[HN Gopher] Death of Michael Ledeen, maker of the phony case for...
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Death of Michael Ledeen, maker of the phony case for the invasion
of Iraq
Author : nabla9
Score : 54 points
Date : 2025-05-25 07:08 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.spytalk.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.spytalk.co)
| melling wrote:
| $2 trillion for that war. Next time let's cure cancer(s).
|
| Correct, no one said it would be easy. True we would likely not
| have succeeded, but millions more would be cancer survivors.
| motorest wrote:
| > $2 trillion for that war. Next time let's cure cancer(s).
|
| Aren't there any positive tradeoffs in overthrowing the likes
| of Saddam Hussein?
| somenameforme wrote:
| There's a problem there. Many people reason about things by
| assuming that since option A is clearly bad, option B must be
| more desirable. But in life we often have this fun situation
| where we get to choose between a bad choice, and a terrible
| one - there is no good one.
|
| Saddam was, without any doubt, an at-times brutal tyrant. Yet
| not only was Iraq vastly more stable and peaceful under his
| reign, but so too was the entire Mideast. That war set off a
| chain reaction of events that led to a complete
| destabilization in the Mideast and created a fertile ground
| for extremist groups to recruit, operate, and generally
| thrive.
|
| So I don't think so. Like in most contemporary wars, the only
| real winners are the arms dealers, and the people getting
| rich off death and destruction.
| motorest wrote:
| > Saddam was, without any doubt, an at-times brutal tyrant.
| Yet not only was Iraq vastly more stable and peaceful under
| his reign, but so too was the entire Mideast.
|
| Hindsight is 20/20, but as consequences go I think that
| making a mockery of the UN in general and it's sanctions
| and weapons inspection in particular was something that had
| far more nefarious consequences. Most of today's stability
| issues in the middle east are caused by Iran financing and
| supporting terror groups, which isn't something that Saddam
| Hussein would counter. Worst case scenario, Saddam's post-
| normalization rule would double down on this playbook.
| Gaddafi's fate and Israel's handling of Iran shows that
| this blend of terrorism is only curtailed by going after
| the source.
| throwanem wrote:
| > as consequences go I think that making a mockery of the
| UN in general and it's sanctions and weapons inspection
| in particular was something that had far more nefarious
| consequences
|
| Any serious observer could only agree. Colin Powell has
| much for which to answer, just for a start.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| The problem was that he was holding Iraq together. After he
| fell, we ended up with a situation where there are about 1/2
| as many Iraqi Christians in Sweden as there are in Iraq.
|
| Basically, Iraq went straight to hell, and whatever
| minorities etc. didn't flee got murdered.
|
| I interpret it as something along the lines of Saddam
| Hussein's government caring about having a strong or at least
| functional country enough that they only wanted to kill Kurds
| and Iranians.
|
| Baathists are better than sectarian madmen, and I suspect
| we'll see some kind of idiot outcome in Syria as well.
| motorest wrote:
| > The problem was that he was holding Iraq together.
|
| Not really. He was oppressing Iraq and ruling it with a
| cruel tight grip, but any regime change takes decades to
| normalize. You don't just replace a nation's political
| class overnight and expect to a) not have pushback, b) the
| successors having it easy or hitting the ground running.
| throwanem wrote:
| > any regime change takes decades to normalize
|
| Oh come _on._ To whom in 2025 could you possibly expect
| to sell this nonsense excuse for an unbroken record of
| catastrophic neoconservative failure? Do you steal candy
| from babies also?
| impossiblefork wrote:
| I think the outcome was bad enough that the cruel crip
| didn't matter, and I suspect that we'll find that to have
| been the case also in Syria.
|
| Furthermore, it's not as if though cruel grips can't grow
| back with another hand.
| brookst wrote:
| You're saying that he was holding Iraq together in a bad
| way, which is true.
|
| But he was holding it together. There might be a case for
| removing him, but note that nobody ever made that case
| without resting it on total fabrications. Because, while
| he was "bad" in a moral sense, there was no case for the
| war that could be made using the actual truth.
| vkou wrote:
| Yeah, like killing half a million people, creating an
| environment for ISIS to germinate, grow, and perform
| unspeakable atrocities in both that, and a neighbouring
| country (with a little bit of fun terrorism in Europe thrown
| in, but on the grand scheme of things, the moral weight of a
| few hundred murdered Europeans pales in comparison to what
| they were doing closer to home).
