Dougie’s Rant
I’m less interested in the news that Dougie Feith is publishing a 900-page rant against his detractors in the Bush Administration and more interested in how a copy of that manuscript got liberated and delivered into the hands of Karen DeYoung, biographer of Feith detractor Colin Powell, and Thomas Ricks, all-around skeptic of Dougie’s disastrous war. The book appears to be primarily a long whining complaint that Colin Powell has retained moderately more of his credibility than Dougie and his allies in the Pentagon.
Powell, Feith argues, allowed himself to be publicly portrayed as a dove, but while Powell "downplayed" the degree and urgency of Iraq’s threat, he never expressed opposition to the invasion. Bremer, meanwhile, is said to have done more harm than good in Iraq. Feith also accuses Franks of being uninterested in postwar planning, and writes that Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser during most of Feith’s time in office, failed in her primary task of coordinating policy on the war.
He describes Bush as having wrestled seriously with difficult problems but as being ill-served by subordinates including Powell and Rice. Feith depicts former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld with almost complete admiration, questioning only his rough handling of subordinates.
How remarkable that two credible journalists with superb ties to Powell and Franks (and Bremer, whom Dougie also attacks) happened to obtain a copy of the manuscript in plenty of time to do interviews with all those Dougie attacks in the book, huh? DeYoung and Ricks seem barely able to contain their disdain for "the stupidest fucking guy on the planet."
Despite its bulk, the book does not address some of the basic facts of the war, such as the widespread skepticism inside the top of the U.S. military about invading Iraq, with some generals arguing that doing so would distract attention from the war against global terrorists. Nor does Feith touch on the assertion of his fellow war architect, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, that Iraq would be able to pay for its reconstruction with oil revenue.
Feith says surprisingly little new about the conduct of the war on the ground, instead focusing on the policy battles in Washington and asserting that most accounts thus far have been written from the point of view of the State Department and the CIA. He attacks those criticisms as "fear-mongering" that serves the interests of certain officials and journalists.
DeYoung and Ricks must have had plenty of laughs writing this article.
That said, I can find just two noteworthy tidbits. First, Dougie reports that on December 18, 2002, Bush declared that war is inevitable.
Among the disclosures made by Feith in "War and Decision," scheduled for release next month by HarperCollins, is Bush’s declaration, at a Dec. 18, 2002, National Security Council meeting, that "war is inevitable."
That’s not really a surprise, but the date is notable, since it was the day when the Bush Administration was vetting their comments about Saddam’s declaration regarding his WMD program. The following day, despite INR warnings that the intelligence was bunk, John Bolton would publish a document asserting that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger.
Then there’s the revelation that purports to show that General Myers was not as pliable as reports make out.
In contrast with the reputation of Gen. Richard B. Myers, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for pliability, Feith reports that Myers grew irate at what he saw as administration attempts to get around the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners following the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Myers, he writes, threatened to bypass Rumsfeld and take his concerns directly to Bush, but calmed down after being told that the administration would distinguish between legitimate prisoners of war and al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees.
I’m not sure Dougie understands what it means for someone to not be pliable.
Anyway, something to look forward to next month: 900 pages of Dougie Feith insisting that if only Ahmad Chalabi had been given control of Iraq, all of Dougie’s dreams of flourishing democracy would have succeeded.
Zed
To the extent that DoD was more competent and more listened to than State we will get less new information from them IMHO.
Bill Foster!!!
Good morning, ew. Doug Feith- what can he possibly fill 900 pages with, except self- absorbed justification after justification. That this guy held the position he did @ the Pentagon…well I can only think of Pat Lang’s anecdote about a job interview he had w/Feith. Bet that won’t be in Dougie’s rant.
From TP:
“At a recent forum, career U.S. intelligence officer Patrick Lang recounted a job interview he had with neocon war architect Douglas Feith. Lang, who had previously run the Pentagon’s world-wide spying operations, “was put forward as somebody who would be good at running the Pentagon’s office of special operations and low-intensity warfare, i.e., counterinsurgency.” So he was interviewed by Feith:
“He was sitting there munching a sandwich while he was talking to me,” Lang recalled, “which I thought was remarkable in itself, but he also had these briefing papers — they always had briefing papers, you know — about me.
“He’s looking at this stuff, and he says, ‘I’ve heard of you. I heard of you.’
“He says, ‘Is it really true that you really know the Arabs this well, and that you speak Arabic this well? Is that really true? Is that really true?’
