Words can live eternally - and eternally haunt you. Just in case you have forgotten, here are few prognostications from the past which have proved a little off the mark2/13/02 - "I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk."
- Kenneth Adelman, member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board.
7/11/02 - "Support for Saddam, including within his military organization, will collapse after the first whiff of gunpowder."
- Richard Perle, Chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board.
7/11/02 - "Iraq is a very wealthy country. Enormous oil reserves. They can finance, largely finance the reconstruction of their own country. And I have no doubt that they will."
- Richard Perle, Chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board.
9/02 - "It is unimaginable that the United States would have to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars and highly unlikely that we would have to contribute even tens of billions of dollars."
- Kenneth Pollack, former director for Persian Gulf affairs, National Security Council
9/16/02 - "The likely economic effects [of the war in Iraq] would be relatively small... Under every plausible scenario, the negative effect will be quite small relative to the economic benefits."
- Lawrence Lindsey, White House Economic Advisor
10/4/02" - The costs of any intervention would be very small."
- Glenn Hubbard, White House economic adviser
11/15/02 - "The idea that it's going to be a long, long, long battle of some kind I think is belied by the fact of what happened in 1990. Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that."
- Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense.
1/29/03 - "I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing to take that wager?"
- Bill O'Reilly, radio columnist
2/7/03 - "It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could be six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."
- Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense.
2/10/03 - "It won't take weeks... Our military machine will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there's no question that it will."
- Bill O'Reilly, radio columnist
2/18/03 - "Iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the Iraqi people. And so there are a variety of means that Iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction."
- Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary
2/27/03 - "It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army. Hard to image."
- Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, testifying before the House Budget Committee.
3/27/03 - "When it comes to reconstruction, before we turn to the American taxpayer, we will turn first to the resources of the Iraqi government and the international community."
- Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense
3/27/03 - "There is a lot of money to pay for this that doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people. We are talking about a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon."
- Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, testifying before the Defense Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.
4/21/03 - "The United States is committed to helping Iraq recover from the conflict, but Iraq will not require sustained aid."
- Mitchell Daniels, Director, White House Office of Management and Budget.
10/5/04 - "The allies [have contributed] $14 billion in direct aid."
- Dick Cheney, vice presidential debate with Democratic candidate John Edwards
For those who slept through World History 101, here is a condensed version.
ReplyDeleteHumans originally existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters/gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in the winter.
The two most important events in all of history were:
1. The invention of beer, and
2. The invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer, and the beer to the man.
These facts formed the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups:
1. Liberal Pukes (like Gnarly Eric)
2. Conservatives
Once beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed.
Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to BBQ at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement.
Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly BBQ's and doing the sewing, fetching, and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement.
Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women. The rest became known as girlie-men. ie Gnarly Eric
Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy and group hugs, the evolution of the Hollywood actor, and the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide all the meat and beer that conservatives provided.
Over the years, Conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the jackass.
Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare. Another interesting evolutionary side note: most of liberal women have higher testosterone levels than their men. Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn't fair to make the pitcher also bat.
Conservatives drink domestic beer. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, corporate executives, athletes, Marines, and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies hire other conservatives who want to work for a living.
Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to govern the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were coming to America. They crept in after the Wild West was tamed and created a business of trying to get more for nothing.
Here ends today's lesson in world history.
It should be noted that a liberal may have a momentary urge to angrily respond to the above before forwarding it.
A conservative will simply laugh and be so convinced of the absolute truth of this history that it will be forwarded immediately to other true believers, and to more liberals, just to piss them off.
Gnarly Blowhard, if you're playing with a stranger, remember to wear gloves!"
ReplyDeleteThe Juneau Empire is reporting today that a local man was involved in an ugly incident while shopping for incontinence pads at the local pharmacy - his little electric shopping cart toppled over and no one came to his aid - leaving some in the town horrified and others pissing themselves with laughter.
ReplyDelete"So what the kids call this man crazy. So what he is the local 'looney tune', so what he beats defenseless women, so what he is addicted to prescription anti-psychotic drugs, so what he pretends he served his country - he is still a human being, despite his withered frame, penchant for 'animal bothering', smell and deliberate disruption to our small community. I am appalled!" said mayor Bruce Botelho.
What made things worse was that a crowd, mainly children, gathered around the stricken man and laughed at his plight. One child, a recent target of the mans venom said "It was so funny to watch him scrambling around on the floor in a pool of his own urine while his incontinence pads were sat in the basket, unable to help him - you know - of his little electrical wheelchair/cart thing that spastics, fat people and Norwegians ride in. Anyway - we thought he might be drunk again - so it was a blessing - he usually beats women when he is drunk. Small, defenseless women."
Local veterans - who often let the man join their annual parades despite him hiding in Canada for the duration of any conflict stifled giggles as the story was retold across dinner tables throughout the town.
Drinkers at the Red Dog Saloon were also chuckling at the story "It could only happen to him" said one reveler "you know, when he is in that little electric shopping cart thing that spastics, fat-people and lazy ass Norwegians use. Sooner or later it was going to topple over with all the incontinence pads, gay-porn and flatulence pills he buys - he overloads that thing, you know, his little electrical shopping cart thing that cripples use."
It's been a bad year for Senile Ken Rilie (which isn't an anagram of Erik Lie-Neilsen)- in March he cried like a little girl and huffed and puffed because things were not going his way and nobody was reading his moronic rantings on the spoof.com. He subsequently returned, cap in hand and has since become the laughing stock of the site - as many continually remind him of the day he wrote the most drawn out goodbye in history - which proved meaningless - like his writings.
His little electric shopping cart, you know, like the ones wankers ride in, was fine though.
Gosh! It's amazing that so many people can get so exercised over being reminded of things their side has said. Some are motivated to write long 'history lessons' (which have no relation to reality except in their own narrow brains), and others to simply rant and spew against the guy who reminded them.
ReplyDeleteMakes me feel I'm doing something right!