|
| It's never a bad idea to create a power vacuum by
| overthrowing a dictatorship and then _utterly fucking up_
| your occupation and handling of the peace.
|
| It's not clear if _any_ invader and occupier could have
| handled that part well, but it is absolutely clear that the
| ghouls running the Bush regime were completely incapable of
| it. That those architects are still part of civilized
| society, and didn 't spend the rest of their worthless lives
| breaking rocks with their teeth in a chain gang never fails
| to boil my blood. They put the lie to every principle of
| freedom and liberty that western democracies claim to stand
| for.
|
| Similar horrors were inflicted on Libya by the Obama
| administration in particular and NATO in the general, but
| they were smart enough to not even sully their hands with
| making any effort to occupy and nationbuild after the fact.
| And guess what happened? Also ISIS and also a decade of civil
| war, and while it's died down a bit, there are still violent
| clashes between warlords and a humanitarian disaster nobody
| gives two shits about going on in the background.
|
| Under Qadaffi, Libyans weren't free. But they weren't
| _hungry_ , either.
| floralhangnail wrote:
| In an alternate timeline, maybe he would have become more of
| a dangerous liability, but I think it would have been cheaper
| for the CIA to overthrow him in any case
| shigawire wrote:
| The CIAs track record here is terrible. It basically only
| succeeds if there is already a viable opposition that it
| can hand bags of cash.
|
| It can't create regime change out of nothing, despite what
| it's detractors and its own propaganda might claim.
| agent281 wrote:
| Maybe? But it destabilized the Middle East, caused the
| migrant crisis in Europe, the migrant crisis caused a rise in
| right wing movements in Europe, it caused the rise of ISIS
| (lots of Iraqi ex-military), ISIS was involved in the the
| civil war in Syria, it caused a loss of faith in the American
| government, created a generation of disillusioned combat
| vets, so on and so forth.
|
| I really think we're still recovering from the damage caused
| by Bush administration.
| i80and wrote:
| Are we recovering? The knock-on damage you list seems to be
| accelerating if anything.
| agent281 wrote:
| Fair enough!
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Not much. Except for the oil companies. In any case the goal
| was not to make the world a better place.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Half a million dead for totally bogus reasons, and you want
| to try to find positive tradeoffs?
| johnohara wrote:
| 2,000,000 miles of roads @ $1,000,000 per mile.
|
| Think of that the next time you drive through Arizona on I-40,
| avoiding the potholes, debris, and life-threatening disrepair.
|
| I-40 runs a scant 2,556 miles from Barstow, CA to Benson, NC.
| SilasX wrote:
| Alternatively, for $2 trillion, you could probably solve cold
| fusion and synthesis of liquid fuels, making the Middle East's
| oil wealth effectively irrelevant.
| daymanstep wrote:
| That's assuming cold fusion is real.
| arp242 wrote:
| Cold fusion is basically impossible according to the laws of
| the universe as we understand them today. You'd have to do
| some sort of major discovery about the fundamental physics to
| do cold fusion. It's unclear (and IMHO, very unlikely) this
| will ever happen. It's very much not a money issue, it's a
| "we need to wait on some Einstein to make a major discovery
| of an unknown nature" issue, except that we don't know if
| that's even possible.
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| I always wonder how much the war would've ended faster if
| Bremer didn't screw up the "transition" phase. So many lives
| would've been spared.
| stormfather wrote:
| I've never understood what the real reason we invaded was. I just
| know it wasn't what we said, or oil.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Saddam tried to kill g dub's daddy
| mycatisblack wrote:
| I remember things sped up shortly after Saddam became vocal
| about having his oil paid in euros.
| Retric wrote:
| Ego? Bush Jr trying to surpass his father isn't particularly
| far fetched.
|
| The signal war plans leak shows decisions for these kinds of
| things aren't necessarily particularly well thought out.
| djohnston wrote:
| IMO that's unlikely. For all his faults he doesn't seem
| particularly egotistical. He was more likely manipulated by
| Cheney and the MIC and probably as shell-shocked after 9/11
| as the rest of us. Dumb war; dumber pretence; not a dick-
| measuring contest with his dad.
