Josh Marshall has posted the rough draft of what he hopes will be the definitive Wilson scandal timeline. He’s asking for emendations and suggestions, and on reading it, one immediately comes to mind.
He says:
February 26, 2002:
# Wilson arrives in Niger. After meeting with the former Nigerian Prime Minister, the former Minister of Mines and Energy, and other business contacts, Wilson concludes that “it was highly unlikely that anything was going on.”
Hmmm. Let’s go to the record.
From Page 43 of the Senate report (pdf):
The intelligence report indicated that former Nigerian President Ibrahaim Mayaki was unaware of any contracts that had been signed between Niger and any rogue states for the sale of yellowcake while he was Prime Minister (1997 – 1999) or Foreign Minister (1996 – 1997). Mayaki said that if there had been any such contract during his tenure, he would have been aware of it. Mayaki said, however, that in June 1999, [redacted] businessman, approached him and insisted that Mayaki meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss “expanding commercial relations between Niger and Iraq. The intelligence report said that Mayaki interpreted “expanding commercial relations” to mean that the delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales. The intelligence report also said that “although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to the UN sanctions on Iraq.”
So Josh – how about amending the report to read that “Amb. Wilson was personally told that Iraqi agents were seeking uranium ore, but discounted the importance of the information” – ??
Let’s consider this a test; I’ve respected Josh as a good journalist who happens to be a passionate partisan. One side or the other will win out. I’ll email him and we’ll see.
For the record, my own view on the Fitzpatrick investigation was blogged here awhile ago:
I’ve stayed out of the swamp that is the Rove/Wilson/Plame game for the same reason I stay out of it when TG gets one of her speeding tickets, and is outraged, yes outraged that she has to go to court.
Yes, I know everyone does it, but that’s not going to do you much good in front of the judge when you’re explaining why the officer wrote you for 58 in a 40.
So yes, I know everyone talks to the press, and typically violates all kinds of policies up to and including secrecy, but there’s no way it doesn’t – at minimum – look bad when you’re the one caught doing it.
bq. Let’s consider this a test; I’ve respected Josh as a good journalist who happens to be a passionate partisan. One side or the other will win out. I’ll email him and we’ll see.
Is this really the game you want to play, AL? Define things your way or get labeled as someone whose political instincts override his respect for the truth… in other words, as a hack?
Well, heck, two can play at this game. Here’s a recent link by Kevin Drum about Cheney’s opposition to the McCain Amendment. To date, the only post I’m aware of that you’ve really made on the torture issue is this one, where you essentially said “well, we make mistakes, but we’re better than the people we’re fighting, and we do our best to be self-correcting.”
It’s true we’re better than the guys we’re fighting. But, as Kevin shows, what Cheney’s arguing for clearly crosses the line between “regrettable mistake” and “delibrerate policy”, and he’s clearly not interested in self-correction.
So let’s consider this a test, AL. I’ve respected you as a thoughtful liberal with an independent streak, who happens to be fixated on the importance of the Iraq war to the exclusion of almost every other value he professes to hold. One side or another will win out.
Which is it gonna be?
AL,
Go read “the Left Coaster on this”:http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/005856.php. Start there with “the definitive analysis of the whole uranium saga”:http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/005211.php
So instead of giving other people homework, do your own. Debunk ALL of eriposte’s analysis – not just one or two cherry-picked points – and then I’ll take you seriously.
To recap.
Cherry-picked and stovepiped intelligence.
Going to war, even though no WMD’s found by Hans Blix, and a massive attempt to discredit him.
The attempt to smear Joe Wilson, and silence by releasing the name of Valerie Plame.
The continuing discrediting of both of them (smear and discredit is a common them here).
The indictment of Libby establishes the pattern.
That’s the scoop.
Wow AL. You really stirred the pot on this post.
Given the two posts above, I think the safe answer to your question is “no”
When this happened, I was outraged. How could someone deliberately out a CIA agent just for petty politics? They should be brought up on treason!
Well, it’s two years later, and there’s no “there” there. No agent, no outing, no story except for some administration official who played CYA with a grand jury (let him pay accordingly). It’s interesting that JC (#2) wants to tell the entire story of the Iraq war. So many times, when you poke around this Wilson issue, you get a dime-store novella in return. People want to construct all sorts of timelines, plot complications, secret agents — geesh. Did she fit the category of a secret agent at the time she was outed? No. Is there evidence they outed themselves? Yes. Do you want the CIA management making political decisions and then hiding behind “But I’m a secret agent!” Absolutely not. End of story.
Forget about the war, the uranium, the rest of the saga. Focus on the issue. Even if Cheney sat down and said “Let’s tell the folks that his wife was CIA” would that be a crime? Not that I can see. But I’m sure I’ll be invited to do some homework. Give me the links, and I’ll gladly read them. So far, I seem fairly incorrigible on the issue.
Since Joseph Wilson is the new paragon of credibility for the Vapid Left Wing Conspiracy (replacing Michael Schiavo), let’s review the great man’s previous pronouncements on weapons in Iraq. Everybody take off your hat if you’re wearing one.
“NOW with Bill Moyers, 2/28/03:”:http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_wilson.html
This would have been a great opportunity for Wilson to say, “By the way, all this stuff about WMDs in Iraq is a lie,” but for some reason he passed it up.
Now this was after Wilson spent a week in Nigeria drinking sweet tea and waiting for people to return his phone calls. During which time he either did or didn’t see a report (which either was or wasn’t a forgery) which either did or didn’t describe an Iraqi attempt to score some yellowcake, which he later either did or didn’t lie about. Depending on the current quantum state of Wilson revisionism.
