Who’s Kidding Who?
Both Republicans and Democrats are rewriting the history of the run-up to the war in Iraq – though hardly in equal portions. Both sides, meanwhile, are avoiding a more central issue which I’ll get to after briefly examining each party’s mendacities.
I don’t care to even get into the debate as to whether or not George W. Bush lied to us or even what his motivations were in rushing us into the war with Iraq. What I think is abundantly clear is, at a minimum, the Bushies sifted, re-arranged, highlighted, distorted, and purposefully misconstrued what intelligence was available in order for it to jibe with a pre-determined decision to go to war.
Various arms of the government – including the CIA and portions of the State Department—raised serious doubts not only about the quality of the intelligence, but also the long-range implications of a U.S. invasion. The Bush White House studiously avoided any and every trace of intelligence and analysis that stood in the way of the march to war.
The official strategy was to stampede Congress and the American people into this conflict. Consequences be damned. The administration’s bottom-line argument for war was that Saddam posed a gathering and immediate threat to our national security, that his build-up of WMD including a nuclear program had to be destroyed post-haste.
All of the niceties about Iraqi liberation and the establishment of a new democracy came long after the fact—after it was revealed there were no nukes, no WMD.
If Bush is grossly re-writing history, the Dems are, at least, fudging it. Leading Democrats now argue that they were shown only intelligence that claimed the existence of WMD in Iraq and that – if they had somehow known the deeper truth—they would have never voted their assent to war.
Sorry, but that’s just baloney. The core issue three years ago was not whether or not Saddam might be building up WMD. Bush is actually correct when he says most people assumed he was to some degree or another. I certainly made that assumption based on Saddam’s previous behavior. The issue was, rather, WHAT should be done about it?
Most anti-war voices at the time argued that even if Saddam had “the nuts” – as they say at the poker table — he was simultaneously contained, restrained and boxed in– by international scrutiny; that the UN inspections process should be escalated and tightened; that under no discernible circumstances was their a necessity for the immediate war that Bush was pushing.
This omission from the current debate conveniently serves both sides. The administration must keep insisting that the “world is safer without Saddam in power” which was initially true (but not so any longer if the Iraqi war is creating more terrorists than it kills). Bush can no longer argue his original and now discredited premise – a premise that now makes this a totally unnecessary, or at least voluntary, war.
This also serves Democrats who voted for war authority. They can raise their hands in the air and now say “We didn’t know we were being snookered.” But back in 2002 there were plenty of anti-war voices that argued that even assuming Saddam had WMD, there were was no visible, palpable compelling reason whatsoever to plunge headlong into war within a matter of weeks or days — especially without having had a vigorous national debate and without the support of our traditional allies.
In retrospect, those critics were absolutely right. Bush was wrong. So were Kerry, Edwards, Clinton and 26 other Senate Democrats who went along for the ride. At the time, Republicans mocked and jeered those who argued that UN inspectors needed more time to fully assess the status of WMD in Iraq. Who was wrong on that one? Who’s got the last laugh on that one?
There were also voices who argued instead of war we should push for more intrusive inspections, multi-national-led armed searches that would be imposed unconditionally on Iraq – with or without prior approval. Those folks were also correct. If the U.S. had not jumped the gun, if we had spent another six, twelve, eighteen months fully assessing Saddam’s potential we, would have never had this war – or at least the excuse for having it.
Ah, but you object, without war Saddam would still be in power. Not necessarily. So far we have spent something like $200 billion on the war in Iraq. Correct me if I’m wrong, but no U.S.-backed covert – or overt destabilization—program in American history has cost more than a few billion at the very most. What if we had kept on with and intensified the weapons inspection program while dedicating, say, $50 billion to a pro-democracy, anti-Saddam political initiative (which by the way would have included the arming and training of Kurd and Shia insurgent forces and heavens knows what other covert but limited military strategies)?
Would Saddam have survived such a double squeeze? I doubt it. Bush would be a hero today instead of a scorned, increasingly Nixonesque figure. A couple of thousand American soldiers would still be alive. Twenty thousand others would have been spared injury or disfiguration. We wouldn’t be wallowing in the black hole of bottomless deficits. American military force levels would not be depleted. And the world, indeed, would be a much safer place.
November 19th, 2005 at 11:38 pm
Marc, I think your “double pincers” are mutually exclusive. An ongoing, tightening inspection regime even as a superpower is pouring billions into funding an insurgency? Would the U.N. even go IN to do inspections under such conditions?
In the late 90s, Ahmed Chalabi fielded an invasion force funded under Congress’s “regime change” policy. That force got cut to pieces. But it’s interesting *how* it got cut to pieces: Kurds helped out. Kurds weren’t interested in being involved in any further U.S.-funded destabilization plans, because Saddam had been able to use those in the past to pit one Kurdish faction against another.
Perhaps by spending enough money funding insurgencies against Saddam, you could have forced him out — but what kind of situation would you have been left with? For every pro-democracy Iraqi who might go to arms against Saddam, there might have been another who felt the game wasn’t worth the candle — or rather, not worth the full-blown civil-war blowtorch. Not to mention the anti-democracy fighters willing to fake it and take the money (Afghanistan in the 80s comes to mind.)
Finally, how would you spend that $50b per year in a way that would arm pro-democracy Iraqis effectively? Small arms? There was already an average of one gun per household in Saddam-era Iraq. So you’re talking about organizing serious artillery, cavalry, etc. Being gathered for deployment … somewhere. Where? In a neighboring state? Turkey? Syria?? Iran??? Jordan?? I think your choices narrow down to: Kuwait. That’s not just an invitation to civil war, but an invitation to yet another Saddam invasion of Kuwait. We would have had to get everything there, and get it organized, piecemeal, over years. He would already have been on the ground. No, with that kind of approach, you have to build up huge logistical capacity fast, in a few months, while always holding out the possibility that the force might not be used.
Sometimes, there is just no cure that isn’t worse than the disease. With tyrannical petro-states (and that’s almost redundant), you’re not just up against sovereignty norms in the international community, a community that tends to prefer oil-supply stability. You’re also up against some political basics: the Golden Rule — he who has the gold makes the rules; and Machiavelli’s observation that, while gold can’t buy you good soldiers, good soldiers can always get you gold. In a state where there is one source of national income that can keep everybody comfortable, there will eventually be one armed group that stands guard over that source of income and rules the roost not just by having a big stick, but an even bigger carrot.
I think at best you’re talking about a Saddam-toppling strategy that would have meant less American bloodshed, but far more Iraqi bloodshed. When a problem sits around for a long time, that’s usually a good indicator that it’s very hard to solve. Saddam was just such a problem. Who was it who said “Everything should be made as simple as possible — but not simpler?” 9/11 had the dubious virtue of making everything … simpler. For a while.
November 19th, 2005 at 11:51 pm
Excellent piece. Every last point is dead on. You’re really on a terrific roll with this week’s posts, Marc.
Keep that adrenaline pumping!
November 20th, 2005 at 12:59 am
This commentary by former Democrat Senator Bob Graham, who voted against the war resolution, is an interesting take on who knew what when:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/18/AR2005111802397.html
November 20th, 2005 at 4:40 am
Marc,
You need to fix the osm link up top, oms is the WHO in French!
November 20th, 2005 at 7:13 am
Cooper asks, “What if we had kept on with and intensified the weapons inspection program while dedicating, say, $50 billion to a pro-democracy, anti-Saddam political initiative (which by the way would have included the arming and training of Kurd and Shia insurgent forces and heavens knows what other covert but limited military strategies)?”
While the Kurds and Shi’ites would certainly (and did) accept financial and military aid from the CIA, there is no evidence that they were in favor of democracy. The Kurdish leaders slaughtered their own dissidents when it was necessary, while the aspirations of the Shi’ites to create a theocratic state is hardly democratic.
The essential problem is that modern Iraq was cobbled together by Great Britain out of disparate peoples who had long-standing enmities. The USA picked up from Great Britain after it no longer had the teeth to impose its will in the Arab world. The fact that Marc Cooper would advocate any kind of intervention by the USA in the area is a sad indication once again of his drift into State Department liberalism.
