Wednesday, February 12, 2014

In the Darkness of Dick Cheney by Mark Danner | The New York Review of Books

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/mar/06/darkness-dick-cheney/?pagination=false

Four years after the Americans had declared victory in Iraq—even as the vice-president was "strongly recommending" that the United States attack Syria—more than a hundred thousand Iraqis and nearly five thousand Americans were dead, Iraq was near anarchy, and no end was yet in sight. Not only the war's ending but its beginning had disappeared into a dark cloud of confusion and controversy, as the weapons of mass destruction that were its justification turned out not to exist. The invasion had produced not the rapid and overwhelming victory Cheney had anticipated but a quagmire in which the American military had occupied and repressed a Muslim country and, four years later, been brought to the verge of defeat. As for "authority and influence," during that time North Korea had acquired nuclear weapons and Iran and Syria had started down the road to building them.

---Steve

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