I have deliberately stayed apart from the arguments about whether President Bush cooked intelligence in order to justify the invasion of Iraq. The reason is that I pledged myself after the last election that I would not do partisan politics. I have not kept this promise completely, but I've come pretty close.
But enough is enough. My son is fighting in Iraq. He called via satellite phone today and related taking part this week in a very large infantry, armor and air power raid against terrorists in the Fallujah vicinity. The rhetoric and accusations of prominent Democrats, accusing President Bush of lying to them and the American people, of cooking the intelligence about Iraq and claiming that their votes to authorize war were msitakes - that simply crosses the line.
The question of the accuracy of the intelligence regarding Saddam and WMDs is certainly legitimate. Questions about the conduct of war are legitimate - I have not been kind at times to the administration about that, especially about Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's deliberate discarding of studies by the Army Staff before the war that the prospective invasion force was too small by about half to secure the country effectively when organized resistance ceased.
I don't have a problem with inquiring whether the intelligence was "bent" by the administration. But here's the rule: You only get to do it once.
The Committee found no evidence that the IC's [Intelligence Community's] mischaracterization or exaggeration of the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capbilities was the result of political pressure.
The Committee detailed the many failures of the intelligence community, but there was no misuse of the intelligence assessments by the administration.
In fact, the president acted in the only responsible manner possible in light of the assessments he was given. These assessments included the unanimous conclusions by the intelligence services of England, France and Germany that Iraq was well on the way to becoming a nuclear power. The German assessment was bleaker than any of the other three powers'.
Let's go back to Jan. 27, 2003, when Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix delivered his report to the UN as required and said the following:Resolution 687 in 1991, like the subsequent resolutions I shall refer to, required cooperation by Iraq, but such was often withheld or given grudgingly. ...
... Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace. ...
As we know, the twin operation declare and verify, which was prescribed in Resolution 687, too often turned into a game of hide and seek. ...
While Iraq claims, with little evidence, that it destroyed all biological weapons unilaterally in 1991, it is certain that UNSCOM destroyed large biological weapons production facilities in 1996. The large nuclear infrastructure was destroyed and the fissionable material was removed from Iraq by the IAEA. ...
For nearly three years [since Dec. 1999] , Iraq refused to accept any inspections by UNMOVIC. ...
Resolution 1441 was adopted on 8 November last year and emphatically reaffirmed the demand on Iraq to cooperate. It required this cooperation to be immediate, unconditional and active. ...
[Blix then spent a few paragraphs reporting that ther inspection regime cionsisted of two parts, process and access. Access, he said, was satisfactory with only a few problems. But he recounted a number of times the inspectors were harrassed. Then:]
Paragraph 9 of Resolution 1441 states that this cooperation shall be "active." It is not enough to open doors. Inspection is not a game of catch as catch can. Rather, as I noted, it is a process of verification for the purpose of creating confidence. It is not built upon the premise of trust. Rather, it is designed to lead to trust, if there is both openness to the inspectors and action to present them with items to destroy or credible evidence about the absence of any such items. ...
On 7th of December 2002, Iraq submitted a declaration of some 12,000 pages in response to paragraph 3 of Resolution 1441 ...
These reports [that is, two reports by Blix's commission] do not contend that weapons of mass destruction remain in Iraq, but nor do they exclude that possibility. They point to a lack of evidence and inconsistencies which raise question marks which must be straightened out if weapons dossiers are to be closed and confidence is to arise. They deserve to be taken seriously by Iraq, rather than being brushed aside as evil machinations of UNSCOM.
Regrettably, the 12,000-page declaration, most of which is a reprint of earlier documents, does not seem to contain any new evidence that will eliminate the questions or reduce their number. ...
The nerve agent VX is one of the most toxic ever developed. Iraq has declared that it only produced VX on a pilot scale, just a few tons, and that the quality was poor and the product unstable. ...
UNMOVIC, however, has information that conflicts with this account. ...
There are also indications that the agent was weaponized. In addition, there are questions to be answered concerning the fate of the VX precursor chemicals, which Iraq states were lost during bombing in the Gulf War or were unilaterally destroyed by Iraq. ...
The [Iraqi air force] document indicates that 13,000 chemical bombs were dropped by the Iraqi air force between 1983 and 1998, while Iraq has declared that 19,500 bombs were consumed during this period. Thus, there is a discrepancy of 6,500 bombs. The amount of chemical agent in these bombs would be in the order of about 1,000 tons. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we must assume that these quantities are now unaccounted for.
The discovery of a number of 122 mm chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at the storage depot, 170 kilometers southwest of Baghdad, was much publicized. This was a relatively new bunker, and therefore the rockets must have been moved here in the past few years at a time when Iraq should not have had such munitions. The investigation of these rockets is still proceeding.
Iraq states that they were overlooked from 1991 from a batch of some 2,000 that were stored there during the Gulf War. This could be the case. They could also be the tip of a submerged iceberg. The discovery of a few rockets does not resolve, but rather points to the issue of several thousand of chemical rockets that are unaccounted for. ...
I might further mention that inspectors have found at another site a laboratory quantity of ... a mustard [gas] precursor. ...
I turn to biological weapons. I mention the issue of anthrax to the council on previous occasions, and I come back to it as it is an important one. Iraq has declared that it produced about 8,500 liters of this biological warfare agent, which it states it unilaterally destroyed in the summer of 1991.
Iraq has provided little evidence for this production and no convincing evidence for its destruction.
There are strong indications that Iraq produced more anthrax than it declared and that at least some of this was retained over the declared destruction date. It might still exist. ...
As I reported to the council on the 19th of December last year, Iraq did not declare a significant quantity, some 650 kilos, of bacterial growth media, which was acknowledged as reported in Iraq's submission to the Amorim panel in February 1999. As a part of its 7 December 2002 declaration Iraq resubmitted the Amorim panel document but the table showing this particular import of media was not included. The absence of this table would appear to be deliberate, as the pages of the resubmitted document were renumbered.
In the letter of 24th of January this year to the president of the Security Council, Iraq's foreign minister stated that, I quote, "All imported quantities of growth media were declared." This is not evidence. I note that the quantity of media involved would suffice to produce, for example, about 5,000 liters of concentrated anthrax. ...
Our Iraqi counterparts are fond of saying that there are no proscribed items and if no evidence is presented to the contrary, they should have the benefit of the doubt; be presumed innocent.
UNMOVIC, for its part, is not presuming that there are proscribed items and activities in Iraq. But nor is it, or I think anyone else, after the inspections between 1991 and '98 presuming the opposite, that no such items and activities exist in Iraq. Presumptions do not solve the problem; evidence and full transparency may help. ...
This report could not possibly build confidence that Iraq was at heart a peaceful nation with no intentions of retaining or reconstituting mass-destructive weapons programs. Quite the opposite, the report reasonably led to concluding that Iraq was determined to do exactly the opposite. Furthermore, the president knew that there were real and substantive connections between Iraq and al Qaeda, even though Iraq was not linked to the 9/11 attacks. For example, Iraqi Fedayeen Saddam Lt. Col. Ahmed Hikmat Shakir:
Six days after September 11, Shakir was captured in Doha, Qatar. He had in his possession contact information for several senior al Qaeda terrorists: Zahid Sheikh Mohammed, brother of September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed; Musab Yasin, brother of Abdul Rahman Yasin, the Iraqi who helped mix the chemicals for the first World Trade Center attack and was given safe haven upon his return to Baghdad; and Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, otherwise known as Abu Hajer al Iraqi, described by one top al Qaeda detainee as Osama bin Laden's "best friend."
Much, much more at the link. Then there's this summary by Richard Miniter. Were there constant, enduring ties between Saddam and Osama bin Laden? No. But both men hated the United States. Saddam had billions of dollars at his disposal while bin Laden has merely a few tens of millions, not enough to run an ambitious, worldwide terror program. (One al Qaeda perp captured after the bombings of American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1988 complained bitterly that bin Laden wouldn't pay for a doctor's visit for the perp's pregnant wife.) As Stephen Hayes summarized, "I would certainly never argue that they were buddies. It was an on-again, off-again relationship based, as [Sen. Evan] Bayh says, on mutual exploitation and a common enemy."
One of the most powerful senators of the opposition party took to the floor of the US Senate in October 2002 and said:
I am forced to conclude, on all the evidence, that Saddam poses a significant risk.
Some argue it would be totally irrational for Saddam Hussein to initiate an attack against the mainland United States, and they believe he would not do it. But if Saddam thought he could attack America through terrorist proxies and cover the trail back to Baghdad, he might not think it so irrational.
...At the end of the day, we cannot let the security of American citizens rest in the hands of someone whose track record gives us every reason to fear that he is prepared to use the weapons he has against his enemies.
That would be Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Democrat and member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. So can we claim, "Rockefeller lied, people died?"
I'll go even farther than merely recount the history that Democrats are deliberately distorting. Let's pretend that then-CIA director George Tenet never told the president that Saddam's possession of WMDs was "a slam dunk." Imagine that instead the country's intelligence chief had told President Bush:
(1) There was some uncertainty about what the data indicated,
(2) There was disagreement among intelligence professionals on the status of Saddam's weapons programs,
(3) The consensus of the American IC was that it was much more likely than not that Saddam possessed some quantity of chemical weapons and had active programs to preserve or reconstitute his biological-weapons program and atomic-weapon program. This report was buttressed by officials such as Ambassador Joe Wilson, sent by the CIA to Nigeria, where he found that although Iraq had not actually obtained uranium ore from the country it had made the attempt. (Oh, you didn't know that such is exactly what Wilson reported?)
Blix's report, btw, would stay the same.
Even had there been uncertainty about Iraq's weapons programs, there was ample just cause to invade Iraq and topple Saddam. In fact, Sen. Hillary Clinton said to the Senate on Oct. 10, 2002 thatBut if we get a clear requirement for unfettered inspections [from the UN], I believe the authority to use force to enforce that mandate is inherent in the original 1991 UN resolution, as President Clinton recognized when he launched Operation Desert Fox in 1998.
At the request of the United Methodist News Service, I wrote an article for its release in Feb. 2003 that UMNS entitled, "Just cause exists for action against Iraq."
Saddam's regime threatens American lives and the peace of the entire Middle East. The Bush administration and the U.N. inspectors have provided conclusive proof of Iraq's programs to develop mass-destructive weapons and its extensive efforts to conceal them - efforts that continue to this day. There is solid evidence of Iraq's links to transnational terrorists. Saddam's regime is brutally repressive of its own people.
Whether the status quo with Iraq constitutes a cause for war should be debated. That the status quo should continue cannot be faithfully maintained. The question is not whether Saddam's regime must be ended and the Iraqi people freed; the question is only how. We pray that open war may yet be avoided. But to fail to act effectively to accomplish the just end is to make oneself an accomplice of injustice and ally oneself with murderous oppression. ...
A key fact is being overlooked in today's debate. The choice is not really between peace and war. We have not been at peace with Iraq since 1991, and Saddam wages war upon his own people every day. The issue is not beginning a war, but how long the present war will continue. Absent Iraqi compliance, the choice is between brief, controlled warfare imminently or the continued suffering of the Iraqi people, the continued absence of peace and almost certainly a truly terrible war later.
President Kennedy's words during the Cuban missile crisis still apply: "We no longer live in a world where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation's security... The 1930s taught us a clear lesson: aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war. ... Our policy has been one of patience and restraint, but now further action is required. ... The greatest danger of all would be to do nothing."
I also explained Saddam's murderous regime against his own people (like this). I stand by every word, including what I wrote about WMDs. Why? Because it's worth remembering that the only reason we have certainty now about Saddam's WMD programs is because we invaded Iraq. As Tod Lindberg points out,
We took down the Saddam government, arrested and detained as many senior Iraqi officials and weapons scientists as we could find, questioned them thoroughly, scoured the country for biological and chemical weapons supplies, and found evidence of programs variously abandoned or discontinued or on hold. We found, however, no clear record of when or how (or whether) Saddam had destroyed whatever stockpiles he may once have possessed. Nor did we find any evidence that Saddam had done anything more than suppress his chemical, biological or nuclear ambitions for prudential reasons. On the contrary, there was ample reason to conclude that he hoped to reconstitute such programs at the first opportunity.
Then we come to the Duelfer Report, named after the chief of the US Iraq Survey Group, led by Charles Duelfer. No actual WMDs in Iraq, said the report, and that's where people usually stop. But the report also stated that:
Saddam wanted to re-create Iraq's banned weapons programs, including nuclear weapons.
Saddam was determined to develop ballistic missiles and tactical chemical weapons when the U.N. sanctions were either lifted or corroded.
Saddam retained the industrial equipment to help restart these programs, having increased from 1996 to 2002 his military industrial spending 40-fold and his technical military research 80-fold. Even while U.N. weapons inspectors were in Iraq, Saddam's scientists were performing deadly experiments on human guinea pigs in secret labs.
To what end? The overlooked section of the Duelfer report could not have put it any clearer: "Iraq would have been able to produce mustard agents in a period of months and nerve agent in less than a year or two." While Saddam had abandoned his biological weapons programs, he retained the scientists and other technicians "needed to restart a potential biological weapons program," and he "intended to reconstitute long-range delivery systems [that is, missiles] and . . . the systems potentially were for WMD." These conclusions were based on interviews with Saddam Hussein, his closest advisers, and his weapons scientists, along with the kind of industrial equipment the Iraqi government imported and maintained.
The report also explained that materiel prohibited to Iraq by the UN was arriving in quantity "virtually no problem" from France, China, Russia, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, and elsewhere.
There is no doubt - none whatsoever - that had the status quo ante bellum continued, my Feb. 2003 assessment for UMNS would have proven tragically true: had we not warred upon Saddam in 2003, we would have faced much more terrible war later.
So what to make of the current Democratic attacks upon the president? Fred Hiatt wrote in the Washington Post Nov. 14, of the "questions" about the use of the intelligence,"Those aren't irrelevant questions," says Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.). "But the more they dominate the public debate, the harder it is to sustain public support for the war."
What Lieberman doesn't say is that many Democrats would view such an outcome as an advantage. Their focus on 2002 is a way to further undercut President Bush, and Bush's war, without taking the risk of offering an alternative strategy -- to satisfy their withdraw-now constituents without being accountable for a withdraw-now position.
Many of them understand that dwindling public support could force the United States into a self-defeating position, and that defeat in Iraq would be disastrous for the United States as well as for Mahdi and his countrymen. But the taste of political blood as Bush weakens, combined with their embarrassment at having supported the war in the first place, seems to override that understanding.
Michael Barone put it this way:
The Democrats are trying to relitigate the prewar intelligence issue in the hopes of delegitimizing this administration. But in delegitimizing the administration, they also tend to delegitimize the efforts of the U.S. government, including military personnel, in Iraq and generally in the war against Islamic terrorism. To the extent they delegitimize the United States, they are hurting the cause of freedom for millions of people. I do not say the Democrats are being unpatriotic, a word they seem fixated on. So far as I am aware, no responsible Republican has charged that they are unpatriotic; John McCain refused Bob Schieffer's invitation to do so. But I do say this: The Democrats who are peddling the Big Lie of "Bush lied" are doing so either (a) deliberately to injure the cause of the United States and of freedom in the world or, as I think, (b) with reckless disregard of whether they injure the cause of the United States and of freedom in the world. What they are doing may suit their political needs, but it hurts our country.
So Barone shrank from saying "the Democrats are being unpatriotic"? I won't.
Listen, Senators Reid, Rockefeller, former Sen. Edwards, Sen. Kerry and your rhetorical allies: I have known many patriots. My son, fighting in Iraq, is a patriot. And you, sirs, are no patriots. You are actively betraying my son and his comrades. You are giving comfort to the enemy.
Have you no shame? No, I think not.
Well said! It's beyond comprehension how the anti-war faction can justify their actions and comments. I think there is a tremendous lack of wisdom on their part; I said wisdom, not intelligence.
I'll continue to pray for your son and his entire unit, and for you. May all of you experience God's Peace and protection.
More hiding behind hawkish Democrat senators, which every pro-war conservative is echoing today. Dan, if you are going to break your non-partisan streak, you not wait until you have something original to say?
This report could not possibly build confidence that Iraq was at heart a peaceful nation with no intentions of retaining or reconstituting mass-destructive weapons programs.
Again, here's the funny thing; I don't know any Democrats, doves or hawks, who claimed Saddam was a teddy bear. Within our party, the debate was between invasion and more inspections, and how much force to back up the latter.
All of this, of course, relies on the false premise that Democratic Senators had unfittered access to intel, which was not the case.
Now, seperating myself from this partisan arguement for a moment, I don't believe the Administration's lying truly undermines the case for war. As the Duelfer report suggests, a confrontation with Saddam was inevitable. Thus, what the recent struggle over prewar intel does is undermine Bush's credibility-- something which has never been synonymous with the war, and probably shouldn't ever be.
