Brain Fertilizer: Halliburton! Halliburton! Bush, BUSH <i><b>BUSH</i></b>!

December 29, 2004

Halliburton! Halliburton! Bush, BUSH BUSH! « Politics As Usual »

President Bush has endured a great deal of criticism for some of his decisions and actions. Some of the things he did made it more difficult for him to get elected. So, clearly he is making decisions on the basis of motivations other than his own personal benefit.

So, among all my 200+ daily readers, I'm absolutely certain several of you have expertise in psychology, pathology, and criminal science. Is there a single, valid psychological model that explains how a person could be so strongly motivated by the potential of financial benefit to former business colleagues (or even friends) that he would wage a war resulting in the deaths of hundreds (now thousands)?

I cannot conceive of the possibility. If the field of psychology can be so accomodating to the trauma of Democrats losing a national election, can they not also respond to the mistaken beliefs regarding President Bush's motivations?

Posted by Nathan at 10:41 AM | Comments (5)

Comments

You are assuming that BushCo had any idea what they were getting into in Iraq. I can easily see the whole crew being gung ho about a quick, little foray into Iraq to kick out SH and take control of the 2nd largest oil reserve on the planet. Ooops. Guess it didn't turn out to be such a picnic.

Posted by: rtoes at December 29, 2004 12:11 PM

Trouble is, except for Pat "I'm a world-class idiot" Robertson, nobody can seem to find any documented proof that Bush or anyone else in the administration believed any part of the war on terror (and Iraq is a part of the war on terror, opponents' denials notwithstanding) would be quick or easy.

The claim that they saw Iraq as "a quick, little foray" is so pathetic that even calling it a straw man is an insult to straw.

Posted by: McGehee at December 29, 2004 12:49 PM

Kevin (McGehee) is 100% correct: according to all sorts of people, Afghanistan was going to be a quagmire for years and years, and Iraq was going to result in 10,000 US soldiers dead from chem weapons because they were ready for us.

Revisionist history doesn't fly among the people that have memories...

Posted by: Nathan at December 29, 2004 02:12 PM

So the consensus here is that they knew it was going to be tough going... but failed to plan for it anyway?

All righty...

Posted by: Yepp at December 29, 2004 05:02 PM

Yepp, the automatic gainsaying of anything your opponent says does not constitute reasonable discourse.

The responsible people knew it wasn't going to be easy, and made adequate preparations, but no plan survives contact with the enemy. They don't just do what you want them to, they have their own plans designed to mess you up. We're still defeating them while accomplishing our mission. We could have razed the entire country without a single lost US life, but only by killing everyone. That wouldn't have freed very many people, would it?

No, it was the chattering classes, the idiotic liberals who love dictators but hate America (note that with the qualifiers, that doesn't include all liberals), who trust the UN but not our own military, who complained that we would get chewed up in a quagmire just like the Soviets, that Saddam would wipe us out, that are now hypocritcally saying that they always knew it would be easy to win peace in Afghanistan and topple Saddam.

Posted by: Nathan at December 29, 2004 08:08 PM

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