A Look Back At People Who Got it So Catastrophically Wrong

The Internet is unforgiving in its accurate record keeping of exactly what people wrote and when they wrote it.

It is highly instructive to revisit opinions of the people who told us that invading Iraq was in the best interests of the United States. Amazingly, some of these people such as neo-conservative Reuel Marc Gerecht still think we should listen to them.

Below are some samples and links to writing from Mr. Gerecht, Richard Perle and a host of other misguided individuals who all told us that this war thing would work out just fine.

The full page of links can be found here

Of special interest to me is the hypocrisy of David Frum who complains about the dictator Saddam whose brutality and murder were perfectly acceptable when those atrocities worked in our favor.

""Saddam has no title to rule his country. He seized power by force, and has held it by murder. He represents the will of nobody but himself. And yet there are people all over the world, and even freely elected heads of democratic governments, who see it as an important principle to preserve Saddam in power.""

From Richard Perle:
"Blix is dealing with Saddam as if he were a normal, sane person. But Saddam isn't someone you can treat like that. Blix doesn't have a clue that he's talking to a bloodthirsty thug as if he were in a Bloomsbury salon. In fact the whole approach of the weapons inspectors has been wrong. The impression is being created that they are trying hard to find weapons of mass destruction-and because they can't find them, maybe they do not exist."

From Reuel Marc Gerecht: it should be noted that despite Mr. Gerecht's predictions, Pakistani President Musharraf recently awarded amnesty to pro-Taliban tribal leaders.

""The Pakistani example is illuminating. In 2001, after the September 11 attacks, Secretary of State Colin Powell visited Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, who had consistently backed the Taliban regime in Kandahar, the protector of al Qaeda. General Musharraf had also been one of the primary architects of the practice of using Afghanistan for training Islamic militants for the guerrilla-cum-terrorist war in India-controlled Kashmir. These training camps, supervised by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, were interconnected and co-located with some of the training programs funded and organized by al Qaeda. With Powell's visit, General Musharraf quickly understood America's resolve, abandoned the Taliban, fired some pro-Taliban army and ISI officers, and confronted Islamists within Pakistan whom he had once backed. Now it is open to doubt whether Islamabad has permanently retired from playing the fundamentalist card among the Pashtun tribes in Afghanistan, but Musharraf and his fellow military officers will certainly be wary of resuming past habits so long as they believe Washington is looking over their shoulder and retains the will and capacity to punish them painfully."