| Retric wrote:
| I don't think anyone runs for the presidency without a
| major ego, but we may disagree with what ego means.
| mrkeen wrote:
| Good polling perhaps? Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 (and
| allegedly the actual vote), but won in 2004.
|
| Or maybe it was just Cheney's idea to funnel money to himself
| via Halliburton.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| A US invasion, occupation, and political reformation of Iraq to
| serve as a lever for a pro-US series of regime changes in the
| Middle East were central ideas of the Project for a New
| American Century, from which the Bush Administration drew
| heavily for its defense and foreign policy officials (as well
| as VP.)
| somenameforme wrote:
| This is 100% it, but this goes far beyond just Bush or Iraq.
| If you ever want to understand what's really happening in US
| geopolitics, their paper, Rebuilding America's Defenses [1],
| is critical reading. It describes every motivation, goal, and
| purpose with 0 effort to fluff it up for public. This
| absolutely transcends parties as well. It is the position of
| the US political establishment. For instance Robert Kagan is
| the founder of the Project for the New American Century and
| his wife is Victoria Nuland who served as deputy head of
| state under Biden.
|
| It's not easy to give cliff notes, because there's too much
| to say. But in general, this was at the time when the USSR
| had still only relatively recently fallen and the US was not
| only essentially the king of the world, but had 0 meaningful
| competition for said claim. The goal of PNAC, and of the US
| political establishment, was to take this scenario, expand
| it, and perpetuate it. So the primary point was to prevent
| the rise of any other power and to essentially dominate the
| world primarily through being seen as the unquestioned
| premier military power, which would entail dramatic increases
| in military spending, regular demonstrations of power
| including preemptive and unilateral attacks on other
| countries if necessary, and so forth, wrapped in a tidy
| package of 'spreading democracy and freedom.'
|
| Most famously they acknowledged that all of their goals would
| be quite difficult without, in their own words, something
| like a new Pearl Harbor: "Further, the process of
| transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is
| likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and
| catalyzing event--like a new Pearl Harbor." 9/11 happened
| less than a year later, and everything went into overdrive, a
| trend that continued long after Bush was but a fading memory.
|
| [1] - https://archive.org/details/RebuildingAmericasDefenses
| HaZeust wrote:
| Solid comment. The more I read into these geopolitical
| pretexts, the more I think the U.S. government didn't
| orchestrate 9/11 - but that they allowed it to happen.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Methods aside, it is funny how quickly Republicans went from
| "we want to rule the whole world" to "we want nothing to do
| with the world and btw, foreigners get out".
| brookst wrote:
| Now they just want to annex Canada and Greenland, and hand
| over the US's role in UN, WHO, and economic development to
| China.
| swat535 wrote:
| How realistic is the idea of the U.S. annexing Canada,
| and what would that even look like in practice?
|
| Is there any historical, legal, or strategic precedent
| that would make this even remotely feasible? And given
| the likely short political shelf life of the current U.S.
| administration, would any of this outlast the next four
| years anyway?
| motorest wrote:
| > I've never understood what the real reason we invaded was.
|
| Wikipedia has a pretty good summary.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prelude_to_the_Iraq_War
| ekianjo wrote:
| The more wars the more special interest groups make money.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| It's imperialism. The US has traditionally dominated the Middle
| East region and it's big enemy is independence and nationalism.
| It wants countries that are willing to obey. So they made an
| example of a disobedient country, which may set an example for
| others if successful.
| sjzizbxjzj wrote:
| Israel has outsized influence on the US government and has a
| stated goal of removing/destabilizing all their opponents in
| the region. Nearly all political goals the US has in the Middle
| East could be resolved using peace and diplomacy, but this is
| at odds with Israel looking to be the sole regional power.
|
| For Iraq more specifically see:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean_Break:_A_New_Strateg...
|
| Their influence allows document like above to exist while the
| majority of the population is still wondering why it all
| happened. There's a plethora of other documents etc like this -
| see project Esther wrt deporting otherwise legal immigrants who
| are pro Palestine, etc.
|
| Stating these facts gets you accused of anti semitism which
| tends to be a dialogue killer, and yet our tax dollars continue
| to genocide Palestinians and we're on the verge of war with
| Iran.
