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Petraeus
and the Surge Myth
By Robert Parry
If there is one overriding consensus
among Washington opinion leaders today, it is that Gen. David Petraeus
is the perfect choice to
turn around the failing war in Afghanistan because he supposedly
already achieved
such a feat in Iraq. But
what if that conventional wisdom is wrong?
had little to do with the eventual reduction of violence in Iraq, that these were more coincidental than causal?
The
Iraq War has been a classic example of how false assumptions can lead
to disastrous policies. That was surely
the case before the invasion when nearly everyone of importance was
onboard with the bogus intelligence about
WMD and Saddam Hussein’s links to al-Qaeda terrorists.
That
was followed by the premature victory celebrations, from MSNBC anchor
Chris Matthews declaring
“we’re all neocons now” to President Bush’s
“Mission Accomplished” speech.
When all these assumptions proved wrong
– and the war in Iraq turned very ugly – there was almost
no accountability for either
the journalists or the politicians who had clambered onto the invasion
bandwagon.
Excellent point made by Parry.
You know what would fix this? Gambling.
The pundits who make these wild-ass predictions should be made
to
go back over them and pay a penalty for the times they got things wrong.
Remember Steve Brill's Content Magazine?
And that's why you have to watch your mouth at a poker table.
If you say,
"More soldiers died under Clinton that Bush,"
someone is going to say, "I have
$1,000 that says that's not true."
Gambling would make the sons of bitches more honest,
but they tell us "Gambling is wrong"
so we have the shit we have.