November 20th, 2005 at 8:30 am
State Department liberalism? I think that Cooper’s approach here is to the right of Foggy Bottom, more in line with, as hinted at by a prevous poster, the Chalabi crowd. First off, he’s right that tthte Democrats are shedding crocodile tears – but those tears are out there because of ground-up pressure from an increasingly antiwar populace. There is no reason to argue about whether Saddam should or shouldn’t be gone, because, like in Zimbabwe or anywhere else – bad as it is, its up to the people to get rid of the tyrant. The US has no moral right, especially on its own, to attack – or destablize another country. That is the point that is not being made by either Democrats, Republicans, or the third camp argument by Cooper here. By its longterm criminal conduct in just about every intervention in which it has been involved, no sane Leftist, or humanist should ever endorse any intervention by the United States. Yes, Afghanistan was somewhat acceptable but still prosecuted criminally. When someone can point out any war that the US has involved intself in that did not have torture and mass civilian deaths, I will bat an eye at the argument Cooper makes. Otherwise, he’s again endorsing what Nixon did to Chile.
November 20th, 2005 at 8:41 am
First of all, my ding a lings, I was not proposing the policy of destablization necessarily. I was merely specualting what other options were available to the Bush administration. If the latter course had been chosen, it would have been much less injurious than the present course. I think that obvious.
Of course, it was NOT chosen. And my little leftie scolds might argue that it would have never been because the US is so evil. Perhaps.
But what if it had. Are you saying the US has mo moral right to finance foreign democratic movements fighting against dictatorship? Who’s sounding like Nixon now? If you want to argue that the US would never choose the side of democracy against dictatorship== that’s different. You’d be mostly right, but not completely so. But i was posing a “what if scenario.” What if the US had financed a destablization program against Pinochet? Would u have defended Chilean sovereignty? Do you oppose govts like the US supporting, say, intl sanctions against an aparthied South Africa. Why dont u climb down off your moral hobby horse and deal with some real world arguments.
Finally.. if you believe the US has a monopoly on what u call “criminal conduct” in its affairs you’ve got a real wire loose. Grow up.
November 20th, 2005 at 8:45 am
Michael Turner: You’re right on the mark. Great post.
November 20th, 2005 at 8:45 am
P.S. Cummings..I re-read ur post a second time– it’s worse than I thought. By your logic, we shouldnt lay a hand on Mugabe because that is the job of the peopel of Zimbabwe. so YOU ARE arguing that it was wrong for any foreign power, including the evil U.S., to have put any pressure on the Botha regime to dismantle aparthied. After all, that would have been the exclusive task of the people of South Africa. Thanks for clearing that up. What overwhelming humanism from this dusty little lefty nook and cranny. To put it into the sort of political terms u are used to dealing with: that’s touching solidarity with Pat Buchanan. LOL
November 20th, 2005 at 9:02 am
The US did jackshit to end apartheid until the end. It was Cuba and to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union that kept the ANC up and running throughout the struggle, while successive US administrations “engaged” with South Africa. In terms of helping opposition groups with no-holds-barred grants thatt don’t threaten said groups with implication of being “US agents,” thus discrediting them – then I have no problem with that…but that is not what you are endorsing.
I happen to, on foreign policy, be in broad agreement with Pat Buchanan, save a few things. Buchanan is at least an Anti-Imperialist.
November 20th, 2005 at 9:41 am
I can find little in Marc’s post to disagree with. But what do you think Reynolds will divine from the blather of selective amnesia they’ll post over at OSM? They’ll blame everyone but Bush and fudge the evidence. Readers will cheer and jeer.
November 20th, 2005 at 10:05 am
I avoided painting Mark’s proposed Iraq intervention strategy in any partisan colors, because I think issues of what could work should be separated from issues of what should be done, even though both need to be addressed. Marc doesn’t agree with me about what could have worked, but that’s irrelevant — at least he proposed a possible solution.
The legitimacy of interventions and their effectiveness do intertwine, however. Things get complicated, and the law of unintended consequences rules over all. Take the Apartheid South Africa sanctions — please! J Cummings says it was Cuba and the USSR keeping the ANC running. But he doesn’t mention the frontline states — the #1 violators of the sanctions. They traded avidly with South Africa, to the point of being for all practical purposes its economic lifeline to the world economy, even as they harbored ANC combatants. And none of those frontline states were exactly model democracies. Yes, that helped keep the (only mildly terroristic) ANC alive, and thus kept the pressure on. But is using bad countries who violate sanctions the right way to keep pressure on? Was this an *intended* effect of the sanctions, that they would be violated in ways that would help the ANC? I rather think not, though perhaps some such calculation worked behind the scenes in parallel with all the moral posturing going on center-stage.
In this question of using questionable neighbors for leverage in morally-motivated interventions, we’re hardly hardly short of other precedents — think Honduras in the Contra war (though I think the moral case there was deeply flawed.) And it isn’t exactly irrelevant to Iraq, considering that Ahmed Chalabi’s little U.S.-sponsored “regime change” invasion force entered Iraq though Iran, of all countries, and that our invasion force entered Iraq courtesy of cooperation from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf Arab petrostate monarchies.
Well, the perfect is the enemy of the good, but some kinds of “good” don’t seem nearly good enough. At least, not to me. Maybe my standards are too high. Perhaps it’s the last refuge of cowards that they draw fine moral distinctions between washing one’s hands of a messy situation and avoiding getting them bloody in the first place. If so, I’m a coward. Moreover, I’m a delusional coward, who lives right smack in the middle of what he thinks is the better solution — here in Japan, people get by on a fraction of the amount of gasoline consumption per capita you see in America. Is the quality of life so much lower here as a result? To quote a certain erstwhile commenter here who visited me a few months ago, as he looked around Tokyo on his way back from Beijing to the U.S.: “This is a *rich* country.” Well, not exactly — but close enough.
November 20th, 2005 at 10:31 am
Marc,
You”re completely right when you say “I don’t care to even get into the debate as to whether or not George W. Bush lied to us or even what his motivations were in rushing us into the war with Iraq.” It’s all speculation anyway, so it’s pointless to argue about motivations of Bush et al.
You did a wonderful summary in the sentence “Bushies sifted, re-arranged, highlighted, distorted, and purposefully misconstrued what intelligence was available in order for it to jibe with a pre-determined decision to go to war. ”
I think it’s not very productive to debate about any speculations about what if U.S. hadn’t invaded.
What’s been missing is this conversation is that not only U.S. military policy is failed in Iraq but also it’s non-military policy has failed. The U.S. let Iraq’s cultural/government buildings be sacked and looted; privatized state corporations, laying off tens of thousands; never fixed basic systems such as sewage and electricity; tortured Iraqis in U.S. run prisons in Iraq; made trade unions illegal. If an occupying power wants to fight an insurgency, then it has to “win hearts and minds” but the Bushites in Iraq have done a great job in losing Iraqi’s hearts and minds.
One of the consequences of the U.S.’s failed policies in Iraq is trashing the Iraqi economy & infrastructure. These failed U.S. policies have only alienated Iraqis from the U.S. I think that has happened during the occupation is much more important to discuss than any speculation about what led up to the war or what would happen if the war hadn’t happened.
November 20th, 2005 at 10:56 am
I am curious as to what Michael Turner is referring to when he refers to as “frontline states” that harbored the “terroristic” (as if they didn’t have a moral right to their actions…) ANC. The problem with this is two-fold – first he doesn’tt identify what states to which he is referring, the other is the implication that a resistance movement to a racist authoritarian state can be referred to as “terrorist.” Even “armed group” is more proper, and conveys that they aren’t necc. nonviolent.
One could also argue, if I’m reading him right that those who propped upthe Apartheid economy actually prolonged, not helped end, Apartheid rule. With the economy in tatters, the ANC could have taken power much earlier – but that was still a no-no due to the Cold War and the Reaganites’ special love of real counter-revolutionary terrorists like Savimbi, who sucked on Botha’s teat.
In Turner’s ambiguity, he, like Cooper, won’t take a strong posititon except that he seems to be for a continuation of the war, and believes strongly in US hegemony, as a non-utopian “least worst” sort of situation, as does Cooper, so it seems. A fair, if highly immoral position, but one that shouldn’t be cloaked in ambiguity.
November 20th, 2005 at 11:18 am
This is somewhat of topic but since Mark mentioned Chile I thought I could interject.
I went to the documentary “Salvador Allende” directed by Patricio Guzman. The film is great. It presents a historical account of Allende’s twenty year polical struggle to gain the presidency and bring democratic socialism to Chile. In addition to the hsitorical aspect, the interviews with people close to the movement and Allende are amazing and heartbreaking. Especially the interview with his friend and secretary, I think her name is Pataki I may be wrong on her name. Mark may know her and some of the many others interviewed.