“And I said, ‘Yeah, that’s really true.’
“That’s too bad,” Feith said.
The audience howled.
“That was the end of the interview,” Lang said. “I’m not quite sure what he meant, but you can work it out.”
Feith, of course, like the administration’s other Israel-connected hawks, didn’t want “Arabists” like Lang muddying the road to Baghdad, from where — according to the Bush administration theory — overthrowing Saddam Hussein would ignite mass demands for Western-style, pro-U.S. democracies across the entire Middle East…”
Dougie further solidifies his reputation as the Neocon’s poster boy for WATBs with this set of scribblings.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was done in crayon with stick-figure pictures portraying all the “lil’ rascals” who continually gave him yucky atomic wedgies.
crayon and stick figures would certainly explain the 900 page heft of the book.
And I like the comment in the WaPo article that has Franks frequently “rolling his eyes” when Dougie asks questions.
I bet it was also the response Pat Lang had in that anecdote that MarieRoget highlights in her #3.
As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the “rolling of eyes” is the normal response from everyone running into Dougie.
Makes my day! *g*
And you remember Franks’ famous quote about Feith, right? I wonder if Dougie will try and trash Franks too.
Who will buy Feith’s book? Where’s the market for it, who would want it? Seems to me it’s ridiculous to give Dougie an advance to produce anything @ this point in time. And, hey, editors, you’re allowing it to go to print that looonnng? Sheesh.
BTW, Pat, gentleman officer of the old school that he is, was also offended that Feith was shoveling down his lunch & wiping his chin during a formal job interview. Sloppy, disorganized, & so pressed for time was little Dougie.
F**king up a country is serious business and one has to use one’s time as economically as possible.
Another tidbit, though not from Feith’s book per se. One of the advantages of a book like this is that it promotes a historian-enriching circular firing squad. Thus:
In an interview yesterday, Bremer disputed Feith’s narrative, saying he believes that Bush gave up on the idea of a quick transition shortly after Baghdad fell and widespread looting broke out in April 2003.
“By the time I sat down with the president on May 3, it was clear that he wasn’t thinking about a short occupation,” Bremer said. After consulting his records, Bremer also said that at a White House meeting on May 8, Vice President Cheney said, “We are not yet at the point where people we want to emerge can yet emerge.” He said that Feith omits that comment. On May 22, he added, the president wrote to him, saying that he knew “our work will take time.”
One of my favorite Feith quotes:
and wrt MR @ 3
But he’s willing to support AIPAC spys…
I hope Juan Cole gets to write the NYT’s book review…I’m sure it will be “side splitting” and tragic at the same time…
Yes, that’s the monster quote. Thanks for digging that one up.
Interestingly, if you substitute “Eastern Front” for “Iraq,” and “Fuehrer” for “President,” the quote reads like a mid-20th century movie script, and a familiar history lesson.
Harper, as Harper & Row, used to be a great publishing house. Now that it’s HarperCollins, part of the mighty murdock empire (TM), it publishes dreck.
As I read the WaPo story, I wondered how much of an advance they gave Dougie. It’s surely money gone, because that screed will never earn it back, and it’s just that much more money not available to pay for publishing books and even poetry by promising writers (I seriously doubt that Robert Frost could get his work into print these days). The consolidation of publishing houses has done that in the last 10 years, but the ginormous advances for schlock writing exacerbate the problem, and we are all poorer for it.
and MarieRoget @ 7:
Not just that, but it’s a way of showing how very very important one is, if one has to conduct a job interview while behaving badly. One is simply too too important to observe the amenities. Those are for little people.
Have I mentioned lately how much I loathe that whole bunch of no-goods?
Don’t count on it. After all, Pantload’s book is still #2 on the NYT non-fiction hardback chart.
H. L. Mencken: “No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.”
Sigh. Mencken, yes.
Even on the “best-seller” list, those books don’t always earn back advances. The list is compiled through strange and arcane methods that often have little to do with how well the books are actually selling to the general public, and are almost as strange and arcane as those used by publishers’ acocunting departments in calculating royalties.
Not knowing s**t about the publishing business, I’ll defer to your expertise.
Ishmael pretty well nails it @ 23.
I am on the road this weekend, on the way out of town I saw a guy reading Goldberg’s book. I watched him to see if it made him visibly more stupid during the 2 hour delay.
Well? And so? Gosh: you’ve left us hanging in suspense here, masaccio.