Regardless of what did or didn’t happen in Nigeria, Wilson seemed to have no factual differences with Bush on the eve of the war. Instead he had lots of policy differences – but Wilson’s policy differences are irrelevant, as Bush is the POTUS and Wilson is a former ambassador to Gabon.
Wilson is a demonstrable liar. Can we start there?
JC –
Just scanned the Left Coaster series, and the interesting post is “this one”:http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/004982.php#2A
The argument he makes is a bit convoluted, so let me walk through it for a bit & I’ll respond.
A.L.
Weak.
Wilson himself is the source of that information.
In any case, Iraq had no ongoing nuclear program.
End of story.
“In any case, Iraq had no ongoing nuclear program.”
Your honor, given the highly unusual extenuating circumstances in this case I’d like to point out to the jury that the actual facts of this case are totally irrelevent.
BTW, Marshall’s timeline is missing the Moyers interview, in which Wilson sang quite a different tune than he did in The Nation only three earlier, when he shrieked: “The underlying objective of this war is the imposition of a Pax Americana on the region and installation of vassal regimes that will control restive populations …”, as Marshall quotes.
Not to suggest that Wilson puts on a different head depending on which rabble he’s rousing, but:
– The stuff about vassal regimes and restive populations is pure amphetamine to the “hard” (so they like to think) Left of The Nation. It’s also completely ridiculous, but that makes it even better.
– On the Moyers show, with its audience of liberals and lukewarm types, he puts on the face of a sober foreign service professional expressing modest concerns – a loyal critic of the administration.
– Five months later he’s in The New York Times, leading right off with the classic pick-up line: “Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?” Cover-up groupies now follow him wherever he goes.
– Marketing surveys must have concluded that Wilson’s main audience was now the sanctimonious middle-brow left – somewhere below The New Republic but above Mother Jones. How else could someone publish a book entitled THE POLITICS OF TRUTH: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed my Wife’s CIA Identity with a straight face?
In fact, Wilson has all the familiar pantomimes for sale. In The Nation article he wrote:
Wilson should have saved that bulging-eyed crap and published it in The American Conservative. It’s paleoconservative crap, Pat Buchanan stuff. All of Wilson’s defenders are welcome to jump right into that mess and wallow all they want, because decent folk want no part of it.
With the usual paleocon combination of cunning and dishonesty, Wilson never uses the word “Israel” in that article. I guess he thought “neoconservative” (aka Jew, Jew, Jew) sufficed.
I liked this:
Zakaria has a good column about the torture administration. Near the end he writes:
America washes its dirty linen in public. When scandals such as this one hit, they do sully America’s image in the world. But what usually also gets broadcast around the world is the vivid reality that the United States forces accountability and punishes wrongdoing, even at the highest levels.
This is exactly right. If instead of blaming the media for bringing attention to the issues or pretending torture didn’t happen even as they were justifying and advocating torture there had been some accountability for the people involved the message sent to the world would’ve been very different. And, yes, I’m realistic and I know that true accountability – the resignations of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney – wasn’t going to happen. But, imagine if Rumsfeld had resigned over this. Message sent: America good, torture bad.
But, instead we’re treated to the spectacle of Big Time running around all the congressional offices begging his minions to let him keep putting the testicle clamps on. Nice.
IOKIYAR
Bringing trust and responsibilty back to the White House and all that.
PS IMHO- people who commit treason should be shot, and Libby commited treason. You can confuse the issue all you want, but he deserves to be put against a wall.
people who commit treason should be shot …
This is why some people should just leave patriotism alone, in the same way that some people should leave bourbon alone. If you can’t enjoy it in moderation …
I could give a rat’s ass what Wilson said and when he said it.
Unless he is being prosecuted for perjury, or treason, at the moment, there is as of yet no reason to think that he didn’t tell the truth when it mattered in the investigation. And if not, we’ll find out more if Fitzy’s investigation continues to expand.
But, BUT, what our leaders said, and when and how THEY said it, is of high relevance to the Plame affair, and larger Iraqi war PR campaign, and to the way we conduct ourselves in a Democracy.
This cannot be trivialized by trying to scapegoat or shift the attention to Wilson. So save your (apparenty precious) brain power and spare us the foolishness and ham-handed attempts at partisan propoganda.
Bush Lied and People Died. It’s beginning to really resonate, isn’t it?
(Another question of far less importance but of some “local” interest is: Why do you warmongers continue to cling so tightly to the shroud that was thrown over the truth in order to sell this ugly counter-productive war? Reminds me of the typical response of a 3 year-old when someone tries to take their “blankie” away…waaaah!)
Wilson is a very weak reed to base a case on.
He was sent to Niger in 1999 as a contractor also, again by his wife, to do some undisclosed activity unrelated to Iraq. This shortly after a coup that resulted in the assassination of the former President by the Coup leader, in a sensitive African Nation whose only significant product is uranium. Considering Wilson’s ties to a known Al Qaeda banker, ties to Libya (and perhaps the Libyan nuclear program), his work for Middle East Institute (100% Saudi owned), and unexplained high income (just WHAT does JC Wilson Enterprises DO?) there are serious questions not just about nepotism but about how Wilson is able to afford by all accounts a lavish lifestyle.
