Disagree About Iraq? You're Not Just Wrong -- You're Evil

[Hippikos]

Some quotes from the architects and dogs o' war and yep, you'll still surprised Dicky....

“And a year from now, I’ll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush. There is no doubt that, with the exception of a very small number of people close to a vicious regime, the people of Iraq have been liberated and they understand that they’ve been liberated. And it is getting easier every day for Iraqis to express that sense of liberation.” [Richard Perle, 9/22/03]

“We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.” [Wolfowitz, 3/27/03]

“I am not asserting to you that I know that the answer is — we did it right. What I am saying is it’s an extremely complex judgment to know whether the course that we chose with its pros and cons was more sensible.” [Douglas Feith, 7/13/05]

“I should have recalled at the time of the State of the Union speech that there was controversy associated with the uranium issue. … And it is now clear to me that I failed in that responsibility in connection with the inclusion of these 16 words in the speech that he gave on the 28th of January.” [Steven Hadley, 7/22/03]

“We recognize that military action in Iraq, if necessary, will have adverse humanitarian consequences. We have been planning over the last several months, across all relevant agencies, to limit any such consequences and provide relief quickly.” [Elliot Abrams, 2/25/03]

“[T]he American part of this will be $1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this.” [Andrew Natsios, Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, 4/23/03]

“President Bush understands that the need to disarm Saddam Hussein is necessary. He has made that case to the United Nations Security Council. He’s made that case to the United States Congress. The entire world rallied behind this resolution that gives him one last chance. He has that chance, but time is running out.” [Dan Bartlett, 1/26/03]

Mitch Daniels had said the war would be an “affordable endeavor” and rejected an estimate by the chief White House economic adviser that the war would cost between $100 billion and $200 billion as “very, very high.” [Mitch Daniels, Office of Management and Budget from January 2001 through June of 2003, 1/10/06]

“It’s a slam dunk case.” [george Tenet, CIA Director, 4/19/04]

“You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people,’ he told the president. ‘You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You’ll own it all.’ Privately, Powell and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage called this the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it.” [Colin Powell in Bob Woodward's, Plan of Attack]

“You go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” [Rummy the Great, 12/9/04]

“We did not know at the time — maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency — but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery. Of course it was information that was mistaken.” [Condi Rice, 6/8/03]

“I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.” [Cheney, 6/20/05]

“Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” [Bush, 10/7/02]