Seeing Goldberg’s book excerpted in the National Post tells you all you need to know about the standards at the Post these days – no one has more contempt for Conrad Black than I, but I don’t think even he would have run little Jonah’s screed on the pages of the Post when he was trying to run it as a Canadian version of the Daily Telegraph.
Ishmael, they’re publishing Marsden now too. I figure that puts them in the running for the Darwin Awards.
Maybe just ask Doug who selected all these Bush subordinates?
And what is with the comment by Bremmer that by the time “he sat down with Bush on May 8…” the idea of a short transition was gone?
Why didn’t Bremmer sit down like, before the war started?
Why didn’t Bremmer sit down like, before the war started?
Probably because they had passed the unimportant issue of how to deal with Iraq off to a retired three-star General, Jay Garner, as a way of ignoring the issue. Within six weeks of the invasion, after the uncontrolled looting, they realized that there might be a problem there and that Garner was both competent and not one of them. So they quickly found a replacement for Garner in Jerry Bremer. But by the time Bremer got on board, a May planning session was probably the earliest he could arrange.
They were shooting from the hip to solve problems they had not anticipated, and Bremer himself was an afterthought.
I really wish that Jay Garner would publish a book telling what happened to him. THAT would be an interesting book, especially when compared to Bremer’s book.
EW,
For an EW pledge/fundraiser, you should turn this thread into a collection of Feithisms to publish a Feithisms calendar. (If we work fast enough, it could be a 15 month calendar to “kick off” on the first day of Spring and be released in stores in an adjoining display to his book…
landreau – glad you enjoyed it!
BTW, if you want to laugh all day, go read his Wiki page. WHAT a hoot!
Still digging…Columbus got 20.5 inches in less than 24 hours…snow that is.
I’m sure when I read the Feith 900 pages though, I’ll still need my boots – but NOT for record snow fall…
Feithisms calendar as an ew fundraiser? Hey, I’d buy several.
I actually might purchase Feith’s 900 pager- when done slogging through it & swearing the big swears, just remove the binding. Makes excellent fireplace kindling.
Sounds a bit like Scotties snot rag? Knowing no one would read it, his new handlers made up crap about what it might say. Nothing like making money. Sad that it comes at the price of freedom, no justice.
I was tempted to make a snarky comment, that instead of War and Decision, the better title was “The Stupidest Fucking Book on the Planet”, but there is something more disturbing about all this than Dougie sitting in front of his calendar for the past 8 years with his dictaphone and ranting about all his enemies – this book is simply one of the first waves creating the Dolchstossegende, the stab in the back, where the CIA “politicizers” of intelligence and the fops at the State Department harbored Commie sympathizers and helped the Russkies get the bomb…..sorry, wrong stab in the back, but you will all recognize the method.
Quite on target wrt Dolchstossegende…
Let’s hope history DOES NOT repeat itself…but everyone seems to love myths…
The Democrats are not so good at exploiting these myths as the Republicans – Nixon and his gang got started with the “Who lost China?” fantasy, but I suspect that Hillary or Obama will not be able to make as much out of the “Who fucked up Iraq?” scenario.
Yawn. The book will only have value if it can flush out Powell. I don’t think it will. He’s suffered so many pile-ons already, and another one from this twit is unlikely to push him over the edge.
I’ve never understood the economics of the bookselling business, where the retailers essentially take everything on consignment from the publishers, and send back what doesn’t sell to the publisher – no other retailer works that way, without any kind of investment in the books they are providing floor and shelfspace to. I don’t know if Amazon works the same way, but the vast majority of books printed these days I suspect go unread and ultimately pulped – and bestseller lists often measure how many books were shipped to stores. There really is no reason that a book should cost $30-40, anymore than a compact disc should cost $20 – it is simply a reflection of the bad economics of the business and the support of the distribution network, not the product itself.
While Feith has a lock on the title of stupidest fucking man on the planet, it is still important to remember that they were all world class fuck ups, those Feith defends and those he criticizes.
If I remember correctly, Karen Kwaitkowski said something in her Salon piece about Feith not having any papers or a file cabinet in his office. So, I’m wondering what he used as a source for the book and whether Feith himself did any of the writing or research for his book.
Interesting, too, is the timing- with Chalabi’s book out now.
IIRC, Kwiatkowski had some rather pithy things to say about Feith in her contemporaneous postings as “Deepthroat” on the late Col. David Hackworth’s Soldiers for the Truth website during the prelude to the invasion of Iraq.