The definitive answer on the question of WMDs (forbidden missile programs, chemical, and biological as well as nuclear) comes from Colin Powell’s COS Larry Wilkerson who charged both that a “secret cabal” of the Vice President and Defense Secretary made policy (instead of anonymous bureaucrats) and that he himself saw all the satellite imagery showing Saddam’s men swarming over inspection sites and carrying off everything including the bare earth. Wilkerson says the ONLY thing INR dissented on was the nuclear program, they at State agreed that Saddam had active chemical and biological weapons programs (this assessment based on the strength of the satellite imagery).
Given that Saddam spent the years 1975-1991 in a sustained and varying effort to acquire nuclear weapons, ranging from the Osirak reactor to covert uranium refinement using the centrifuges (primitive during Oppenheimer’s day) it is not surprising to find most Western intelligence agencies thought he still had an active program. Given the complete lack of anyone inside his inner circle, all you could do was guess based on his past actions.
On a broader level, Wilson’s wife was known to be CIA and the person who sent him on what seems to be nepotistic boondoggles on the face of things to many people before Novak’s column. A US Army General who shared a talk-show green room with Wilson says Wilson bragged about his wife before the Novak column, Wilson has threatened to sue but so far has not done so. Others have said they knew, including Andrea Mitchell who apparently socialized with the Wilsons (active on the party circuit in DC).
Max if you think Libby is a traitor then you must also accept a special prosecutor looking into the leaks about the secret CIA airlines and prisons around the world, including serious jail time or execution for whatever CIA leaker that tipped off the press, and subpoenas for Dana Milbank and other reporters. What’s good for Judy Miller is good for Dana Milbank. I find it laughable that the CIA that knew if nothing else of Archbishop Romero’s assassination, Allende’s assassination, helped plan Pablo Escobar’s killing, and fell all over itself to endorse Clinton’s Plan Columbia is a stalwart defender of human rights and morality. More likely the gravy train of easy advancement up the CIA ladder through cronyistic relationships with foreign intelligence and shady deal brokering post-CIA is threatened. Pentagon went ballistic when Rumsfeld killed the Crusader and tried to kill the Osprey (you can spend nearly 35 years on one procurement program and work 15 years post-military for contractors on the other side of the desk).
Never forget the usual politics in all of this.
“”In any case, Iraq had no ongoing nuclear program.”
Your honor, given the highly unusual extenuating circumstances in this case I’d like to point out to the jury that the actual facts of this case are totally irrelevent.”
Its not the strength of the case, its the seriousness of the charges that is important! Limbaugh usually bores me to tears, but he sure can turn a phrase. Let me paraphrase this case: No-one may be guilty of betraying Plame in a factual sense, but in a larger, metaphysical sense they are and that is what counts. CBS should be all over this.
—
“Bush Lied and People Died. It’s beginning to really resonate, isn’t it?”
Or else you have a nice echo in that head of yours.
Treason? Looks like we’ve been invaded by the “DC dinner circuit:”:https://ssl.tnr.com/p/docsub.mhtml?i=express&s=peretz072104
bq. Still, in a lot of dining rooms where I am a guest here, there is outrage that someone in the vice president’s office “outed” Ms. Plame, *as though everybody in Georgetown hadn’t already known she was under cover, so to speak. Under cover, but not really.* One guest even asserted that someone in the vice president’s office is surely guilty of *treason,* no less–an offense this person certainly wouldn’t have attributed to the Rosenbergs or Alger Hiss, Daniel Ellsberg or Philip Agee. But for the person who confirmed for Robert Novak what he already knew, nothing but high crimes would do.
“He was sent to Niger in 1999 as a contractor also, again by his wife, to do some undisclosed activity unrelated to Iraq. This shortly after a coup that resulted in the assassination of the former President by the Coup leader, in a sensitive African Nation whose only significant product is uranium. Considering Wilson’s ties to a known Al Qaeda banker, ties to Libya (and perhaps the Libyan nuclear program), his work for Middle East Institute (100% Saudi owned), and unexplained high income (just WHAT does JC Wilson Enterprises DO?) there are serious questions not just about nepotism but about how Wilson is able to afford by all accounts a lavish lifestyle.”
Blah blah blah. And yet, Iraq had no active nuclear program, which is the relevant issue here.
Look, I’m very confused about the whole Plame thing right now. When the right/left talk about it, it’s like two 100% seperate stories. So the most basic question still confuses me: Why did ‘Scooter’ feel the need to lie if no offense was comitted?
The basic problem with this whole Iraqi weapons affair is nicely outlined in (13)
#13) Given the complete lack of anyone inside his inner circle, all you could do was guess based on his past actions
That is really the problem isn’t it. Our intelligence, at it’s best, was a guess. Forget that inspectors on the inside saw no sign of a program, forget that all the intelligence being routed to the IAEA turned up nothing, we made a guess based on what appears to have been bad intel.
I beleived Colin Powell when he made his speech, but over the next year the claims of those reports fell apart. I have heard of not a single claim that was substainted. As of yet there are no WMD’s, no uranium, no weapons equipment, no chemical or biological weapons, no research sites.
I do not know who is to blame for all of this, but an accidental war should not be just a ‘oops, well we did our best…’ scenario. Heads should roll, and if Fitzerald finds that Libby was one of many who played politics over his job, then he can be the first to go.
“Blah blah blah. And yet, Iraq had no active nuclear program, which is the relevant issue here.”
