Senator Warner’s comment sets a new benchmark in the absurd, moving it several steps beyond that established by all of those cold war commentators who complained that the people of countries whose dictators’ loyalty was purchased with foreign aid weren’t more pliable and grateful.
Discounting the damage our military campaigns have done to Iraq’s infrastructure (and consequent loss of basic services), the casualties they inflicted as collateral damage, the way George H. W. screwed the Shi’ites after Gulf War I, the distribution of reconstruction monies to American contractors and consequent exclusion of Iraqis from those projects, our admitting Christian missionaries to their country, our failure to establish order after our victory (“Freedom is messy.”), among so many other things, I can’t see why the Iraqis wouldn’t be grateful for the Bush regime’s attempt to establish military (through long term bases) and economic (through Bremer’s illegal “liberalization”) hegemony over their country.
By the way, does anyone know how the different Iraqi groups feel about all of the mercenaries the US, and its representatives, have imported into that country?
Then again, perhaps this is just meant to become part of the Republican’s face (and ass) saving rhetoric for withdrawal: “After all we did for them…”

Posted by: optional | Aug 29 2005 19:47 utc | 3

Warner is being ungrateful and myopic. The Iraqi people have already given the subsidiaries of Halliburton billions of dollars in profiteering opportunites and have very generously provided approximately 437,037 sq.km. to the United States for the dumping of hazardous nuclear waste.
To answer Mr. Warner’s disengenuous question, the Iraqi people are a gift that keeps on giving to American corporate avarice.

Posted by: Monolycus | Aug 29 2005 20:54 utc | 5

Statements like Mr. Warner’s belie a deeper problem with American attitudes about war. Winning and losing is all that matters, not how you play the game. Lie, kill thousands unnecessarily, and break international law are all ok as long as we win.

Posted by: Marc | Aug 29 2005 21:38 utc | 7

It isn’t just Warner thats delusional and I don’t blame the 30-35% for being such myopic idiots. Its the rethug machine that braiwashed the US public for the last twenty five years starting with that morning in America bullshit.
This country is so far in debt from Rethug adventure and the you can have anything attitude, so charge it, that the US public as a whole and the Federal government have come to believe that we can do what we want, run up debt, waste resourses to no end and the party will just keep going.
Now, in Chimpies great wisdom we have ruined a whole country and the flow of cash will go on and on.
The whole thing is delusional. We are running on complete borrowed time and as Greenspeak said last week, the whole adventure of the last twenty five years will crash. So Iraq, you better get that oil on line because the good ol US can’t afford this adventure anymore.
On another front, the American people are strapped for money with gas price spiking, home heating etc going up 30-50% this winter. Isn’t Bushworld a great place for the average Ameeerican?

Posted by: jdp | Aug 29 2005 22:05 utc | 9

Warner will be hero in the next few days; he’s going to sack Rumsfeld. (Not in a Jeff Gannon sense BTW).
The Empire rules.

Posted by: Friendly Fire | Aug 29 2005 22:20 utc | 11

these insufferable idiots who seem to come fully formed from even the worst satire of gore vidal – speak such inanities – cruel inanities
their disrespect for the people of iraq is total
their self satisfaction is slowly dissolving into panic & the panic is being heard in the voices of these revered senators. there will be more of them to come as this situation gets increasingly consolidated by the people’s war the iraqui people are conducting
the people of iraq have already shown what they think of the mercenaries who come to make money from the death of others. they are strung high from bridges. they are taken out down this or that route. & if their day is not today – it almost certainly will be tommorrow
there is story after story even in the whore media exactly what form of suffering the mercenaries trade. we cannot calculate the number of people who have been assasinated by thugs just throwing their armoury out of the window & these people are never spoken of. this or that father; this or that mother , this or that child being killed because some fuckwit from ohio or manchester or queensland wants to stick his guns outside the window of their armoured cars. their day will come & that is certain. for all the rotten & corrupt mythology of their masculinity – they will meet death in the same way as all of us in front of violence – shitting our pants & pissing oourselves
but these cruel & indifferent users of language which allows people to live with murder, constant murder as it is being seen in iraq has been the lot of people of many people who have come under american imperial influence
this beast which has produced from its belly artists & scholars who have been able to see though the cruel song american sings & tell it as it is – are not being heard – this time round they are not being heard at all
it may not be so apparent in my discourse but i am as concerned about what is happening to those capable of resisting in america as the people who are being murdered by american foreign policy
but this is no time for the left in america to feel sorry for itself – or scared(though with the patriot acts – it has every reason to be) – it is time for it to take advantage of the natural sympathy for people like cindy sheehan & turn this corrupt morality on its head. to demand why their children are being turned into perpetrators, into becoming ‘good germans’ for the day will coime when that question will be asked & it will not be asked rhetroically but with the violence that frantz fanon so clearly saw some fifty years before

