{"id":1141,"date":"2003-04-23T05:27:27","date_gmt":"2003-04-23T19:27:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/04\/23\/theyre-running-out-of-excuses\/"},"modified":"2019-12-06T08:38:57","modified_gmt":"2019-12-06T16:38:57","slug":"theyre-running-out-of-excuses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/04\/23\/theyre-running-out-of-excuses\/","title":{"rendered":"They&#039;re running out of excuses"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:14778,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.washingtonpost.com\\\/wp-dyn\\\/articles\\\/A17886-2003Apr22.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:14779,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.thismodernworld.com\\\/weblog\\\/mtarchives\\\/week_2003_04_20.html#000484&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/thismodernworld.com\\\/weblog\\\/mtarchives\\\/week_2003_04_20.html&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>Why&#8217;d we go to war with Iraq again?<\/p>\n<p>First it was to find and destroy all of Saddam&#8217;s WMDs, but we can&#8217;t find any.<\/p>\n<p>Then it was to find and destroy Saddam, but we can&#8217;t find him.<\/p>\n<p>Then it was to liberate the Iraqi people and install a new, democratic government in Iraq &#8212; only that new goverment is looking like it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A17886-2003Apr22.html\" title=\"U.S. Planners Surprised by Strength of Iraqi Shiites\">might not be very friendly to the US<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  As Iraqi Shiite demands for a dominant role in Iraq&#8217;s future mount, Bush administration officials say they underestimated the Shiites&#8217; organizational strength and are unprepared to prevent the rise of an anti-American, Islamic fundamentalist government in the country.<\/p>\n<p>  The burst of Shiite power &#8212; as demonstrated by the hundreds of thousands who made a long-banned pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala yesterday &#8212; has U.S. officials looking for allies in the struggle to fill the power vacuum left by the downfall of Saddam Hussein.<\/p>\n<p>  &#8220;It is a complex equation, and the U.S. government is ill-equipped to figure out how this is going to shake out,&#8221; a State Department official said. &#8220;I don&#8217;t think anyone took a step backward and asked, &#8216;What are we looking for?&#8217; The focus was on the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.&#8221;\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>We&#8217;re on a roll, folks. It&#8217;s just not going where the powers that be expected it to.<\/p>\n<p>(via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thismodernworld.com\/weblog\/mtarchives\/week_2003_04_20.html#000484\" title=\"Did they even think about any of this?\">Tom Tomorrow<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Iraqi Shiite demands for a dominant role in Iraq&#8217;s future mount, Bush administration officials say they underestimated the Shiites&#8217; organizational strength and are unprepared to prevent the rise of an anti-American, Islamic fundamentalist government in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2042],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-1141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}