How is that remotely relevant? It was found out only in hindsight and took an entire war to answer that question. If Iraq didnt have a nuclear program, Hussein certainly went out of his way to make it look like he did over the years.
alchemist (#17)
Intel was all over the place. An analysis was done, which turned out to be wrong. Dems and pubs both played politics, which is what they are supposed to be doing in our system.
Yes, starting a war on bad intel sucks. Not a crime though. If you’re mad, vote for the other team. But before you do that, ask them if they are prepared to wait until a U.S. city gets nuked before taking action. Bushie wasn’t. Maybe they are. If waiting until a million of your compatriots die in a fiery holocaust is not to your liking, then at some point we’re going to make mistakes on bad intel. You can’t have it both ways.
To me this seems like a huge circular discussion. I remember the long debate over war with Iraq — I posted many times to the anti-war folks begging them to convince me the war was unecessary. Being a former marine, I was all too well aware of what we were getting ourselves into.
The Dems said that the UNSEC binding resolutions weren’t enoguh, that the breaking of the truce of the 91 war was not enough, that the sponsorship of Pal terrorists wasn’t enough, the plotting to kill Bushie senior wasn’t enough — they wanted something stronger. So Bush and company labored long into the night and boom! We had this WMD storyline.
I never needed this. I came to the conclusion that less people would die if we took action, both American and Iraqi. Utilitarian morality, sure, but it was something I could live with. Who cared about WMDs? The Dems did, it seemed. So now they feel rightly outraged. But it’s way far off the point, in my opinion. the argument against Saddam had more to do with bad nation states, upholding the UN, and non-proliferation among bad actors than anything else. Active WMDs just made the decision easier. I guess most people didn’t want to think that hard about it at the time: they would rather get their politics and the drive-thru on their favorite blog.
Alchemist (#17) wrote:
bq. The basic problem with this whole Iraqi weapons affair is nicely outlined in (#13). Given the complete lack of anyone inside his inner circle, all you could do was guess based on his past actions.
Sounds like you are uncertain more than confused (me, too).
Seems to me the pre-war WMD intelligence aspect of this boils down to a couple of general points.
* It’s clear that the Bush administration was wrong in its assessments of Iraqi WMDs prior to the invasion. The Administration made specific, falsifiable claims about active nuclear, biological, and chemical programs, in particular claiming that the Iraqis had stockpiles that we would uncover. These active programs and these stockpiles were never found.
bq. WMD precursor chemicals and components were found; the existence of dormant programs was confirmed; documentation of programs active prior to the 1995 defection of Saddam’s son-in-law were unearthed. But not the active programs or the stockpiles that Bush, Cheney, Powell, etc. had claimed.
* The circumstances of this bad intel are what’s in dispute. There are competing explanations. While matters can be complicated, some of the favored narratives are not internally consistent. In particular:
bq. Bush & Co. were careless and reckless with intel. They used intel that they knew was bad. They fabricated WMD stories out of whole cloth.
OK.
* If they were careless and stupid, the implication is that they, themselves, believed their own narrative. However grossly incompetent, they are broadly innocent of the charge of lying.
* If they were lying, then carelessness and stupidity aren’t really key issues. Then where’s the evidence of the conspiracy that’s being charged? Very large conspiracies in a polarized, politicized environment don’t hold up well under stress–where are the smoking guns?
bq. “Invent false evidence of WMDs” is an implausible narrative for another reason: the certainty that the stories would be discredited as soon as the invasion took place. Surely a Conspiracy of any magnitude could have bettered the actual performance of the Bush team on that score (e.g. B.Y.O. WMD’s).
* Why is it so easy to go to the pre-2003 record and find so many of Bush’s critics agreeing with various “Saddam has WMDs” positions? Were these players stupid (but then suddenly got smart after the invasion?) Were they part of a broader Conspiracy (but then abandoned it after the invasion?)
* How does one account for the apparently intensive efforts of the Iraqi Ba’athists to act as if they did have WMD programs, right up to the fall of Baghdad? Were these pathetic efforts that any reasonably-intelligent analyst should have seen through? Or, given the absence of reliable human intelligence to the West, was this a well-played bluff?
It seems that many people approach this matter like a Chinese buffet–one from Column A, one from Column B, and another from Column C. If the purpose is to fulfill an agenda, arguably it doesn’t matter if narratives are logical and plausible. “Fake but accurate” is okay from that point of view.
I’d prefer to get a clearer sense of what happened. Timelines that are plausible, logical, and consistent with the record. Acknowledging human foibles and bureaucratic failures, invoking Conspiracies only as a last resort, and in the presence of very strong evidence.
Jim Rockford:
Have you aimed your laser at our president, on similar issues to this one?
Considering Wilson’s ties to a known Al Qaeda banker, ties to Libya (and perhaps the Libyan nuclear program), his work for Middle East Institute (100% Saudi owned), and unexplained high income (just WHAT does JC Wilson Enterprises DO?) there are serious questions not just about nepotism but about how Wilson is able to afford by all accounts a lavish lifestyle.”
bq. The Dems said that the UNSEC binding resolutions weren’t enoguh, that the breaking of the truce of the 91 war was not enough, that the sponsorship of Pal terrorists wasn’t enough, the plotting to kill Bushie senior wasn’t enough — they wanted something stronger. So Bush and company labored long into the night and boom! We had this WMD storyline.