The U.S ambassordor to Chile at the time of the coup is interviewed. He fully admits and freely discusses our role in backing and financing the coup of Chilean democracy. Interestingly, he agreed with Fidel that Allende’s greatest mistake was not taking over the military.
However, the underlining focus of the film is about memory and the loss of historical memory. The director, Guzman, is in search of the social solidarity, street level creativity and the sense of human progress that was buried by the dicatorship. The film made me realize that Allende was a truely great man with a viable vision of democratic socialism and his overthrow in 1973 was global and historical event that helped paved the way for the neoliberal model of “TINA”( As Thatcher said “there is no alternative”). Allende’s belief that democracy intrinsically led to socialism had to be erased from the collective consciousness, not just in Chile but around the world.
It’s is powerful film I highly recommend seeing it if you have the chance. It premiered in Washington DC last night and is only screening in a few cities in the U.S.
November 20th, 2005 at 11:53 am
I don’t know why this shibboleth keeps sounding in my head when I come this blog:
“The radical of yesterday is the stuffed shirt of today”.
失礼ã—ã¾ã—㦠申ã—訳ã‚ã‚Šã¾ã›ã‚“　m(_ _)m
November 20th, 2005 at 12:57 pm
Marc your suggestion is about 14 years too late. If the Bush I administration had supported the Shia and Kurd uprisings in 1991 the Saddam regime would have fallen then. And it would have fallen to IRAQIS. They would have been the instraments of their own liberation with US help just as we gained independence from Britain with French help. It is doubtful that either insurgency could have prevailed without that outside power providing arms and assistance. Yet we sure don’t claim that the French “Liberated” us. And neither would the Iraqis. My guess is they would have left both the Army and Civil Service in place and just replaced the most heavily involved Baath leaders. Of course we’ll never know now since we let the Shiites and Kurds hang out to dry. And maybe that is why they are suspicious.
November 20th, 2005 at 1:16 pm
“Bush is actually correct when he says most people assumed he was to some degree or another. I certainly made that assumption based on Saddam’s previous behavior. The issue was, rather, WHAT should be done about it?”
Marc, if you were listening to people like Scott Ritter or Glenn Rangwala or Larry Johnson or Melvin Goodman before the official invasion, you would not have been so naive as to believe that Sodom Whosane was involved in a buildup of WMDs. Not even close and the evidence was already clear to anyone who was not afraid of refuting the Parties line of the day at the time.
http://traprockpeace.org/firstresponse.html
So much for liberals’ critical thinking skills.
November 20th, 2005 at 1:20 pm
“so YOU ARE arguing that it was wrong for any foreign power, including the evil U.S., to have put any pressure on the Botha regime to dismantle aparthied.”
That’s a pathetic comparison. In South Africa the resistance organizations were advocating a boycott. Who in their right mind in Iraq’s opposition was advocating a sanctions regime based on ‘we won’t stop suffocating your people until your leader leaves” principles? Nor do I remember the ANC stating, “if your boycott campaign doesn’t work, please bomb the holy moses out of our country and then proceed to occupy it and buy up our national industries”.
November 20th, 2005 at 1:22 pm
BTW, why not just negotiate with the insurgents in Iraq? Why is that such an impossible option for a COoper, but even the left-wing Trotskyist-Zionist Libertarian Talabani can accept as acceptable?
November 20th, 2005 at 1:26 pm
Boy we wouldn’t want to be impolite to this new wave of visitors. One I guess. Also Mr. Cooper’s name is spelled with a “c.”
November 20th, 2005 at 2:02 pm
“What if the US had financed a destablization program against Pinochet? Would u have defended Chilean sovereignty?”
You’ve got the cart before the horse I’m afraid. If the US had not intervened in Chile there wouldn’t have been a Pinochet problem. Duh.
November 20th, 2005 at 2:14 pm
Murtha was great on Meet The Press this morning. He’s pushing the debate over how to deal with BushCo’s terrible failure in Iraq – a failure in both omission and comission – with a gravitas, credibility and damn-the-torpedoes attitude that few Dems could muster. And Chris Mathews played clips of a tuxedoed Cheney growling at war critics over rubber chicken at some Beltway GOPer Elite affair next to Murtha’s response about “guys with five deferments, etc.”. It was devastating.
November 20th, 2005 at 2:41 pm
Murtha video (MTP) – worth watching.
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/nbc_mtp_murtha_051120a.mov
November 20th, 2005 at 2:42 pm
It was. Richard Clarke was too at the Miami Book Festival. The criticism of former war heroes like Max Cleland who dare talk back to the chickenhawks is incredible. Epic hypocrisy.
November 20th, 2005 at 4:58 pm
Murtha also told Russert that he made a mistake in voting for the War Resolution. And he’s no Johnny-come-Lately to this since he voiced a lot of misgivings last year and presented his plan after seeing no progress in the ensuing period. But that was not good enough for the GOP slime machine that brands any dissent traitorious and cowardly.
What should we have known in 2002? I thought Saddam might have some spare chemical weapons but the fact that the inspectors could turn up none meant if he had any they were pretty meagre. In any case it was obvious to me that he posed no threat to his neighbors. He was well and truly boxed in and everyone should have known it. But that was then. Now we have to be talking about the best, or realistically the least worst way to remove ourselves from this Mess-O-Potamia as soon as possible. And, yes, Iraq will be in chaos. It is in chaos now. First, do no harm.
To those that want to argue that overthrowing Saddam was a noble goal in itself let me ask you something. Do you really think the American people would have been for the invasion of Iraq if the President had said, “Well he can’t threaten his neighbors but he is a ruthless dictator who oppresses his people?” No I didn’t think so.
November 20th, 2005 at 5:46 pm
Richard, I think your last point is a crucial one: as Marc noted in this or a previous posting, one of the huge negative consequences of the Bushies’ machinations was a failure to allow (I’m being generous in my wording here) or engage in an honest national debate on the Iraq question. It didn’t happen. As I’ve said many times before, what I found most obscene about the pre-emptive war “debate” was that the question you propose the administration should have been asking–i.e, should we invade the country of a ruthless dictator who poses no imminent threat–was indeed never asked. It’s possible I (and millions others) would have supported an invasion had the argument been proposed honestly as such (aside: I’m not so naive to think or expect that every aspect of every military venture will be spelled out in full detail to the American people, but rather that it is necessary that the overarching goal be put forth clearly, spin-free), but the sad thing for our democracy is that I (we) never had that chance.
November 20th, 2005 at 5:47 pm
Yes and remember those who claimed we found them (wmd) and that the two old shells from the Iran war qualified? Unbelievable. I didn’t buy it for a minute at the time and said so. The inspections should have been carried on instead of this ill-conceived bloody farce.
November 20th, 2005 at 6:00 pm
Mark, you’re absolutely right about that. Of course, the reason the administration wouldn’t let the inspectors do their jobs is because they knew that nothing would be found, therefore blowing the rationale for the invasion right out of the water.
November 20th, 2005 at 6:45 pm
“The problem with this is two-fold – first he doesn’tt identify what states to which he is referring, the other is the implication that a resistance movement to a racist authoritarian state can be referred to as ‘terrorist.’”
FYI, any group that targets civilians can be accurately described as “terrorist,” regardless of its circumstances. It amazes me, really, how many people believe that if you can just scrape together enough nobility of motivation you can wash the blood from your hands. Talk about “highly immoral” positions…
November 20th, 2005 at 7:29 pm
Sodom Whosane?!?
November 20th, 2005 at 7:32 pm
So does the DC Sniper think Nelson Mandela was a terrorist?
November 20th, 2005 at 7:52 pm
1/2 truth: “Bushies sifted, re-arranged, highlighted, distorted, and purposefully misconstrued what intelligence was available in order for it to jibe with a pre-determined decisionâ€
and 1/2 lie: “to go to war. ”
Bush was determined to force Saddam to PROVE HE HAD NO WMDS. Like most of the 17 UN SC resolutions required of Saddam, and all were violated (Why no mention of t
THIS history, Marc?). Any history of Iraq since 1990 must include each of them to demonstrate bad faith by Bush — so the Bush-haters just ignore it. The burden of proof was on Saddam — and if he had proven he had no WMDs, which is very different than inspectors finding them, Bush would NOT have gone to war. (Only 1% chance of Saddam doing this — had France told him the Texas Ranger would attack so he better take the Exile option, I guess he would have. France told him W wouldn’t send in the marines. France knew Clinton — not W.)