SAO - Thus, what the recent struggle over prewar intel does is undermine Bush's credibility-- something which has never been synonymous with the war, and probably shouldn't ever be.
Unfortunately, SAO, it is and it does. Not because we say so, but because the enemy says so. I am amazed how many times the Democrat talking points make it into speeches, videos and writings of the enemy.
then again, I'm not, because they understand holistic strategies which, by your own insistence in ignoring the fact, means that you don't understand or you don't care. I am hopint it is the former rather than the latter. Because, if it's the latter, then I'd have to weigh in with that word "unpatriotic" and possibly "seditious" and even "treasonous". But, I'll stick to "unpatriotic".
I might add that the problem with all of this language is more than the current struggle within Iraq or with Islamist extremists. Right now the rhetoric is reforcing to countries like North Korea and Iran and Syria (to name a few) that our intelligence networks are worse than they thought, that the government is weak (I mean, the entire US government, not just the administration because Democrats are now saying they are easily duped for over a decade - as Hitchens recently says, is that a message you really want to convey to the world?).
You know, I remember the post Viet Nam world and how, for a decade, communism made serious gains around the world and the Soviet Union was quickly grabbing up influence in states around the globe in the ME, South Ameria and Africa to name a few and serious repressions continued through out the Eastern Bloc.
Why? Because, in the immediate post Viet Nam era, the Soviet Union rightly judged that we were politically and economically weak, unable to oppose this expansion and repression. A lesson that our current enemy has taken to heart.
To some extent, the regression of the US gave the USSR just enough rope to hang itself, but it never would have happened if we hadn't made an economical and military comeback. The duel problems of over expansion and the re-emerging need to spend more for protection, weapons and maintaining these countries over extended the Soviet Union.
Had we not made that come back, but continued regressing to isolationism and financial brinkmanship, there is a real possibility that we would be like Europe now and the USSR would be the lone super power.
I see these same trends in our current struggle. It would be nice to imagine that, if we regressed, the Islamists would over extend themselves, too. The problem is, they don't have the same overhead or necessity to protect static areas. Their long term goal is to obtain states, but their short term goal is the strategy of "a thousand cuts". Even that short term goal is a longer goal than say our partisan goals for the next election so everything in between is either a help or a hinderance to their goals.
VDH compared this conflict and potential problems to the Peloponesian Wars, but frankly, I think it reminds me more of Carthage. The senate dithered so much and couldn't decide whether to press their military advantage or sue for peace, by time they decided, Scipio was at the gates and Carthage is now a blip in history.
So SAO, I do beg to differ. Just because you think such accusations are separate from the war effort, doesn't make it so.
I have a son who is serving- or will be (he's at a military academy) - I served (GW1) and my father served (WW2 Pacific theater) and I think the Iraq war is a stupid blunder - from concept to execution - that was allowed to jump off because Bush and company set up the OSP to stove pipe and filter intelligence.
They had nothing and when the inspections were causing the Bush Admin's collective ass to show, they pushed the button and invaded.
And, once again, Congress did not vote to go to war. They voted to use force to cause the inspections to go on unimpeded (which BTW, they did). Bush lied about that as well. He claimed Saddam "wouldn't let the inspectors in" what ever and where ever "in" is supposed to be. Regardless, Bush's hyperbolic rhetoric is contrary to what the inspectors themselves said.
The list of Bush admin. lies and mis-deeds related to the Iraq invasion is long and is noted all over the internet. I recommend Pat Lang's blog as a place to get a perspective 1) because he knows what he's talking about and 2) he is an authority on the region 3) he was a colonel in the US Army up until a couple years ago, so you guys can't say that he's some sort of fruit loop lefty.
What I really wanted to comment on is Dan's stating that you only get to question your government once.
Bullshit! What is this? Blindly follow the leader? Stallinism lite? We won't shoot you in the head the first time, but that's it.......
It is our responsibility as citizens to question our government. I will do so as frequently as I please and you should too. There is plenty of reason to believe that the intel investigation was a poorly done, if not a bold faced cover-up. New evidence and understanding is coming to light. By all means re-visit the important issues. Our way of life is far more threatened by our governemt gone awry than it is by terrorists. Terrorists can destroy material objects and take lives, but only we can compromise the values, principles and ideas upon which this republic was founded.
One of those ideas is that governments cannot be trusted to be virtuous; that citizens must remain constantly vigilent against their own government's tendency to move towards corruption and authoritarianism.
So when Dan and commentors here state that questioning your government aids the "enemy", I have to chuckle a little. Dan and his ilk are the enemy. They're neo-facists, plain and simple.
Plus, terrorists could care less if the Bush admin. is investigated. They're going to do what they're going to do, regardless.
You want to blindly follow the leader. Move to North Korea.
You want to be a citizen of a democracy, then start questioning your leaders.
I'd say that the fascists in this country are getting desparate given the lameness of arguments like Dan's.
Take a look at the Bush admin's polls. Freedom is on the march and Dan's ilk is losing.
You didn't do yourself any good with me SAO when you claimed a NYTimes article behind Times Select as proof of anything. It is an indication, not proof, that a senator claims he may not be getting full information, but it is entirely unclear if this alleged lack of information is either true or relevant to Donald's article. The NYTimes used to a reliable source..I've read it since 1955, but no more.
I think Donald's post is a really helpful and objective presentation on the issue of Iraq. When the president said that waiting until the threat from Saddam was imminent was not an option he made the critical point for me. We now know from the Deufler report that had we not invaded he would he moved ahead with WMD probably once the sanctions were formally lifted. The current barrage of nonsense from the Democrats is making certain that, even though I've been a life-long Democrat, I wont vote for any Democrat again until they demonstrate they are prepared to defend the country. The Dems have a heap of things to attack Bush with without damaging the war effort or trier country. As many have said this war will be won or lost on the home front and whatever the motivation it plays right into the hands of Al Qaeda.
Kat,
Can't you see that your fear of terrorists is making you put all of your trust and faith in your government?
That is what they - the Bush admin. - has been playing all along since 9/11.
We are the land of the free and the home of the brave, right?
You have to be brave to be free. You can't be so scared of terrorism that you give up your duty as a citizen to keep your government in check.
Also, from your comment above, you state that communism made gains all over the world in the post VN era (because of criticism of our govt?).
Where is communism today? Faded out. So what was the big problem as you see it?
I think you are typical of a certain mind set in this country. You tend to see global boogey men as being catastrophic threats to the world and our country. You probably see these boogey men - terrorists, communists, lefties......- as the very face of evil and all that.
Admins like Bush's play to people like you. Stop the game. Relax. The world is a diverse and competitive place. Nations and peoples will always be at war in one form or another. Yesterday's enemy is today's friend and vice versa. Our survival will not be determined through force of arms, by stomping around the globe attempting to crush out groups, governments or ideas that oppose us at the moment.
Rather, we will, in the end, survive by ensuring the vitality of our ideals and institutions here at home and by learning to cooperate to a greater extent with other countries; and that means compromise, sharing, partnering.
However, this will all take vision. Fear is the vision killer.
SAO: I don't know any Democrats, doves or hawks, who claimed Saddam was a teddy bear.
I can't believe you've never heard of "Jihad Cindy" McKinney, "Baghdad Jim" McDermott, or former Whip David Bonior. Not to mention Saddam's f--king lawyer, Ramsey Clark. And this guy, who actually resembles a teddy bear, is almost Hussein's biorhythmic double.
Fear is the vision killer ...
Who invited the Bene Gesserit to the non-denominational prayer breakfast?
"...I think you are typical of a certain mind set in this country. You tend to see global boogey men as being catastrophic threats to the world and our country. You probably see these boogey men - terrorists, communists, lefties......- as the very face of evil and all that..."
Methinks someone has overstepped rhetorical boundaries here, arguing at extremes.
I bought gas for my car yesterday. Did the fear of being without my personal comfort take over my waking mind and compel me to become enslaved to the big oil companies one more time? Maybe. Or maybe I just looked at the gauge and thought it was time to fill up.
Mr. A,
you know nothing about me. I am a liberal hawk and had been looking for the invasion of Iraq under the Clinton administration. It is not this administration that I am concerned with. My concern is with the security of the United States and the ability to conduct a war. A war that I hope is shorter rather than longer, but may continue for several administrations.
I am concerned with the Islamist terrorist threat. I'm concerned about it more than just their short term capability to strike us or our allies which they have proven capable to do. My concern is based on their own writings and statements, not something that the President or the rest of the administration has said because I feel that they have been remarkably circumspect in identifying the enemy and outlining their goals and strategies. Something I vaguely understand as part of the war to insure and secure stability. But, in vast ways, detrimental to the war effort on the home front.
I take it that you do not believe that the threat is that extensive based on your comment about my "fear" of terrorism. I wonder if you have looked at a map lately? Do you know how many countries have Islamist movements linked to Al Qaida or have suffered terrorist attacks? Do you know what areas (besides the oil bearing ME) that this covers and to what extent it threatens our economy and the world economy?
Have you read Zawahiri's Knights Under the Prophet's Banner or Bitter Harvest? Have you actually read their entire translated letters, speeches and press releases? My bet is going to be "no" or else you would not wonder why Iraq was an important battle front in the war, far beyond Saddam Hussein, but inclusive of his resources, weapons and human talent in these areas.
In the next Presidential election we may have a Democrat as President. I will support that President in the war against Islamist terrorism. If, at any time, I feel that a Republican congress is damaging that effort, I will be ready to speak out and challenge them.
In the mean time, I believe that those who are looking for a conspiracy are either partisan hacks selling our security for short term gain or people that are probably still looking for JFK's assassins in government and may half suspect that the FDR allowed the Japanese to bomb America so we could join WWII. Heck, maybe they believe that we really did blow up the WTC.
In any case, the problem with conspiracy theories is that there are too many people that would be involved in order to cover every aspect. We don't live in a police state, contrary to some folks beliefs, which means executing and covering such a conspiracy is down right impossible. It would have been blown some time back in 2002. I mean, you have seen all the leaks coming out of the CIA and congress? You think somebody would have set on it and a politican or journalist wouldn't have run with it way back then? Matt Schauer wrote wrote "imperial hubris" under anonymous in that period and he was an employee of the CIA. Do you really think that if the CIAhad felt differently or some employee that they wouldn't have come out or leaked something?
I really believe that you are letting your politics interfere with your common sense and that goes for Reid, Pelosi and the rest of the crew.
I don't have a problem with thinking the president is an idiot (even though I don't). I don't have a problem with acknowledging that he says things, that while true to the best of his knowledge, turn out to be false later. Heck, you can make a great case, from both left and right, that Bush is a poor president (although I do not agree)
What bothers me is that the Dems are willing to make political war on Bush, regardless of the cost in the REAL war. Do those 20 percentage points justify the loss of all those soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan? If they get elected and pull out of Iraq, was loosing those lives a good price to pay for the Dems coming back into power?
I don't think so. And I can't believe Pelosi and Reid think so. I was aghast at learning how LBJ fought the war -- target by target. Micromanaging. Looking out for the polls in every turn. I was also aghast that the last administration didn't go on vacation without polling first.
Surely the Dems are more patriotic than this. If we have comitted soldiers to a war, let's give them the message that nobody died in vain. Sure the president might be a fool, but we're there with you, looking out for winning the war (not PR stunts with greiving moms), and we have a better plan for fighting the larger GWOT. While we may want to disengage sooner, we're definitely not giving up, and our desire to disengage is part of a larger strategic plan, not pandering to the cameras on the nighty news.
To me, that's the way you get my vote -- show how you would do better. While I hear a lot of the negative comments, I haven't heard many positive ones, and the troops deserve a plan, a strategy, not just complaining and whining. "Run Away!" is a strategy -- if the Dems avocate that, then let's just be honest about it, ok?
>>Had we not made that come back, but continued regressing to isolationism and financial brinkmanship, there is a real possibility that we would be like Europe now and the USSR would be the lone super power.
I find your faith in the power of Communism quite amusing.
"if we have comitted soldiers to a war, let's give them the message that nobody died in vain."
The best way to do that is to not commit them to a pointless war and/or a war that has not been planned properly.
The Iraq war is such a war. No one can explain, beyond some ivory tower gambler's theory, hoe establishing a democracy in Iraq would thawrt the growth of terrorism.
No one can explain how democracy is going to arise in Iraq.
No one is presenting a real cost benefit analysis complete with risk analysis.
Given that we have been in Iraq going on several years now (almost as long as it took to go from peace time to total victory in WW2) and there is at least equal odds of the country collapsing into civil war and/or becoming an extension of the Iran regime I'd say the further sacrifice of troops is of questionable merit. I'd say the same for expenditures of $, what with education, etc now on the table to be cut because of deficits.
As far as I can see, terrorist attacks have only increased since the Iraq invasion, there are more terrorists operating and Bin Laden and his gang (the guys that really did attack us) are still at large. I won't even get into NoKo and other massive threats.
Sorry if I'm not convinced that invading Iraq was the right step to take post-9/11.
Saddam's nuclear ambitions were clearly thwarted by what controls had been in place and by the inspections that Bush brought back (a good idea in and of itself) proved it.
As far as bio or chemical WMD, I don't buy into the hype -read fear mongering - about all that because those types of weapons are difficult to use in a way to cause the mass casualties that are feared. Furthermore, even if terrorists did have the will and know-how to deploy such weapons, they would be much wiser to simply create the agents in the country that they wished to attack and not to attempt to smuggle barrels of the stuff over from Iraq. Red herring, I say.
As for Iraq attacking us directly as a state with bioChem...impossible. Delivery system? Signatures resulting in retaliation?
I could go on and on about how silly it was (and is) to see Iraq as a threat to our national security, but I'll spare you.
Can anyone state the probability that our staying in Iraq (and absorbing the related costs) will produce a favorable outcome?
Can anyone express a real cost benefit and cost effectiveness analysis?
I've been waiting for three years and haven't seen one yet other than the type of hyperbolic fear based decision making exhibited by Kat.
Well said, Major. You obviously hit the mark. Listen to 'em yowl. Random small arms attempting to answer a well-placed 155.
The real question that arises is why so many on the left wish to undermine not only the Iraq Campaign but the entire war against Islamism. What is so important to them they are willing to ignore abundant evidence (and their own strong statements) to promote their Big Lie?
To say they're "hungry for power" is simplistic and perhaps even misguided. But in ignoring evidence while attempting to drag down the war effort without offering any real plan or solution of their own, many Democrats are acting just as France has done for generations. If you can't move ahead on your own merits, try to bring down the leader.
This similarity to France may provide an answer. Many on the left are fervent transnationalists, and they deeply resent the Bush administration's obvious willingness to see to America's interest without passing John Kerry's "global test."
Transnationalists seek binding international laws and a form of world government, to which the US would be subject. If you repeatedly fail to convince the American voter to support your socialist, dirigiste, and statist policies, your best hope is to have it imposed on America from outside.
Transnationalism -- along with activist courts -- is the best way to advance an agenda that consistently and repeatedly fails to pass as legislation. George Bush, and Republicans in general, stand in the way of transnationalism. Thumb their noses at it, even.
Therefore anything, including providing ample aid and comfort to the enemy, is justifiable as part of the effort to remove this stubborn obstacle.
Historians will someday write at length about how it was that the Democrat party stumbled into a situation in which their political advancement came to depend on bad things (economic, military, geo-political, and social) ... bad things happening to America.
I couldn't agree more. My nephew was killed in Kuwait March5, 2004. His death and the lives of all our fallen should not be in vain. This entire campaign is being conducted by radical elements that have pretty much taken over the Democratic party. These are the people who want to run our country and bring it to its knees:
"[www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org Date: 11/15/2005 1:07:58 PM]
DEMOCRATIC PARTY
Democratic National Committee
430 South Capitol Street, SE
Washington, D.C.
20003
Phone :202-863-8000
URL :http://www.democrats.org
Related Profiles: Shadow Party, Democratic Socialists of America, Progressive Caucus, America Coming Together , America Votes, American Constitution Society for Law & Policy , Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), Brennan Center for Justice, Center for American Progress, EMILY’s List, League of Conservation Voters, Media Fund, MoveOn, National Abortion Rights Action League , National Association for the Advancement of Colored People , People for the American Way, Project Vote, Service Employees International Union, Sierra Club, Thunder Road Group, USAction, Vote For Change, Working Families Party"
"“Now it’s our Party: we bought it, we own it….” -- MoveOn.org leaders, December 2004
“I hate Republicans and everything they stand for.” -- Howard Dean, 2005, days before he became chairman of Democratic National Committee"
"As a result of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms, a group of private “527” political funding organizations have become a “shadow party” that now has more influence over Democratic campaigns than the Democratic National Committee, which heads the formal party apparatus."
