April 03, 2003

Disquiet at the Pentagon! How

Disquiet at the Pentagon!

How do you get from a field commander's statement that the enemy is not the one "war-gamed against" to contending that a pro-war cabal is cavalierly willing to risk the lives of American fighting men and women in pursuit of an extremist ideology? If you're writing in the pages of the Nation, it's easy:

"To say that the enemy in Iraq is not the one "we'd war-gamed against" is to say that the war games themselves were not an accurate representation of the situation in Iraq, and that the games' designers--the senior leaders at the Pentagon--were blinded by their prowar zealotry from appreciating the vigor of Iraqi defenses. Put another way, this means that the civilian leadership was prepared to risk the lives of American fighting men and women in pursuit of an extremist ideology."

What "extremist ideology"? Lebensraum for Rumsfeld's grandkids in "Venice of the East" Basra? Forced conversions of Shia's to Crawford-style Baptism? A Halliburton-cracy on the Tigris--rife with wild cat profiteering and replete with steely, self-contented chuckles from Cheney and pals as the cash comes gushing in?