The fact that there have already been two elections in Iraq, with a third coming, and so many moonbats here keep repeating “no progress” should be embarassing to Marc C.
What would progress look like?
In Chile, yeah, Pinochet was a dictator — but claiming Allende’s socialism was going to be better than Fidel’s in some way is mere wishfill thinking. State-Socialism fails. Post Pinochet Chile keeps doing lots better than the other South American countries (OK, little Central America Costa Rica, no army, is also doing almost as well.)
Why not look at where the Leftist “socialists” took over, not long after 1973? Vietnam and Cambodia. From 1974 – 1978: genocide. Before Reagan. Genocide — the unintended result of the policy Marc Cooper favored.
Michael Turner’s comments do a good job popping the Marc idea-bubble of doing inspections AND active destabilization. Plus I don’t see any links to any folk actually advocating that policy, specifically, rather than war. I remember “anything but war” kind of comments. Like Clinton’s acceptance of Rwanda genocide rather than war, or even being honest about it at the UN.
At least Bush calls Darfur genocide — which is failing (or passing?) Kerry’s Global Test. Not genocide; more words is enough action; it’s a legal issue; use the Int’l Criminal Court; NO WAR — let thousands be murdered.
I also remember how the anti-American folk had been calling for an END to sanctions in Iraq, since it was sanctions, not Saddam’s stealing and palace building, that was killing Iraqi kids.
The sanctions were NOT sustainable.
Finally, Marc, the real problem in America is the lack of a debate about Leaving Vietnam. Was it the right thing to do? We’re still in Germany — why not just stay in Vietnam?
How many Vietnamese and Cambodian unarmed civilians must be murdered before leaving is worse than staying and winning — by staying. No genocide with American troops there.
THAT debate has still not been had — because folk (Lenin’s Useful Idiots), like you, want their “out now” policy to be followed, without being responsible for the genocide results.
November 20th, 2005 at 8:58 pm
This Grey’s ideas are so selectively amnesiatic, and still mired in trying to win Viet Nam that it’s no wonder these worthless UN resolutions are the focal point of his sad disjointed argument. Who cares how many they passed? The man had nothing to show. Here’s the sad truth: Hussein said he didn’t have any wmd. He was right about that. Imagine it. Hussein told the truth, and no one listened. Now that’s sad.
November 20th, 2005 at 10:06 pm
http://tinyurl.com/842j4
November 20th, 2005 at 10:06 pm
OK, time out everybody… is it true that Abu Masub al-Zarqawi was killed today in a shoot out with the Marines? …damn am radio…
November 20th, 2005 at 10:17 pm
The interesting thing about the Murtha comments that reg links to above, aside from a Dem who finally has some sand, is the fact that he cannot bring himself to say that the Bush administration distorted the Iraq intelligence. If anything is clear I think that is. He mentions early on that he and Cheney are friends; It makes me suspect that part of the reticence is this chummy DC club they all belong to.
Not too long ago there was talk from the Defense Department about adding 1500 troops for the runup to the Iraqi elections in order to provide adequate security. I was stunned at this, since I wondered if it were simply a matter of 1500 extra troops then why weren’t 1500, or 10,000, or 100,000 extra troops there from the get go. It was Rumsfeld’s insistence to fight this war in the grip of his small-fast-army ideology, more than anything else in the conduct of the war, that has led us to where we are now. There were never enough forces to pacify and then quickly rebuild the country and Rumsfeld, even when it seems he should have known this, it appears to me, let his ideology, and an unwillingness to admit a mistake, govern the conduct of the occupation. Maybe I’m wrong since this is mere speculation, but I think if there were enough troops to occupy more than the Ministry of Oil or whatever it was called, and then quickly rebuld power plants and provide security, the face of this country would be a very different one now.
But then, who knows. Wasn’t that the essential argument in Vietnam as well? Didn’t some factions argue that more troops would solve the problem and others see it as entirely unwinnable? LBJ thought it was unwinnable from early on, but thought prestige and other factors militated against leaving. It’s a thorny question.
RLC: I wil say if there has been anything noble out of this at all it has indeed been the removal of Hussein. I never though this war was justified on the WMD issue (there are too many other places that get a free pass to warrant that line), but it might have been justified on the grounds of unseating a vile despot. Still, I feel deeply ambivalent about it, since this question hinges on whether democracy can be “placed” in another land. I’m not sure the record on this is too good. We might have represented ourselves a bit better if we had taken our chances with helping people like the Sandinistas. But now I become entirely ahistorical.
And finally, in the tradition of Fraulein Schmidt, will we get to refer to Don as Rumsfled when he finally unveils his withdrawal plan?
November 20th, 2005 at 10:56 pm
By the way, in the same vein as the “OSM” name screw-up, it’s mildly amusing to note that the name “Blogjam” is also purloined – this time from an Australian blogger who used the title for a weekly compendium of Australian blog posts.
This one is certainly not an unintentional coincidence: Tim Blair, another editorial board member, was at least aware of the use of the title – assuming he wasn’t responsible for the theft himself.
Here is a post from his blog in 2004 mocking the Australian version.
http://timblair.spleenville.com/archives/006295.php
November 20th, 2005 at 11:17 pm
“He cannot bring himself to say that the Bush administration distorted the Iraq intelligence.”
I believe Murtha does say quite explicitly that they exaggerated it…but stops short of “deliberately distorted”. Frankly, I think this is just a matter of degree. Regarding the comments by Dan O on Rumsfeld, another little gift from the Sunday morning gabfest was an interview of Rummie by Stephanpolous after which his entire panel of center-to-right pundits – Fahreed, Joe K, Will, Radditz – were incredibly dismissive of the Secretary’s performance as totally unconvincing. How far we’ve come from the days when the Beltway press lapped up every morsel of mindless tautology, arrogant evasion and calculated disinformation from The Don as though they were pearls.
November 20th, 2005 at 11:46 pm
“lapped up every morsel… as though they were pearls”
reg, that mixed metaphor makes me giddy..
November 21st, 2005 at 12:08 am
I thought I’d squeezed enough verbiage in between so’s you wouldn’t notice…
November 21st, 2005 at 1:33 am
> What if we had kept on with and intensified the weapons inspection program while dedicating, say, $50 billion to a pro-democracy, anti-Saddam political initiative (which by the way would have included the arming and training of Kurd and Shia insurgent forces and heavens knows what other covert but limited military
> strategies)?
Marc, intensifying the weapons inspection program would almost certainly encourage resistance movements within Iraq, especially in the Shiite region, to take more and more overt action against the Baathist regime. Saddam has a long and bloody history of crushing such Shiite resistance. At that point, the UN would seek to have the inspectors withdraw amid the turmoil, while the US and the UK would pressure the UN to authorize full invasion. If such authorization was granted (possibly), we’d be more or less in the same mess we are now. If such authorization was refused (more likely), we’d be required once again to stand by and watch Saddam crush resistance by rampaging whole cities. In either case, the initiative and the advantage would not be ours, but Saddam’s. Would you really have preferred that?
Supporting and arming an anti-Saddam democracy movement in the Kurdish no-fly zones would almost certainly lead to one or more untenable situations. The least worst would be Turkey’s aggressive reaction to a newly empowered Kurdistan. Worse than that, Saddam would certainly (and correctly) interpret our arming of the *peshmerga* as a move to destabilize him, and act accordingly. He’d likely support covert action against the Kurds, perhaps even allying with Ansar al-Islam or even Al Qaeda itself to destablize the region. He’d just as likely engage in probing, ground level incursions into Kurdistan– which would then threaten to escalate to all-out conflict, which US and UK no-fly zone patrols would be dragged into. In any case, the initiative and the advantage would not be ours, but Saddam’s. Would you really have preferred that?
November 21st, 2005 at 1:58 am
“I am curious as to what Michael Turner is referring to when he refers to as “frontline states†…”
Get a map, and a brief history of the conflict.
“…that harbored the “terroristic†(as if they didn’t have a moral right to their actions…) ANC….”
Nelson Mandela himself admits that the ANC perpetrated some terrorism. I wrote “only mildly terroristic” because I don’t think it was ever ANC policy. Mandela was jailed for terrorism for committing crimes no worse than sabotage. That doesn’t mean that the ANC didn’t commit terrorism. Certainly, Winnie Mandela wasn’t exactly Nobel Peace Prize material.