No sane anti-war people believe the WMD issue was invented out of whole cloth. However, it seems fairly uncontrovercial by now to state that a weak WMD case was deliberately pumped up to push the country towards war.
bq. I never needed this. I came to the conclusion that less people would die if we took action, both American and Iraqi. Utilitarian morality, sure, but it was something I could live with. Who cared about WMDs? The Dems did, it seemed. So now they feel rightly outraged. But it’s way far off the point, in my opinion. the argument against Saddam had more to do with bad nation states, upholding the UN, and non-proliferation among bad actors than anything else.
Well, no, the argument _you_ made had to do with bad nation states, etc. Bush’s argument was almost entirely fixated on WMDs. But bad nation states are still in existence post-Iraq, the authority of the UN has unquestionably been harmed by the war, for good or ill, and the war seems to have emboldened two of the most threatening vectors for WMD proliferation: Iran and North Korea.
My point isn’t that none of your arguments have any validity, but that the case is most definitely a debatable one – and I’m not sure it’s one Bush could have made without WMDs.
bq. Active WMDs just made the decision easier. I guess most people didn’t want to think that hard about it at the time: they would rather get their politics and the drive-thru on their favorite blog.
Cheap shot. The truth of the matter is that Iraq was always a questionable decision – the case for invading was far from airtight, but the case against ingading wasn’t a no-brainer either. The WMD issue was the one thing that had the power to unquestionably tip the scales, and it’s also the one thing that most people had to take the administration’s word on: there’s very little publically available information on WMDs that isn’t filtered by the government.
So, yeah, a lot of people who were vehemently against the war didn’t speak as loud as they would have, because they gave Bush the benefit of the doubt, and a lot of people who were on the fence supported the war, because they gave Bush the benefit of the doubt. But Bush turned out to have deliberately misled people as to the severity of the threat by pushing weak intelligence and editing out contradictory opinions. Whether the Iraq war turns out to be worth it or not, betraying the trust people extended towards him is plenty enough reason for people to dislike Bush.
Chris, odd how “it turns out…” in your post seems to be translated best as “I’m now going to claim without any basis that …”
JC accuses the administration of “Cherry-picked and stovepiped intelligence.” and points to the Leftcoaster as proof of his claims. So I went there and skimmed through some of his posts.
My take? Everything Wilson says is taken in the best light possible. Everything the administration says is taken in the worst light possible. Every negative statement of the intelligence agencies is taken as proof of the negativity of the evidence.
Yet anyone should know that 1) Wilson is a partisan, so his statements should be taken with a grain of salt, 2) the administration is partisan, so their statements should be taken with a grain of salt and 3) intelligence is based upon both negative and positive reports and someone then decides which to give more weight. The weight the CIA gave it at the time was “credible”. It matters not one whit what weight you give it now, since you have the benefit of hindsight.
Specifically referring to the report that AL refers to, saying, “Just scanned the Left Coaster series, and the interesting post is this one”, I found it interesting that the writer referred to Niger trying to buy petroleum from Iraq. I find it interesting because Niger is a petroleum exporterif the report of approaching Iraq for petroleum were true, was there some sort of quid pro quo involved, and if so, what?
He employs some interesting methods of argumentation which will convince the gullible and the already convinced but do nothing to persuade the careful reader.
C’mon, Prak – this is just beneath you.
“Blah blah blah. And yet, Iraq had no active nuclear program, which is the relevant issue here.”
This issue isn’t whether they did or didn’t; the issue is what a “reasonable President” would have believed in 2003.
I’ve blogged it before, but when we judge a policeman who shoots someoen armed with a pellet gun, we don’t judge them on what was shown after the fact, but on whatwhat known at the moment the decision had to be made.
Would I have felt better about the war had WMND been found? Of course. Were WMD the reason I supported the war? Of course not.
So let’s have a sensible discussion of this tough issue.
A.L.
So would you feel the same way if a local security guard (who was standing much closer to Pellet Man and had a real clear look), let’s call him….Mr. Blicks, was yelling to the policeman that the man was not wielding a real gun?
But then let’s say the policeman’s sidekick, let’s call him….Mr. Chayney, also knew the guy only had a pellet gun but was a “real bad dude” who was certainly guilty of other crimes?
And let’s then say the policeman, lets call him…Mr. Hedge, also harbored ill will toward Pellet Man because he insulted his girlfriend back in high school.
You are essentially arguing that it is OK to shoot someone under these circumstances.
“You are essentially arguing that it is OK to shoot someone under these circumstances.”
I would say that, especially if the suspect was known to the policeman as a really bad dude with several murders to his credit and a history of threats and intimidation to his neighbors and law enforement.
But then again, I am from the South.
Tob
bq. Chris, odd how “it turns out…” in your post seems to be translated best as “I’m now going to claim without any basis that …”
Robin, I’d like to rebut your remark, but I’m not entirely sure where you’re quoting. If you’re referrring to the following passage:
bq. Whether the Iraq war turns out to be worth it or not, betraying the trust people extended towards him is plenty enough reason for people to dislike Bush.
…then I’ll just note that, based on your past posts, I doubt I’ll be able to convince you that Bush is ever capable of making any mistakes of any kind whatsoever. That being the case, I’m not sure if there’s any point in either of us talking to each other.
“I have heard of not a single claim that was substainted. As of yet there are no WMD’s, no uranium, no weapons equipment, no chemical or biological weapons, no research sites.”
Read the Iraq Survey group Report.
Also, there were always 4-5 reasons to depose Saddam, only one of which was the fact that he was seeking to restart his WMD program (which he was) and needed to be taken out before he got too far. That and the other reasons are enumerated in the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. Bush basically enacted Clinton’s plan, becasue 9-11 made it more urgent and he had the political will. Thank God.
