America’s “Baghdad Bob”
When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Iraqi Information Minister Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf quickly became known as “Baghdad Bob” by declaring on Iraqi television that Saddam Hussein’s military brigades were successfully turning back the invading forces. During the same time the U.S. was handily dominating Iraq militarily, Bob told Iraqis that “We slaughtered them and will continue to slaughter them.” Bob claimed that U.S. soldiers were committing suicide by the hundreds and that American troops were “going to surrender or be burned in their tanks. They will surrender, it is they who will surrender.”
It’s hard to imagine someone making more erroneous statements-that is unless you listen to Senator Lindsey Graham.
WTMA talk radio host Richard Todd asked Graham during an interview last week, “4,427 American soldiers dead, over 34,000 wounded in Iraq, was it worth it?” The senator replied, without hesitation “Absolutely. Saddam Hussein is in the grave. A young democracy is emerging between Syria and Iran. The reason I went there… is to change the world for the better, and Saddam Hussein was a threat… he was a rogue guy…” Appearing three days later on Meet the Press, host David Gregory played a video clip of reporter Richard Engel claiming on NBC’s Today show, that the Iraq War was unnecessary, that Saddam was not a threat and that it was a huge distraction. Shaking his head, Graham accused Engel of “completely rewriting history” and defended the war along the same lines he did before. Gregory pointed out that our current “defense secretary, who’s a Republican says, ‘Iraq will always be clouded by how it began,” adding that “Three-quarters of the American people think it was not worth the cost.” Graham replied, “History will judge us, not by what we did wrong at the beginning, but what we got right at the end.”
And may history judge Graham by his uncanny ability to obfuscate fact with his own personal fiction. There are many different opinions on the Iraq War, but Graham’s inability to even consider something virtually the entire world now sees as obvious-that every reason given for going to war turned out to be wrong-says far more about the senator than the subject at hand. When GOP politicians like Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) can say “Now that we know that it cost a trillion dollars, and all of these years, and all of these lives, and all of this blood… all I can say is everyone I know thinks it was a mistake to go in now,” or Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) can now claim of his fellow Republican congressman, that “everyone would agree that Iraq was a mistake,” or even Defense Secretary Robert Gates can cautiously advise that “It really requires a historian’s perspective in terms of what happens here in the long run”-it becomes obvious that Graham’s absolutist defense of the Iraq War is more ideological than logical. In this respect, Graham is little different from Baghdad Bob who also created his own war narrative, formed primarily out of loyalty to his government. As propagandist, Bob’s job was to sell the Iraqi public a myth that would better serve the ruling regime-the humorous part is the extent to which he was willing to continue with the charade.
Graham’s mythmaking and charades are not as humorous. The actions of a nation with the power and military capability of the United States should be weighed and measured rationally, and such calculation necessarily requires acknowledging past mistakes in order to avoid them in the future. Few Americans want another Vietnam and knowing what we know now, few should want another Iraq. Saving face for the sake of national honor or psyche is perhaps understandable to a degree, but the complete dismissal of colossal mistakes by our government-by redefining them as triumphs-almost insures that those mistakes will be repeated. Not so coincidentally, this is exactly what Graham seems to want, or as he told Todd: “I’m glad we invaded the country. I hope we keep troops there after 2011. I hope we don’t withdraw troops next summer in Afghanistan… If we have to use military force against Iran… I want to do it… And at the end of the day we’re at war with a vicious enemy and if they go to Yemen or Somalia we ought to follow them throughout the globe, and follow them to the gates of hell.”
Graham’s case for perpetual war is the same neoconservative vision espoused by the Bush administration when making its pitch for war with Iraq, and in still dutifully subscribing to this narrow vision it continues to blind the senator to anything outside of it. This is not merely the politicking of a statesman assessing a sticky situation and proceeding forward, as Graham pretends-but a let’s-police-the-world ideologue who propagandizes accordingly, creating his own facts as needed.
All propagandists do this, or as Baghdad Bob told BBC News in 2003, his information came from “authentic sources-many authentic sources.” On Iraq, our intelligence sources turned out to be about as authentic as Bob’s, and Lindsey Graham’s refusal to confront or consider this makes him no less delusional than the Iraqi propagandist-though far more dangerous.
FTA: ‘Not so coincidentally, this is exactly what Graham seems to want, or as he told Todd: “I’m glad we invaded the country. I hope we keep troops there after 2011. I hope we don’t withdraw troops next summer in Afghanistan… If we have to use military force against Iran… I want to do it… And at the end of the day we’re at war with a vicious enemy and if they go to Yemen or Somalia we ought to follow them throughout the globe, and follow them to the gates of hell.” ‘
Okay, then, next time we start dropping bunker-busters anywhere, let’s make sure Graham is strapped to the first. (Dr. Strangehammer to the second.)
Nothing proves one’s dedication to a cause better than putting one’s money where one’s mouth is.
(See ya, Lindsey. It’s been good knowing ya’! Have a nice ride down!)
Lindsay Graham is reportedly very close to Zionist fanatic Joe Lieberman and the two have collaborated on legislation to erode the freedoms of the American people.
I was struck by one word in particular: ‘experiment.’ If I recall correctly, the good Senator labeled the War in Iraq an ‘experiment.’ Now, we do lots of experiments on everything from radiation to rats. We even go as far to say that our nation is an ‘experiment’ in liberty and self-governence. But that was decison that was made by our ancestors at the time–NOT by a foreign power arranging a regime change. To call the foreign invasion and occupation of a sovereign nation, with our soldiers and our tax money, an ‘experiment’ belies an amazing level of hubris and power mania.
