Barack Obama must be looking over his shoulder as he steps up and sets forth his war policy for Afghanistan.
No, he doesn’t sound sure of himself and, despite donning his CIC chain mail for a speech at West Point, he may be be projecting weakness, just as Dick Cheney, our great, snarling former vice president, says he is.
But there may be more to it than simply cowering under Cheney’s glare, or because of the messy table which Bush and Cheney left behind.
Oh?!! Why?
I read a stray story over the week-end about the Kennedy assassination; and the writer put forth the “grassy knoll” theory, supported by the famous Zapruder film from that time, which seemed to show at least one other shooter than Lee Harvey Oswald that day in Dallas in November 1963, a shooter who blasted a hole in the front right of Kennedy’s head as he sat in his limo, cruising through Dealey Plaza – a wound which, according to the writer, suggested a CIA conspiracy to kill the president.
Here’s another take on the Kennedy/CIA dynamic from another writer, James Douglass:
http://antiwar.com/radio/2009/12/02/james-w-douglass/
So the question raised by some is whether, in the eyes of certain people in the government, Kennedy wasn’t tough enough at the time (thus, the assassination), and – considering Obama’s dilemmas and our current wars – whether the new Democratic president, and his CIA chief, Leon Panetta, are now fearful of the CIA.
Well, gosh, I don’t know about that; but, as far as Afghanistan is concerned, it sure looks like it’s in for a dime, in for a dollar.
Cheney, in his latest armchair generalisimo comments on Obama’s leadership, has denied that he or his former boss are responsible for any backsliding in Afghanistan, just as they keep saying they kept us safe and did everything right in Iraq, including, presumably, crossing all the t’s and dotting all the i’s legally.
And as the Obama war policy for Afghanistan is rolled out, sure-as-shootin’, the national media will treat it all in its usual “he said, he said” manner, giving Cheney his due, tit for tat.
Yet, about Iraq, there’s more going on today, debate-wise, than many Americans may be aware of (maybe even Cheney), since there are, even six years after the invasion, new questions being asked about that war.
But the questions are not being asked here. Can’t have that. They’re being asked in London, at the Chilcot hearings.
Over the week-end, Jeremy Greenstock, the former UK ambassador to the UN, said the Bush administratoin was “hell bent” on invading Iraq and didn’t want to wait for a second UN resolution on the matter. This is not news really, but Greenstock drove the point home that, even today, while the invasion might – might - be seen as legal in a narrow sense, it was not legitimate politically because a wider consensus within the UN was never established.
Also this week-end, the Chilcot hearings heard that the former attorney general to Tony Blair, the former UK prime minister, wrote opinions in 2002 which questioned the legality of a proposed, preemptive US/UK invasion of Iraq.
http://www.docudharma.com/diary/17534/iraq-war-inquiry-day-four
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6938002.ece
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/27/truth-uk-guilt-iraq-chilcot
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/01/iraq-memo-smoking-gun-goldsmith
As Kurt Vonnegut would say: And so it goes …