“Well, no, the argument you made had to do with bad nation states, etc. Bush’s argument was almost entirely fixated on WMDs.”
See above. Also see Bush’s authorization to go to war and any number of his speeches. “Bush’s argument was almost entirely fixated on WMDs.” Is. Simply. Not. True.
“But bad nation states are still in existence post-Iraq,”
Well, darn! If we didn’t get rid of all of them simultaneously, then it wasn’t worth doing! However, some of them, especially in the Arab world, have less power than they did 5 years ago. ex: Libya and Syria.
“the authority of the UN has unquestionably been harmed by the war,”
If you are implying, by the Oil for Food Scandal which was uncovered as a result of the war, and which in retrospect providces yet one more reason to get rid of Saddam: that the sanctions would have fallen apart soon because Saddam was bribing everyone in sight (including several members of the UNSC), and then he would have been able to restart his WMDs with no interference.
Also the UN’s rep was harmed because it refused to enforce 14 UNSC resolutions against Saddam. How serious are you if you order someone to do something, but never follow up when he doesn’t mind you?
“for good or ill, and the war seems to have emboldened two of the most threatening vectors for WMD proliferation: Iran and North Korea.”
How did the war embolden them? I think they were already emboldened.
“How is that remotely relevant? It was found out only in hindsight and took an entire war to answer that question. If Iraq didnt have a nuclear program, Hussein certainly went out of his way to make it look like he did over the years.”
Actually, this was known before the war and would have been made clear had the inspectors been given another few months to make a final report. The IAEA also, you should know, debunked the Niger claims before the war.
“Would I have felt better about the war had WMND been found? Of course. Were WMD the reason I supported the war? Of course not.”
Well, that’s nice, but the official legal reason we went to war was to enforce UN resolutions. If that wasn’t why the Bush administration did it, they should have made a different public argument.
In any case, you brought up WMD yourself in trying to impugn Wilson’s credibility, which I found bizarre because (a) it isn’t relevant and (b) Wilson himself is the source of the story in your post. It’s not like he tried to hide it, though he may have been sloppy in how he spoke about it on TV. But at root, the question is: did the Bush administration distort, cherry-pick, and hype intelligence in order to garner support for the war? I think the answer is obviously yes–a good example is the alluminum tubes. If you want to argue that such dissimulation is necessary, then I can understand that point of view but frankly I find it beyond question that the Bush administration was not acting in good faith here.
. . . how about amending the report to read that “Amb. Wilson was personally told that Iraqi agents were seeking uranium ore, but discounted the importance of the information” – ??
We’ve got two accounts of what “Amb. Wilson was personally told”; Wilson’s, and the CIA’s as relayed by the SSCI.
Wilson’s account:
The SSCI/CIA account:
Wilson’s account doesn’t get you “told that Iraqi agents were seeking uranium ore”, it gets you “told of speculation”. The SSCI/CIA account goes further; this isn’t just speculation but, apparently, Mayaki’s best judgement. Could be either the CIA’s spinning it up or Wilson’s spinning it down.
Unlike Mark Buehner, I know no reason to dismiss Wilson as a “demonstrable liar”. [I guess I’ve read some of the same allegations that Buehner has; but then, I’ve also read the rebuttals to those allegations.] Still, by the time he gave that account, he had some apparent motive to spin down. There are some more direct indications that the CIA was spinning up. One is the apparent artful phrasing of the March CIA report (the same that the SSCI quotes above):
As written, this strongly suggests that (Wilson told the CIA reports officer that Mayaki told him that) the Iraqi delegation sought to discuss a purchase of uranium but Mayaki “let the matter drop”. This is unlikely: (1) We have Wilson’s explicit statement to the contrary. (2) We know now that Iraq was not in fact seeking to buy yellowcake; so it’s unlikely that Mayaki told Wilson that it was, or that Wilson told the CIA that it was.
Still, the CIA report doesn’t explicitly state that the Iraqi delegation did seek to discuss uranium; it just strongly suggests it. I.e., it spins up.
An alternative hypothesis is that the SSCI itself is spinning up, by selective and misleading quotation from the CIA report. While certainty is impossible, the CIA is a likely culprit in this instance, since it fits into a pattern of CIA behaviour through March-October 1992, of hyping the African uranium meme:
Bottom line: Josh Marshall owes Armed Liberal nothing here.
prak, is this really you?
I’m worried…
Seriously, let’s go through the points.
The UN resolutions (here’s the “full list”:http://www.un.org/Depts/unscom/resolt2.htm ) had to do with a lot more than posession of WMD.
So to tie the UN resolutions solely to the active posession of WMD seems kind of incorrect to me.
I bring up WMD to “impugn Wilson’s credibility” because the only real peg of fact he has to on which hang his condemnation of the Administration is about – WMD and his clazims regarding them.
The simple fact is that in every recounting, Wilson was told by a former President of Niger that said President believed that the Iraqis had asked to meet in order to buy uranium.
He may or may not be correct in believing it. But the fact that he said it does represent the base of fact that we all have to deal from.
A.L.
bq. See above. Also see Bush’s authorization to go to war and any number of his speeches. “Bush’s argument was almost entirely fixated on WMDs.” Is. Simply. Not. True.