“… the implication that a resistance movement to a racist authoritarian state can be referred to as “terrorist.”"
The British ran Palestine in a rather racist, and definitely heavy-handed manner. Irgun committed acts of terrorism. I don’t know if I’d write a line like “Irgun was a terrorist group that attacked the racist authoritarian state of British Palestine”, however, any more than I’d write a line like “Irgun was part of a resistance movement that ended racist authoritarianism in Palestine.” Nothing is that clear-cut.
“One could also argue, if I’m reading him right that those who propped upthe Apartheid economy actually prolonged, not helped end, Apartheid rule.”
Not mutually exclusive — I merely suggest that it was propped up in a way that ultimately helped bring it down, in ways that raise ends-means quandaries.
“With the economy in tatters, the ANC could have taken power much earlier – but that was still a no-no due to the Cold War and the Reaganites’ special love of real counter-revolutionary terrorists like Savimbi, who sucked on Botha’s teat.”
No argument there. (If only because I’m approaching exhaustion. I really don’t know WHEN the ANC would have won in some alternate history universe.)
“In Turner’s ambiguity, he, like Cooper, won’t take a strong posititon except that he seems to be for a continuation of the war, and believes strongly in US hegemony, as a non-utopian “least worst†sort of situation, as does Cooper, so it seems.”
I fail to see how my supposed “ambiguity” leads to even tentative conclusions like those. I opposed the invasion, I think the Occupation was botched, and I honestly don’t know what should be done now. As for favoring a “continuation” of the war, my fear is shared by many, across the political spectrum: not only will the war continue if we leave, it could get far, far worse. I don’t believe we should have destabilized the situation in the first place, and I think there’s overwhelming onus on the U.S. to be part of cleaning up the resulting mess — having its own troops there may or may not be a part of that clean-up, I don’t know. Finally, I am not in favor of U.S. hegemony. I might be in favor of it if somebody could convince me that it’s ultimately the best thing for the world, and wouldn’t involve an ends-justify-means modus operandi. But nobody has ever convinced me of that.
“A fair, if highly immoral position, but one that shouldn’t be cloaked in ambiguity.”
It is hardly immoral to be concerned for the fates of millions of Iraqis who might die in a full-blown civil war if we simply pulled up stakes now. A continuously-simmering civil war may, unfortunately, be the best of some very bad choices. (MAY. Get that part straight.) I wouldn’t have lent my voice to creating those new choices — in fact, I strenuously opposed the invasion. I’m not “cloaking” myself in “ambiguity”, I’m being forthright about my uncertainty where I am uncertain, and expressing certainty where I feel it strongly, as in the case of Marc’s notion of a “double pincer” strategy that might have been applied to Iraq to bring down Saddam Hussein.
I’m sure I’m still failing your ideological litmus tests. I just want to make sure that others don’t arrive at the same faulty diagnoses for lack of knowledge of my positions.
November 21st, 2005 at 2:35 am
“To those that want to argue that overthrowing Saddam was a noble goal in itself let me ask you something. Do you really think the American people would have been for the invasion of Iraq if the President had said, “Well he can’t threaten his neighbors but he is a ruthless dictator who oppresses his people?†No I didn’t think so. ”
I agree with that last. But please admit the possibility that overthrowing a dictator could be a noble goal, just politically impossible to do right. A noble end may require ignoble means, and therefore be a non-starter in any truly moral foreign policy. (My own opinion: the prospect of overthrowing Saddam was just an ideological comforter for those in this administration who wanted to go in. One motivation among several less savory motivations.)
WJA writes: “Marc, intensifying the weapons inspection program would almost certainly encourage resistance movements within Iraq, especially in the Shiite region, to take more and more overt action against the Baathist regime. ”
That’s ridiculous.
If it would have had that effect, then WHY DIDN’T IT, when U.N. inspectors were in Iraq during the mid-90s? Saddam might have wanted WMD for international deterrence purposes (or worse), but the Republican Guard (sometimes working hand in glove with one Kurdish faction or another during their uprisings) was an adequate deterrent to internal fragmentation. The Shi’ites didn’t rise against Saddam even as we were invading through their territory for the second time. So how would having even more unarmed foreigners touring Iraq in dusty Toyotas and randomly picking suspicious sites to inspect have spurred the Shi’ites to some major rebellion that we hadn’t seen earlier under previous UN inspections?
“Supporting and arming an anti-Saddam democracy movement in the Kurdish no-fly zones would almost certainly lead to one or more untenable situations. The least worst would be Turkey’s aggressive reaction to a newly empowered Kurdistan.”
Actually, we did something like that, and what it typically led to was one Kurdish faction against another, with Saddam’s troops supporting one faction against another. And Turkey — a U.S. ally — seemed to be able to handle a virtually autonomous Kurdistan in Iraq with aplomb — for years. They even seem to be handling the fact that the Pesh Merga IS the current de facto Army of Iraq, the one force that the U.S. can count on for indignenous support in any future Fallujahs.
Turkey knows which side its bread is buttered on, and they know that any future butter must flow through the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline. Forestalling some Greater Kurdistan is mainly a matter of the U.S. cutting Turkey a deal, involving both security and lucre. If it meant a Kurdistan going along with the deal in a way that meant Kurds having to kill some other Kurds — well, it’s not like that’s unprecedented, exactly. If Iraqi Kurds could kill Iraqi Kurds in coordination with Saddam’s Republican Guard, they could certainly kill Turkish Kurds in coordination with U.S. and Turkish forces, if it came to that regrettable necessity on the long road to statehood. Why, I could even see them in some temporary alliance with the Badr Corps, to kill expansionist, nationalistic *Iranian* Kurds, in the name of stable borders. History holds darker ironies, and probably has more of them in store for us.
November 21st, 2005 at 8:01 am
Good comment MT.
November 21st, 2005 at 8:09 am
But I can’t believe good intellectual energy is still being spent down stream counting leaves that have long since past under the bridge.
November 21st, 2005 at 8:11 am
While the bridge itself is now burning.
November 21st, 2005 at 8:23 am
Oh, I forgot. We need to know why the fire was set so we can decide whether to help put it out or better to let it burn.
November 21st, 2005 at 8:30 am
Sorry Marc, but making comments between drinks. Well, time for work. Behave yourselves while I’m gone. No fighting and remember to take out the garbage.
November 21st, 2005 at 8:47 am
I didn’t argue one way or another on the “nobility” of overthrowing Saddam. I merely asked if the American people would have found that sufficient reason to go to war. The Administration sure didn’t , hence the the lies – sorry “Deceptions” that Wolfowitz called the best persuasive arguments as the pretext for the war. Why didn’t they stress Saddam’s vile regime? Maybe they knew that most Americans agreed with John Quincy Adams that America does not go abroad in search of dragons to slay.
November 21st, 2005 at 8:51 am
“But I can’t believe good intellectual energy is still being spent down stream counting leaves that have long since past under the bridge.”
I can’t believe that people think democracy can be brought to a country that is forced to orient its economic development to the demands of the US and the IMF. Gives whole new meaning to democracy!
And it’s not just counting leaves, much as that idea helps you to avoid the weak nature of your or Marc’s arguments. Marc’s abstract wishful thinking has to be talked about in the context of an actual country with an actual history, not just some fairyland where angels pat each other gently and sing cumbaya.
November 21st, 2005 at 8:52 am
And Marc, my Grammatically persnickity roomate saw this thread and pointed out it should be titled “Who’s kidding WHOM?” I tell ya, its hell living with a nitpicker!
November 21st, 2005 at 9:31 am
Here’s the circus. Marc has the only worthwhile link and quote in the whole lineup. The rest must be some sort of a joke.
http://www.osm.org/site/articles/11212005prewarintelcarnival/
November 21st, 2005 at 9:50 am
rlc: you’re absolutely right…it wouldn’t have sold.
November 21st, 2005 at 10:38 am
Actually there’s a very good contribution by Max Sawicky just below Marc’s in the roundup…I started reading a couple of the arguments on the other side and realized that if I wanted the “serious” other side of this issue, it was pointless to pursue the musings of bloggers who believe in things like “the nuclear device in the rose garden” as blostering the administration’s case for war. We get the “other side” every day and have for years from official sources. I’m hard pressed to figure out what sifting through this “Carnival” (I thought the original name “Blogjam” was more apropos) is going to add to my data/analysis bank that I haven’t already heard from BushCo and the stalwarts at The Weekly Standard. If the OSM guys want to add something fresh to the blogosphere, the debate Marc referred to where he got to engage Michael Ledeen would be more useful AND entertaining than a “Carnival” that doesn’t even rise to the level of a good Sideshow. I think this is going to be my last “critique” of Open PJs (TMavis) – they’ve got money for their own market research and plenty of Deep Thinkers to hatch Great Ideas. When I compare this effort with the last big hype to hit the blogosphere, The Huffington Post, Arianna wins hands down because she’s able to back up her grandiosity with flamboyance.