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 30 2005 0:27 utc | 13

sorry bout the above typepad has been accusing me of spamming lately.
Anyone else having trouble posting? Maybe my messages are just too long or salty tongued.
b real reveals the most likely outcome for Warner’s profanity. That is the US establishment is preparing a fallback position for their fallback.
It is one thing to throw billions of dollars that would be better spent on domestic health education and welfare within the US, at Iraq as long as the old boys are there to show the Iraqis how to spend it. It is quite another to give politicians’ lifeblood (ie govt revenue) to a mob of ungrateful sand n…..s who have no intention of kicking any of it back.
Jimmy Carter can build as many houses as he likes for poor people who have lost so much dignity that they will kowtow to a 2000 year old superstition to get a roof over their heads, but nothing will atone for his refusal to provide the the millions of Vietnamese poisoned by US chemical warfare with a pot to p… in.
Unfortunately while that would be a great ‘exit strategy’ for the a..h…s who started this murdering, once they convince the US voters that this is a ‘win win’ strategy it will leave Iraq with no infrastructure, many many people with disabilities, polluted with radioactivity and missing hundreds of thousands of young adults.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 30 2005 1:40 utc | 15

Some more inventive people can perhaps add to this Profanity Test.

Posted by: Groucho | Aug 30 2005 1:54 utc | 17

Those dots, debs get goddamned annoying, I must say, trying to figure them out!

Posted by: Groucho | Aug 30 2005 1:58 utc | 19

In January of 2003, I sent Warner (my senator) a letter asking whether, among other questions, we might not be creating a theocracy or a failed state prone to authoritarian takeover (if it remained united at all). How is it I hadn’t heard anyone from the Administration, or his party, describe what victory would look like? How long America would be involved in Iraq? How much it would all cost? Got a nice “I’m so proud of George W. Bush” letter back in reply. Warner’s one of the co-sponsors of the Iraq war authorization. And, he’s the vastly smarter, less partisan of our senators. (The other one, outside the realm of politics, in which he is natively skilled, makes one admire the rich, broad intellect and high principle that is George W. Bush.) The only redeeming element for Warner has been his attention on Abu Ghraib, and that’s been barely adequate, if that. But, another GOP type would have buried it. Perhaps Warner just couldn’t shut John McCain and Lindsey Graham up.
God yes, this comment is stupid. Right up there with any of several of Wolfowitz’s statements, of which the one, “We need to stop Americans from dying for Iraq by convincing Iraqis to die for Iraq,” a quip that had the distinction sending young men running away from recruiting centers in two countries.
Maybe the Iraqis aren’t grateful because we’ve hammered a tyranny into chaos and christened it democracy.

Posted by: Brian C.B. | Aug 30 2005 2:08 utc | 21

these savages whim inhabit american politics have toungues so squalid – minds so empty of ny meaning except that of murder – – as bob dylan once asked in ‘idiot wind’ – it is a wonder they can breathe at all
nnothing these savages speak surprises me in the least now – i’ll just browse cnn every day & there will be something from that criminal crew that will up the ante – obscenity for obscenity
decency as a notion – was something i was brought up with by communist parents who had become bitter & who had suffered enormously – but they insisted – demanded even – in perhaps the mot sadean sense – decency
in american politics – there is not one ounce of decency – not one ounce at all

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 30 2005 2:16 utc | 23

This place is getting like a cross between Love Story and Dr. Zhivago.
I retire for the evening to my dascha, dreaming that Ann coulter can be domesticated, after 3-4 years in the Gulag.
Sweet dreams are made of these.