Look up the Shadow Party. See who they are and how they "illegally" raise millions to support their cause. What none of these people will remember is that they "all" voted on the war based on the same information Mr. Bush used. They all believed as he did that the WMDs were in Iraq. They were also in office during the administration of Mr. Clinton, who also determined Saddam must go for the same reasons and had plans drawn up to do so which were not implemented.
I find your faith in the power of Communism quite amusing.
No faith in the Communist manifest, but I certainly believe that control of vast resources, including oil, natural gas, precious metals and gems, iron ore, uranium and a ton of other resources through outright invasion or through client states would have been a very nice way for them to prop up their failing state for many more years.
I mean, tell me that you were one of those folks (who apparently didn't exist until 1992) that predicted the fall of the USSR in the 20th century. or maybe you're just one of those folks who was have been perfectly fine with the existence of a Communist super power with nukes. Maybe you think that Iraq or Iran with nukes would have been fine, too?
So, I find our response, without responding to my other points, to be rather lame.
SAO, WTF is unfittered intel? something new? ;-)
Here's my idea for a pushback for GW.
Redact the classified portion of the 911 Commission Report and publish it. Let everyone see--you know you want to. ;-)
After the clintonistas and the toricelli doctrine operated on our intel networks, it's a damn frickin' miracle we had ANY intel at all.
"All of this, of course, relies on the false premise that Democratic Senators had unfittered access to intel, which was not the case."
Oops, you picked a poor choice of wording. The intelligence committee does indeed have access to the same intel as the president. No, they dont receive the same briefings, but that isnt intel. The committee has the power to summon any intelligence agency they wish and get answers to any questions they want.
Rockefeller and his cronies are making an interesting (read- pathetic) argument. That they were so content relying on whatever prechewed intel the White House was doling out to them they didnt find it necessary to do any of their own investigating on this critical vote for war. Basically they are either claiming to be gullible or lazy or both. Great platform to run on.
Add to that the fact that Rockefeller has admitted to telling the Syrian's he was sure we would invade a full year before the war started, and i think its pretty obvious exactly what these slimo politicians cared about. And the wellfare of the US and her soldiers wasnt it.
(1) The extended quote from Hans Blix' January 27, 2003 report is relevant to the central contention of my (former) party's leaders (and the newspaper I subscribe to): Bush Lied. Not "Bush was mistaken." In claiming that Saddam retained active WMD programs and stockpiles, Bush Lied. Misled. Tricked. Deceived.
The contemporaneous statements of UN bureaucrats, American and European politicians, and the directors of Western intelligence agencies should not be shoved down the Memory Hole.
If Facts are incompatible with Interpretations, it's our interpretations that should change. This is hardly exclusive to the 'pro-war' side; 'anti-war' partisans have made some telling criticisms of the Administration's conduct of the war. But not on this "Bush Lied" point.
(2) In the body of the post, Don Sensing quoted something he wrote on the eve of the invasion:
What is much clearer now than in 2003 is the extent to which the status quo was in the process of changing, to the advantage of Saddam.
The consequences of Operation Iraqi Freedom have been in some ways good and in other ways bad. The counterfactual case--no OIF--would have had its own set of results, some good, some bad. But it would have been substantially worse than a hypothetical continuation of the status quo ante, which--we now know--was in the process of dissolving in early 2003.
It would also be good to remember the internal democratic memo supposedly leaked or stolen from Rockefellers office mapping out how best to politicize the intelligence investigation... before the investigation even began. Yeh, sounds like the Senator and his ilk were really fighting to get to the truth.
"Intelligence issues are clearly secondary to the public's concern regarding the insurgency in Iraq. Yet, we have an important role to play in the revealing the misleading -- if not flagrantly dishonest methods and motives -- of the senior administration officials who made the case for a unilateral, preemptive war. The approach outline above seems to offer the best prospect for exposing the administration's dubious motives and methods."
Recall that this was written before the investigation ever took place. Kinda like finding a note in the local police department describing how best to nail a certain suspect before they even examine the crime scene.
This is pure politics and its disgusting.
Mr. A:
Talk about "lameness of argument", anyone who uses the term "fascist" in conjunction with this or any other administration automaticaly loses credibility and would be rightly labeled as a hack.
If the "lies" are so many, why couldn't you bother to list one?
Regieme change in Iraq has been official US policy since 1998, or have you convienently forgotten this fact, or is it just a symptom of Bush Derangment Syndrome? I'd vote for the latter. The only consistancy in the anti-war lefts argument to oppose this war has been their willingness to lie and distort the facts involved with the runup to the war, and their willingness to twist history to fit their preconvieved view of the facts.
What is very helpful is to look at the pre and post war UNMOVIC reports
WMD Refresher
It's interesting how alarming the pre-war UNMOVIC reports are compared to the post war May 2003 report. In January of 2003, UNMOVIC finally returned to Iraq after a 4 year absence due to the inability or unwillingness of the UN to enforce the last resolution. Even after three months they were only able to survey 28% of the known sites and were unable to survey any new sites due largely to obstruction and threat of eviction by Saddam.
What they said about the problem this presented:
Four years [ed...1998-2003]without inspection is a significant period. Given the history of Iraq’s proscribed weapons programmes (see Appendix), Iraq potentially could have made considerable advancements in that time, particularly in the biological and chemical fields. For example, within a period of about three years, Iraq built most of its chemical weapons plant at Al Muthanna and went into large-scale production of a variety of CW agents and munitions. And it took just two years to build its BW production plant at Al Hakam and produce over 27,000 litres of BW agent. Plants of such a size would of course be easy to detect, but they could also be disguised as dual purpose plants now producing some civilian product.
Now, in case anyone is too lazy to go read the hundreds of pages of the report, let me explain the significance and why UNMOVIC was so alarmist. The Al Hakam plant was built after the Gulf War and resolutions proscribing these weapons. it was never even declared (just about the only way the commission knew where these plants were). It was built by Iraq ordering dual use equipment ostensibly for another plant to develop veternarian vaccinations. Iraq simply took the equipment to this highly secretive plant. Recall that the UN inspections of equipment and shipments going in and out was kind of lax (understatement). Read the report and find that all through this period Iraq could not provide or did not provide invoices, names of companies and countries of origins or where many such shipments had gone to. The March 2003 report actually indicates there were over 500 incidents of unresolved questions.
The Al Hakam plant was not discovered until 1995, escaping detection for three years, until Hussain Kamal, head of the organization, defected to Jordan.
With all do respect for members of both parties, reading this report and knowing how Iraq acted in the last few months, much less a decade, it's really no wonder people felt that the UN commission could not hope to know or truly stop Iraq's desire for WMD.
As for the question of "security threat" to the US, what I find most egregious about this idea is that the expectation for "threat" was the ability to attack us on our homeland. You do know that our national security is more than just the land within these borders, right? I mean, economic and energy also comprise portions of our national security. The economic and energy resources of our allies falls under our national security.
And, let's be clear that we are talking about natural gas as well as oil and threats to maritime routes where billions of tons of product and raw materials transverse, pipelines, etc, etc, etc.
The ability, will and desire to attack Israel is a threat to our national security. A state capable and willing to provide materials, finance, base of operations with the potential for WMD or other phsyical or non-tangible support constitutes a threat to our security. And, like wise, a terrorist organization would not have to attack us directly (though they did) to constitute a national security threat and that threat was escalating after 9/11.
None of this can be taken separately from the question of Iraq.
I seem to recall that CNN reported that Saddam offered bin Laden assylum after he was ejected from Sudan in 1998 (reported in 1998). Whether Zarqawi was in Iraq in February of 2002 for medical treatment or to begin preparations for a larger battle is only a question that can be asked of Zarqawi and possibly Saddam and his henchmen who aren't talking because they rightfull discern if they admitted to and were found complicit in setting up such an organization to kill Iraqis, all other charges would be superfluous. They'd be dead men.
The truth of the matter is, hind sight doesn't matter unless one is truly trying to devine and correct actual intelligence failures such as our inability to place or turn spies inside Iraq, inside the government or any agency. Possibly explained by the many security leaks that resulted in dead people and people's real fears of being buried somewhere in the desert with a hole in their head, unknown to their family. Still, one wonders how we did survive the cold war if this is how we operated within the intelligence agency.
I return again to the UNMOVIC report March 2003. It's extremely alarmist and it was written by a UN commission with members from some 29 countries, not all of them friendly to the United States. To me, this report pretty much explains why we went to war. May 2003, they were still missing parts of the puzzle but had been better able to verify the status of some of the question marks in the March report. It was much less alarmist. Transparency does wonders.
Then again, maybe I'm just a partisan hack? LOL
There are some of the lamest counter-arguments I've ever seen. I could spend some time fisking them, but it would be pointless. Rev. Sensing has already said everything I would say better than I would say it. It's completely clear that some people won't listen, and would rather gouge out thier rationality than listen. I do however want to mention one area of the counter argument:
"Thus, what the recent struggle over prewar intel does is undermine Bush's credibility-- something which has never been synonymous with the war, and probably shouldn't ever be."
The emphasis is the authors.
I don't see how this is a counter argument at all, and it is in fact highly revealing. For the people making the argument that 'Bush Lied', even they are willing to admit that it is not an argument over substative facts, but an attempt to undermine Bush's credibility in order to make political gains. In other words, as far as they are concerned, the whole drama is just political theater which has nothing at all to do with the war. It is they would argue, and have argued here, merely business as usual in Washington and only to be expected.
I suggest we therefore not take any of thier arguments seriously. Every counter-argument made above boils down to the following stupidity:
1) Bush is Hitler and all of his followers are Nazis.
2) You are blindly following Bush.
3) It's unpatriotic to question my dissent regardless of how I choose to dissent or what I choose to say.
4) Terrorism doesn't consitute a threat, but Bush does. Don't be blinded by your fear of terrorism to the real threat.
Since all of these arguments basically require me to accept that the person making the argument knows more about my own motivations than I do, I can't imagine how anyone expects them to be persausive. In fact, I don't think that they expect them to be persuasive. They are merely swapped around the true believers to keep justifying the faith.
I seem to recall that CNN reported that Saddam offered bin Laden assylum after he was ejected from Sudan in 1998 (reported in 1998).
This is how it was reported in the 9/11 Commission Report:
A true partisan hack:
what does this have to do with September 11? If Bush had no responsible choice but to invade Iraq, based on Saddam's WMD, why didn't he invade in 2001, as soon as he took office? Why did Colin Powell dismiss the threat from Hussein in 2001, if what you are saying is true?
These are all rationalisations. They didn't start with a problem to solve and construct a policy. They started with a policy (invading Iraq), and came up with a million and one reasons why it's the only conceivable course of action. Arguing in bad faith, I believe it's called.
Wi'th your charges of lack of patriotism, you might succeed in cowing and bullying the more weak-minded of your readers. But it doesn't make what you're saying true.
A great and good man like Donald Sensing accusing his political opponents of lack of patriotism is a great public relations coup for the Bush administration. But it is merely that, public relations. It does not change the fact that the Bush administration has been dishonest, repeatedly, about Iraq, about Social Security, about tax cuts, about every significant policy initiative in their tenure. You may not want to hear it, but that doesn't change the truth.
Richard Feynman once wrote, "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."
Substitute "war" for "technology", and the same principle applies.
"The 9/11 Commission, chaired by a Republican, I might add, said there was no connection between terrorism and Saddam Hussein."
This was a quote by Howard Dean, for anyone that didnt see the link. It is utterly and completely untrue, aside from the 9/11 commission being chaired by a former republican governor. Dean is a demagogue and a hack of the worst variety, and Matthews predictably didnt call him on it. If you wonder why Dean wont share an interview with anyone that might actually challenge him, there you go.
"They started with a policy (invading Iraq), and came up with a million and one reasons why it's the only conceivable course of action. Arguing in bad faith, I believe it's called."
Thats an absurd simplification. 'started with a policy'? Like Bush just threw a dart at a map and then started coming up with reasons Hussein was a bad guy? All the million and one reasons existed before Bush even took office, as the Clinton administration quotes plainly show. Post 911 all those reasons took on a more urgent tone, and obviously Afghanistan was more pressing but Iraq was on the table immediately afterwards, and it was only Bush bowing to the left and Colin Powell by wasting time in the UN that slowed things down.
Talk about disingenous, the argument that if Iraq was so important it should have been done first is silly. Japan was important but we did Germany first. And before that we did Italy, Sicily, and North Africa. Was Morocco more important than Tokyo? Or in war does one have to bow to circumstances? You talk of natural law, which is amazingly hilarious considering you are making a purely clinical hypothetical that has nothing to do with reality. We couldnt have invaded Iraq before 911, immediately after 911, or during Afganistan for obvious and pragmatic reasons, political and military. Natural law indeed.
"With your charges of lack of patriotism, you might succeed in cowing and bullying the more weak-minded of your readers. But it doesn't make what you're saying true."
With your charges of perfidy, you might succeed in cowing and bullying the more weak-minded of your readers. But it doesn't make what you're saying true. You may not want to hear that, but it doesn't change the truth.
Frankly, I'm sick of your feeble, intellectually dishonest arguments, and I'm increasingly get sick of the people who make them. On the one hand, you and those like you make the argument that Bush entered the White House with the intention of invading Iraq, and you make this charge as if it was damning. On the other hand when it suits you, you make the opposite charge that Bush didn't enter the White House with the intention of invading Iraq, and you make this charge as if it were damning. It's immediately clear that your problems have nothing to do with what Bush does, but instead with what you think he represents. And lost in the middle of this is how 9/11 could have made an antagonistic dictator in the Middle East seem a more pressing concern, even if he wasn't operationally connected to the attack.
You have no connection with reality. If you believed half of what you say you believed, you'd have no choice but to stop what you are doing and make war against me and all the other people you think are 'Nazis'. Well, if that is really what you think, then put on a uniform, take up a weapon and lets get this civil war over with. As much as civil war in this country greives me, if it must happen let me bear the burden and not my children's. But otherwise, shut up and get out of your fantasy land. There are elections in about a year. Voice your choice then. But I'm sick of your stupidity, and the stupidity of all those like you.
roublen, cher ,
what does this have to do with September 11?
everything. do you know anything about mil-strategists? there is a mathematical construct called a threat assessment matrix. this construct is used for decision-making . what intel we have feeds it. we may have had bad intel, we may have had sparse intel, but there is no way to twist it or "lie" about it.
it is mathematics.
we went to war because of 911, because we were attacked on our own soil, and because under analysis by the experts, Iraq became the highest priority threat.
Oops, you picked a poor choice of wording. The intelligence committee does indeed have access to the same intel as the president. No, they dont receive the same briefings, but that isnt intel. The committee has the power to summon any intelligence agency they wish and get answers to any questions they want.
I wouldn't be so sure
And again, hiding behind Rockefeller isn't an exit strategy for this mess. Keep trying though- it's not going to work.
Bush lied, and a lot of people died... who probably were going to sometime in the near future anyways. I believe the consequence of this lying was not some sort of "illegal blood for oil war," but instead was a poor planned, unilateral strike.
Perhaps, the public could have been convinced to go to war without using lies and scare tactics? It might have taken longer, involved some dubious dealings with our nominal allies, and some backroom armtwisting at the U.N. Who knows? Perhaps this was our last opportunity, and we're lucky we struck while the iron was hot (to borrow from AL).
"I wouldn't be so sure"
Wow, damning stuff. Unfortunately it was a dustup between the CIA and Congress which the WH has nothing to do with. If Graham couldnt get Bill Clinton's appointed CIA director to comply with his orders in a timely fashion, he should have simply supoenad Tenent and whoever else he wanted information from. Again, if Congress isnt using the authority it possesses to the fullest extent, they can hardly go crying to the WH for not spoon feeding them to their satisfaction.
So I guess it comes down to gullible, lazy, or incompetent as Congresses excuses.
"And again, hiding behind Rockefeller isn't an exit strategy for this mess. Keep trying though- it's not going to work."
There's nothing to 'work'. Its a recorded fact that Rockefeller has been using this issue for political gain from the beginning while trying to run away from his vote. Let the American people decide when they hear from the Democrats own mouths whether the Dems were gullible, lazy, or incompetent. Oh, I guess there is one more option: wracked with political cowardice.
"I wouldn't be so sure."
THIS IS RIDICULOUS. THE LINK YOU PROVIDED DOESN'T EVEN ADDRESS THE SUBSTANCE OF THE CLAIM YOU ARE MAKING. DID YOU ACTUALLY READ IT YOURSELF? Even if we ignore the possibility that this is mere political grandstanding by a Democrat (WHICH IS HARD TO DO AT THIS POINT), if you examine the actual complaint you'll find that the Senator is primarily upset that reports on Iraq's CONVENTIONAL weapons and on possible POLITICAL FALLOUT from a war in Iraq. So the link does nothing to substatiate any of your claims.
