Marble Composition

Douglas Feith's CNN Interview

I'm posting a comment about this because I haven't seen anything anywhere else in blogland. Did anyone else out there catch Wolf Blitzer's interview with Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith? First off, as far as memory serves, he doesn't give many interviews at all, and when he does they're usually in print. Who decided it was time to wheel him out in front of the cameras now? He looked woefully unprepared, and one would think he would drag something more fresh out with him than this dead horse, first Wolf:

BLITZER: Let's talk a little bit about the war in Iraq. And you were one of the key architects, one of the key planners.

If someone had told you before the war, in the weeks leading up to the war, that 2.5 years or so later, or two years later, 1,800 or so American troops would be dead, thousands of others would be injured, and the American taxpayers would have to shell out what's now approaching $300 billion with no end in sight, what would you have said?

FEITH: Our purpose in Iraq was to overthrow a regime that was a major threat to us, to the region, to the world. I think the world is much better off with the removal of Saddam Hussein. And I think it's an important contribution to our fight against international terrorism.

He had a really tough time getting this out, and at this point in time, it's no surpirse why. After all we now know about this war, and whatever their reasons were for launching it, does he really expect anyone to believe that Iraq was a threat to the U.S.? Hasn't this talking point been stamped into dust by now? Here's some more:

BLITZER: But did you anticipate the cost, what this would endure?

FEITH: Nobody thought that it was going to be a simple matter. The Iraq war was a large war against a regime that had a formidable military. Iraq is a country of 25 million people. It was clearly going to be a major effort.

And there have been terrible sacrifices and our forces have fought bravely. And the sacrifices are important...

A formidable military? Who does he think he's kidding? And that's what was so weird about the whole interview. Does he really expect us to believe this? And is he that deluded to still believe it himself? One more:

FEITH: One of the major things that was on the minds of the war planners was the danger of a long, protracted, major war.

And there was a premium on surprise, because there was -- General Franks had the view that if we could achieve surprise, we could get a shorter major combat period. And he came up with the idea of the smaller force.

We went to war with the smaller force than Saddam Hussein expected us to start with. We have achieved the tactical surprise. We had a much shorter war than a lot of people anticipated. And there were a lot of benefits...

Surprise? The temptation to get snarky here is almost overwhelming, but did Hussein really not realize that massive mililtary build-up taking place right next door? Go read the whole thing
to get a full sense of the tragic weirdness. Did anyone else see this, or am I really crossing over into the Twilight Zone?

Update: Kevin Drum over at Washington Monthly had this on our Dear friend Mr. Feith:

DOUG FEITH'S SWAN SONG....Via Suburban Guerrilla, you really have to admire the chutzpah of senior Bush administration staffers sometimes. Here is Doug Feith, the outgoing #3 guy at the Pentagon:

"Our intelligence community made, apparently, an error, as to the stockpiles" of weapons it assured President Bush existed in 2003, Feith said. Thus that part of the administration's argument for why war was necessary was overdone, he said, adding, "Anything we said at all about stockpiles was overemphasis, given that we didn't find them."

Our intelligence community made, apparently, an error. Yep, it was all the CIA's fault! Damn their hides!

This really takes some balls considering that it comes from the guy who was ultimately in charge of the Office of Special Plans, the Pentagon outfit charged with ferreting out evidence of WMD and al-Qaeda connections in Iraq that the squishy analysts at the CIA were too reality based to acknowledge. The OSP was practically created to find WMD whether it was there or not. If the CIA did screw up, Feith's shop made them look like pikers.

Ballsy indeed. Of course, Feith is also the guy that Gen. Tommy Franks memorably called "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth." Perhaps that's the perfect combination for this administration: ballsy and stupid.

posted by FuzzFinger @ 7/14/2005 10:50:00 PM