Horse power / bullshit

In Iraq, just before the second US invasion, a man hauls propane in his horse-drawn cart through Baghdad’s muddy streets.

In front of the soon-to-open store, “Trust Fund Baby,” a smug, ostentatious asshole parks his smug, gas-guzzling penis-entender-on-wheels. The store failed within a month or so. Too much, even for trendy Soho?

We can’t know if the man and his horse survived Washington’s Shock and Awe, but we do know that the war protected enough oil to fuel cars like this, and that the Americans who planned the war are, as The Intercept noted, “all doing great, thanks for asking.”

MacNamara shed a few crocodile tears and died in his bed. At 100, Kissinger, a bona fide war criminal, still marinates in his own moist self-regard. Bush collects $100k a pop for platitudes on the rubber pheasant circuit. Cheney, happily unprosecuted for torture, enjoys fishing. Colin Powell, who kicked off his sad, career-molding sycophancy by covering up the My Lai massacre, was kinda sorry … about being a patsy. Biden’s enthusiastic support for the invasion remains largely unremarked on and apparently unlamented. And so it goes.

To catch up with the major players in the war mongering crew, see Jon Schwarz’s: “The Architects of the Iraq War: Where Are They Now?” https://theintercept.com/2023/03/15/iraq-war-where-are-they-now/