Oh ye of little Feith; the knowledge is locked away in the stupidest brain on the fucking planet!
No papers or file cabinet in his office? Could it be [ gasps, wih hand over heart ] that he took notes and papers out of supersecret meetings and offices to copy and use them elsewhere? Didn’t Sandy Berger get pilloried and vilified and generally neoconned for that?
Or maybe he just made it up out of whole cloth, the modus operandi of the entire Bushco administration.
And I’m sure his friends and family network will support the sales of his new book…
More fun here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…..spatch.usa
bmaz! Haven’t had a Filipino Monkey fix in a while! Thanks…More snow coming…
If Pat Lang and Juan Cole are not available to do the NYT review, I suggest the Filipino Monkey. “If this book is coming toward your house, you head will explode in a few minutes!”
so let me see if I got this straight
feith’s buddies in the PNAC crowd and the neocons had been planning to attack Iraq since 1998
and TOMMY FRANKS is guilty of being “UNINTERESTED” in post-war planning ???
shouldn’t the stupid motherfuckers who planned the fucking invasion have THOUGH OF THE POST-WAR PLANNING PART TOO ???
sounds to me as if feith just complained that Tommy Franks didn’t save feith from his OWN STUPIDITY
can anybody splain how that isn’t true ???
The fingerpointing is a distraction.
What needs to be understood is that these Shock Doctrinaires did not believe that planning was necessary for post-war Iraq; they believe absolutely and blindly that a free market democracy will spring from chaos if chaos can be induced. Like Venus rising immaculately from the half-shell, emerging from the sea in all her Titian glory, democracy was going to arise from the sands of Iraq.
That sane people are so shocked by the lack of planning surprises them, catches them without a suitable response; they can only stammer and point fingers, even years later. Only the stupidest fucking people on earth could still cling to this belief system and this defense this long after the fact.
Heh, well, about 5 minutes after I started watching, he got up and looked blankly around, sat back down, read some more, stood up and turned around in a circle and sat down, read some more, stood up and dropped the book on the floor. He looked blankly around and found it on the floor. It took several minutes to get back to reading. I couldn’t see if he was moving his lips. Then there was an announcement for a plane to another city from across the hall. He stood up, looked around and eventually walked to that flight.
I’m going with stupider, definitely, but I have to caution you that I needed an earlier base point to be sure.
What’s odd is that they’re reading the 900-page manuscript. The book has to be well past the ms. stage by now — it has to have been typeset, proofread, corrected, indexed, and probably sent to the printer; there may even be finished books in the HarperCollins offices and warehouse (if not, there will be soon, because it has to ship out to stores nationwide by April 8.).
(I point out the 900-page manuscript because the typeset book is supposed to be 688 pages — see the Amazon link in my comment above — and they’re clearly not reading that, even though various typeset editions would have to have existed for a few months now. Presumably they’re embargoed.)
manuscript ???
typeset editions ???
what ???
y’all think we still use pens an paper, and set pages with lead type, an stuff like that ???
we gots ‘tubes an ‘nets, an desktop publishing programs now
let’s admit it folks
we’re talking about PDFs of various RE-WRITES here
the doughy pantload must be cutting the parts that make him look stupid
probably be down to just the cover page in about a month …
Which once again raises the question–how did they get it? They’ve had it for long enough to 1) read it, and 2) conduct a number of interviews about it. So who would have gotten a manuscript in the process and then liberated it into the hands of two allies of Feith’s targets?
I think SteveM is right. This thing must be in bound books by now (what a waste of trees). And embargo or no, there are a lot of people who can get their hands on a bound book, from the highest to the lowliest in the warehouse.
[Complete speculation alert]
The article says, more or less, that they got hold of the manuscript halfway through the editing process. From what little I know about publishing these types of books, that’s about the point in the process a book like this has to get reviewed by the spooks to make sure there’s no unauthorized release of classified information. What do think the chances are that some intelligence community professional decided that leaking the manuscript to Ricks and DeYoung would be in the best interests of the truth?
High. That was my speculation too–his would have to be vetted since so much of it pertains to his own little intelligence empire. Ergo, spooks. Ergo, people who would know to get it in DeYoung’s and Ricks’ hands.
If the manuscript was ever e-mailed or transfered electronically…..guess who got it.
Stupid and cunning aren’t mutually exclusive. Feith, with Wolfowitz, was responsible for disbanding the Iraqi army and creating the vaccuum that supposedly necessitates our stay.
“vacuum”