{"id":1034,"date":"2006-03-15T01:38:16","date_gmt":"2006-03-15T01:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:09:39","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:09:39","slug":"jerryjeff_wasnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1034","title":{"rendered":"Jerry-Jeff Wasn’t Doing No Research Project…"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the comments to my post below<\/a>, commenter Davebo raised the issue of the conscious decision by the Administration not to bomb a terrorist camp strongly believed to house al-Zarqawi.<\/p>\n

The camp was in the North of Iraq \u2013 in the area under the no-fly zone, and only loosely under Saddam\u2019s control.<\/p>\n

Davebo characterized the decision as an effort to use al-Zarqawi\u2019s presence as a rationale for the war. Administration figures characterized it differently<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Another factor, though, was fear that a strike on the camp could stir up opposition while the administration was trying to build an international coalition to launch an invasion of Iraq. Lawrence Di Rita, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said in an interview that the reasons for not striking included “the president’s decision to engage the international community on Iraq.” Mr. Di Rita said the camp was of interest only because it was believed to be producing chemical weapons. He also cited several potential logistical problems in planning a strike, such as getting enough ground troops into the area, and the camp’s large size.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It sounds like they were talking a ground assault, which would have been a meaningful escalation from the air strikes and cruise missile attacks we\u2019d employed in Iraq up until then.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s do something interesting here. Let me put out a call to everyone to pull together links to the best available information about this decision, and the background to it.Before we debate policy, let\u2019s make a good-faith effort to assemble what facts we can. I\u2019m particularly interested in two things \u2013 the nature of the proposed assault and reason it wasn\u2019t approved; and why Zarqawi felt it was a good idea to be in Kurdistan in 2002.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to impose a rule for the next day or so; don\u2019t post a comment here without a link to an outside source on these issues. Once we\u2019ve got a body of links, I\u2019ll put them up in one post, and we\u2019ll discuss the issue in our freewheeling style there. Again, don\u2019t comment unless you\u2019ve got a link to an outside source with information on this<\/b>. I\u2019ll delete all other comments for now.<\/p>\n

*Post title is from a version of Mr. Bojangles – I forget the artist<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the comments to my post below, commenter Davebo raised the issue of the conscious decision by the Administration not to bomb a terrorist camp strongly believed to house al-Zarqawi. The camp was in the North of Iraq \u2013 in the area under the no-fly zone, and only loosely under Saddam\u2019s control. Davebo characterized the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}