Plenty of Blame to go around!

So as the shit hits the fan in our Mess-O-Potamia the fingers are pointing everywhere. And yet those who championed this debacle are relatively free from J’accuse! I have ranted about this before.

So, today the NYT’s has an article on the blame game and all of the finger pointing that is going on in DC. It is notable for what is missing.

Here is the article:

February 11, 2007

The World

Blame (Blank) for Iraq

By HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON

THE blame game on Iraq seems to be reaching a peak. The surest sign is that people inside the Beltway have started to proclaim loudly that they’re not looking to assign any blame.

“This is not at all a finger-pointing exercise,” Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, helpfully told a Senate panel on Tuesday as he explained that other federal agencies weren’t shouldering their responsibility for sending civilians to help out in Iraq.

“Self-righteous finger-wagging will not make Iraq any more secure,” lectured Representative Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican, during a House hearing in which his colleagues tore apart L. Paul Bremer III, the former United States point man in Baghdad after the war.

No one can say with certainty that Iraq is lost; it is too early to say whether President Bush’s new strategy to increase the number of American troops in Baghdad and Anbar by 21,500 won’t work. But, a continent and an ocean away, Washington is already positioning to lay blame if the worst happens. After all, history books are being written right now.

So, in a decidedly gloomy Capitol, a steady succession of administration officials, military types and yesterday’s dignitaries have trooped through various Senate and House hearing rooms to lash out — and be lashed.

Blame the Democrats.

Back when the Republicans were in control of the House and the Senate, they didn’t venture far toward an examination of President Bush’s Iraq strategy. Newly empowered, the Democrats have hauled in everyone but the kitchen sink: from Henry Kissinger to President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

A whole lot of blame has been spread around. The Pentagon took a swing at the State Department, with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates publicly griping to a Senate panel about a State memo asking the military to temporarily fill some Iraq jobs that State is supposed to be responsible for. “If you were troubled by the memo, that was mild compared to my reaction when I saw it,” Mr. Gates said.

The next day, in a telephone interview, Adm. Edmund P. Giambastiani Jr., vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was asked by State officials to defend them to a reporter, showed that when the chips are down and blame is being assigned, his first priority is not the diplomatic corps. “The military won’t lose this war,” he said, then added, pointedly, “but we won’t win it by ourselves either.”

The State Department shot back, but not with much gusto. David Satterfield, the senior adviser on Iraq, took the high road during a conference call with reporters, eschewing direct criticism of the Pentagon and saying only that “the skill sets needed for the additional staff are not skill sets in which any foreign service in the world, including our own,” are proficient.

Beyond that, State left its blame-mongering to smaller guns, relying on unnamed career employees to point out that if the Pentagon had bothered to include State in the initial postwar planning, Iraq might not be the mess it is today.

Robert K. Brigham, a historian of American foreign relations at Vassar, argues that the finger-pointing is a natural outcome for bureaucrats who are secretly frustrated by American policy in Iraq but unable to change it.

“These different departments are all stuck with the same playbook,” Mr. Brigham says. “In the absence of any kind of movement to change the geometry, this is what you get. You didn’t have this dissension during the Nixon years, you had it in Johnson’s.”

Mr. Brigham said that Lyndon B. Johnson got more flak for Vietnam than Richard M. Nixon did because Mr. Johnson did not make significant changes to Vietnam policy, while Mr. Nixon did, by going to China, among other things. Unless President Bush makes an about-face in American foreign policy, Mr. Brigham argues, by, say, beginning a pullback of troops, the blame game will continue.

Or increase. “This game has got a lot more plays before it plays out,” says Joseph Cirincione, senior vice president for national security and international policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal research group. “Are we reaching a crescendo? Heck no.”

Well, even if the blame game hasn’t reached its zenith, now seems a good time to look at the latest culprits, scapegoats and whipping boys who have become fashionable in Washington. It’s a disparate group.

Whipping Boy: Iran.

Whip: President Bush.

The president upped his rhetoric in January when he unveiled his new troop surge plan, announcing that “Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops” in Iraq. Expect more in the coming weeks, as administration officials say they will disclose new intelligence that shows Iran meddling in Iraq.

Whipping Boy: L. Paul Bremer III.

Whip: Henry A. Waxman.

The last time Mr. Bremer, the American civilian administrator in Iraq in 2003-2004, testified before Congress, he was hailed by Republicans and Democrats alike. But that was in the past, before de-Baathification became the dirty word it is now, before the Michael Gordon book and the Tom Ricks book and the Bob Woodward book.

At a House hearing on Wednesday, Representative Mr. Waxman, the California Democrat, upbraided Mr. Bremer for a Bush administration decision to send billions of dollars in cash into Iraq quickly after the United States had occupied the country. “Who in their right mind would send 360 tons of cash into a war zone?” demanded Mr. Waxman. He suggested that some of that money may have ended up financing the insurgency.

Mr. Bremer acknowledged that he made mistakes, but said, “I think we made great progress under some of the most difficult conditions imaginable.”

Whipping Boy: Gen. George W. Casey Jr.

Whip: John McCain.

General Casey, responsible for the Army’s Iraq war strategy for the past two years, appeared before a Senate panel weighing whether to approve his promotion to be the Army’s next chief of staff, and quickly came under attack.

“I question seriously the judgment that was employed in your execution of your responsibilities in Iraq,” Senator McCain informed him. “And we have paid a very, very heavy price in American blood and treasure because of what is now agreed to by literally everyone as a failed policy.”

Mr. McCain then went on to vote against General Casey’s promotion. But the general got the last laugh; the full Senate confirmed him on Thursday by a vote of 83 to 14.

Whipping Boy: Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

Whip: Dinesh D’Souza.

The conservative author argues in his recent book, “The Enemy at Home,” that President Carter’s withdrawal of support for the shah of Iran helped Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s regime gain power in Iran, thus giving radical Islamists control. Mr. D’Souza also says that President Clinton failed to respond to Islamic attacks and thus emboldened Osama bin Laden into thinking he could get away with the Sept. 11 attacks. Therefore, Mr. D’Souza says, American liberals are to blame for the rise of radical Islam and Muslim anger at America.

O.K., this isn’t technically an Iraq finger-point, but it seemed to capture the moment.

Captures the moment?

Now I know that a lot of people are to blame for this fiasco (hat tip to Thomas Ricks) but did you notice who is not mentioned in this blame game story. No where are the names Wolfowitz, Feith, Rumsfeld, Perle, Cheney or Bush mentioned in this story. And for a final crescendo we have that idiot D’Souza who blames Clinton and Carter, and their Liberal followers, for all of America’s problems.

Wow! The finger pointing is getting out of control and totally off mark. And it appears that those who should have the finger pointed at them are without guilt. If this is the MSM reporting we have we can expect to have some really poor information coming forth from the MSM on our imminent War on Iran.

Because if that War goes to hell and beyond, as has already been predicted, Clinton and Carter, and of course their Liberal supporters, are going to take quite the hit.