November 21st, 2005 at 11:02 am
Reg.. OSM has a long way to go or nowhere to go.. Meanwhile, Ive appended the link to the Cooper/Ledeen mini debate up at the top of the blog.. or right here
http://pajamasmedia.com/blogjam/archives/2005/10/blog_panel_test_2.php
November 21st, 2005 at 11:04 am
What is interesting is it’s getting more and more difficult for liberals like Cooper to paint those who want immediate withdrawl and real reparations as Kim Sung Il lovers…
November 21st, 2005 at 11:16 am
> If it would have had that effect, then WHY DIDN’T IT, when U.N. inspectors were in Iraq
> during the mid-90s?
It did, actually. Read Ken Pollack’s history of the containment/inspection policy throughout the 90s. The containment policy indirectly led to numerous coups, assasination attempts, and general unrest. A *Sunni* tribe revolted against Saddam in ’93. The inspection regimen led *directly* to more destablization: the defection of Hussein Kamel and his revelation to inspectors that Saddam had not in fact ended his nuke program was a serious blow to his regime as world attention and resolve refocused on him. Desert Fox in ’98, a response to Saddam’s continued flouting of inspections, did indeed lead to Shi’ite resistance, with Ayatolloah Sadr calling for defiance in his mosque, “and his sermons attracted tens of thousands of disaffected Shi’ah. In February, Saddam had al-Sadr and his two sons killed… This sparked rioting in a number of Iraqi cities– including the Shi’ite ghettoes of Baghdad– that Saddam was forced to put down with Republican Guard and SRG units. The Shi’ite insurgency flared again in southern Iraq, and for a time it became dangerous for regime officials to travel in rural areas of the south.” (p.93)
So yes, renewed inspections always threatened to cause renewed instability, or outright collapse and civil war. The nightmare scenario is what would have happened if an uprising or a coup attempt was *successful*. If one of these assasination attempts did take out Saddam, for example, you’d have various factions in the Baathist army warring against each other for power, warring against Shi’ites from the South and the *peshmerga*, waves of chaos and bloodshed that we’d be helpless to prevent or contain.
*This* is supposed to be the better alternative then invasion on our terms?
November 21st, 2005 at 11:17 am
Jimmi Fox.. u are free to argue any idea that you like. If however you think Im running a blog to provide you a platform to attack me personally, then you are welcome to piss off. Before I click u off.
If u had minimal skills you might check out my 30 year publci record and see if you think Im really a liberal. Im sure that notion fits your primitive view of things and you are welcome to think it for the rest of your life.
But either argue some serious politics or pack up and go away.
How anyone can read my posts on Iraq and think I dont have a position shows u just how far your head is buried in your own dogma. Take a deep breath and see if u have some capacity other than trying to brand me as enemy of the people. It gets boring, kid.
November 21st, 2005 at 11:44 am
Christ, Marc that thing with Ledeen was interesting but surreal. His off-hand comments attempting to glibly seperate himself from the Iraq disaster ( to the effect of “I had doubts from the start. I wanted to foment revolution in Iran first, then do something political to overthrow Saddam…blah, blah.”) is proof enough for me of what utter crackpots the neo-cons tend to be. And where did that ditz LaShawn Barber come from ? I probably shouldn’t say this, but I couldn’t help but think that she was so out of her depth her participation gave more than ample credence to Shelby Steele’s worst nightmares…ironic, of course, but the conservative crowd tends to be fountain of ironies.
November 21st, 2005 at 11:45 am
Interesting discussion between Marc and Michael Ledeen, especially all the agreeableness. Btw, who thought it would be a good idea to invite La Shawn Barber?
November 21st, 2005 at 11:58 am
Well Marc, you’re the one who attacked people on this blog as nuts if they supported immediate withdrawl. Maybe you don’t like to be reminded of it, but liberals are like that, very sensitive when reminded of their opportunitstic attacks on left critics of war that they don’t like.
And you are wrong that everyone basically believed that Sodom Whosane had wmds or was about to develop them, etc. Glenn Rangwala’s website alone proves that wrong.
November 21st, 2005 at 1:00 pm
(This blog was cited on jameswolcott.com.)
http://tbogg.blogspot.com/2005/11/can-i-borrow-number-2-pencil-i-really.html
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Can I borrow a number 2 pencil?
I really hope that Open Sores Media, LLC M-O-U-S-Eâ„¢ doesn’t blow through their seed money too fast because this is going to be fun. Case in point: BLOGJAM!
Apparently Blogjam is a real-time comments forum where invited OSM bloggers haggle over the stories of the day and we get to see those who can think on their feet (or, more accurately, on their tushes) and those who are woefully unprepared but show up anyway. In this Blogjam, the first posed question is:
Should Rove be indicted?
Is the increasing criminalization of party politics in Washington, D.C. a growing problem? And what is the Plame Affair really about anyway?
We’ll disregard the general stupidity of the question and move on to our first contestant, LaShawn Barber, someone I have always avoided posting about because, well, even I’m not that cruel.
November 21st, 2005 at 1:15 pm
“All of the niceties about Iraqi liberation and the establishment of a new democracy came long after the fact—after it was revealed there were no nukes, no WMD.”
This statement doesn’t square with the facts: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021002-2.html
“Whereas the Iraq Liberation Act (Public Law 105-338) expressed the sense of Congress that it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove from power the current Iraqi regime and promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime; ”
“Whereas it is in the national security of the United States to restore international peace and security to the Persian Gulf region; “
November 21st, 2005 at 1:34 pm
I went and read the exchange with Ledeen as well, and I agree, the civility is very nice. I’ve tried to read KOS a few times…it’s just a cess pool. So refreshing to see people talk politely and respectful ly about ideas. Let’s see some more of that!
November 21st, 2005 at 1:58 pm
Jimmi Fox, care to back up your assertion that Marc “paint[ed] those who want immediate withdrawl and real reparations as Kim Sung Il lovers”
November 21st, 2005 at 2:00 pm
What doesn’t square with the facts is the suggestion that the Bush administration attempted to generate public support for their invasion agenda on any basis other than the allegation that Iraq was a clear and present danger to our national security. All last-gasp assertion to the contrary – despite the repetition – is ludicrous…it was the speculative pre-emption argument (“mushroom clouds” on the horizon tied to bogus intimations of a Saddam-bin Laden alliance) not “nation-building”, that drove the pro-war propaganda.
November 21st, 2005 at 2:32 pm
More blather from Cheney. We’d be turning over Iraq to Zarqawi, bin Laden and Zarwarahri he says. That would be the either or fallacy yet again.
November 21st, 2005 at 2:47 pm
“Jimmi Fox, care to back up your assertion that Marc “paint[ed] those who want immediate withdrawl and real reparations as Kim Sung Il loversâ€
I seem to recall Marc saying some pretty nasty and slanderous nonsense about a number of people who support the call for immediate withdrawl. Jimmi Fox is right and a lot more right than Marc was on the WMDs marketing campaign back when.
November 21st, 2005 at 2:53 pm
Reg, I guess the vast Right Wing conspiracy includes Bill, Al, Hillary and all the rest of these distinguished people on the left side of the aisle: http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies.”
Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL,) and others, Dec, 5, 2001.
“I am absolutely convinced that there are weapons…I saw evidence back in 1998 when we would see the inspectors being barred from gaining entry into a warehouse for three hours with trucks rolling up and then moving those trucks out.” — Clinton’s Secretary of Defense William Cohen in April of 2003
What did Bush say about mushroom clouds? “Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. As President Kennedy said in October of 1962, “Neither the United States of America, nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small. We no longer live in a world,” he said, “where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nations security to constitute maximum peril.”
November 21st, 2005 at 3:20 pm
From Bush speech October 7, 2002: If military action is necessary, the United States and our allies will help the Iraqi people rebuild their economy, and create the institutions of liberty in a unified Iraq at peace with its neighbors.