"And again, hiding behind Rockefeller isn't an exit strategy for this mess. Keep trying though- it's not going to work."
Good grief. More arguments that defend on convincing me that I actually believe things that I don't believe. Do you have any arguments that don't involve persuading me that I'm actually motivated by things I'm not motivated by?
What you seem too angry or hot-headed to realize, Mr. Sensing, is that exercising everyone basic rights in a Democracy (see posts #4 and #6) cannot be swept aside so easily with charges of Anti-Americanism.
My suggestion to all those who are tending toward this line of thought is to take a deep breath, step back, and realize
WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER!
Democrats and Liberals are not your enemy, by any reasonable stretch of the definition. But sadly we have people advocating this premise like #11 and #14 more and more frequently.
From where I sit, these folks look and act more than anything else like little wind-up tin soldiers sent out to do battle against the evil DemocRAT (sorry about the seasonal metaphor!).
You must of course realize that "questioning the actions of your government" have only become "dangerous" in the last few years, haven't you?
The irony, of course, is that the majority of Americans are now (thankfully) starting to see that recent domestic and world situations make this even more important now than it ever was.
To restate: Questioning government is more important NOW than it has been in the recent past...in fact, the very opposite of what many of you are trying to argue.
The more vigorous, the better. If that results in a (temporary) weakening of one party's influence, so be it. That's the way the system works.
And there is nothing, NOTHING, about current events that suggests we need to re-think our system of government to deal with.
I'd rather lose the war in Iraq than weaken or destroy Democracy in America.
I think to many on this site, apparently spawned purely to support this war as well as serving as a last refuge for the True Believers, the opposite seems to be true.
Walter, you did not address any of the substantive points being made.
"What you seem too angry or hot-headed to realize, Mr. Sensing, is that exercising everyone basic rights in a Democracy (see posts #4 and #6) cannot be swept aside so easily with charges of Anti-Americanism."
Is it not an American's basic right to be angry and hot-headed? Is it not an Americans right to call someone else anti-American?
What a circular and highly hypocritical argument.
"Democrats and Liberals are not your enemy, by any reasonable stretch of the definition."
I'm not so sure about that
#35
Where did I say that it was "Anti-American" to call someone "Anti-American"?
#36
How do you know they are Democrats or Liberals holding the signs?
WMD was Clinton's argument.
Why should the same claims be honest when used to justify missile attacks and blockade, but suddenly become dishonest for a ground assault? They're just different tactics.
The whole debate is a canard. The fact is, we were already at war with Iraq for over 10 years by 2003. If there's been any deception, it's been about that, not about intelligence analysis.
"#35
Where did I say that it was "Anti-American" to call someone "Anti-American"?"
So you didnt have a hypocritical point, you had no point. Thanks for clearing that up.
DS:
Kudos for raising a son big enough to join the world's finest fighting force.
I was a Marine in Bush 41's Gulf War. What a contrast... in every way G HW Bush was a leader and his son is not. But for the foul up of the end game, leaving Saddam in power.
This his son has finished, but in such an incompetent manner he deserves our scorn and the boot.
Like a lot of bloggers you are rather too caught up in what some democrats are saying.
Get real! The GOP has every arm of the gov't. They are running things, and their mistakes are what is betraying our lads overseas and making their deaths in vain.
Not the ramblings of the completely out of power democrats.
The people are not polling down on Bush because of some Kerry or Kennedy comment. They are polling down on Bush because the truth is peeping out from behind the Rovian veil.
Bush is dishonest and incompetent, and has surrounded himself with dishonest incompetence.
To the point that the only response for realist patriots is to work hard to tie his hands, out his party in the mid terms elections, and then get someone with heart and soul to the presidency.
"Questioning government is more important NOW than it has been in the recent past...in fact, the very opposite of what many of you are trying to argue."
Not only have you fired a shot and missed the target, but its become clear that you didn't even see the target in the first place.
Noone here has argued that questioning government is not important (and if anyone does, I'd reject that argument). If anything, not placing trust in government has been a central tenet of the American conservative platform for some time.
But keep up your tired old meme that I'm questioning your right to dissent. It only makes you look ignorant, and why should I mind when my rhetorical opponents make fools of themselves?
And for the record, it was Clinton who said, "You can't claim to love your country and hate your government." The argument we are making does not go nearly so far, and in fact has nothing to do with whether you approve of your government or not.
One might conjecture that Clinton was only kidding or that he would never have gone to war with Iraq under any circumstances but Clinton himself has repeatedly said that under the same circumstances he'd probably have done the same thing as Bush did. Not recently, of course.
So making the strongest possible case AKA “tailoring the information” for implementing the explicit policy of the United States probably can't be deemed “arguing in bad faith”.
Oh, and by the way, the “True Believer” jazz doesn't work on me. I didn't vote for Bush the first time around and opposed the invasion of Iraq. But we're there now and we have a legal, moral, and strategic responsibility after replacing the regime in Iraq to establish conditions under which the new one has a decent chance for success.
I don't know whether the Senators, Congressmen, journalists, and commenters here who have cold feet and are looking for exit strategies that don't include doing the above are unpatriotic or unAmerican. But I do think they're being stupid and unproductive.
Thank you for the great post,Donald. My thoughts are with your son. The President and our Prime Minister have my full support in their handling of the War on Terror. We live in dangerous times, and the politicking that is going on, both sides of the Atlantic, is escalating the danger we are all in. Having watched Saddam for a very long time, I can only applaud George Bush's courage in facing up to the need to remove him from power.
"Noone here has argued that questioning government is not important (and if anyone does, I'd reject that argument)."
---
"I don't have a problem with inquiring whether the intelligence was "bent" by the administration. But here's the rule: You only get to do it once."
"Listen, Senators Reid, Rockefeller, former Sen. Edwards, Sen. Kerry and your rhetorical allies: I have known many patriots. My son, fighting in Iraq, is a patriot. And you, sirs, are no patriots. You are actively betraying my son and his comrades. You are giving comfort to the enemy."
----
I won't hold my breath waiting for your "rejection"....
"...then get someone with heart and soul to the presidency. "
I see no evidence that anyone with those qualities would make a viable presidential candidate. The primary process of both parties has come up with Kerry, Bush II, Gore, Dole, Clinton, Bush I, Dukakis, and Mondale in recent history. None of them would rank high in "heart and soul" as you seem to be defining it, whatever other qualities they may have.
ALL:
What amazes me in this discussion are the persistent but unspoken assumptions that:
1) The various intelligence agencies are able to produce highly accurate assessments of the situation on the ground, on demand, and
2) In a relatively short amount of time, the (any) Administration is capable of restructuring the intelligence agencies to give a particular desired answer above all others.
Ignore, for a moment, the investigations about who tried to pressure who, who tried to thwart what, and all the rest. Concentrate, instead, on known past performance, and first principles as regards large, segmented bureaucracies.
Recall, for instance, the small issue of the Indian and Pakistani nuclear bomb tests during the Clinton Administration. The reaction of the intelligence community to these events, as best I can recall, was blink confusedly and say, "They did what? Whoah!" These were not the only intelligence failures in recent years, and these failures spread across multiple Administrations and many, many Congresses, of all possible mixes. But the nuclear issue in South Asia was the one where I really realized that exaggerating their capabilities was not going to lead me to an accurate picture of the world.
Likewise, consider the possibility of actually reforming a very large, very secretive, very entrenched bureaucracy which knows perfectly well that it need only deal with you for eight years... or four, if they're lucky. Remember back to the early 2001 picture of Rumsfeld very publicly trying to reform the Defense Department, with the consensus view being that he wouldn't get anywhere. Now, remember back to the same time period with the equally high profile attempt to reform the CIA-- oh, wait. You won't recall that, because it didn't happen. The biggest shakeup in the intel community happened, not before 9/11, not before the Iraq war, but on June 3 or 2004 after Tenet resigned from the CIA, clearing the way for Porter Goss. (Who, I might point out, hasnt' really done much in the way of reform that is visible to civilian eyes.)
Worse, understand that the intel community is an ecology of smaller intel agencies beholden to different intermediary groups, interests, and masters, some civilian, some military. They are rivalry driven, and intensely secretive by their nature.
The idea that somehow, in the span of just two years, the Administration not only somehow whipped the entire fragmented, squabbling intel community into a unified voice saying only what they wanted to hear really offends my personal knowledge of how bureaucracies work. The notion that all this was done on the sly is really quite ludicrous.
And finally, understand that the various intel organizations, by virtue of their necessary secrecy, are particularly likely to fall prey to opinion cascades, whereby closed deliberations of small groups tend (and this is a documented sociological fact) to move to more and more extreme positions. With the stunning failures of the South Asian nuclear question, followed by the massive shock to the system of 9/11, the intel community as a whole could react in only one sociologically consistent way-- amp up their sensitivity to threat and take an exteme position, so that if they made a mistake, at least it wouldn't be the same mistake.
#39
Perhaps I was not too clear or you are simply too thick, but instead of repeating myself I'll just pass this along:
"The Iraq war should not be debated in the United States on a partisan political platform. This debases our country, trivializes the seriousness of war and cheapens the service and sacrifices of our men and women in uniform....The Bush Administration must understand that each American has a right to question our policies in Iraq and should not be demonized for disagreeing with them. Suggesting that to challenge or criticize policy is undermining and hurting our troops is not democracy nor what this country has stood for, for over 200 years."
---Sen. Chuck Hagel, Nov. 15, 2005.
Fortunately for all of America, Mr. Sensing neither gets to decide where the line is, nor when it's been crossed. It's an America thing that apparantly he can't quite grasp.
And rather than calling out folks for allegedly crossing this imaginary line, his time would be better spent at a more important, but much more difficult task of getting Americans to support the Iraq war.
If you think that having 57% of Americans believing that the president mislead us into an ill conceived war then you aren't paying attention to an even bigger problem.
Mainly that only 35% of Americans don't believe we were mislead into war.
And whining about how folks are stepping over some line in pointing that out isn't going to build on that 35% number.
Fortunately for all of America, Mr. Sensing neither gets to decide where the line is, nor when it's been crossed. It's an America thing that apparantly he can't quite grasp.
And rather than calling out folks for allegedly crossing this imaginary line, his time would be better spent at a more important, but much more difficult task of getting Americans to support the Iraq war.
If you think that having 57% of Americans believing that the president mislead us into an ill conceived war is a problem then you aren't paying attention to an even bigger problem.
Mainly that only 35% of Americans don't believe we were mislead into war.
And whining about how folks are stepping over some line in pointing that out isn't going to build on that 35% number.
To Mr. A You said _The Iraq war is such a war. No one can explain, beyond some ivory tower gambler's theory, hoe establishing a democracy in Iraq would thawrt the growth of terrorism.
No one can explain how democracy is going to arise in Iraq_
Please take the time to read yesterday's post regarding why this war is inevitable and why it's even named incorrectly.
Your blind eye ignorance is exceeded only by your blind faith in the left having a solution.
Celebrim: if you examine the actual complaint you'll find that the Senator is primarily upset that reports on Iraq's CONVENTIONAL weapons and on possible POLITICAL FALLOUT from a war in Iraq.
Quite the selective reading habits you've got there. Sandwiched between the graphs on conventional weapons and the possible political impact on Iraq's neighbors (fallout? sheesh) was this little tidbit:
Noone here has argued that questioning government is not important (and if anyone does, I'd reject that argument). If anything, not placing trust in government has been a central tenet of the American conservative platform for some time.
Talk about having your cake and eating it too. So let me get this straight now, we're at:
"Some Democrats were pro-war and believed the intelligence estimates of WMD, thus the whole left cannot question Bush-- more than once, since SSIC 1 cleared up everything."
Great.. nice little tightrope walk you guys have going here. Don't fall off!
And then there's more.
Fred Kaplan at Slate has some good comments on the whole issue of lying, and the Senate report that "cleared" the pres.
http://www.slate.com/id/2130295/
Here's some cut and paste.
Let's go to the transcript:
Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs.
This is not true. Two bipartisan panels have examined the question of how the intelligence on Iraq's WMDs turned out so wrong. Both deliberately skirted the issue of why.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence deferred the second part of its probe—dealing with whether officials oversimplified or distorted the conclusions reached by the various intelligence agencies—until after the 2004 election, and its Republican chairman has done little to revive the issue since.
Judge Laurence Silberman, who chaired a presidential commission on WMDs, said, when he released the 601-page report last March, "Our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policymakers, and all of us agreed that that was not part of our inquiry."
There's something misleading about Bush's wording on this point, as well: The investigation "found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments." The controversy concerns pressure from the White House and the secretary of defense to form the judgments—that is, to make sure the agencies reached specific judgments—not to change them afterward.
"I won't hold my breath waiting for your "rejection"...."
Neither comment questioned the right to dissent, so I don't need to make a rejection. Again, you show a marked lack of understanding and reading comprehension.
The first comment made the argument that repeated calls for investigation after an investigation had already been made and concluded constituted not honest debate but political grandstanding. Basically, someone was just trying to keep the debate focused not on results, but - as someone earlier admitted - simply on undermining the credibility of one's political opponents. Asking for 'do overs' and more 'do overs' until you get the answer that you want, and then presumably at that point claiming only then that the answer is definitive is not an honest debate or an honest process. You don't get to try and retry the issue until you get the answer that you want. And you don't get to keep stirring up contriversy for contriversies sake so that you can find something else to distort, misquote, or remove from context in an effort to keep finding political ammunition.
This is not productive or healthy. Dissent can only be healthy if its grounded in an honest attempt at improving the situation. Dissent which is made purely out of a desire for self-gain and which is based on slander is not productive dissent.
And the second point is that at some point dissent does become unpatriotic. The Left would currently like to claim that because a Republican is in office that there is no action which can be defined as unpatriotic (accept of course, supporting a Republican president). The hypocracy of this is self-evident because they made the opposite claim when a Democrat controlled the office. Again, as I pointed out, it was Clinton who equated patriotism with support of the government, an argument which goes much further than what Sensing said.
So here's the question: Is there anything one can say that is sedition? Is there anything one can say that is unpatriotic? As far as I can tell, Rev. Sensing has every right to dissent from the actions of Reid, Rockefeller, Edwards, and Kerry, and every right to ask whether the lies that they persist in saying are motivated by pure self-interest.
It has taken the recent article by Norman Podhoretz to point out the appalling hypocrisy of Democrats when it comes to this issue of WMD.
There is no doubt whatever that this attack on Bush is partisan politics pure and simple.
The understanding that Iraq possessed WMD was almost an article of faith among Democrats.
Who said this ...
"Earlier today, I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors.
Their purpose is to protect the national interest of the United States, and indeed the interests of people throughout the Middle East and around the world.
Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons."
Bill Clinton back in the 90's.
The really disgusting aspect of this double dealing, is that plummeting poll numbers for the President will demoralize the troops while boosting the hopes and bolstering the will of Musab al Zarqawi. In short the Democrats are placing the lives of soldiers at greater risk by opening up this cleavage during a time of war, and they are emboldening an enemy who appears to be confident that America doesn't have the backbone to stay the course. When I look at the way Americans are polling I'm almost tempted to agree.
As a Canadian I feel let down by partisans to the south who are bailing out on Bush at the very time when resolve and commitment is required.
Did Bush and co spin some of the details about WMD - in particular Saddam's nuclear capability? Yes they almost certainly did. Any fair minded Republican needs to acknowledge that. Wolfowitz came closing to tacitly admitting this when he said that WMD was made the top bureaucratic priority.
However spinning doesn't always mean outright lying - the intelligence was flawed and its quite possible that they were making calls to bolster their case on the basis of this flawed intelligence. So spinning the evidence doesn't necessarily imply that "Bush lied".
If there was ever a time to give the President the benefit of the doubt, it is now, with so much at stake. If America is forced to withdraw from Iraq under pressure, Musab al Zarqawi will claim the victory and this will boost Al Qaeda status around the radical Islamist world. In short - America cannot afford to lose this and be forced into retreat.
I'm hoping that Bush supporters stateside will come to their senses, and offer their support, however conditional, to the President at this crucial time.
Whats really depressing about this whole argument is that the most obvious scenario: that the CIA was both incompetant and had its own agenda seperate from the WH or Congress, gets completely glossed over. Clintons CIA man Tenant calls the intel a slam dunk, doesnt give the Senate Select Committee the intel it wants when it wants it, and meanwhile with its other hand sends Plames husband to Nigeria to debunk a nuke claim and publish the results in the NYT.
