Cassandra Speaks

From Wikipedia:

In Greek mythology, Cassandra (Greek: Κασσάνδρα "she who entangles men") (also known as Alexandra) was a daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy whose beauty caused Apollo to grant her the gift of prophecy. However, when she did not return his love, Apollo placed a curse on her so that no one would ever believe her predictions.

A big tip of the hat to Jackson Williams blogging at HuffingtonPost for digging up this gem from neo-con tough talker William Kristol's Weekly Standard, circa 2003.

On the 4th anniversary of the onset of Bush's folly, and while the same idiots are touting the surge in Iraq, as well as an attack on Iran, it seems a suitable time to review their mockery of those among the sane with the temerity to doubt the US' invasion of Iraq.

Keep the above definition in mind as you savor the irony of what the Weekly Standard too appropriately calls The Cassandra Chronicles:

AREN'T YOU PROUD of us? For most of this past week, as an overwhelmingly successful, lightning-quick Anglo-American military assault liberated Iraq's capital city, and ordinary Baghdadis poured into the streets to kiss our GIs and stomp on pictures of Saddam Hussein, THE SCRAPBOOK has remained the soul of magnanimity and restraint.

Here in our office there's this giant archive of newsclips, transcripts, and Internet postings we collected in the months preceding the war, wherein a world community of jackasses confidently predicted that the events lately unfolding on our television screens could not and would not ever take place. And you can imagine the temptation, we're sure: A lesser SCRAPBOOK would throw open the file boxes and run through the streets with treasures like these, laughing hysterically.

"This invasion of Iraq, if it goes off, will join the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Desert One, Beirut, and Somalia in the history of military catastrophe. What will set it apart, distinguishing it for all time, is the immense--and transparent--political stupidity." --Chris Matthews, San Francisco Chronicle, August 25, 2002

The whole article is like this. And if those mocked turned out to be slightly off in the details, they were more than correct in the assessment of the ultimate outcome of this disaster. And certainly more correect than the sooth-sayers at the Standard.

Indeed it's Cassandra all over again, prophets telling the truth, but doomed to see their words fall on deaf ears.

At least those of Bill Kristol and their ilk.