“In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security.” — Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002, linking Saddam & al Qaeda
“The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow.” — Bill Clinton in 1998
November 21st, 2005 at 3:40 pm
Give it up…it won’t fly.
November 21st, 2005 at 3:55 pm
I asked about WJA’s theory that expanded inspections would cause Iraqi Shi’ite rebellion
> If it would have had that effect, then WHY DIDN’T IT, when U.N. inspectors were in Iraq
> during the mid-90s?
WJA replies:
“It did, actually. Read Ken Pollack’s history of the containment/inspection policy throughout the 90s. The containment policy indirectly led to numerous coups, assasination attempts, and general unrest.”
I wasn’t asking about the containment policy. I was asking about inspections. Inspections could actually have been conducted even in the absence of sanctions. What is it about *inspections* that is supposed to fire Iraqis up?
“A *Sunni* tribe revolted against Saddam in ‘93.”
No doubt, but what did inspections have to do with that? Establish causality.
“The inspection regimen led *directly* to more destablization: the defection of Hussein Kamel and his revelation to inspectors that Saddam had not in fact ended his nuke program was a serious blow to his regime as world attention and resolve refocused on him.”
Yes, but where are your Shi’ite revolts as a result of inspections per se? Establish causality.
“Desert Fox in ‘98, a response to Saddam’s continued flouting of inspections, did indeed lead to Shi’ite resistance, with Ayatolloah Sadr calling for defiance in his mosque …”
Somehow, the terms of the debate have shifted — I asked how inspections caused Shi’ite revolts, and WJA is telling me that American bombing can cause Shi’ite revolts by making Iraqis think that Saddam was internally weak just because external enemies could attack Iraq with impunity. Yes, how STUPID of me to not realize that American bombing can trigger Shi’ite revolts. Thank you, WJA! Now, can we get back to the actual question?
November 21st, 2005 at 3:56 pm
It’s so ludicrious to watch the same partisans who yelled and screamed that Clinton wasn’t man enough to do the job hiding behind his admission that Saddam Hussain was a “threat.” What you saw as lack of machismo looks now like proper caution. We can agree that everybody thought Saddam was worth keeping a sharp eye on, only this president thought we should start a gunfight.
What a pathetic line of attack for hawks. Rather than giving any reason why the war is worth fighting it just suggests that our current leader isn’t the only fool, just the biggest one.
November 21st, 2005 at 3:56 pm
Actually, Clark is right, the Clintons lied about the Iraqi ‘threat’ as much as Bush. And enforced a hideous sanctions policy that was unpopular with the Iraqis and contributed to mass death. Kerry participated in the fake claims about Iraq also…
November 21st, 2005 at 3:57 pm
It would also be interesting for you to respond to my point about what drove the argument for speculative pre-emption, rather than cut and past centrist-Dem boilerplate. I don’t give a goddam what Hillar Clinton said in order to rationalize her vote for Bush’s war resolution….she’s part of the problem.
November 21st, 2005 at 4:20 pm
I wish some commentator would call the administration’s current rationale for remaining in Iraq correctly: a variation on the defense offered by the child who murdered his parents: “have mercy on an orphan.”
Our incursion into Iraq either created or ripped the cover off internecine disputes in the externally-created nation of Iraq. We removed the grim pillar of stability, Saddam Hussein. All hell broke loose. Radical Islamists rallied from thruout the middle east and in fact the world to come to Iraq to fight the infidel, the Crusader. There were few terrorists, and no active ones, in Iraq before we arrived. Now they are everywhere, esp. in the north-central provinces.
So, as the President says, if we cut and run now, the terrorists [whom we brought in with us like park bears chasing picinic baskets] win.
As with the orphan, it won’t be easy, but we have to do what we have to do.
November 21st, 2005 at 5:38 pm
About those Kim-il-Sung lovers: The post by Jimmi Fox and his pal Frank clearly reveal the utter bankruptcy of the extreme left fringe. These posters clearly think it is injurious to associate anti-war with protestors with Kim Il Sung. I totallyand aboslutely agree. It is indeed an outrage.
That’s why I have “attacked” not anti-war protestors, but rather the cult-like group known as ANSWER who along with their mother political party, openly celebrate Kim (as well as Saddam in the past). This grouplet has weasled itself into being able to lead the biggest of the anti-war demos. And I have argued, forcefully, that the 99.9% of the rest of the peace demonstrators should drive these Stalinoids out on a rail. They do NOT represent the views of the anti-war movement, and their narrow, sectarian and dogmatic politics are a liability for the movement and have served to limit its influence.
If Jimmi Fox had any political consistency, he would join me in this demand. We both agree that the protestors are not Kim Il Sung lovers- s0 why let the Kim lovers speak on their behalf? Banish them, I say. Drive them into a hole where they belong instead of pandering and kowtowing to them in the name of “unity.” I cant tell you how many people I personally know who oppose the war but tell em they dont go to the protests because they are “embarrassed” by the nutballs running the show. A-fucking-men.
Instead, lil Jimmi would rather throw bricks at me and feels he is goring me by calling me a “liberal.” That’s something that few others would call me. But OK, I dont give a damn. If that makes him feel like a big macho radical revolurionary, who gives a wank?
What does interest me, however, is that Fox saus he wants to end the war, but believes “liberals” are his enemy on this… rather than being a key constituency with whom, if nothing else for practical reasons, he would have to find some accomodation with. But no. If someone with my politics isnt fit to be part of his “movement,” who does he think his constituency is? The reads of Z and Monthly Review magazine?
His responses are a great insight into the self-enforced isolation of the Bunkered Left. They like the bunker…nay.. they LOVE it. It’s snug and comfy and far from the responsibilities of real-life politics.
November 21st, 2005 at 5:49 pm
The problem has always been if you toss out sunni leadership and replace it Shiites this turmoil is the predicted result. It will continue.
November 21st, 2005 at 5:54 pm
The snopes thing again?
“All of the quotes listed above are substantially correct reproductions of statements made by various Democratic leaders regarding Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s acquisition or possession of weapons of mass destruction. However, some of the quotes are truncated, and context is provided for none of them — several of these quotes were offered in the course of statements that clearly indicated the speaker was decidedly against unilateral military intervention in Iraq by the U.S. Moreover, several of the quotes offered antedate the four nights of airstrikes unleashed against Iraq by U.S. and British forces during Operation Desert Fox in December 1998, after which Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen and Gen. Henry H. Shelton (chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) announced the action had been successful in “degrad[ing] Saddam Hussein’s ability to deliver chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.”
November 21st, 2005 at 7:00 pm
K-rist…I didn’t bother to click that guy’s link on until I read Mark’s last post. The link actually debunks the idea that these statements by Democrats were offered as rationales for the 2003 invasion and shows how most are out of context, at best, or so dated as to be irrelevant. Bizarre…
November 21st, 2005 at 8:05 pm
Yes it does, but it goes to show you how deranged these supporters are. It’s no wonder they don’t get the war debate or even understand the basics of critical reasoning. Out of context is the key for everything they do and say. It’s the propagandsit’s staple.
November 21st, 2005 at 9:12 pm
“His responses are a great insight into the self-enforced isolation of the Bunkered Left. They like the bunker…nay.. they LOVE it. It’s snug and comfy and far from the responsibilities of real-life politics.”
Far from it in my estimation, the nation has moved far closer to my position of immediate withdrawl than it has toward your position of sending more troops. ANSWER has nothing to do with this, you’ll even attack critics of ANSWER like Perrin whose politics you don’t share. Everyone who disagrees with you is a big fan of ANSWER in your book, a thoroughly inaccurate presumption and the sad thing is you know it to be inacurrate.
November 21st, 2005 at 9:48 pm
OK Jimmi.. you said it all. You have no answer to what I said. Frankly, I didnt expect one. So damn predictable. Why dont u stand up like a man and fight for your ideas instead of simply lashing out with wild charges? You can say a lot of things about me and this blog but not that we dont permit disagreement. Why dont u provide some evidence for the charge u make against me? Find ONE sentence Ive written comparing peace protestors to Kim Il Sung lovers. How about if I offer you $10,000 to provide it.