| arp242 wrote:
| There was the notion in certain (neo)conservative circles
| throughout the 90s that toppling Saddam really would be the
| trigger for a democratic wave throughout the middle east, kind
| of like an "Arab spring". This would benefit everyone in a kind
| of win-win situation: the US would have fewer enemies, and the
| people living there would benefit because freedom and democracy
| is good.
|
| The "weapons of mass destruction" was kind of used as a pretext
| because they didn't believe such an argument would win popular
| support. It's somewhat abstract and rooted in a kind of
| ideology rather than pragmatism. They also genuinely believed
| that Saddam _did_ have weapons of mass destructions, but just
| couldn 't prove it. They would be found after invasion. Just a
| little white lie in the meanwhile.
|
| That's really all there's to it. People get all cynical about
| "freedom and democracy", but that really was the goal, as a
| kind of "enlightened self-interest". After 9/11 this only
| became more acute: with the middle east part of the liberal
| hegemony, there would be no more Al-Qaeda (or they would be
| severely weakened).
|
| Because they lied about the pretext, there was little to no
| broad discussion about any of this so they just operated in
| their ideological echo chamber. There was no one to really
| point out this entire notion was perhaps well-intentioned but
| also rather misguided and ignorant (to say nothing of the
| execution, which was profoundly misguided and ignorant).
| aeve890 wrote:
| This sounds to good to be true. Neoconservatives pushing for
| freedom, democracy, enlightened self-interest? Extraordinary
| claims require extraordinary evidence.
| arp242 wrote:
| It's well documented. I'm not going to spend ages finding
| citations because this is a HN comment and not a scientific
| paper.
|
| If you prefer to live in the psychological simplicity and
| safety of "neocons do evil because they're
| {evil,greedy,powerhungry,...}" or whatever then you're free
| to do so. But at that point you've also disqualified
| yourself from serious discussion.
| poncho_romero wrote:
| They aren't "evil" but the actions of the West in the
| Middle East have always been about capital despite being
| dressed up in the language of freedom and democracy. I
| would recommend the later parts of The Silk Roads by
| Peter Frankopan for a broad overview of this dichotomy.
| mandmandam wrote:
| > They aren't "evil"
|
| I'm not sure I understand this. If mass murder,
| propaganda, war crimes, atrocities, torture, money
| laundering, drug & people trafficking, etc aren't
| literally evil - just 'normal Western capital' stuff -
| then what do you call evil?
| bongodongobob wrote:
| No one actually thought or thinks that. It's about control of
| that region. All they want are figureheads that play nice
| with American business. That's always been the goal.
| moomin wrote:
| But you see, this was a bigger crime than the invasion.
| Because it was ideologically driven on faith, no-one was
| looking at the actual facts. The US military could knock over
| Hussein, no problem, but no-one had any plan for what
| happened next. No state-building, not even a plan for how the
| civil service was going to work. Absolutely no plan to win
| over hearts and minds and not create the next generation of
| extremists. No-one checking prisoners were treated with
| respect.
|
| The Iraq invasion was wrong, but the occupation was worse.
| arp242 wrote:
| I'm just explaining what the thought process was that lead
| up to the invasion.
|
| But yes, I broadly agree with you. Although I'm somewhat
| sceptical you can do this kind of state-building imposed
| from the outside in the first place though. But if you must
| do it, then the way the US went about it was clearly the
| wrong way.
| moomin wrote:
| I think your scepticism is justified. Reading about
| Germany invasion the 1950s suggests it didn't go
| massively well there. But they didn't even try.
| throw310822 wrote:
| > I'm just explaining what the thought process was that
| lead up to the invasion
|
| Are you sure you explained the thought process, or you
| just explained the justifications and the propaganda in
| support for a plan that had different purposes? Because
| of course if you need to convince an entire country
| (including its politicians and intelligentsia) to start a
| war, handwaving things such as "democracy", "domino
| effect" and spreading fears about WMDs is an obvious
| strategy.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| If I remember right, Bush ran on the idea that the US
| should not do nation building. So I guess he was just being
| true to his values? Maybe he thought Iraq would self-
| organize into something better.
|
| Just another example of hubris. Then he got re-elected,
| which still blows my mind.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| A large part of it was oil and keeping control on oil prices.
| People seem to forget that without the discovery of cheap way
| of fracking US would have required large amounts of oil to keep
| its economy growing and any kind of power in the region that
| could disrupt its oil supply had to be removed.