How does the CIA get off the hook in all of this? And if Bush manipulated the CIA, which part? Tenant and his slam dunk? Or Plames and her people who thought the Nigerian uranium scenario was so ridiculous they sent over her stooge husband to debunk it and leak the results? Rockefeller complains about not being privvy to the Presidentail Daily Briefings, but those briefings end up being more alarming than the ones the Senate got. And what is the mechanism here? How does the WH lean on CIA lifers? Why hasnt anyone come forth and said, "Dick Cheney called my office and told me to dig up some dirt on Iraq or else?". The whole thing is a house of cards built entirely on the premise that Bush must be a liar and a manipulator, and then worked backwards to a convaluted, obscure, implausible scenario far more unlikely than the simple idea that the CIA is wracked with incompetance, infighting, and insecurity.
It must be a terrible thing to have lost a child for a war fought in vain, or even to have one now in harm's way.
You should remember, though, that we are trying to make the parents of Islamic terrorists suffer exactly this misfortune, and to make them realize the emptiness and futility of the path they are pursuing. So such losses, no matter how tragic, don't disguise that there really isn't any logic behind continuing to follow a mistaken policy implemented by an inept and incompetent fool as he continues to lead on cohort after another to destruction.
The White House is now sending out its talking points to counter the (long-delayed) reaction to the fact Iraq doesn't look anything like it was supposed to: the nukes, the other WMD, and the flower petals in the streets are all missing. The simple fact of the matter is that we haven't finished investigating what went wrong with pre-war intelligence and that's why Harry Reid insisted that the Congress start with the very-long-delayed Phase II of that inquiry. Phase I, as I understand it, was about mistakes in how the intelligence agencies gathered and evaluated the information. Phase II will be about the Administration's use of the information. No wonder Sen. Roberts, an Administration loyalist, was so dilatory in getting it started!
It follows that there is something either ignorant or dishonest in a claim likeTo repeat, there is no mention of this misuse (if, cough, any) because the issue will be analyzed in Phase II.Nor am I pleased to see links to Stephen Hayes' article on connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda, because, in plain English, Hayes is a leak-recipient for the Office of Special Plans. The Defense Department itself is unconvinced by the "rumint" he provides and who knows how many of his alleged facts are among those that turned to crap under serious investigation. (Some of his revelations appear to be the desperate and now-discredited ravings of al-Libi under torture, very reliable info that.) Links like Hayes are not an analysis of our intelligence failures before and during the war but an attempt to perpetuate them.
It has become perfectly clear that whatever the reasons for the IraqWagmire, whether Oedipal on the part of Bush, or eschatological on the part of the neocons remaking the entire Middle East, or National Greatness through Warfare from Dick "I had other concerns" Cheney, securing the American homeland from further terrorist attack was not one of them. One can hardly expect support for the war to stay high after the discovery that the whole thing was in every way a colossal mistake.
And criticizing our patriotism isn't going to make that go away.
"Quite the selective reading habits you've got there. Sandwiched between the graphs on conventional weapons and the possible political impact on Iraq's neighbors (fallout? sheesh) was this little tidbit"
I read that part. You apparantly still didn't, because you are still wrong.
First, the claim that the report was 'late' is false. The report arrived before the requested committee meeting deadline. Two paragraphs down from your cherry picking we get:
"Senior intelligence officials said that the report on Iraq's capabilities to produce weapons of mass destruction was delivered to the committee as soon as it was ready. One official said the 90-page report was written in record time and given to the committee before some senior administration officials received it."
Note the last sentence implies that the White House didn't even get a chance to fully review the report before it went to the committee. Perhaps that was the reason that Mr. Graham waited until the committee meeting was almost on top of him before making the information request. If so, I congradulate his accumen as much as I detest his grandstanding with complaints about the report being 'late'.
But even more to the point, the deficiency sited by Mr. Graham in the WMD report as the reason he's unhappy with it isn't its description of the WMD program itself, but (reading the very next sentence):
"Mr. Graham said the report did not satisfy the committee's request for an assessment of what political impact a Congressional resolution authorizing the use of force would have on Iraq's neighboring nations."
Which is exactly the complaint that I said Mr. Graham made about the report in my prior post. So, in fact, the evidence you sited is exactly the evidence which supports my statements that Mr. Graham had no substantive complaints that would support your position.
Again, none of this supports your central claim that the White House massaged intelligence reports on Iraq's WMD committee before handing them over to the Senate Intelligence committee. If anything, it does the exact opposite.
Face the Nation transcript for 11/13/05, bottom of pdf pg 2
To demonstrate that Bush lied--as opposed to was wrong--it would help to provide links to credible sources that directly support that assertion.
And even links won't make a "slam dunk" case for a BushCo conspiracy on this point, given the breadth and depth of evidence that suggests that broadly-accepted but mistaken intelligence is sufficient to account for the administration's actions in this area in 2002 and early 2003.
If you skipped it, see Marcus Vitruvius' post of 11/16/05 at 08:13 PM, above, for a separate set of reasons to be skeptical of "Bush Lied!" claims.
Mark: Yes, exactly.
To me, what is even more depressing is that this isn't really an argument any more. The two sides simply are living in totally different worlds, and can no more hear each other than if they were speaking across a vacuum. The arguments begin from wholly different premises, and those premises remain untouched and untouchable. The country is polarized to an incredible degree, and I seriously doubt any change in administration is going to change that. I think that the current DNC strategy must be to get people so fed up with the whiners on the Left, that they'll vote for anyone - even Hillary Clinton - if they can just get them to shut up.
Boil everything away, and basically I'm being asked by the Left to believe the the administration manipulated intelligence in order to reach the same conclusion which had been the official policy of the United States under the Clinton administration. I'm supposed to believe that Bush got into office and somehow strong armed the CIA into coming to the same conclusions that they had already come to when Clinton authorized Desert Fox. How is this narrative in any fashion supposed to be compelling?
The story as I see it is simple. The notoriously incompotant CIA, after having been burned several times by underestimating Saddam's weapons programs in the first half of the '90's, took as a given that Saddam had active and dangerous WMD programs in both the Clinton and Bush administrations. Both Presidents showed some signs of concern for this, but Clinton lacked the political capital (and balls) to do anything about it, and after 9/11 Bush decided to reverse his promise to stay out of nation building and do something about it. And here is the difference between me and the Left which shows just how far apart our worlds have become. I was glad when we didn't find any WMD's. I was terribly afraid of the complications having WMD's in the country would cause for our troops and the Iraqi people. Not finding the WMD's made things easier.
But I'll agree with this much. As the war started , Austin Bay stated that the Bush administration had spent so much time focusing on that one aspect of the justification, that if we didn't find them and find them quickly regardless of how well the war went we would not be able to claim a total victory. That's one of the reasons I hated seeing Powell going to the UN to beg the blessings of those kleptocrats and tyrants. It was embarassing to begin with, and more so when the intelligence proved to be wrong. If more time had been put into speaking to the American public, and less time speaking to the UN, we wouldn't be having this debate. Or rather we would, but the position of the other side would be more self-evidently bankrupt.
Mr A --
You don't seem to me to typify most military officers. You certainly don't sound like Matt Heidt, or Mac Ranger, or even the late Col Hackworth, who had his issues with the Iraq War but was willing to fight to win.
Granted, Saddam beat you like a drum in Desert Storm, winning by politics a massive victory (the massacres of the Shias and Kurds were your clue he beat you decisively). And granted, other and better soldiers did what you could not (beat Saddam), and did it in three weeks. They did it with fewer troops but better leaders. Ending the constant low-level warfare; and not allowing Saddam to bribe his way to another try at Kuwait and Saudi.
So yes I understand your bitterness, others beat the tyrant who defeated you, handily. You lost to Saddam. They pulled him from his spider hole.
If you are not willing to fight Saddam, who ARE you willing to fight? Anyone? Are you willing to go to war with Pakistan to get Bin Laden? What about Iran (if he's hiding there)? Are you willing to do anything more than Clinton's impotent missile strikes against Saddam and bin Laden or do you advocate the unilateral "run away run away" strategy last seen in Mogadishu? Do you believe Iran's nukes are no threat, terrorism is a law enforcement issue, and we should rely on the World Court and the UN to deal with Osama, Saddam, Lil Kim, and others? Do you really think that doing what Clinton did will result in anything other than massive 9/11 attacks on us again?
I understand our military was ordered to run away in defeat in Iraq (1991), Somalia (1993), and do nothing in response to the Cole. It certainly saved lives of servicemen and women who would have otherwise died in combat or combat related operations. Over 3,000 Americans however died in their place in a space of an hour or two in part because America was perceived as cowardly and easily intimidated (as Saddam intimidated Powell and Bush and Scowcroft in 1991). Schwartzkopf was ordered to turn around and run away when it looked like Saddam would fall, the failure to get rid of him made us easy targets.
Are you willing to have service men and women fight and possibly die to protect civilians in this country, or is it the other way around? You certainly seem to be projecting a "French" attitude of pre-emptive surrender to bin Laden, Zarqawi, and Zawahari. I don't see a willingness on your part for the military to fight ANYONE at ANYTIME regardless of the threat. Your views seem to match Dennis Kucinich who advocates a "Department of Peace" wrt "fear." Unless you think we should just apologize to bin Laden and pay him off (by giving Iraq over to him), take Saddam and people like him at their word.
Are you willing to have victory snatched away from the US Military again as in GW1 so we can be defeated by Zarqawi? Are you willing to surrender to Zarqawi? You certainly seem to be willing to surrender Iraq to him.
You frankly sound like a Daily Kos commentator, or Jimmy the Atrocities Liar, than the mil-bloggers who have serious issues with the Iraq War (not enough resources and political freedom to simply crush the terrorists). But nonetheless believe victory there over the terrorists (who are mostly Al Qaeda) is definitely achievable with enough support and resources and political will-power.
I have no issue with "no to Iraq, yes to getting rid of Iran and Pakistan's nukes by military force." I have no issue with suggesting that Saddam could have been dealt with AFTER the Iranians and the shaky house of Saud, Pakistan, and other places.
I DO have an issue with thinking that massacres, terror, and other horrors done in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Darfur and more won't eventually find their way here, possibly in a nuclear way, and that pretending that the "fear" is "irrational" and lolling about in multi-culti PC paradise where the military is useless is a plan.
I've seen no alternate plan from you. No plan to use the force advantage we have to defeat our enemies and deter further attacks. Just Kucinich-Kos rhetoric.
I would LOVE an alternate plan. "Peace love and understanding" may make a great song but it's not a plan. After 9/11 going the Elvis Costello route is hardly sensible.
It IS understandable. The same people who believe "the Jews" or "GWB" had advance knowledge of 9/11 and used it to "wage imperialist war" etc. believe that Islamic terrorism is both justified and "non-existent." You know them. John Conyers. Cynthia McKinney, Cindy Sheehan, Joe Wilson, etc. What's the word I'm looking for?
Yes. Democrats. [I note this with shame, I voted for Bill Clinton. Twice] Their plan is no plan, just hope no one attacks again.
"The same people who believe "the Jews" or "GWB" had advance knowledge of 9/11 and used it to "wage imperialist war" etc. believe that Islamic terrorism is both justified and "non-existent." You know them. John Conyers. Cynthia McKinney, Cindy Sheehan, Joe Wilson, etc. What's the word I'm looking for?"
A clue?
It's hilarious that in the same comment where you post this tripe you add..
"You frankly sound like a Daily Kos commentator"
So our American servicemembers who fought in Desert Storm were defeated by Saddam eh?
It's a vastly overused term that is almost never appropriate, but in this case I'd say it's fitting.
You're a 101st Fighting Keyboarder Chicken Hawk, and apparantly proud of it.
Mr Sensing
You always have an opportunity to examine a situtation again. That is how you learn, that is why there are after action reports, et al
Your use of the SSCI One report is misleading. The report does not examine whether or not it was misused. It examined whether or not it was pressured by the White House to conform to what theywanted to hear. The second part was to be finished about now, one year from the date of the first part thanks to Pat Stevens stalling. The Vice President's office has helped stall it as well but not forwarding the requested paperwork. That is why the Democrats used the parliamentary rules to force the issue. It will still not be done on time.
The intelligence nonetheless has proven faulty about everything but Saddam's PAST use of chemical and biological weapons and his attempts to make nuclear ones. The electorate understood after the attack by a 4G military operation that the stakes for using the US military had been raised. Nuclear weapons were not found and that is the issue of invading Iraq hinged on. It was the issue the vast majority of the electorate expected to find after Saddam's army was defeated. After two special missions by our country they still were not found. That is the reason the electorate is uneasy and finds they can not believe the President. The President compounds the error by not leveling with the public about the issues of intelligence.
The Democrats arguments(distortion of information) are buttressed by the attacks on Wilson's wife not Wilson himself. One, she is/was a CIA agent. She clearly had the status necessary for an investigation to take place. Two, Mr Wilson was a hero under the Bush 41 for his actions abroad. As such he was capable of making credible cases against the Bush case to invade Iraq based on nuclear weapons threat. Three, in a time of war the electorate is disgusted and many think the President can not be trusted because he continues to allow Karl Rove to work in the White House. A man whom is a traitor by Bush 41's definition. A case that is now known because of Mr Fitzgerald's indictment of another traitor Scooter Libby.
As to delegitimazation of the situation we are in, the administration bears far more blame than the Democrats. The Democrats did not authorize torture witha legal strategy intiated by the White House counsel office w/ John Woo at its head. The Democrats did not offer an amendment authorizing hidden jail facilities. We now read today that the Iraqi have their own new center for torture. It was found by US forces. I wonder where they got the idea a torture center was a good idea.
We have a situtation in Iran where it is reported that a laptop with nuclear warhead design and technology is in our hands. We have tried to use it to buttress the case against Iran in a variety of forums. It is reported we are hitting a wall to getting action because no one believes us.
I support the war(In fairness I changed by mind after reading many of Dan Darlings post's here @WOC and the war on GWOT in all its phases is theonly thing I agree with Bush on). But too many of the problems with the war reside at the White House and not with the Democrats. I think the problem we have for both parties and sets of politicians is that after not finding the weapons we did not to a good job of examining why there were so many failures of intelligence as to what would find in Iraq. Much of it is caught up in our internal politics. Nonetheless the burden lies with the President. His coin of the realm in world affairs is trust and he has turned it into dross. A situtation rectified by having a open investigation into the intelligence failures as what we were going to find in Iraq instead of all the denying, until his Veterans Day speech and a challenge to the Democrats afterward of what plans and ideas can you bring to the table to solve the intelligence failures.
I hope your son, his comrades and all of our soldiers come home soon with victory in their hands. We will not be safe if they come home any other way.
"The president didn't lie".
The jury is still out. Sen McCain may be right, or he may be judging his design on the white house in 08' won't be improved if he makes some serious accusations. Note how he bent over backwards to give Bush the benefit of the doubt on the issue of torture in the recent Newsweek piece.
But! Note what faint praise this is... "he didn't lie". The pres screwed up intel, walked into a land war in Asia with shit for plans, and now our Donald Sensing has a son putting his life on the line with the Marines with a joke for a C in C.
Bush is a disgrace. He is the worst thing that could have happened in the age of Islamist terror.
Here's my plan to make things better.
Impeach Bush over the torture, then put him on trial and send him to prison.
With him will be Cheney, and a lot of officers and enlisted men who disgraced themselves and their uniforms.
Some politicking, or does Hastert step in? He'll be better than Bush, so we'll take him until 08'.
Start winning in Iraq.
Secure the borders, police up the explosives, and crush the insurgency. Better yet break up that colonial golum and give the Kurds what they richly deserve.
Police up all the ex Soviet nukes.
Set the example with no further nuke testing ourselves.
Draw a line in the sand with Iran.
Try this with the next leftist faggot you meet :
L : "Bush lied about WMDs"
You : "So is that why you oppose the war?"
L : "Yes. Bush is Hitler."
You : "So, if we had found them, would you support it?"
If L says "yes", then,
You : "So Iran and North Korea openly say they have WMDs and are threatening to use them. By your logic, attacking them is justified, right?"
If L says "no", then,
You : "Then why state that as the reason if you would oppose it either way? What is the real reason?"
Leftist System Crash Error..
These low-IQ leftists devote their life to hating America, yet are too cowardly to he hoenst about their true feelings. Imagine a life not just devoted to hatred, but hiding that hatred with great shame.
Their lives sure do suck. I am glad I am not a leftist.
"Start winning in Iraq. "
How to become a millionaire: First, somehow get ahold of a million dollars...
"It was found by US forces. I wonder where they got the idea a torture center was a good idea."
I snipped out the rest, because alot of the logic was of the same order but this one was revealing in a particularly charming way.
Robert, you come across - unlike some of the posters in this thread - as a reasonable man who really wants to make honest and constructive criticism, and who is focused on the military results and not on getting political leverage. But virtually every sentence in your statement contains as big of a gapping hole in its logic or factuality as the one I quoted above. Before we talk about those, do you see it? Do you see why I would think those two sentences taken together indicate a rather odd bias?
"With him will be Cheney, and a lot of officers and enlisted men who disgraced themselves and their uniforms."
