It's not just the neo-cons who want a do-over on Iraq.And, like with Iraq, the media has no idea at all exactly where the war should be or who exactly it should be fought against or what the goal should be or how to decide who has won.
By and large, the American press wanted that war as much as the Bush Leaguers did.
The media cheerled for the invasion. They reported the war as a rolling victory even after it was clear it was far from that.
They propped up the Bush Administration. Tried to sell us on the idea that W. was a great leader. And they'v never really admitted any of it.
Let alone apologized.
And rather than admit they were played for fools and suckers and certainly rather than admit they were glad to play along...
...they're itching for another war. Wars sell newspapers and advertising. Covering wars boosts careers.
It makes desk bound editors and pundits feel like heroes.
And this time out, they think, they'll get it right.
Not that they think they didn’t get it right the first time.
All I've garnered out of those studies has led me to formulate a precautionary rule. Don't get into wars that you're not willing to win and, even then, not without knowing how you will win, how long that will take, at what cost, how you will know if you've won and if you've lost, and how you will get out. Those preconditions all sound so reasonable and yet, if applied to our military adventures in the Muslim world since the turn of this century, we would have stayed home.Emphasis mine.
Forget this bullshit about moral wars for it's the most heinous, most barbaric side that sets that morality bar in these new wars. There's no moral consolation prize that doesn't leave mountains of suffering and dead in its wake.
The mandarins are running for cover. They failed to stand up to Harper. They chose not to defend the public service over which they presided. They allowed themselves to be intimidated into colluding with a corrupt government. They abandoned their responsibility to the nation and the Canadian people and they now, unforgivably and outrageously, depict themselves as victims.Yeah -- after ten years of "the Harper government" taking over what used to be The Government of Canada, after years of outrageous firings and resignations, after everyone was so sick and tired of Harper that the country threw him out, NOW the deputy ministers decide to complain about politics affecting the civil service? Give me a break.
With only a week before Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government is to be sworn in, independent Liberal senators say they are being kept in the dark and have no idea how the new government plans to get its legislation through the Senate.Poor babies, their delicate fee-fees are hurt.
“It’s a great big black hole,” said Senator Jim Munson.
This would also be my message to Andrew Coyne, and all the other casual collaborators in the MSM, who would have us move on and forget the Decade of Darkness as if it never happened.The United States has seen a determined effort to wipe everyone's memory about what happened during the eight Bush years, to the point that the US media was shocked, SHOCKED, this week when Donald Trump reminded everyone that Bush was actually in charge of the American government when America experienced 9/11.
We will NEVER stop writing about that nightmare, until the day the guilty are held accountable for their crimes against Canada.
Until the day we can determine whether Stephen Harper used government departments and the security services as political weapons against his own people.
And of course, until the day we can be sure that his foul legacy is finally buried...
Harper’s downfall, and that of the party he built, had nothing to do with Harper Derangement Syndrome. Nor was it about the machinations of war rooms, whore rooms, evil gurus or a burnt-out lieutenant screaming at her own deckhands as the ship went down — assuming Tory MP Ron Liepert has it right.
It comes down to this: you can’t have a dictatorial liar running a democracy for the benefit of his corporate buddies and expect a country like Canada to tolerate it forever. Canadians ultimately drop the gloves when they come face to face with tyrants — and kick the stuffing out of him. [Emphasis mine]
That is what really happened here. The country really did embrace the “better angels of our nature”, to borrow the phrase Trudeau borrowed from Lincoln. It was more disgusted by than afraid of Stephen Harper.
It didn’t appreciate his lies about what he was doing and why, his degradation of Canadian foreign policy for domestic political gain, his toxic manipulation of information that belonged to everyone, and his vicious mistreatment of anyone who dared to tell him that the sun didn’t orbit around … him.
How ironic is it that his kingdom of secrets, that bubble once hermetically sealed, is now leaking like an old rubber boot. Party brass like Jenni Byrne and Ray Novak at each other’s throats. Ex-PMO lawyer Benjamin Perrin saying the PM had lost the moral authority to govern. Tory Blue Bill Thorsell saying throw the rascals out. And now even pipsqueak MPs daring to unload on the autocrats at CPC headquarters who made their lives a living hell as long as Harper rode the back of the tiger — before he ended up inside.
What scares me? These people still won 99 seats. For some of them, it should have been 99 years.
