Bad Faith
Another report on pre-war WMD intelligence stuff. The basic picture I think we get from all of this is that the administration's rhetoric certainly wasn't a matter of "mistakes" or "bad intelligence" and probably wasn't primarily the product of lies either. One reason some of us were so credulous about what they said before the war is that it just wouldn't make sense to deliberately lie under circumstances where you were bound to get caught. What certainly I didn't really consider when evaluating what was being said was the possibility -- that now clearly seems to be the case -- that they were just operating with a near-perfect indifference to the truth.
They "knew" what they wanted to know and the point of the intelligence community at that point wasn't to uncover the truth but simply to provide the evidence necessary to reach the conclusion.
Echoes of Harry Frankfurt. And the implications of this attitude need to be spelled out. For one thing, how likely are we to attract allies next time we have unique information about a serious and hard-to-handle threat? For another, what does it say about how much truth about our Iraq progress are we likely getting from the administration? If they're apt to say what they think we want to hear, then in addition to judging the evidence available to us, we have reason to suspect worse news is being hidden, distorted, and underplayed. The latest headlines of new joint military campaigns, negotiations, and tactical gains in this or that city fit into a long-standing cycle of one step forward, two steps back. It's rolling a stone up a hill and then standing atop the hill in front of the stone to announce the achievement and obscure its slide back down to the base. Past time, surely, to gauge the terrain for ourselves. Even more telling than its absurd optimism is a substantial pessimism that's snuck into hawkish rhetoric, implied by the bases, arguably by the massive embassy, and by the shabby numbers and picture that emerge when you get them discussing details about Iraqi force readiness and cohesion.
June 25, 2006 2:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
"it just wouldn't make sense to deliberately lie under circumstances where you were bound to get caught."
Okay. So now you've "caught" them.
What are you going to do about it?
This is why Bush makes the stupid pronouncements he makes. Not because he's dumb or illiterate. It's because he doesn't GIVE A DAMN. Why? Because there's NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT HIM.
Face it, folks. You've LOST POWER. You no longer control your government (not that you ever did, of course - it's just more OBVIOUS now - it always becomes more obvious as time goes on - that's the POINT of the state - to make it obvious that THEY have the power and you DON'T.)
Oh, you think voting out some Republicans this fall and maybe putting Hillary in in 2008 is going to make a difference?
Meanwhile, you'll NEVER consider re-evaluating your premises that lead you to this situation.
Suckers.
That's why you're the "reality-based" group that that Bush admin guy claimed would never be able to control his "historical actor" group.
He's right. You never will.
But Transhumans will.
June 25, 2006 3:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
One reason some of us were so credulous about what they said before the war is that it just wouldn't make sense to deliberately lie under circumstances where you were bound to get caught. What certainly I didn't really consider when evaluating what was being said was the possibility -- that now clearly seems to be the case -- that they were just operating with a near-perfect indifference to the truth.
Oh c'mon Matt.
Count me as one who thinks Bushco deliberately lied. I can accept the notion that they lied to support their larger "narrative", a narrative which many of them sincerely believed to be true - by and large. Dick Cheney may have honestly believed the Laurie Mylroie bunkum he was reading. But they also knowingly told lots of plain old lies in the process, and they knowingly exaggerated and twisted pieces of information to support the narrative, when the brute facts wouldn't do.
It's quite easy to understand why they didn't care about getting caught. They thought they were going to win - and win big. And they thought the win in Iraq would be a stepping stone to a whole series of Middle East wins. They assumed that if things turned out well, nobody would care whether they lied or not - and they are right about that. Only a few dissident historians care now about what FDR might or might not have known about Japanese intentions prior to Pearl Harbor.
Bush thought he was launching a cascading Middle East war, and that he was going to go down in history as the great hero who liberated Iraq, liberated Iran, liberated Syria, reformed Egypt and Saudi Arabia, ended the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and ultimately ended Islamist terrorism. With that end in view, it's no mystery at all why he and his cronies were willing to roll the dice with a few lies, if that's what it would take to get the chain reaction started.