At least your honest about not supporting the troops. That's a start.
"Start winning in Iraq."
So, Sen. Kerry, I see that that plan of yours hasn't progressed any further than the state it was in last year. Keep working on it though. Eventually, your secret plan might have well, actual plans.
"Police up all the ex Soviet nukes."
And if the Soviets don't want to be disarmed? Actually, I confess I'm unable to even figure out what your plan is here because you've mangled the English language so badly.
"Set the example with no further nuke testing ourselves."
We're testing nukes right now?
"Draw a line in the sand with Iran."
OK. War with Iran will be so much easier than war with Iraq... :rolleyes:
Mr. A:
So you think we live in a fascist police state do you? You seem to be posting pretty freely and I probably bet you haven't seen any silent, black helicopters outside your window. Guess there goes your arguement for a police state... time to take off the tinfoil cap there buddy.
John M.
Try this with the next leftist faggot you meet
Ernst Röhm speaks.
"With him will be Cheney, and a lot of officers and enlisted men who disgraced themselves and their uniforms."
At least your honest about not supporting the troops. That's a start.
- No, I support them fully, as I did when I wore the uniform. I don't support torturers, ever. No American should. We hung Nazis who waterboarded -prisoners.
"Start winning in Iraq."
So, Sen. Kerry, I see that that plan of yours hasn't progressed any further than the state it was in last year. Keep working on it though. Eventually, your secret plan might have well, actual plans.
- Did Kerry suggest this? Basic counterinsurgency strategy: secure the borders. Deny the insurgents arms and explosives.
"Police up all the ex Soviet nukes."
And if the Soviets don't want to be disarmed? Actually, I confess I'm unable to even figure out what your plan is here because you've mangled the English language so badly.
- To "police" is military lingo for picking shit up. As in "go police the parade ground".
The Ex-Soviets are quite willing to accept our help in figuring out how many nukes they have, and more importantly, securing them. Many of them are held with remarkably little security.
"Set the example with no further nuke testing ourselves."
We're testing nukes right now?
- Bush wants to return to nuclear testing. This would set a bad example.
"Draw a line in the sand with Iran."
OK. War with Iran will be so much easier than war with Iraq... :rolleyes:
- Keep rolling em buddy. Iran with nukes is unacceptable.
#53
"The first comment made the argument that repeated calls for investigation after an investigation had already been made and concluded constituted not honest debate but political grandstanding."
Of course this is your spin, and I knew you'd refute it thusly. If I wanted to be as insulting and offensive as you, I could claim in return that you should try thinking before...well, just try thinking.
The comment from Sensing is claiming some right for Republicans and the administration to decide when enough is enough. As far as I know, this is a novel theory of justice...you get one shot and that's it, even if new evidence comes up or the original investigation (as in this case) was not established to focus on the issue in question. So too goddamn bad, we're gonna have more and more investigations until everyone, EVERYONE, is satisfied, or sick to death of them to the point of sqawking that they're politically motivated. And even if they are, so what. A case will stand or fall on it's merits. All you are doing by arguing to curtail any effort to learn more, about anything, just makes you look like you're afraid of what might be found.
And that, my friend, is where the effort to paint further inquiries as being "dangerous to national security" or "aiding and abetting the enemy" (all of which imply that they be curtailed, BTW, despite your disingenous claims to the contrary) fit in this little political game you're playing: They're quite obviously the desperate finger in the leaking dyke.
Put that on your list of obvious talking points, but in the "Right Wing Propogandists" column.
You're just a hot-headed self-righteous blowhard who doesn't warrant any more attention as far as I'm concerned.
Walter's Ridge: I read your comments, and would suggest you do the same. You wrote almost 300 words and I cannot for the life of me understand what your point is other than "Dan is bad-old-typical Conservative."
I can't tell what you disagree with. As far as I can see, you never provide any evidence for whatever it is you disagree with other than "just because". Make a point, and get to the point, man.
To Mr. A, you, sir, are a damn liar. You wrote "And, once again, Congress did not vote to go to war. They voted to use force to cause the inspections to go on unimpeded (which BTW, they did)", and that is a damn lie.
Congress passed a resolution in 2002 that read, in partCongress authorized the President to use the military as he determines. You got that? There is nothing in that wording that even mentions inspections. Comprende?I'm sick and tired of the lies.
Just to pick up on my above post (time was short earler) ...
while I think these late hour accusations by Democrats reveal shameless hypocrisy and while I think the US should stay the course, some extremely foolish strategies have created the unholy mess that exists in Iraq.
When the Americans went in and swept to victory, I thought dismantling the Ba'athist power structure and the disbanding of the Iraqi army - gun in hand - was very misguided. This created a power vacuum there was no way in hell they could hope to fill.
The naivity of the planners defies imagination. I also have a problem with this federalist model. Al Jaafri is a Shi'ite with ties to Iran. Bombs and other material are being smuggled in from Iran, along with fighters. I'm sure the Iranians are thrilled to see the Americans at sixes and sevens. Ahamdhi-Nejad would never have stood up, as he did recently, to call for the destruction of Israel if he hadn't been supremely confident that the USA was bogged down and on the defensive.
This strategy in Iraq was deeply flawed. Rather than go after Bush and Cheney over WMD, maybe the people who should have their feet held to the fire are the planners; the people who got this badly wrong.
I supported Bush in going in, but as the campaign unfolded it seemed to increasingly lose focus. The Sunni are the traditional ruling class in Iraq. They held the levers of power. Not all of them were corrupt and blood stained. It was lunacy to demonize them and their leadership with publicity stunts such as playing cards bearing the names and pictures of the wanted. This type of triumphalism simply stoked the flames of the insurgency.
Obviously there is no going back, but what this means is that the US military finds itself in a snake pit with no end in sight.
Let me add in a url to another very good piece by Fred Kaplan in Slate. More evidence that Bush's incompetence is the real issue here. Don't get distracted by what the out of power party is saying. Unless it's easier to attack them than deal with what is actually happening.
http://www.slate.com/id/2130492/
It is becoming increasingly clear that President George W. Bush and his top advisers lack not only a strategy for fighting the war in Iraq but—more disturbing—any idea of how to devise one.
The latest, most jaw-dropping evidence comes from a front-page article by Greg Jaffe in the Nov. 15 Wall Street Journal...
Read the rest!
Some of the commenters here need to pay more attention to who wrote the article they're reading. I see a bunch of references to "Dan", but this article was written by Donald Sensing, not Dan Darling.
Oz (#75),
Kaplan's article in Slate (as a clickable link) is cogent, and well worth a read. As are many of the critiques of the Bush administration's Iraq policies on this thread.
This Kaplan piece doesn't parrot the Rockefeller/Kennedy/Kerry/Dean/etc. charge that Sensing addressed: Bush got his Iraq war by lying to the Congress and the American people about intelligence assessments.
Rather than segueing from one talking point to another and then back again, let's stick with "Bush Lied" for a minute:
Intelligence screw-ups in the runup to war are well worth discussing. Ongoing policy failures are even more valuable to highlight, per the Slate and WSJ reports.
If there is a logical progression from that stance to "Bush Lied," nobody on this thread has shown it. Or pointed out the evidence that makes "Bush Lied" look like a plausible reality-based scenario. We are left with "fake but accurate": anything that does political damage to evilBush is good. Anything.
"When the Americans went in and swept to victory, I thought dismantling the Ba'athist power structure and the disbanding of the Iraqi army - gun in hand - was very misguided. This created a power vacuum there was no way in hell they could hope to fill"
How quickly we forget the Shiia uprisings. Dismantling the Baathist power was the smartest thing we ever did. Battling a Sunni insurgency is problematic. Battling a Sunni insurgency and a Shiia rebellion would be impossible, and make no mistake the Shiia would not go along with any system where the Baathist remained intact. The Kurds going their own way would just be salt in the wound. This country needs to recognize that sometimes there is no good solution and you just need to slog through and get the job done as best you can. Zero defects is not a realistic policy demand.
Zero defects is not a realistic policy demand.
Let me second that because that's what I hear when people talk about "the mistakes". I think these are the same folks that think of our military history in the strict terms of "won" or "lost" with no idea how we got to either.
Civil War - Major mistakes, plenty of lost battles, people from both sides claiming a "quick" war: 4 years later - won
WWII - We get our butts handed to us in Africa and the Pacific, Anzio is a mess, we give up the philipines, etc, etc, etc: won
Vietnam: do I have to mention that?
The constructs of a win or loss in war is about who holds it together the longest politically, economically and militarily. Risk averse nations suffer no great losses, but make no great gains. That's why we call them switzerland. ;)
At last, some substantive criticism of the Bush administration's 'peace fighting' policy in Iraq.
"When the Americans went in and swept to victory, I thought dismantling the Ba'athist power structure and the disbanding of the Iraqi army - gun in hand - was very misguided. This created a power vacuum there was no way in hell they could hope to fill."
The de-Ba'athification policies and the dismantling of the Iraqi army are policies which intelligent people can disagree over. I definately see your point, but I disagree with it.
The argument that we should have kept the Iraqi army basically in place, perhaps after removing the general staff and the upper ranks of the officer corp is one which is I think based on some very niave assumptions about the nature of the Iraqi army. The tacit assumption in thinking that we could have left the Iraqi army in place is that in some fashion the Iraqi army looked like a slightly inferior version of the US army. In fact, the Iraqi army was structured so differently from anything that Americans think of as an army that it is almost a misnomer to use that word to describe both things.
For example:
1) The US army of about 500,000 men has about 600 generals. The Iraqi army of about the same size had 10,000 generals. Thus, to remove even just the top level of the chain of command would have involved removing 10,000 or so individuals. Removing just the officers therefore would have been enough to create an insurgency all on its own.
2) Officers in the Iraqi army tended for the most part to not be the sort of professional soldiers cranked out by US military academies, but rather tribal and political functionaries which and been unfeudated by Saddam Hussein as part of his patronage system. Thus, the existance of one general for every 50 men. One of the primary duties of Iraqi military units was therefore to economically support its officers, even though in many cases these officers had no military experience or training.
3) The Iraqi army was by no means a national army, but rather an extension of Sunni tribal power created to perpetuate that power. It was not integrated ethnically, and indeed was designed from the top down to maintain the political power of the Sunni's. There is no reason to believe that they would have relinquished that goal had they been allowed to maintain themselves in place (with or without officers), no reason to expect that they would have accepted Shia or Kurdish officers and in fact every reason to expect none of these things. When Sunni units were allowed to be maintained or when Sunni units were reformed, such as after First Fallujah, these units almost immediately began cooperating with the insurgents. There is every reason to expect that heldover Baathist units simply would have joined the insurgency either fighting with them directly, or by passing information, or by cooperating with them to murder non-Sunni recruits because all these things have already happened.
4) The Iraqi army was not a centralized force. Rather, in typical police state fashion, it was divided into multiple chains of command so as to prevent any one individual in the army from having authority sufficient to challenge Saddam Hussein. The various chains of command and branches of the army were designed to check on the other ones. Several branches were effectively secret police. Others like the Feydayeen were effectively jihadist shock troops. The great mass of the Iraqi army - certainly any not loyal through ethnic and tribal ties to Saddam - were untrained and ill-equipped cannon fodder.
5) The assumption that the Iraqi army could have been left intact presumes that the Iraqi army was effectively intact at the end of the invasion. But this was not the case. The Iraqi army had been effectively destroyed as a fighting force. Whole divisions of conscripts had simply melted away and gone home leaving thier boots and weapons behind in the desert. Virtually all the Shia in the army deserted. In many cases deserting units which were able to saw fit to loot thier barracks and HQ on departure, stripping them of anything mobile and raiding the motor pools. Units which had been in the path of the invasion and which hadn't simply melted away, took very heavy casualties. The Iraqi army was basically gone anyway.
All and all, the Iraqi army was just ill-suited to protecting a democratic people. Leaving it in place certainly would have been simplier, but I'm not convinced that it would have been better in the long run. My feeling was that had we left the Iraqi army in place, things probably would have had the appearance of going better in the short term - but only because the Sunni's would have known that they could simply wait for us to leave and then return things back to 'normal', or else, if we tried to move the social structure of Iraq away from what they would have accepted, then the Iraqi army would have been a willing supporter of the insurgency and would have had to be dismantled anyway.
I don't have a feeling that things would have certainly been better if only we'd left the army intact, and while its certainly possible its by no means certain. I believe that had we left the army intact, we'd be hearing the hindsight brigade talking about how utterly stupid and irresponcible it had been to do so. The truth is that what we are trying to accomplish is hard and would be hard no matter how we approached it.
AMac (#77):
Thanks for the kind words-- twice.
As an additional comment, I also agree that both intelligence and policy failures are worthwhile, in fact necessary, to discuss. What I crave, though, are discussions with a group of people that I both agree and disagree with (to protect myself from opinion cascades!) but without the all-too-rapid degeneration into partisan politic mudslinging.
I'm not a Democrat or a Republican. My only horse in this race is the United States. I am uncomfortably aware that, especially in foreign policy matters, I may appear to be Republican these days. I assure people, I'm not.
So in the spirit of both paragraphs above, if I had to lodge a big complaint against the Administration as regards the wider war, it would be the Administration's handling of the intelligence community. Not from a Bush Lied! angle, but from the angle that the intelligence community appears to be deeply flawed from where I sit, on a number of levels.
I am neither surprised nor angered, especially, that the indications of the 9/11 attacks were missed, even though there were almost certainly individuals who were thinking about planes being flown into buildings, and even memos to that effect. In the hierarchy of data -> information -> intelligence -> wisdom, a few memos are pretty far down there. Likewise, just as the Pentagon is perennially accused of "planning endlessly to fight the previous war," so, too, does the intel community fall prey to that syndrome. In September of 2001, the intel community was primarily focussed on the ex-Soviet Union, and China.
Moreover, we as a nation asked for the intel community to be fragmented (among other reasons) to protect our individual civil liberties. In theory, as a side benefit, this would also be good to make sure the community didn't become completely incestuous and mono-focussed. But in practice, because the communities were so firewalled from each other, there was little if any good cros-fertilization.
So when all is said and done, I do not fault any government agency for being made up of humans who act as humans do and make sociologically predictable mistakes.
However.
As I mentioned in #46 above, while the repeated failures of intelligence (this time ending in catastrophic civilian bloodshed) should have been a clear indication that the old models were not working... the big shake-ups in the intelligence community did not occur until nearly three years (!!) later, and to this civilian's eyes, don't seem to be yielding any noticeable results other than bureaucratic shuffling.
This is a big problem.
I don't know what the solution to the problem looks like, but I know it doesn't look like what we have today. I can point out some salient features that I think would be beneficial, though.
Protection against the incestuous sort of opinion cascades to which nearly all closed groups fall prey is necessary. Whether this means maintaining a bunch of different groups, or firewalling one big group into little ones is not clear to me; it might end up being the same thing in practice.
Perhaps some technical requirements on the mid to upper echelons of the services. The very top layers are political appointees, and so have their own level of churn built in. Perhaps something along the lines of a gauranteed "exchange" program between the branches as a requirement for advancement, or effective "term limitations" as DARPA imposes on its program managers. (DARPA seems to be one of the few organizations that stays away from that syndrome, so perhaps we should figure out how to adapt what works for them to other critical agencies.)
And finally, there is a desperate need for more information sharing between the services, but with appropriate safeguards for our own civil liberties and to prevent the falling of the firewalls resulting in just one big, amorphous bland mess.
As I said, I don't know how to do that. To a large degree, it's a matter of finding the right guy to lead the community and giving him the carrots and sticks, in the form of authority and budgetary control, to make the changes. George Tenet was not that man. Neither does Porter Goss seem to be, nor am I convinced he has the authority.
This seems to me to be a much more fruitful line of discussion than, "Bush Lied!" "Did Not!" "Did So!"
In the broadest sense, I see the biggest problem as being an unwillingness to see issues in terms of tradeoffs. Closer to home, every reasonably successful person works with the concept. A dollar spent here on a movie can't be spent there on a book (or saved). What to do?
Civil liberties, broadly defined, will be at greater risk from an integrated, effective intelligence service. The chance of a devastating attack on the US goes up in the absence of same. What to do?
It's not an either/or situation. It does require evaluating the severities and probabilities of varied consequences--in the absence of adequate information. Society has to have reason to trust its leaders to make best guesses. We have to accept that, with benefit of hindsight, some guesses will have been wrong. Somehow, we have to figure in accountability into this mix.
An example of this sort of thinking is the counterfactual exercise by celebrim in #80, above, "What if the Ba'athist Army Had Been Retained?" Disbanding might or might not have been the best plan, but, clearly, keeping that army around would have led to its own serious consequences.
And--in the current climate--to the "hindsight brigade talking about how utterly stupid and irresponsible it had been to do so."