Posted by: L. Beria | Aug 30 2005 2:41 utc | 25

Call me cynical (guilty! guilty! guilty!) but Warner’s crack is probably one of the most powerful talking points that can be used right now to peel away U.S. public support for the war.
Yeah, it was arrogant — also stupid, racist and delusional — but so is a hefty chunk of the 35-40% of the American public that still supports the war. They can’t be reached by anything that any of us would recognize as rational or moral arguments. But they are vulnerable to arguments that paint the Iraqis as welfare queens, and Bush as the ultimate bleeding heart do-gooder.
The kind of folks I’m thinking of have never been comfortable with Bush’s liberation schtick — they thought (some still think) that we invaded Iraq to kill terrorists, not to turn the place into the Switzerland of the Middle East. I think that’s why Shrub has been turning up the volume on the 9/11 references recently and dialing down the democracy rhetoric — the White House propaganda team realizes it’s neither credible nor popular with a big chunk of his remaining pro-war base.
(BTW: The other talking point that seems to have traction is the argument that Bush has given the store away to the Shi’a fundamentalists, who are turning Iraq into an Iranian-style Islamic republic. This appears to resonate with the war supporters who are most likely to respond positively to Bush’s messianic visions — the Christian conservatives, who hate Islam a hell of a lot more than they love democracy, particularly for brown people.)
It reminds me of an old story about Earl Long (Huey’s brother), who the governor of Lousiana back in the ’50s. It seems a delegation from the NAACP came to him to complain that the state’s hospitals were refusing to hire black nurses, even in their segregated black wards.
Earl told them he thought he could do something about that, but he also warned them that they wouldn’t like the way he did it. The delegation said they didn’t care how he did it, the black community really needed those jobs.
So Long gave a speech to the state legislature in which he howled about the fact that in the great state of Louisiana, white nurses –the very flower of Southern womanhood — were washing the private parts and emptying the bed pans of big, black buck nigras! The outraged solons, of course, immediately whooped through a bill requiring the state hospitals to hire black nurses to tend black patients. So Earl made good on his promise — in every way.
If peddling lies (the Iraqis are ungrateful) and partial truths (Iraq is gonna be just as bad as Iran) seems just as distasteful, consider the alternatives — a U.S. occupation that summons just enough support from the American people and the GOP sheep in Congress to last for years.
Speaking strictly for my cynical self: Given the choices, I can live with the ethical consequences.

Posted by: Billmon | Aug 30 2005 3:07 utc | 27

CALLING BEQ:
WILL YOU IMMORTALIZE THAT STATEMENT. Or perhaps we should raise $$ for Cindy S. to commission an Iraqi sculptor to do a sculpture for her sons’ grave w/that immortal line.

Posted by: jj | Aug 30 2005 3:36 utc | 29

@Groucho about the profanity test: You syphalytic afterbirth of a Mongolian gang-rape!
There,you see? Not one swear word. The art of cursing has been largley lost.
As to the words of our so-called leaders,”They have been at a great feast of languages,and stolen the scraps.”
Shakespeare, Love’s Labour Lost
Feel free to use all aforementioned comments in reference to the post, or any thereafter.

Posted by: possum | Aug 30 2005 3:55 utc | 31

In my eyes this comment is typically American…
And Americans (with few exceptions like you guys here) wouldn’t bother to try to understand anything else but what’s good for their business.
I am not surprised…on the contrary…

Posted by: vbo | Aug 30 2005 6:39 utc | 33

@billmon
I agree. Warner’s statements are an important step in the on going republican re-evalutation of the Iraq mess, and are not directed at those already publically against the war.
The Islamic Foundation of the “Iraqi constitution” is a giant torpedo in U.S.S. Mission Accomplished. And since we’re pissing in the soup tonight…
Consider this the evidence that we were the main mover in forcing the Islamic nature of the consitution on everybody else.
Money quotes from the article: link
“The current working draft of the constitution stipulates that no law can contradict Islamic principles. In talks with Shiite religious parties, Kurdish negotiators said they had pressed unsuccessfully to limit the definition of Islamic law to agreed-upon religious principles.”
…
“Mr Khalilzad had specifically supported those provisions, urging other groups to accept them, according to Kurds involved in the talks.”
It’s not too likely Pat Roberts, Billy Grahm, or anyone else in the evangelistic movement will be able to sell this reality to the Christian base. Its not just that Team Bush sold out Women’s Rights, they have also sold out all the Christian principles behind the war. How evangel friendly will a nation based on legislated Koranic principles to Christian Missionaries?
Team Bush has sold themselves down the river for the sake of a self imposed deadline. Any Dem who wants to run in 2006 or 2008 in the more religous districts of the nation need only point to this reality and its consequences.

Posted by: patience | Aug 30 2005 6:56 utc | 35

SBS News (tonight)
Sydney…
Quote:
STEVE FORBES, FORBES CHIEF EXECUTIVE: It’s not the money, it’s not that we have troops there, it’s that we have young Americans are bleeding and dying in Iraq.
Another depressing factor, he said, is the sky-high oil price – but he predicted that would halve, to around US$35 a barrel within 12 months.
———-
Young Americans are “bleeding and dying in Iraq” because of their government decision and world actually do not give rat ass about it…Americans should on the other hand…but they don’t. Until the draft comes. And “depressing factor” sky high oil price is actually very good for Bushco business but they’ll sell this fog to Americans too…even if they have to push it through your trough with an Army boot…

Posted by: vbo | Aug 30 2005 11:21 utc | 37

@jdp
No worries… it might not be your writing that is at fault as much as my reading. I tend to hit the bar here before my coffee has kicked in. Looking at the comments again, I think we are in complete agreement.

Posted by: Monolycus | Aug 30 2005 21:54 utc | 39