Date: 2011-02-16 03:27 am (UTC)
sethg: a petunia flower (Default)
From: [personal profile] sethg
Back in 2003, Mark Kleiman quoted Machiavelli’s advice in the Discourses never to listen to exiles: “Such is their extreme desire to return to their homes that they naturally believe many things that are not true, and add many others on purpose.”

Date: 2011-02-16 01:40 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] richardthinks.livejournal.com
I was going to say, it's like nobody reads Graeme Greene an more. Is this more Tailor of Panama or Our Man in Havana?

Either way, the will of the Bush regime was apparent months before any justification was offered, and John Negroponte demonstrated how taking one for the team doesn't do your long-term career any harm, even if it means you'll never get your Nobel. So my question is, why this now? Cui bono?

Date: 2011-02-16 01:46 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] richardthinks.livejournal.com
...in answer to your question, if I were personally involved and interested in ending the dictatorship, and if I had a sympathetic audience that could actually bring it about, I might lie like a trouper of rugs on opposite day with my fingers crossed. I note the guardian doesn't enquire about his personal motives; he just decided he ought to take this dangerous and highly indirect method to try to topple Saddam..?

Date: 2011-02-16 03:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] nancylebov.livejournal.com
Did he have any other methods available?

Date: 2011-02-17 06:01 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] richardthinks.livejournal.com
Maybe not, but I don't think it would even occur to me that lying to German spies might advance my cause.

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