say bring 'em (Iraqi insurgents)."
  

What makes me so brilliant? Well, I'm not (he says, humbly). What set me (and many others like me) apart from the crowd was that I (we)

1. Ignored every claim from anyone who had a vested interest in going to war.
2. Listened for the propaganda behind the public statements and proclamations.
3. Found sources of information that had no vested interest in going to war.
4. Applied critical analysis to each concept that sounded correct.
5. Checked, and re-checked everything that seemed to be correct as I went through steps 1 - 4.

The best sources for information, then and now (and always):

• "Between the lines" of articles in publications (and websites and blogs) that are often thorough and often correct; the actual articles, on the whole, tend to be wrong, but the truth is sometimes in there.
• Left-wing fishwrap/birdcage liners such as Mother Jones (Smart, fearless Journalism) and The Nation(unconventional wisdom since 1865).
• Listening to the sheep(major news media) - and their listeners - bleating while marching in lockstep with those who have a vested interest in doing the wrong thing ... then using the opposite of what they say as a starting point in my research.
  

And ... I (we) tend to be on the right side of history, e.g,

• I thought way back then that Viet Nam was a mistake. In fact, I yelled it.
• I told people that there was torture going on at Guantanamo and in our prisons in Iraq.
  
• I predicted that if it ever got started that the "9-11 Commission's" recommendations would be largely ignored.

There's a much longer list inside my head, but those voices in there drown out the items on my list. Stay tuned. Some of those will sneak out. Truth For Dummies!

posted by Recovering Republican® © ™  # 12:01 AM

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