June 25, 2006 4:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
I thought it was pretty clear, at the time, that they were choosing arguments, for the power that argument had in cowing any potential opposition.
They chose a scenario, which they thought was, at least nominally true -- a "slam dunk" -- even though it was not substantively true, and used it to bludgeon any opposition.
That was the context in which they operated, and in which they were indifferent to truth.
The other side of that indifference to truth is that they simply did not consider that policy is, or ought to be, related to reality. Leaving aside their need for "intelligence" in their rhetorical war with the opposition, one would think that someone might have had some need for information, regarding the clarification of their own actual goals and the means to achieve those goals. That kind of intelligence-gathering and preparation was actually quite narrow, as far as I can tell from news reports: they located and secured oil, and that was about it.
For all the talk of WMD, they did not do much to locate, secure or dispose of WMD, or conventional munitions. The insurgents in Iraq are so difficult to combat, because they do not have, and do not need supply lines. The U.S. did nothing to secure conventional stockpiles after the war, and went about searching for WMD in a most leisurely way. That just sort of confirms that it was all a big show.
June 25, 2006 4:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, young Mr. Yglesias that just won’t pass the Mother test. “Mom, honest, I ain’t lyin’ I was just showing a near-perfect indifference to the truth” – oh yeah, that would of worked.
Poor George he’s just mis-misunderstood. Remember a few months before the Iraq invasion he said he didn’t have a war plan for Iraq on his desk. Well, a war plan had already been in the works for over a year. But I guess a lawyer could make the case that he didn’t “lie”. Because the plan was maybe in his desk drawer, or filing cabinet, or sitting on the coffee table, or folded up in his back pocket, or something. But if it wasn’t on his desk, at that moment, he wasn’t really lying now was he – see how that works?
This man lies about things he doesn’t even need to lie about. He’s an invertebrate* liar.
He’s the lyingest liar that ever told a lie about lying while going to Lyon with Larry the liar – and then later lied about it!
I’d heard of this Curveball character quite awhile back. Too bad he didn’t get to meet Bush – “Curveball I’d like you to meet Oddball”. But I still do respect the Office of the Presidency. I think it’s a nice shade of yellow.
* this is not a typo – it means he is a “spineless liar”.
June 25, 2006 5:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
"From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." Andrew Card
And we ought not forget that as Dick Morris pointed out, when the WHIG did introduce the sales campaign in September Bush had not a single issue going for him in the upcoming elections except terrorism.
June 25, 2006 5:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
What's interesting to me is how neatly this attitude ties in with the mechanisms of creation science. Start with an unswervable thesis, identify the facts and anecdotes which bolster the thesis, and disregard the rest. It's really all part and parcel of the "war on science".
June 26, 2006 9:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Matthew Y. writes:
It makes perfect sense if you understand the whole WMD charade as a foot-in-the-door approach. The neo-cons were absolutely convinced that the war would be easy, that Iraq would be a shining beacon of democracy in short order, and that we'd quickly move on to the next target. That being the case, why care if WMD really exist or not?
The WMD were an excuse to start what was really an excerise in redrawing the political map of the Middle East, a policy which the American public was too skeptical of to serve as the openly stated reason to go to war. So the neo-cons settled on a reason that would convince the American people, and then figured that once the war had been a resounding success, the public would understand the true wisdom of their broader policy. After that, they would need no more excuses.
It nearly happened anyway. The only reason that WMD have become an issue at all is that things are not going well and people have started to wonder what the heck we're doing over there. The administration and its neo-con backers were able to deflect most of this criticism by claiming that the WMD really did exist, it was all the CIA's fault, or that (closest to the truth) WMD weren't what the war was about to begin with.
Given that under these highly adverse circumstances, they've paid only a small political price, it's no wonder that the presence or absence of WMD wasn't much of a concern.
June 26, 2006 10:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
And I thought the astrology stuff was ridiculous!
June 26, 2006 3:24 PM | Reply | Permalink