To take it one step further, all of the Hindsight Brigades attempts at prediction have failed so utterly and visably its even harder to take them seriously. These are many of the same people claiming there would be tens of thousands of American casualties, millions of civilian refugees, invasion from Iran, Turkey, Syria, and anybody else they can think of, an uprising in the Arab street to swing pro-islamo fascists into additional neighboring regimes, and of course... Vietnam. Anyone with any sense of history or perspective will scoff at the Vietnam analogy. Particularly critics quickly forget the 2/3rds of the country secure and starting to prosper.
So at the end of the day, if you need sketchy post-diction against an eternal Vietnam backdrop, these critics are perfect. On the other hand if you want to do anything productive going forward, their credentials are not so great.
"So at the end of the day, if you need sketchy post-diction against an eternal Vietnam backdrop, these critics are perfect. On the other hand if you want to do anything productive going forward, their credentials are not so great."
Exactly. If you look at the loudest critics of the administration policy before the war - the NGO's, the foriegn governments, the left in general - they weren't predicting the scenarios that actually arose. But these critics do not take respocibility for thier own failed predictions about the war, even to the extent that the advice of NGO's about what kind of clamities to expect shaped US war preparations and arguably caused - to the extent the US listened to them - the US to prepare for the wrong aftermath of the war.
For example, the main two complaints of the NGO critics of the war were:
a) A massive refugee problem would be created as millions of Iraqis fled in advance of US troops. But this is ridiculous. No one flees in advance of US troops accept armies, because everyone knows that as conquerers go the US has a pretty soft boot. In fact, hundreds of thousands of refugees from Iraq (as well as hundreds or thousands of would be jihadists) entered Iraq even as the invasion was going on. The population flow was in instead of out, and so to the extent that the US prepared for a refugee crisis (and it did) this interfered with the US's ability to deal with the real consequences of the war. Noone of course is going to hold the NGO's feet to the fire.
b) Similarly, the NGO's and the UN were terribly worried that a massive Cholera epidemic would breakout in the wake of the US advance. The US stoke piled medication in anticipation of this. But it never happened, in part because of the unforeseen fact that the Iraqi infrastructure had basically totally collapsed years before the invasion, and the populations were used to dealing with contaminated water. Nonetheless, were it to happen the US army was ready for it.
And other complaints in general were...
c) Many of the loudest critics of the war did not postulate that WMD's wouldn't be found. Instead, they spoke passionately about how the problem would be that invading Iraq would trigger Saddam Hussein into using his weapons against his neighbors (Israel in particular) and against his own population as the US moved through built up areas. So, the US if it wished to take this advice seriously, had to be prepared to fight in a NBC battlefield enviroment and render aid to civilians caught in this theater wide battlefront. But of course, it never happened.
d) Those same critics argued that the immediate consequence of invading Iraq would be that the Shia and the Kurds would immedaitely declare thier independence, sparking off a cascading series of regional wars. But this didn't happen either.
e) Those same critics argued that invading Iraq would trigger a cascading series of civil wars in neighboring states as the Arab street rose in revolt. But to the extent that Al Queda tried to get this to happen, those revolts have been crushed and the Arab street has largely been complacent or even hostile to Al Queda's attempts to widen the Iraq war into a mandate against Iraq's neighbors.
f) Many of the critics of the Iraq war were worried that in the chaos the war Al Queda or its sympathizers would be able to make off with large quantities of WMD's, effectively accomplishing the very threat the war was designed to prevent. In fact, I bought into this line of argument (and I'm pretty sure Pentagon planners did as well, judging by the way the war was run), and I was extremely worried about this outcome. For a while there, I was fairly sure that this was exactly what had happened as rumors surfaced of chemical weapons being transported to Syria and Lebanon. So, in fact, as it became clear that Saddam had no existing WMD stockpiles, my first responce was not to feel like I'd been lied to, but a big sigh of relief that we'd dodged a bullet. I still feel that way.
g) Its currently fashionable to talk about how some people had predicted that we'd need more troops to occupy Iraq. That's a legitimate criticism, but the pointedness of that criticism is lost by the fact that most of the vocal critics (not the experts in the War College) demanded more troops not because of stated fears about the occupation but because of stated fears about the invasion itself. While its easy to forget this now, lets not forget that two weeks into the war critics like Sen. Edward Kennedy were calling the invasion a quagmire and the media's line of thinking was that the invasion would bog down in the face of 'fierce opposition'. So while fears about the US ability to occupy the country were well placed, those fears got lost in the irresponcibile yelling about needing more troops to defeat Saddam's army.
And I could go on and on in this vein, but the main point being as badly as the US has bungled from time to time, I've yet to notice anyone in the Hindsight Brigades that a) can claim real foresight and b) has a plan of action for the future.
To take it one step further, all of the Hindsight Brigades attempts at prediction have failed so utterly and visably its even harder to take them seriously.
You guys are joking, right? You really want a discussion of predictions, with the troops home by Xmas 2003, the Iraqis paying for their own reconstruction, the flower petals in the streets? How many times to I have to post these bookmarks before it sinks in: Iraq today looks nothing like what the American people were led to expect. Now, you might be able to argue that we're making progress, but you can't wish away all that hyper-optimistic nonsense from Spring 2003. (Yeah, and we told you Bush would plunge the budget into record deficits, too.)
Tp return to the original items in the thread, here's Knight-Ridder cataloging the dishonesty of the latest GOP Talking Points, and here's a Vietnam War vet voted-for-the-war Democrats getting off the bus. You might wait for the official Swift Boat faxes before wading in on that one, though.
"You really want a discussion of predictions, with the troops home by Xmas 2003, the Iraqis paying for their own reconstruction, the flower petals in the streets?"
I don't recall that. Please provide links to where the administration said anything like that. So, yeah, I really want a discussion of predictions.
Andrew, you know that Knight-Ridder piece is itself quite dishonest and just repeats already debunked Democrat talking points.
The nonsense about Congress not seeing the PDB's is especially hilarious. It falsely implies that old canard on "imminent threat". The rest is goal post moving nonsense.
Pathetic.
I don't think that you can assume a Shia uprising as a consequence of having maintained the essential parts of the Ba'athist infrastructure - especially with the removal of Saddam and other key players/symbols of the regime (with the prospect of due punishment in the offing).
I realize that the structure of the Iraqi army was different and that it would have posed a challenge to work with - however 2,000 plus Americans have died as a consequence of returning soldiers to civilian life, many of whom were hardened veterans with explosives capabilities. In fact, I'm pretty sure that if the Americans had known how fast and seamless the victory would turn out to be, they would have had a different set of contingency plans. I think they found themselves in a position then never remotely expected, and they were unprepared. In that situation, they had no choice but to disband the Iraqi army.
I'm still on-side with the campaign, but it just eats me up that so many young marines have died. A smarter approach might have saved lives. As for the Democrats and their hypocrisy - excuse me while I reach for the douche bag.
U.S. and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq," said Rep. John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat who has been in Congress for 31 years. "It's time for a change in direction."
Murtha warned that other global threats "cannot be ignored."
Murtha, a retired Marine colonel who earned a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts for his service in Vietnam....
Thanks for the Knight-Ridder link, AJL (#85). What you take away from it depends on:
There's a lot of faith-based understanding, on all sides of these issues. For "Bush Lied!," it doesn't seem to take much to strengthen the views of believers.
"I don't think that you can assume a Shia uprising as a consequence of having maintained the essential parts of the Ba'athist infrastructure - especially with the removal of Saddam and other key players/symbols of the regime (with the prospect of due punishment in the offing)."
I don't think that you can assume a Shia uprising as a direct and immediate consequence of maintaining certain parts of the Ba'athist infrastructure, but I do think you are being very naive to suppose that maintaining portions of the Ba'athist infrastructure - and in particular the army - would not also impede your plan to transform an apartied military Dictatorship into a multi-ethnic democracy. I do not think that the Shi'a were being naive or even power hungry when they demanded the Ba'athist party be removed as a condition of thier cooperation in the process.
If the Ba'athist infrastructure was left in place to a greater or much greater degree than it was, then the Sunni leadership which had been the recepients of the Ba'athist patronage would have had much more sway and influence over events. In particular, they would have certainly used the military to terrorize the Shi'a population. We can know this because we know that they have been doing so whenever they get the chance, cooperating with plants inside even the reconstituted military to kill Shia recruits. They would have almost certainly used the old tools of police state power to try to maintain thier grip on power. Since the US government is effectively the Occupying Power of Iraq, and since it would have been the decision of the US government to maintain (for its own conveince) the old system of Ba'athist authority and to work with that authority to achieve its goals, it would be very difficult to convince the Shi'a (or the hostile world press) that these actions were not taking place with some degree of US approval. Consider the situation we have now in which the Shi'a are turning the Ba'athist tactics of state terror and torture back on thier former tormentors, and then magnify the problem 10 fold because you've left in place the old holders of power.
I just don't think you get the situation. Sure, we put out of work alot of low ranking Sunni soldiers, and these soldiers in many cases have become the foot soldiers of the Ba'athist insurgency. But, as an alternative to becoming foot soldiers in the Ba'athist insurgency, they could have become foot soldiers or officers in the reconstituted Iraqi army - and some did. What separated the two groups? Well, in many cases it was because the refused to serve under Shi'a or Kurdish officers or even alongside Shi'a or Kurdish troops. To a certain extent leaving the Iraqi army in place would have been like leaving the Confederate army in place, and then expecting all of its soldiers to be not only willing to serve alongside black troops (something not even the Union army was willing to do at the time), but also to honorably work toward the goals of the Union and not act as enforcers for the native authority of the South whenever your back was turned.
"I realize that the structure of the Iraqi army was different and that it would have posed a challenge to work with - however 2,000 plus Americans have died as a consequence of returning soldiers to civilian life..."
Whoa there. Not so fast. Two thousand Americans have died but you can't simplistically attribute that to a single cause. You have absolutely no evidence how many soldiers would have died to this point as a consequence of not disbanding the Iraqi army. It could have been 3,000 - in which case disbanding the Iraqi army saved lives. It could have been 1,000 - in which case 1,000 additional lives were lost. But almost certainly no matter what we did some Americans would have died. That was implicit and explicit as the consequences of going to war.
"...many of whom were hardened veterans with explosives capabilities."
I don't think that there were alot of what I would call hardened veterens and professionals in the Iraqi army. About the only skill set in which they probably could be called proficient and experienced by US standards would be interrogation, an area in which most of the world excells us because we just don't have much experience in those affairs (and it definately shows). For the kind of warfare we are experiencing now, Al Queda (and Hezbollah and Iran's Qod force) is much more experienced and much better trained than anything Iraq had. If you look at the early days of the Baathist insurgency, it was extremely inept. They weren't called 'the gang that can't shoot straight' for nothing. If the Baathist had alot of demolition experts, it sure didn't show. It's only since this past March that the insurgents have really been displaying expertise in explosives, and producing high quality command detonated mines. In fact, since this part March I consider it a misnomer to refer to most of what has been killing US soldiers as 'IED's, because there is nothing at all 'improvised' about the latest generation of mines in Iraq. These are increasingly lethal manufactured items, and my conclusion is that outside expertise has been imported into Iraq sometime in the past year - or else a large majority of these objects have been manufactured outside of Iraq. The quality of the explosives is higher. The quality of the workmanship is higher. And the designs are evidencing a high degree of engineering knowledge.
"In fact, I'm pretty sure that if the Americans had known how fast and seamless the victory would turn out to be, they would have had a different set of contingency plans. I think they found themselves in a position then never remotely expected, and they were unprepared."
On that I agree. The original time table for the Iraq invasion required months more than it actually took. (Keep that in mind whenever you recall Ted Kennedy drunkenly blabbing about 'quagmire' in the second week of the war.) In my opinion, one of the worst mistakes of the whole war was rushing forward that time table. The US is only 'dashing' and 'daring' by necessity, and it works. I don't believe in rapid tempo in an operational theater. I know why the planners wanted a fast tempo (to defuse the anti-american propaganda machine of the MSM, to secure the WMD's before they could be deployed or leave the country, etc.), whenever you have a fast tempo mistakes get made and in this case clearly the benifits didn't exceed the drawbacks. In particular, in order to maintain that fast tempo we had to stretch our logistics almost to the breaking point which resulted in the civil affairs and MP battalions that could have been following close behind the advance getting left behind by the combat forces. In my opinion future operations in similar situations will have to balance the tactical needs and benifits of high tempo, with the fact that a rapid advance leaves a power vacuum in its wake. The US military can train to fight a 'three block war', but only if it isn't trying to do it at 45mph simply because civil affairs take longer than blowing things up.
"I'm still on-side with the campaign, but it just eats me up that so many young marines have died."
Me too. I'll confess, its not very Christian of me, but every time I see a soldier has died, I wish we could trade his life for 1,000 Berkeley moonbats. The damn shame of this is that its good men and women that are dying to protect people that seem pretty worthless to me from were I'm sitting.
"A smarter approach might have saved lives."
Sure. Hindsight is always 20/20. I expected 500 fatalities in this war. I hoped for less, but I didn't believe that there would be less. I'd seen projections before the war that put the upper end of expectations an order of magnitude higher (5000 deaths) which seemed believable to me. But I never would have believed that we'd experience this much violence for this long (this is the third year of the war!), and only have 2000 deaths. The US has never remotely had this many men in the field for this long and experienced this low of casualties. Everyone single one makes me curse, but its war and war is hell.
I don't know where anyone gets the idea that we were promised otherwise. I do remember repeated cautions by Bush that the American people should not expect this to be an easy endeavor, and I do remember many attempts by the media to claim that the fact that we weren't being welcomed with flowers (which interestingly, did happen on a few occassions) made Bush a liar, but for the life of me I don't recall Bush saying we'd be welcomed with flowers and I do actually read his major policy speaches.
" How many times to I have to post these bookmarks before it sinks in: Iraq today looks nothing like what the American people were led to expect. "
Ok. Was it a realistic expectation for the outcome to be what anyone expected? The history of warfare suggests no way. Is there a war of any consequence you can name that was resolved as planned or expected by any party?
"I don't believe in rapid tempo in an operational theater. I know why the planners wanted a fast tempo (to defuse the anti-american propaganda machine of the MSM, to secure the WMD's before they could be deployed or leave the country, etc.), whenever you have a fast tempo mistakes get made and in this case clearly the benifits didn't exceed the drawbacks."
Gotta disagree with you completely there. The speed of the operation solved a huge amount of problems. Most of the Iraqi Army was cut off from its command and supply within the first couple days, that is why the army dissolved, which is why we didnt have to kill them in place. The speed of the operation was absolutely deliberate if you believe Tommy Franks. It was meant to provide maximum shock to the Iraqi system and hence prevent them from effectively coordinating their 'ring of fire' in Baghdad. Had we decided to push across the broad front of Southern Iraq, aside from devastating the region, giving Hussein time to engage in who know what kind of mischief (oil wells for instance), and killing about of Iraqi conscripts, we would have handed the republican guard a perfect chance to dig into Baghdad and concentrate in the areas we arrived to first. Thats exactly how the Iraqis dealt with the Iranian counter-invasion, using their rabble regular army to slow and dull the edge of the knife, and the Republican Guard to hold Baghdad as a fortress and counter-attack. It could have worked against us at least as far as inflicting many more US casualties and turning Badghad into a bombed out ruin. Instead we broke on them so quickly we were wrestling for the heart of Baghdad before the commanders could accept we were even near the city. That probably saved Baghdad and many thousands of Iraqi civilians. It was one of the most audacious and brilliant campaigns of certainly US history, and really of all military history.
"It was one of the most audacious and brilliant campaigns of certainly US history, and really of all military history."
Mark: From a purely military perspective, I agree. But in this war of ideas, information, appearances, and largess the political exceeds the martial in value by about 3:1 - if only because no force has a real chance of defeating us militarily. The military aspect of this war is not the decisive arena. Saddam Hussein's forces were just completely outmatched. Noone was or is going to stand up to us successfully in a conventional fight. If he could have adapted, so could we. He had plenty of opportunity to fortify Baghdad if he was going to - the second Gulf War was one of the most telescoped offensives in the history of battle. Even if he didn't begin until the ground offensive began, two weeks should have been more than enough to turn Bagdad into a kill zone. But, his army showed no sign of having the knowledge of how to do so, and for that matter relatively little desire to do so.
I'm not suggesting conducting the campaign at a snail's pace, or even that we should have used a broad front advance. I am suggesting that slowing down by a week or two might have made things less hairy for the support troops and allowed for more boots on the ground during the collapse and its immediate aftermath, to say nothing of being able to prepare for the transition to peace keeping and reconstruction duties better.