Meanwhile, dont you think the peace movement deserves better leadership than ANSWER– a gruop whose leaders go to Pyongyang to kiss the fannies of the North Koreans? Are u willing to do anything about changing that leadership? Dont u think liberals need to be folded into the peace movement? Only people who sign an “out Now” pledge are admitted? What do you do about people who are conflicted? About those who oppose the war but are fearful that a wthdrawal would restore the Baathists or the fundamentalists? Or both? Are u for ending the war or for political purity? Do u ever think anout these things? Do u have any political arguments that transcend bumper=sticker slogans???Take ur time. These are what they call thought questions on a test. Some of them might be hard.
By the way.. where did I endorse sending more troops? I have raised that as something that might have been done at one point or another… but notice, I raised it for debate. I’ve never had that position. Sorry. I am on the record opposing this war from the first day. Nice try.
November 21st, 2005 at 10:16 pm
Michael Crosby writes: “… if we cut and run now, the terrorists [whom we brought in with us like park bears chasing picinic baskets] win.”
I guess it depends on how you define victory. They can’t win militarily — their numbers are simply too small. What terrorism can do is exemplified neatly by the recent discovery that the Badr Corps was running torture chambers in an Interior Ministry building: in their understandable desire for stability, Iraqis may end up grudgingly accepting a return to tyranny, just a tyranny under the militias of a balkanized Iraq rather than under the unifying, heavy hand of some Saddam successor. Meet the new bosses, not too different from the old bosses. It’s really just a question of what those new bosses can deliver. If that’s the “freedom” to go to the mosque without fear of being blown up by some fanatic Sunni, the “freedom” to put milk in their refrigerators without worrying that another power outage will leave it sour by morning, the “freedom” of a woman to walk the streets at night (veiled, if necessary) unmolested … well … that’s as much “freedom” as they’ve ever known, it was the “freedom” they had under Saddam, and that may be as much “freedom” as they can believe in, at this point.
Police states seldom have a terror problem, because they are, if nothing else, very efficiently policed — at a certain cost. Right now, someone sabotaging electricity production or oil pipelines, is faced with the risk of capture and something like POW treatment, or at worst glorious death in battle. But what if would-be saboteurs were routinely faced with the prospect of not only being tortured, but of having family members rounded up and tortured? Saddam understood very well how torture-chamber “terrorism” works. And it does “work”. If the terrorists are “defeated” in Iraq by police-state means, they and their sympathizers can retreat and call it a moral victory. And in the classic calculus of terrorism, they would be right, in their own terms. Terrorism is always a political act, pursued with the strategic goal of using evil to provoke a naked display of the (supposedly) even greater evil of the state the perpetrators wish to destabilize.
I get tired of this “democracy versus terrorism” false dichotomy. Actually, a more open society is a society that’s also more vulnerable to terror attacks, particularly suicide bombing. The real question is this: do Iraqis want that trade-off? Especially when it may mean they have to manage the trade-off for a decade or more as they trudge toward the open society goal? A goal that may not seem very alluring, when you review the time-honored comparison of democratic legislative processes with the production of sausages?
Thanks to both the Ba’athist insurgents and Zarqawi’s anti-Shi’ite terrorism, Iraqis have seen few, if any, of the benefits of an open society so far — except, to a great extent, in the Kurdish north. The relative openness of Kurdistan was made possible by a long (if sporadically interrupted) period of relative autonomy, one that owes much to a trade-off that Saddam chose long before we invaded. The Kurds got regional autonomy to the extent that they avoided destabilizing Saddam elsewhere — even when that meant use of deadly force against each other to help maintain the status quo. Certainly, they got no end of grief at all other times. If anything, U.S. “regime change” initiatives, to the extent that they provoked Saddam’s backlashes, only prolonged the process.
Small wonder that, in the run-up to the invasion, polling of Kurds showed they weren’t terribly happy about the prospect. It actually did threaten the gains they’d eked out for over a decade. For a while, it looked like they were better off. Then Mosul went to hell in a handbasket. Thank Saddam for that, I guess — his Arabizations and force resettlement programs laid a potential ethnic-cleansing moral minefield, and probably intentionally — what a great deterrent to any would-be invader! If Kurdistan was fated to be a new middle east U.S. client state paralleling Israel, he made sure it would also have the “moral equivalent of Palestinians.”
What a piece of work is Saddam. He may be behind bars now, but we’re still wading around in the muck of the Iraq he invented. And because we have at least some nominal respect for human rights, we’re wading in that muck barefoot, toes exposed to whatever squishy, spiny, septic stuff may be down there. If this war gets too unpopular, the job of draining the swamp may get left to Iraqis who wear jackboots under their waders. That was always a risk in this adventure. And not the least among the reasons why I opposed the invasion.
November 21st, 2005 at 10:21 pm
Where did I say I was a big fan of ANSWER, be serious already.
Who said anything about not letting liberals in the movement. But the idea that we have to declare ourselves open to more troops in Iraq, agreeing with the main ideologies behind the war, etc. is of no help to organizing an opposition movement to the war.
What frustrates you isn’t that I am some ANSWER fan, it’s that I have a politics that is not calling for people to be big ANSWER fans and I disagree with you. Anytime someone on the left disagrees with you you accuse them of being an ANSWER fan. What if I agree with someone like Perrin and disagree with you, where is the ANSWER issue in that, I dont’ get it frankly.
The Kim Il Sung remark was hyperbole, gee didn’t know it wasn’t allowed. How about you’ve called them some pretty nasty things and spoken unkindly of their motivations?
November 21st, 2005 at 10:21 pm
uh oh, i’ve spoken dangerous words.
November 21st, 2005 at 10:58 pm
Jimmi… Ive seen “dangerous” in my life. Dont’ flatter urself. Ur dangerous only the way something like dramamine is when operating heavy machnery. Nor do u frustrate me– again dont flatter ur self. I deserve much better antagonists!
November 22nd, 2005 at 5:45 am
“I can’t believe that people think democracy can be brought to a country that is forced to orient its economic development to the demands of the US and the IMF. Gives whole new meaning to democracy!”
Interesting Jimmi. “Forced to orient”; the big bully US. “Its economic development”; capitalism….eeegads. “Demands of the US…”; the imperialist. “….and the IMF”; the international arm of the bully’s sinister imperialistic plan to bring more capitalism to other countries under the guise of ‘democracy’.
Remember I told you, “No fighting and remember to take out the garbage.” I see you have been fighting, and you also left the garbage in Jimmi. You need some damn good ol’ fashion corporal punishment.
If you aren’t a member of ANSWER already, you’ve missed your calling. They’re looking for a few good comrades.
November 22nd, 2005 at 12:01 pm
Jim Russell, you mean you think it’s a good thing that the IMF can dictate the extent Iraq shall privatize in return for its ‘help’? I guess you’re right, that is the basis of sound democratic development. I see what you mean now.
I don’t see why it’s such a big deal to believe Fox isn’t an ANSWER fan. There are plenty of people out there who support immediate withdrawl and disagree with Cooper and you who are not ANSWER fans. You’re part of an increasingly smaller minority that wants more troops and war Mr. Russell, enjoy being part of that very small group, as out of touch with the rest of America as you will be in maintaining that position.
November 22nd, 2005 at 4:06 pm
LOL, spoken like a TRUE Lib!! I see NO FACTS, none, just spinning, dodging and weaving! Typical!
Facts:
1) Saddam had, used, and could reproduce WMD-that would be the Butler, Duefler(SP?), Kay reports, just to name a few!
2)Saddam’s regime had many contacts with Al Quada! (9-11 commission and SIC-just to name a couple)
3) WMD have been found in Iraq!! Large Stockpiles, NO!
Your Bloviating is just that BLOVIATING!! Get back to us when ya Got some FACTS!!
I won’t hold my Breathe!
All You got is NOISE!! Same Ole, Same Ole!
November 22nd, 2005 at 5:47 pm
None of these facts are true.
November 22nd, 2005 at 6:55 pm
Mark York , who says facts have to be used to justify wars after all?. At least not for Mike and other relativists.
November 23rd, 2005 at 4:49 am
Talk’s Cheap, Mark & Jimmi, REBUTTAL??
LOL, Didn’t think so!!
As stated before, Just NOISE!! The DIMS are good at this!!
November 23rd, 2005 at 10:15 am
Just out and out of context lies. Read the reports and quote them then it will be easy to debunk what you say. Saddam used them in 1987 when Reagan was president for starters. Where’s the proof since then?
You get the idea.
November 27th, 2005 at 5:46 pm
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December 5th, 2006 at 7:03 pm
ahhh no. im not sure, but its much much worse wiyhout saddam in Iraq now. his groups are aall over the place. and even more and millions are dieing.
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