Nonsense. Or, if you prefer: Non. Sense. Here’s the text of the resolution – the WMD stuff gets hit on again and again, as does the fact that the US has to go to war to protect itself. Whether the other reasons given in the text constitute window dressing is probably subjective, but it’s clear that the major reason given for the war is WMDs… and Bush’s speeches from the time back that up.
bq. “But bad nation states are still in existence post-Iraq,”
bq. Well, darn! If we didn’t get rid of all of them simultaneously, then it wasn’t worth doing! However, some of them, especially in the Arab world, have less power than they did 5 years ago. ex: Libya and Syria.
Two points: A) effectively throwing our entire military at one bad nation state stops us from dealing with other bad nation states that become more threatening in the future – as Iran and North Korea have both shown. B) Correlation is not causation: Libya was moving towards normalization of its international relations well before 9/11, and the Syria situation is not only unresolved, but doesn’t seem to have much to do with Iraq.
More importantly, the entire idea that we can use our military to take out _everybody_ we don’t like is simply nuts – even granting, for the sake of argument, that Libya and Syria were shaken by the Iraq war, the rest of the region’s regimes are still nasty as ever, and we have no way to change that directly or indirectly.
bq. “the authority of the UN has unquestionably been harmed by the war,”
bq. If you are implying, by the Oil for Food Scandal…
Nope, that’s your talking point, not mine.
I’m saying something very simple: that there’s no one on earth who honestly believes that GWB gives a damn about the authority of the UN, and that his seizing on the idea of enforcing UN resolutions was clearly window dressing for a war he was already committed to. The fact that a majority of the UN was strongly against the war, and yet couldn’t stop it from happening, was the real slap in the face towards the UN. I personally don’t much care about the UN, but it’s just asinine to suggest that Bush helped the organization in any way, shape, or form.
bq. “for good or ill, and the war seems to have emboldened two of the most threatening vectors for WMD proliferation: Iran and North Korea.”
bq. How did the war embolden them? I think they were already emboldened.
Well, clearly neither country ramped up its pursuit of nukes immediately as a response to the war, and said as much publically, right?
Look, you’ve made this argument a hundred times, Yehudit. Even as the war crumbles around you, a core of true believers will always be camped out here at WoC, listening to the echoes.
The funny thing is, I’m not trying to change your mind on any of this, I’m just pointing out that none of these issues are cut and dried, and that it was misdirection on the WMD issue that derailed the rational argument we should have had about this stuff to begin with. Whether you choose to listen to that point, or prefer to fight the same battles over and over, is entirely up to you.
praktike: “… the official legal reason we went to war was to enforce UN resolutions. If that wasn’t why the Bush administration did it, they should have made a different public argument.
That’s a point I agree with. We should have gone to war on the plain and simple reason that Iraq’s failure to comply with UN resolutions voided the GW1 ceasefire.
Still, I wouldn’t trade our position for yours in a million years. You’re stuck with saying that we did the right thing for the wrong reason, or that we failed to explain the right reason. And that we should have gone on forever letting Saddam shoot at our aircraft and bribe the goddamn Europeans, because it was all “working” somehow.
And you’re wrong that a nuclear program was the only relevant thing. Wilson certainly didn’t think so – in the Moyers interview he recommended air strikes on suspected chemical weapons plants.
Typical Clinton Era military tactics: Hit a aspirin factory with a Tomahawk missile and count on your apologists in the media to ignore it. This doesn’t work if your name is not Clinton.
Chris has made some excellent rebuttals. I don’t agree with any of them, but they seem well thought out and argued.
I think the key element that I find at fault is the idea of “Bush’s war”, which seems to be a recurring theme. When I said I made the war decision based on knowledge available at the time which included a lot more than just WMDs, Chris said “Well, no, the argument _you_ made had to do with bad nation states, etc. Bush’s argument was almost entirely fixated on WMDs”
Okay, color me crazy, but don’t we live in a democracy? Hasn’t congress insisted on the War Powers Act, which limits what a president can do? Didn’t we have an election and a congressional vote to authorize action? As citizens of a free country, we are all liable for our decision to go to war. If you don’t believe it that’s fine, but I can guarantee you that AQ understands this.
If Bush’s best political case was WMDs, then I would suppose he would make it, unless he knew it to be false, which is not in evidence. Congressional oversight should allow querying intelligence information at any level of detail. We all had something to do with the Iraq war — it’s not like Bush hypnotized us with subliminal messages during the state of the union. Blaming Bush and Cheney and coming up with elaborate conspiracies dishonors our basic rights as citizens — the right to make decisions. Bush made a conclusion, and made a political argument for it. Others, including myself, are entitled to their own opinions and arguments, whether they vote for or against the war. Bush is simply the chief executive, he is not the master thinker of the country. Nor is he anywhere near solely responsible for our country’s actions in Iraq. If you are saying in hindsight that Bush’s reasons were flawed, to me, it seems like a cheap shot. And it is insulting to the rest of us who reached the same conclusion for different reasons. Surely you are not saying that the opposition party could not think for itself, are you?
Once again, the focus is away from the central point of the post: is a MSM rep going to fix bad information? But what do we get as an answer? The history of Niger, friends of Wilson, each and every public intel report that might support the war or not — this is just silly. Certainly we can talk about one topic without dragging in the larger narrative about Bush or whoever. I understand that it is a good political thing to keep a larger narrative in mind, and I salute the Dems for coming up with one, heinous as it may be. But come on, guys! It seems that when asked _any_ question at all — what are the Iranian prospects at revolution — we hear “Bush lied, people died”
It’s going to be a long two years until the next election.
“Two points: A) effectively throwing our entire military at one bad nation state stops us from dealing with other bad nation states that become more threatening in the future – as Iran and North Korea have both shown.”
