Wrong Again! Bush's Logic and Ours

Tom Engelhardt, writing in TomDispatch.com, says, "Recent polls indicate that most of the public has simply stopped listening to George W. Bush and other administration figures who have proven incapable of predicting which policy foot will fall where in the next 60 seconds, no less what might happen, based on their acts, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, or anywhere else."

Top administration officials, the President, and/or Vice President claimed that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear program; that he was searching for yellowcake uranium in Niger; that the Iraqi dictator had an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (and that they knew where these were); that he had "mobile biological warfare labs"; that he had unmanned aerial vehicles capable of spraying the East Coast of the U.S. (hundreds of miles inland, no less) with deadly toxins, including anthrax; that he was allied with al-Qaeda; and that he had something to do with the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again!
Top administration officials, the President, and/or Vice President claimed that the Iraqis - the previously oppressed Shiites, in particular - would welcome us as liberators ("I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators" - Dick Cheney); that they might strew "bouquets" of flowers at the feet of our troops; that the war would be a "cakewalk"; that the war and occupation would cost perhaps $40 billion or, at most, $100 billion (actual cost so far: at least $450 billion); that the occupation could easily be funded thanks to the "sea of oil" on which Iraq "floated"; that the neighbors in the region, especially Syria and Iran, would be shock-and-awed into submission or would fall before our might - as some neocons then put it: "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran."; that, by August 2003, American troop strength in that country would be down to 30,000-40,000 troops.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again!
On September 14, 2001, George W. Bush stood on a pile of rubble in downtown New York City, a megaphone in his hands, and swore that "the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon"; not so long after, he claimed that Afghanistan had been "liberated" from the Taliban and al-Qaeda; soon after, he ordered American military attention (and crucial forces) shifted from Afghanistan and those al-Qaeda remnants to Iraq, where plans for a much-desired invasion were already in progress; on May 1, 2003, speaking under a "mission accomplished" banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln, he proclaimed "major combat" in Iraq "ended"; in July 2003, he proclaimed the Iraqi insurgency ("bring 'em on").
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again!
In the ensuing years, the President promised "victory" in Iraq again and again, and he has indicated that "progress" was being made there in just about every speech or news conference he's ever given on the subject. On November 30, 2005, the President announced that he had a specific "strategy for victory in Iraq" in a speech in which he used the word "victory" 15 times and "progress" 28 times; until the Golden Mosque in Samarra was bombed in late February 2006, he and his top officials and military commanders continued to insist that Iraq was not in a state of incipient civil war; throughout all these years, he and his Vice President have repeatedly indicated that the press was simply feeding bad news to the American public and avoiding the "good news" in Iraq.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again!
Top administration officials, the President and/or the Vice President claimed that the following were "milestones" and/or "turning points" in Iraq: the killing of Saddam's two sons in July 2003; the capture of Saddam himself in December 2003 (The President even accepted Saddam's pistol from some of the American soldiers who captured him as a memento and placed it in a study beside the Oval Office, near a bust of Winston Churchill. "He really liked showing it off," according to a visitor); the official turning over of, as the President put it, "complete, full sovereignty" to an Iraqi "interim government" in June 2004; the "purple finger" election of January 30, 2005 that led to the writing of the Iraqi Constitution; the nationwide voting of December 15, 2005 that elected a national parliament; the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June 2006 (about which the President felt so strongly that he personally congratulated the pilot of the plane that killed him on a trip to Baghdad and returned home reportedly feeling "buoyant").
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again!
When, before the invasion of Iraq, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki testified before Congress that "several hundred thousand troops" would be needed for an occupation of Iraq, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz called him "wildly off the mark" and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared him "far off the mark"; when a relatively small American force took Baghdad in April 2003 and stood by while the Iraqi capital and its cultural treasure houses were looted, the Defense Secretary declared "freedom's untidy" and "stuff happens"; in June 2004, Wolfowitz denied that an insurgency was even taking place in Iraq ("An insurgency implies something that rose up afterwards ... [This] is a continuation of the war by people who never quit..."); by that June, the administration's viceroy in Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer III, had already officially dissolved the Iraqi military and issued 97 legal orders, "binding instructions or directives to the Iraqi people" (to remain in force even after any transfer of political authority), meant to control practically all Iraqi acts down to how you drove your car; in these years, the administration's representatives refused to deal diplomatically with Iraq's neighbors, Syria and Iran.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again!
The Pentagon arrived in Iraq with plans to build four vast permanent military bases; later, the administration embarked on the construction of the largest embassy on the planet ("George W's Palace," as Iraqis sardonically dubbed it) in the heart of Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone; American officials, handing out enormous no-bid contracts to crony corporations, promised that Iraq would be "reconstructed," that electricity service would be suitably restored; that potable water would be delivered; that damaged sewage systems would be repaired; and that the oil industry would soar above the production levels of the end of the Saddam era.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again!
This January, in a speech to the nation, the President announced a "new way forward in Iraq" and assured Americans that his new "surge" plan would: "change America's course in Iraq," "help us succeed in the fight against terror," and "put down sectarian violence and bring security to the people of Baghdad"; that "America would hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced"; that "the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November"; that "Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis"; that "Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year"; that "the government will reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq's constitution"; that the administration plan would use "America's full diplomatic resources to rally support for Iraq from nations throughout the Middle East," "bring us closer to success," and "hasten the day our troops begin coming home."
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again!
And the flood of misstatements, mistakes, missed predictions, and mistaken assessments of the Iraqi and global situations continue to pour in. To take just a few examples from the last week of news:

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