Also, IMO, audacity is an overrated virtue. It's something that appeals to amateurs in the way 'Advanced Squad Leader' does (full disclosure, I'm an amateur, and I love ASL). I think that wars are won primarily by things which are as boring as accounting, which may be one of the reasons American 'bean counters' and engineers prove so devastating when at war. Or in other words, I prefer Omar Bradley to George S. Patton. This campaign looks to me to be more Patton and less Bradley and Eisenhauer.
I think perhaps we broke them so quickly, that they couldn't really accept that they'd been defeated. Many of Saddam's forces probably never even saw an American vehicle before they were informed that they had 'lost'. I'm not sure that failing to engage them can in this case be counted as success. But of course, this is all hindsight. We'll never really know.
"Amateurs talk about strategy, Professionals talk about logistics", eh? Well there is something to that I expect, but on the other hand you can win wars if you dont win battles, and without question audacity wins battles that otherwise wouldnt be won. Winning battles isnt enough, but it is almost always a prerequisite.
While there is little question we would have won a battle for Baghdad, i think you underestimate the devastation such a fight would have surely caused. I'll the reports i've seen indicate the Iraqis were well and truly surprised by our arrival at the airport, much less our thrust into the heart of the city. Had that not been the case and the Iraqis were mentally prepared and properly oriented against us, it would certainly have been a far different affair. Think about the devastation Fallujah underwent, which is a smaller city, had less defenders, and most of the civilians fled. If we had to fight street by street to secure Baghdad it would have been a nightmare, and you must also calculate the affect of wrecking the city and the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians in the immediate aftermath of the war. Our aura of clinical and complete victory bought us a critical few months, and while we squandered some of that dividend, it was still a critical period of relative quite that allowed us to get our feet under us and start a political dialog. A devastated Baghdad live on CNN would have changed the entire tone of post-war coverage, and Iraqi and world reaction.
Robin, I'm having a hard time understanding which Democratic talking points are auto-discredited. Every since "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," there's been a little more balance in the credit column. I don't think that an Administration that stoops to reversing the meaning of Democrats through out-of-context quotation should be the judge here.
Let's look at one point in the K-R article.
Bush said that "critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs." Isn't this a straw man attempting to deflect the Democrats' charge that the Administration distorted the intelligence community's judgments in the direction of magnifying the threat from Saddam, which is an altogether different question? Isn't it also true that as part of its political campaign to whip up support for the war, the Administration brought into the public sphere terrifying, nuclear-themed "intelligence" derived from Iraqi-Chalabi sources that our spooks did not believe (and which was false)? And, in fact, isn't it true that this Bush-touted bipartisan Senate investigation is, by its own plan, only halfway through with its investigation into pre-war intelligence, even though Phase II appeared to be on indefinite hold (ah, what a surprise) until Harry Reid kickstarted it?
"the Administration brought into the public sphere terrifying, nuclear-themed "intelligence" derived from Iraqi-Chalabi sources that our spooks did not believe (and which was false)? "
Andrew, its astounding how you switch from contempt of intelligence sources to giving them the final word on credibility when its convenient to your point. Our own spooks were also the one's who called the WMD case against Saddam a 'slam dunk'.
Mark, how about if we differentiate between WMD in general and mushroom clouds in particular? AFAIK, none of the gathering-threat nuke scenarios ever got past our intelligence agencies.
It's also worth asking again: the Tenet slam-dunk conversation took place in mid-December 2002. What, if anything, did the White House (and our intelligence agencies) think about the fact that Hans Blix was unable to verify any of the detailed (dis)information from Curveball and his friends that we submitted to him? Did they have any second thoughts at all?
Andrew: No, really, I do want a discussion of predictions and since you thought that such a discussion would be fearsome and damning, I don't see why you aren't leaping at the chance. Until you live up to your threat to get into a discussion about predictions, I don't see a reason I shouldn't discount everything else you are saying.
I've played 'chase down the liberal pundit whose continually changing the topic' too often to get suckered into playing the game your way. You seemed to think that a discussion of the predictions would be utterly damning. Go for it.
"Isn't this a straw man attempting to deflect the Democrats' charge that the Administration distorted the intelligence community's judgments in the direction of magnifying the threat from Saddam, which is an altogether different question?"
No. And, no it isn't. If the Administration distorted the intelligence community's judgement passively as opposed to actively, then not only cannot the Administration be blamed for the problem but such a theoretical psychological responce by trained analysts - if it indeed occured - would not only be so nebulous as to be likely undefinable, but possibly unavoidable in any system involving human judgement. Unless the administration actively pressured the intelligence community to produce the answer it wanted, there is no substance to your claim. And unless the administration actively pressured the intelligence community to produce a false answer knowing that it would be false, then there is no substance to the even more extraordinary claim 'Bush Lied'. If all that happened was that eager members of the intelligence community produced reports that they believed would win them favor with thier bosses even though they were under no pressure to do so and had no reason to believe that they would suffer undo consequences for doing so, then all that happened was just the ordinary failures associated with bureacracy and not a special perfidy and malfesance on the part of the government. Conversely, if in fact there was any evidence that the bosses made it clear that only people who said what they wanted to hear would be rewarded, and anyone who contridicted them would be punished, then it would be impossible to state that "a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments".
So, no, no, and a thousand times no, this was not a red herring. In fact, you are moving the goal posts, and then arguing that evidence of the new lesser claim is proof of the greater orginal claim.
Come to think of it, you aren't even doing anything that substantial. You are arguing that because there hypothetically could be evidence of your new lesser claim that you have some proof of your original greater claim. In other words, you have no evidence for your elaborate conspiracy theory, you just think its important because of the seriousness of the charge. And its charge that boils down to believing that the adminstration exherted a bunch of leverage to change the official position of US intelligence agencies from 'Saddam has a secret WMD program' to 'Saddam has a secret WMD program'.
Well, 101 comments in a very long thread on the issue 'did Bush lie?'
There's no smoking gun to say he did. Some evidence that he didn't.
Though, a reasonable person can look at lies like the Swift Boat affair and at Bush's guard record and be suspicious.
Does anyone really doubt that this administration is perhaps the most likely of any to spin intel?
Let's revisit the issue when we are as far away from this as we are today from the Gulf of Tonkin.
And get on to the very real savage incompetence of Bush and his cabinet.
How can we get Bush to wake up and fire Rumsfeld? How can we get Bush to realized torture weakens us and makes us farther from our goal of winning the War on Terror?
How can we get Bush to win back allies he has lost?
It's tough, and may be impossible. The best we can do may be to tie his hands until a real war time leader can step up in 08'.
Unless we impeach him.
Start writing letters now. This is the challenge we face. Get Bush out. The issue of torture is real. Treaties have the force of the law of the land. Bush has presided over torture and "disappearances". The USA has entered into treaties expressly forbidding torture.
So Woo and Gonzalez think Bush is above the Geneva Convention and all other treaties? Think again.
This thread is getting a bit long in the tooth, but I'm wondering who in here is really being naive.
These are comments by Abu Khaleel an Iraqi, that are far from naive ...
“The huge Iraqi army of more than 300 000 men simply vanished. Shortly after the invasion was complete, it was formally disbanded. That was a mistake! It was admitted to be so more than once by senior US officials. It was also a mistake to look at those people as cowards. Many were battle-hardened professional soldiers who did not fear facing death. Another mistake was to regard them as villains – as Saddam’s army of oppression. The villains who controlled the army for the regime were a small minority. Many of those others were professional patriotic soldiers…not really very different from other soldiers in other armies all over the world. It was also a terrible mistake to humiliate officers (some of them senior) by having them stand in long lines under the summer sun and overlooked by US soldiers who shoved and insulted them to receive a pittance of an allowance! It was a humiliation many felt bitter about.”
Here is a comment by a U.S. military man with respect to disbanding the Iraqi army ...
"It was absolutely the wrong decision," said Col. Paul Hughes of the Army, who served as an aide to Jay Garner, a retired three-star general and the first civilian administrator of Iraq. "We changed from being a liberator to an occupier with that single decision,'' he said. "By abolishing the army, we destroyed in the Iraqi mind the last symbol of sovereignty they could recognize and as a result created a significant part of the resistance."
Republican Senator Richard Shelby has this to say ...
"The big mistake we made is, we disbanded the army. I didn't know it was a mistake at the time," Shelby said Saturday. "We should have culled the army, not disbanded it."
This from Time magazine ...
“On May 23, the U.S. made what is generally regarded as a colossal mistake. L. Paul Bremer--the newly arrived administrator of the U.S. government presence, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)--disbanded the Iraqi army and civil service on Rumsfeld's orders. "We made hundreds of thousands of people very angry at us," says a Western diplomat attached to the CPA, "and they happened to be the people in the country best acquainted with the use of arms." Thousands moved directly into the insurgency--not just soldiers but also civil servants who took with them useful knowledge of Iraq's electrical grid and water and sewage systems. Bremer says he doesn't regret that decision, according to his spokesman Dan Senor. "The Kurds and Shi'ites didn't want Saddam's army in business," says Senor, "and the army had gone home. We had bombed their barracks. How were we supposed to bring them back and separate out the bad guys? We didn't even have enough troops to stop the looting in Baghdad."
And I’ll finish with this quote ...
“The backbone of the insurgency was thousands of Baathist remnants organizing a guerrilla war against the Americans.”
You don't have to be a hack to support the American campaign, but realism is sure refreshing!
Celebrim, I find your remarks obtuse, and scattering them in three separate posts is a strange way of complaining of moving goalposts.
Let me try to be clear. This is not an accurate summary of my position. The accurate reiteration is that the Administration's PR for the war included many claims that did not derive from work of our intelligence agencies, but instead from the Office of Special Plans, the Chalabi forgery factory and such like. There is a mountain of evidence for this: we have the claims ("mushroom cloud") themselves, and now that we can see the intelligence itself, we know it was junk.VP Cheney suggested on three separate occasions that Mohammed Atta had met with an Iraqi emissary in Prague. None of our intelligence or law enforcement agencies has ever signed off on this claim, and it's almost certainly false.
And you want a prediction? How about Rummy's claim that we knew where the WMD were? How well has that one stood up?
Final comment to Mark Buehner and celebrim -
Thanks for the great read. I'm impressed with the depth of knowledge you both brought to this discussion. Interesting thread - pro/con positions aside.
Cheers!
Personally, I found Celebrim's remarks spot on.
I'll add that the Czechs have said several times that Atta did have that meeting. The 9/11 report also notes other meetings between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
Intelligence is always uncertain. It is always fragmentary. And it always comes from many sources, and there's nothing holy (or even especially reliable, if you look at their track record) about the CIA as a conduit. Sometimes intelligence is also wrong - like the CIA's major underestimation of Saddam's nuclear program before 1991, for instance, and of Libya's program until 2003. That's junk intelligence too, of a very very dangrous variety.
You have to deal with intelligence as it is, not as you wish it would be in your fantasies. And craft both policy and the extent of your reliance on it accordingly.
Which is why, at the end of the day, a policymaker gets partial information and has to make a call. Did Clinton hit an aspirin factory in Sudan with cruise missiles? He made a call.
Andrew, Celebrim has done a good job of responding to you but I found your claim with respect to the Atta/Prague issue that it was "almost certainly false" more than a little astonishing.
We can certainly debate the quality of the evidence for it, but to reach such a conclusion just boggles the mind, Andrew. Such certainty on a intel question is just self delusion on your part.
Oz, i find your gratuitous introduction of your 'torture' meme into every conceivable thread psychologically trying. You may be inflicting permanent damage on my delicate psych. Dare I say, torturing me. Do me a favor and try to keep it focused to relevant threads, lest someone chucks you prison for your crimes against humanity.
MB:
It is hard, isn't it, when you keep getting reminded of why Bush is not just morally unfit to lead us, but belongs in prison for his crimes, and you just DON'T want to hear it!
I mean, enough already. Bush is a strong leader. And in war time we need to shut up and support our strong leader.
And if we hung Nazi's who waterboarded prisoners, well, times have changed haven't they?
Get with the program, Oz. We're in a post modernist era. Nothing is set in stone, and everything is relative.
Your absolutism on torture doesn't apply any more.
You're boring me.
Celebrim
Is it your contiention that the US military teaches torture? You decide what constitutes torture and then let's determine whether or not the US military teaches it.
The reality is they do not. They US Government has signed on to numerous international documents condemning it as a policy for the military.
That the Iraqi's have begun to hold detainees in the same fashion we are, without our built in constraints and precedents which here to fore we have repected and our President is determined to undermine at every point. As a consequence instead of reflecting our noblest intentions they are following our worst. That is why the Iraqi's are acting in this manner, not that it is something inherent in them.
In short they are learning torture from us when we change the way we have viewed torture in the past.
Robert, Die Putzlappenkopfen learned torture from us? Surely you jest. Nobody could possibly be that ignorant.
"Celebrim
Is it your contiention that the US military teaches torture?"
No, it isn't. I'm not sure where you would have got that idea. The military and the CIA's manuals are for the most part not classified (and for this reason, no nation has an excuse for producing incompetant troops). You can read for yourself in most cases what the US military teaches.
"You decide what constitutes torture and then let's determine whether or not the US military teaches it."
I have a fairly high standard for what constitutes torture. Some people have set the bar so low that anything involuntary which might cause psychological, emotional, or physical pain is deemed torture. I have frequently countered that by this standard, I would deem prison confinement a more horrible form of torture than a mere flogging. I certainly would prefer the latter to the former. The fact is, when you are dealing with criminals - whether civil criminals or military criminals - then they will not cooperate with you and they will not like how you must or want to treat them.
What we need is a serious, realistic discussion on what constitutes torture, when torture would be acceptable if ever. What we don't need is more political theatre in the face of a ruthless and brutal enemy. What we don't need is more untrained troops taking it on themselves to decide where to draw the line, and in some cases finding out that they have a sadistic and perverse streak.
"The reality is they do not. They US Government has signed on to numerous international documents condemning it as a policy for the military."
That is a rather vague assertion, and its not sufficiently specific for me to even know what your position is. Perhaps if you would cite the relevant portion of those international agreements, we might have a more concrete discussion. I would ask you however to consider the following:
a) Do those international agreements apply to our relationship with nations? If so, which nation which is a participatory in those agreements do you claim is offended by our treatment of thier military forces?
b) Are those international agreements military agreements? If so, the representatives of which military with which we are engaged would you have us open a dialogue with? Does that military abide by the customs of warfare, specifically do its members have designated officers, wear uniforms, and abide by the terms of international agreements governing the conduct of war?
"That the Iraqi's have begun to hold detainees in the same fashion we are, without our built in constraints and precedents which here to fore we have repected and our President is determined to undermine at every point. As a consequence instead of reflecting our noblest intentions they are following our worst. That is why the Iraqi's are acting in this manner, not that it is something inherent in them."
Are you suggesting that the concept of torture is something which was introduced to the Iraqi culture by the Americans? Are you suggesting that before we Americans came along, the Iraqi's were used to operating under a framework of constraints on the use and practice of torture? Really? We the Americans taught the Iraqi's to use torture? It was from us that the Iraqi's learned brutality? Is that really your view of the world?
"In short they are learning torture from us when we change the way we have viewed torture in the past."
Well, I guess that is what you are saying. Leave it to a leftist to always see America as the root of all evil.
As for what I'm suggesting, I'm suggesting that the US is very inept at the practice of interrogation, and that if we are going to practice torture we at least ought to do a good job of it and give the troops some proper training. If torture in some form (that is what you would call torture) is ever going to come up, then we should teach it (or if we aren't going to teach it we should bother using it.) Perhaps we should take lessons from the French. I here that CRS are rather adept at getting the information they want with a set of clamps, and they don't have any annoying hindering concepts like "innocent until proven guilty" in thier law. I'm suggesting that you have a very niave view of what the rest of the world is like. A good deal of the world considers flogging people with rubber hoses reutine investigative practices. Now, I would want to go thier, because I've seen the result (and I'm guessing you haven't) and its a pretty dark place. I know for a fact that noone needed lessons from the US on how to torture anyone or make them disappear. Quite the contrary, we need to decide where we want to draw the line and then get lessons from the rest of the world. Because the simple fact is this, Al Queda has read our interrogation manuals, and frankly, they find our techniques to be rather laughable.
You would too if you knew anything about what you were talking about.
You all have interesting comments.Some comments are close some are way off.I sit here in the comfy confinements of my secure office(courtesy of all the men and women who are here and abroad in the military)Thank God for their sacrafices.I cannot believe we as americans sit here at home and armchair quarterback the going ons here and abroad.I look at the analogy of damned if you do damned if you dont.There are so many ifs out here in the world.I rather think that we are much safer today in america today than we were when Saddam Hussein was roving the land.Whether he had wmd or not he isnt going to be the one to wreck our world.No matter who our President was or is he was going to take the heat for any actions taken on our behalf.I thank the president for possibly making the right decision in iraq.Time will tell whether he did or not.At least we may be alive to know so as long as our own health holds up and God doesnt come calling.