To "be fair" to George W. Bush, he appointed both Dick Cheney and L. Paul Bremer and supported their cockamamie decisions. Just How Much Should Paul Bremer Be Blamed for the Rise of the Islamic State?
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[ In the Boston Globe, Neil] Swidey quotes from an article he wrote in 2003, in which Middle East specialist As’ad AbuKhalil said: “The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan gave us the Taliban. The American occupation of Saudi Arabia gave us bin Laden and Al Qaeda. The Israeli occupation of Lebanon gave us Hezbollah. Let us see what the American occupation of Iraq is going to give us.”

We all know the answer to that: the Islamic State — perhaps the most authoritarian, cruelest, and powerful terrorist organization of all time. The Islamic State, of course, is comprised at its command levels by former members of Saddam Hussein’s military. You know, the one that Paul Bremer disbanded shortly after he banned much of the Baath Party from civil service jobs under the new regime. For his part, writes Swidey:

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Although Bremer has come to be regarded as the sole author of this decree to root out Saddam loyalists from the Iraqi government, that is simply not true. Drafts of the order had been circulating around the Pentagon long before Bremer’s appointment.

A well reasoned argument is like a diamond: impervious to corruption and crystal clear - and infinitely rarer.

Here, as elsewhere, people are outraged at what feels like a rigged game -- an economy that won't respond, a democracy that won't listen, and a financial sector that holds all the cards. - Robert Reich