Mr Greenwald,
This interview really explains everything one needs to know about these writers' article in the NYT. Thank you.
At times sounded like a deposition. You sure you left Biglaw? LOL. Either way, very informative and O'Hanlon should be commended for showing up and explaining himself. We need more journalism like this.
"...this was not, in my opinion, a fundamentally illegitimate or crazy undertaking."
WRONG AGAIN
Stick a fork in O'Hanlon. He's done. Great job, Glenn (yet again)! Now this just needs to get some circulation so these clowns will think twice about doing the Bush dog and pony show. But who am I kidding? These guys are bought and paid for.
The most astonishing thing in this interview is that O'Hanlon apparently didn't understand Shinseki at all. Shinseki's concern was not that the invading force was too small, but "that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq," as he testified in 2003. By changing the focus from occupation to invasion, O'Hanlon minimizes his own amazing support for the Rumsfeld doctrine. The dispute was primarily about the number of soldiers needed to occupy Iraq securely after Saddam was overthrown. O'hanlon shows either that he is childishly incompetent as a defense expert, or that he is shading the facts once again to protect himself against criticism.
Shorter O'Hanlon on the Op-Ed: We got data from people who could easily have been selected to give us a spin (and would have career incentives to do so), and we took that and emphasized it in the direction that they were likely to have spun it, and didn't bother to indicate that we had very limited contact with anybody outside the presence of the spinners, who were armed occupations forces.
Shorter O'Hanlon on the invasion: We had serious reasons to consider invasion, notwithstanding the fact that it was illegal, and they didn't attack us.
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