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Tuesday, Oct 21, 2003
That's Doctor Man of the Year to you.
Somehow the staff here at "Dr. Paul's Words of Wisdom" missed a momentous announcement: Dr. Paul Wolfowitz was named man of the year by the Jerusalem Post.
The number one qualification cited by the J Post was Wolfowitz's influence in driving US policy toward the invasion of Iraq, fulfilling a long held dream of Wolfowitz and likeminded folks at PNAC. Reason number two is Wolfowitz's advocacy of democracy. Now there's a proven formula: democracy by invasion! That's a righteous man-o-the-year caliber oxymoron if I've ever seen one.
The J Post carried a few articles associated with this announcment including an interview. As I scanned Wolfowitz's responses in the interview for words-o-wisdom caliber quotations, I had a sense of deja vu. I had missed the announcement, so why did the interview seem so eerily familiar? Oh, wait, it's the talking points. It's all about the talking points.
One of Dr. Paul's current talking points is shown in the graphic. This is also shown in context at the bottom of this post. In the first place, this isn't quite logical. Dr. Paul is saying it wasn't sufficient for the antiwar folks to know the invasion was a bad idea. They also had to know exactly which unintended consequence would be most adverse in order to receive any credit at all. Thanks Professor Paul. That's an interesting grading system you've got there.
Further, leaving aside the tangential noun "most", Wolfowitz's talking point about "these critics" is demonstrably incorrect. If Google had better date-sensitive search capabilities, or I had access to LexisNexis, I'm sure I could find plenty of evidence to back my point. Having a bit of a mathemetician in me, I'll provide Dr. Paul with a proof of existence, and leave the rest as an exercise for the reader.
NewsHour with Jim LehrerSo, Jay Bookman cited exactly the sort of problems we're experiencing. However, he did say "be there for years with thousands of soldiers" when the real issue is being there for years with tens of thousands of soldiers. Sorry Jay, no credit for you! Come back, one year.
August 7, 2002
TERENCE SMITH: A phrase [nation building] that this administration did not support. When you think about that and you think about the possibility of having to occupy and in effect rebuild the country, what do you think about that?
JAY BOOKMAN: I think that's a incredibly difficult proposition. We would be there for years with thousands of soldiers. The expense would be great. The exposure of our troops to terrorism, all kinds of attacks, guerilla attacks, would be extreme. Mr. Perkins mentions Iraq as a model. I think it's important to note that what's happening in the world right now is we are coming to grips, I think, for the first time with the idea that we are an empire, that America is unchallenged in any sphere of influence in the world.
What we are in the process of defining is how we govern that empire as a nation, and I think it's... if we engage in a cold-blooded invasion of another country, unprovoked, that... it will set a model for how we act as an empire in the future. So I think there's a lot here at stake, not just the fate of Saddam Hussein and Iraq in this particular thing. We are deciding what kind of nation we are and how we're going to rule this empire that has come to us.
Okay, so Jay was close, but not on the money. Perhaps I'll have to go with my backup case to provide the proof of existence. In his "Back in Iraq 2.0" blog, Christopher Allbritton speculated on whether Bush would follow through with the war, with these words.
Back in Iraq 2.0Is that prescient enough for you Dr. Paul? Christopher is pretty close on the killed per day (KPD) stat. On the other hand, civil war hasn't broken out yet. But Christopher's got another year on his projection window. What's that, Dr. Paul? Sorry Christopher. The correct answer is "old regime loyalists". That's "old regime loyalists." We can't accept your non-specific KPD projection. "Baathist deadenders" also would have been accepted.
October 10, 2002
I’m told Bush doesn’t want to be looking at an occupied Iraq two years from now when we have guerilla fighting in Baghdad suburbs, a massive drain on the national economy and a stable oil supply only because United States occupation forces keep Kurds, Shi’ites and Sunni Arabs (not to mention Turkomen and Iranians) from each others’ throats. Add to that a daily trickle of body bags as one or two GIs die every couple of days. That wouldn’t be very fun to run on, would it?
Thanks for trying, and please come back again to play Dr. Paul's "Predict the Specific Debacle ... or No Credit For You!".
Jerusalem Postprevious in series of Dr. Paul's Words of Wisdom
September 25, 2003
JANINE ZACHARIA: Is there anything now you wish you had done or considered differently in the pre-war period regarding the post-war period?
WOLFOWITZ: You mean all this terrible planning that prevented oil fields from being destroyed, that prevented humanitarian crises, that prevented fortress Baghdad, that prevented weapons from being used against Israel… I get a little tired of all these things we didn’t plan for when there was so much good planning that prevented all these things that these critics predicted. Most of these critics frankly didn’t predict the main problem we have today, which is the persistent virulence of old regime loyalists.
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