Green Zone

The boys & I went to see Green Zone last night in Cornelius. We had the entire theater to ourselves. That doesn't happen often. The movie is all about the manufactured evidence of WMD's that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq. That got me wondering about why they picked on Iraq. I mean any one of the countries in the Mid-East fully deserves to get their ass kicked. Why would you pick Iraq?

Then I got to thinking about Argentina and their invasion of the Falkland Islands. The government/military of Argentina concocted some rational that the islands should belong to them, and maybe they should, but a second level analysis said they started a war to distract people from the economic problems at home. Unfortunately, they underestimated England, who may no longer be a world power, but they haven't forgotten how to kick butt, especially when it's some second rate nation that needs kicking.

So was Dubya trying to distract us from problems at home? I thought things were going pretty good back then, well, except for that 9-11 thing. But that was the Saudis, so why didn't we invade Saudi Arabia? Because, A: they are our "friends", and B: they supply a big chunk of our oil.

Iraq on the other hand was run by this jerk. Maybe the Saudis didn't like him, and suggested him as an alternate target for our wrath. Or maybe the people in the know knew how close to collapse Saddam's regime was and figured it would be a cake walk. Once we beat Iraq, all the other Mid-East countries would see how it went for Saddam, and would become more compliant and less disagreeable.

The military action was basically a cake walk. Unfortunately, nobody who was in charge bothered to look beyond the military action, and that little walk led into an effing swamp, filled with poisonous snakes, crocodiles, entangling vines, and mind numbing disorientation. Unless that was what someone was counting on. Now THAT would be a scary thought.

Poundstone, Dubya's man on the scene, was appropriately slimy. Martin Brown, the "dinosaur" from the CIA, was right all along. Funny how that works. I think that's almost a cliche: the young hotshot who refers to the old guy as a "dinosaur" turns out to be a corrupt jackass, and the old dinosaur turns out to know what he is talking about.