Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Some People Knew

I just stumbled across this Youtube clip with Janeane Garofalo on Fox News. It was apparently prior to the invasion of Iraq. She says Collin Powell's speech was a joke. She takes the view that the inspectors effectively disarmed Iraq and there wasn't good reason to think they had WMD, and that the costs of an occupation were a large unknown and potentially very high. In response Brian Kilmeade of Fox News is talking about the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. They are so wrong and she is very right. The contrast is stark.



The wars and economic downturn have been immensely damaging. If nothing else those of us that were on the wrong side of the debate at the time must acknowledge our mistakes and learn from them. How many of us were dismissive of Garofalo as a know nothing Hollywood celebrity? She knew her stuff. The Bill Kristols, Fred Barnes, and Charles Krauthammers seemed so impressive. They were clueless.

4 comments:

Sheldon said...

She was probably listening to ex-marine and weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who was arguing that all to most of the chem weapons were already destroyed or degraded. If you don't already know about Scott Ritter, look him up.

Examinator said...

Why would thinking people be surprised?
we are talking about America and Playing to the Republican rump.
They see what they want to see.
The rump is more numerous, more binary, simplistic (read intolerant)
and their national ego knew no bounds. They were miffed that Daddy Bush didn't stomp those uperty A-rabs(sic) in Gulf War 1. The neocoms, Wolfawictz, Pearl,Fife, Rumsfell,Chenney were looking for an excuse.
Chenney was Chairman of Halliburton who coincidentally won big time by subcontracting. Did I mention they were caught profiteering etc?
(they're here with mining and Fracking.. surprised? I'm not!)
NB: most of them were from a pro-Israeli, conservative sink/thunk tank.

Keep in mind also GDubbya was under pressure given the manner of his win....Florida voting system controlled by Bro. Jeb who now wants to control online education! Yeeha!
The war was more for domestic politics than reality. "War president's always poll well" K. Rove
Money and power over ride everything as is evidenced by the Murdoch (right wing) media in a previous story. I think it's fair to say profit drive America and smothers all else.

Examinator said...

PS
I forgot to mention the plan to invade Iraq was first submitted By the stink tank members to the Israeli and Clinton Govts. But it was rejected.
Then when GDubbya got in ... and the rest is history.

Jon said...

Yeah, I do recall Ritter. In fact I was a bit alarmed at his confident statements that this war would be difficult. I think it was an interview with O'Reilly. Wish I could find that. In any case I found a pretty good overall summary of media events in the run up at FAIR here. This has some good stuff. Remember how Sean Penn is also supposed to be an idiot. Who's the idiot now?