He also extolled the virtues of respecting one’s opinion vs another. Did he ever bother to ask the Iraqi’s whether they wanted to see ??,000 of their fellow innocent citizens killed? Does he plan on asking what Iranians think about being attacked prior to that possible ocurrence?
Peace be with you.
The reason I went there… is to change the world for the better, ”
Gee I didn’t know the Senator was a closet hippie.
In 2003, the most extensive violators of Security Council resolutions were Israel, Turkey and Morocco. Not Iraq
Israel’s refusal to respond positively to the formal acceptance this past March by the Arab League of the land-for-peace formula put forward in Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 arguably puts Israel in violation of these resolutions, long seen as the basis for Middle East peace. More clearly, Israel has defied Resolutions 267, 271 and 298, which demand that it rescind its annexation of greater East Jerusalem.
Moroccan forces still occupy Western Sahara.
Turkey remains in violation of Security Council Resolution 353 and more than a score of resolutions calling for its withdrawal from northern Cyprus, which Turkey, a NATO ally, invaded in 1974.
See
US Double Standards by Stephen Zunes
http://www.thenation.com/article/us-double-standards
As it’s always been- the old wannabe Rambo’s plan splendid, extravagant wars and the nation’s youth is sent to fight. For America, this has always been on foreign soil- we’ve never (except in the very early days of our nation) had to defend ourselves or fight a life-or-death struggle in our back yard. Most of the rest of the world deals with violence on a daily basis, and Europe has seen the destruction we have yet to experience even a fraction of. We’re hawks for war because our civilians haven’t seen war up close and personal. When was the last time Smalltown, USA, was leveled by cruise missiles or air strikes? When was the last time tanks rolled through the streets of Littleville, USA, flattening cars and people along the way?
I was told a long time ago by an old wise man,
“The US is someday going to pay dearly for those two bombs dropped on Japan”
Hubris + Power = Self Destruction
Baghdad bob was not all that wrong 4400 died in the most horrible way many burned in their vehicles snipers killed them.They committed suicide and still do today, being mangled, loss of limbs, eyes murder their families and it goes on and on in Afganistan.I can recall that Bin laden said I WILL BANKRUPT YOUR NATION AND DESTROY YOUR YOUTH and it has happened.
Great article, except that our invasion of Iraq was not a “mistake.” It was a crime.
If Graham outed himself, then perhaps his ardent militarism will fade to naught.
The Washington consensus is alive and well in Senator Graham. What’s repugnant about him is his cheesy crusader attitude. But hey why not? The neoconservative movement is alive and well, and he knows it.
I can’t believe such “patriots” such as Graham and Lieberman haven’t yet donned the uniform and signed up to lead the troops into battle. yeah right! they will be the LAST in line exhorting our teenagers into war. They are TRUE pieces of CRAP. Mouthy and terrified of ANY sort of physical confrontation.
Graham and Lieberman and the rest of the gutless spineless ChickenHawk child-killers are parasitic vermin; they live their entire degenerate lives at public expense, and have spent the United States into the poorhouse to such an extent that the US government needs to constantly be at war with somebody in order to divert the attention of the lower classes from the fact that their lives are going backwards (there has been no improvement in real wages below the top 25th percentile since 1973).
So it should come as no surprise that they have such contempt for those on whom they prey – that Graham would be prepared to simply say whatever he feels like, in defiance of facts, logic, history… and most of all, natural law.
If you permit an entity to continue to be infected with a non-symbiotic parasite, then that entity will eventually be weakened – and if the parasite is vigourous enough, that will continues to the point of the death of the host. As we in the West are discovering to our cost, there is no way to prevent the tendency of the policial cancer to metastasize and dig its way further into our lives, our liberties, our rights and our pockets – except by getting rid of it for once and for all.
Opponents of voluntaryism/anarchy get spooked by the idea of roaming bands of marauders, pillaging the citizenry in acts of private violence: does anybody genuinely think that this private pillage would extend to fully half of everybody’s output? That, given the opportunity to subscribe to private protection against predation of this type, no market countermeasure would surface?
By contrast, we are not permitted to deploy countermeasures against the rape of society by subhuman scum like Graham, Cheney, Lieberman, Blair, Howard, Rumsfeld and their ilk… and so they steal half of the proceeds of our labour, and then – that not sufficing – they borrow against the labour of our children and our children’s children.
This must end. There has never been a State that voluntarily retrenched itself – they keep parasitising their society until they are overthrown or until the society itself fails. Sadly, every overthrow has simply installed a new pack of parasitic vermin in the same set of palaces… even the vaunted ‘Revolution’ of 1776.
Cheerio
GT
” we ought to follow them throughout the globe, and follow them to the gates of hell”
Yes Mr Graham we have reached the gate.Do you know who is entering there first?
For Graham to accuse Richard Engel of rewriting history is an affront to the courage and tenacity of Mr.Engel who gave up much to cover a horrible war for too many years. Equally it is laughable for Graham to utter the reason he “went there” as if he physically faced the obscenities of the war. He would do well to read Engel’s War Diary if he wants to have a grasp of history. It is unfortunate that another brainless twit (Bush) did not listen to Mr.Engel’s advice years ago when asked.