| candlemas wrote:
| There were a few reasons but an important one is that Cheney,
| Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld were convinced by Laurie Mylroie that
| Iraq really had something to do with 9/11 and everybody in the
| administration was paranoid about another attack. Wolfowitz
| also felt guilty about the George H. W. Bush administration
| abandoning the Shiites. All of them (except maybe Powell and
| Armitage) already disliked Iraq, felt like the first war was
| unfinished business, and didn't need much prodding to go after
| Saddam but the 9/11 connection they thought existed gave it
| urgency. Ultimately it came down to Bush and he probably
| thought it sounded like a good idea and not for any particular
| reason.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| Keystone for the Project for the New American Century. The
| problem is that the people who write this dross think they're
| in the same league as Plato or Hulme or Rousseau but they're
| barely above Sesame Street levels.
|
| Project 2025 is this generation's equivalent and will be
| equally as successful.
| rixed wrote:
| Irak, with it's stable government, large population, large army
| inherited from the war with Iran, and natural resources, was a
| strong political player in the middle east, and not quite
| aligned with the USA (for instance, being able and willing to
| threaten its closer ally Israel).
|
| So maybe the reason was just the desire to clip those wings?
| throw310822 wrote:
| It's such a coincidence that Israel is a prosperous (and very
| aggressive) country and all its neighbours either keep a very
| low profile or are reduced to rubble... By the US, and all
| for the sake of democracy of course.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| You'd have to understand everything from a century before the
| formation of the Baath Party to how Saddam consolidated power
| in spite of global efforts to destabilize the people of the
| region for Western gain from WW1 until the 1980s.
|
| He was both a horror and a blight on a long spanning
| intelligence effort that intersected with the storied history
| of Anglo interaction with the "Musselmen" empire.
|
| Long story short, you can't without a Muslim perspective.
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| Cheney. Halliburton. Money for everyone involved. Bush and
| Cheney had to pay back the cronies that got them elected.
| jaybrendansmith wrote:
| This is the last time I felt the power of the propaganda machine.
| (The most recent time was the 2024 election) It was so obvious to
| myself and my friends that this was completely cooked up
| intelligence. And yet the truth was not getting out, and had
| fooled many people with this strange groupthink, almost like a
| dumb, braying herd animal, where the collective intelligence was
| utterly ambushed and tied up in a sack. I don't like feeling
| powerless, yet I have this feeling that our voices have been
| smothered of late, destroyed by ridiculous talking points.
| princealiiiii wrote:
| The same propoganda machine has been on full effect in Israel's
| war on Gaza with American support. As soon as the attacks
| happened, there was a rush of propaganda (40 beheaded babies,
| mass rapes) to make the Hamas attacks seem completely
| unprovoked to justify the complete destruction of Gaza. The
| good news is Americans are more questioning this time of why
| they need to be involved in this at all.
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| If you didn't feel the machine in all those other cases it has
| gone full swing since then, that just means these two attempts
| were extremely crude by comparison (and they were indeed). But
| Cambridge Analytica has really ushered us into a new era of
| manipulation, where most citizens don't even have the slightest
| chance of perceiving how they are getting played by nefarious
| actors. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. Today we have
| stuff like the Saudis buying access to Twitter/X after getting
| busted for planting literal double agents inside the company.
| The level and sophistication of propaganda we see right now is
| unprecedented in human history.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| It certainly is making me wonder about the supposed benefits of
| democracy.
|
| If our votes, even those of our elected representatives, are so
| easily manipulated, then what's the point?
|
| My question isn't entirely rhetorical. I'm hoping someone can
| talk me out of that conclusion.
| jackyinger wrote:
| To the contrary, if voters are manipulated it is not a well
| functioning democracy. It is a farce of a democracy, the
| subtle manipulation just adds a veneer of legitimacy because
| it appears to be a democracy. Those who are manipulating
| people are the ones in power, not the citizens.
|
| Edit: I say subtle in the sense that those being manipulated
| are not particularly aware of being manipulated.
| hackandthink wrote:
| Jeff Stein smells like a spook.
|
| I'm sure it's his real name, but it still sounds made up.
| HaZeust wrote:
| why not just go to /pol/ at this point with a comment like
| that?
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