But no one has, and it’s me alone, standing between idiocy and the Internet.<\/p>\n
You know how it’s all our fault? Here’s a serious commentator – the former U.N. correspondent for the LA Times – who suggests that Saddam’s failure to comply with the UN inspectors – and therefore avoid war – was, of course, the fault of the US Government.<\/p>\n
…one factor, just as important as the others, has been overlooked. U.N. inspections were undercut from the start by U.S. policy.<\/p>\n
American officials boasted continually that the United States would never allow the United Nations to lift economic sanctions, imposed after the Persian Gulf War, as long as Hussein remained in power. As a result, Hussein never had much incentive to cooperate with the inspectors. If the U.S. carried out its threat, sanctions would remain no matter what he did.<\/p>\n
The United States corrupted the process of inspection. <\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
But Iraqi frustration with U.S. policy may have been a significant factor in the decision by Iraqi officials, representing a weak and humiliated government, to preen and bluster and stand in the way of Butler \u2014 foolish and dangerous behavior that bolstered the view that the Iraqis had a lot to hide. When the new presidential commission investigates the flawed intelligence about Hussein’s WMD, it should not overlook the U.S. role in the subversion of inspections.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
You know, at some point this kind of misjudgment of the world is no longer a matter of politics, but a matter of psychology.<\/p>\n
The United States is not the omnipotent parent we all need to rebel against, and yet complain about when it can’t magically solve our problems without pain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m probably as tired of writing about them as many of you are tired of reading me writing about them, but what can I say, someone’s got to do it. I’d laid off this column in the LA Times Opinion (annoying registration required, use ‘laexaminer’\/’laexaminer’) this Sunday, because I thought everyone else would cover it. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}