First, we certainly have thrown nothing like our entire military at Iraq- you may recall we had nearly 3 times the power in the region in GW1 and still maintained our responsibilities globally. Our military has shrunk since but not by 1/3rd. Second, you are making a rather circular argument. Had we husbanded our forces and then dealt with Iran or NK instead, would you not be here complaining of how we we squandered our ‘entire’ military dealing with that nation while Hussein, who only seems toothles in retrospect remains unfought and dangerous as ever?
“B) Correlation is not causation: Libya was moving towards normalization of its international relations well before 9/11,”
Indeed. 20 years of ‘moving towards’. Never mistake the appearance of motion for progress. Still, the timing cannot be doubted, and if your argument is for us to rely on the good will of Gadhafi instead of his fear, good luck with that message.
“and the Syria situation is not only unresolved, but doesn’t seem to have much to do with Iraq.”
Unresolved. I suppose the fact that we still have troops in Japan and Germany indicates WW2 is technically unresolved. You are grasping here. Do you require complete success at every move of the game? If your opening E2-E4 doesnt check mate are you losing?
As far as the correlation, the Lebanese seem to think differently. All these upheavals in the region may be just pure bloody coincidence after 50 years of stagnation, but that seems, well, absurd. 5 years ago there were zero viable democracies in the ME, now there are 3 fledgling
democracies and democratic movement in nearly all the others. Of course I cant ‘prove’ causation to you, but I dont need to. Take your case to the American public that all this was just an amazing coincidence. We will see if reasonable people buy it.
“Valerie had nothing to do with the matter,” Wilson wrote in a memoir published this year. “She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39834-2004Jul9.html
In fact i have seen his ‘rebuttal’ and its breathtakingly Clintonian in its brazen denial of reality. He claims that this:
“The report states that a CIA official told the Senate committee that Plame “offered up” Wilson’s name for the Niger trip, then on Feb. 12, 2002, sent a memo to a deputy chief in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations saying her husband “has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.””
would not constitute a recommendation:
“Of her memo, he said: “I don’t see it as a recommendation to send me”
If we allow that simply refusing to acknowledge the accepted usage of the English language is defense against lying, we might as well pack up and give up on civilization. His wife suggested his name to her superiors and listed his qualifications. _That_ is a recommendation by any sane definition. The man is simply not trustworthy, from the begining he has lied and manipulated to achieve a political outcome to his liking.
There were twenty-seven reasons given for going to war with Iraq. Here’s a summary of the “study:”:http://www.pol.uiuc.edu/news/largio.htm
bq. The results showed that twenty-seven rationales for the war on Iraq were used at one time or another, twenty-three of which can be attributed to the administration. Five rationales were prominent in all three phases: the war on terror, the desire to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mas destruction, the lack of inspections, the desire to remove the Hussein regime, and the fact that Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator. One rationale surfaced initially and gained favor over time: the interest in liberating the people of Iraq. One other rationale emerged later and became very important to official sources and the media: the imminent threat that Iraq posed, though the words “imminent threat” did not appear in official statements of the administration but became the catch-phrase in the media and the public. The other twenty rationales can be classified as secondary and remaining rationales. Thus, the war on Iraq was broad and its rationales encompassed a wide array of topics and concerns, from terrorism to oil, from protecting peace and freedom to finishing unfinished business.
bq. I think the key element that I find at fault is the idea of “Bush’s war”, which seems to be a recurring theme. When I said I made the war decision based on knowledge available at the time which included a lot more than just WMDs, Chris said “Well, no, the argument you made had to do with bad nation states, etc. Bush’s argument was almost entirely fixated on WMDs”
bq. Okay, color me crazy, but don’t we live in a democracy? Hasn’t congress insisted on the War Powers Act, which limits what a president can do? Didn’t we have an election and a congressional vote to authorize action? As citizens of a free country, we are all liable for our decision to go to war. If you don’t believe it that’s fine, but I can guarantee you that AQ understands this.
Daniel, you pretty much start to go off the rails after this with more accusations that I think Bush has some kind of evil mind control device, so I’m gonna make my point one more time and leave it at that.
The US _is_ a democracy, and people _are_ expected to think for themselves and make their own decisions. And to do that, people need access to accurate information about the things they’re making decisions on.
Now, with most political decisions that get made in this country, it’s trivially easy to track down a million news stories, op-eds, blog posts, water cooler opinions, what have you. Almost anybody can know as much about a given subject as an “expert”, with a little hard work.
But that’s not the case with WMDs, firstly because the information, and the information sources, tend to be sensitive and classified, and secondly because unlike, say, tax cuts, you really do need a great deal of training and expertise to properly interpret the data.
In short, we, the American people, have to rely on the government to tell us what we need to know in order to make this kind of military decision. We have to trust the President to show us all the relevant information he can, pro and con, or, failing that, trust that when he makes the decision to go to war because of WMDs, he has a damn good reason for doing so that he just can’t share with us.
But Bush has been found lacking on both of these counts. He didn’t outright lie about WMDs, but he did surpress information that almost certainly would have made at least some people rethink their support for the war. Congressional oversight is well and good, but they’ll never be as involved in intelligence matters as the executive branch, and they had no reason to think that Bush was acting in bad faith with his intelligence presentations.
And that’s the problem – not that going to Iraq was, in and of itself, flawed, but that we were pushed into war for the wrong reasons. That’s not a “conspiracy”, that’s not a “cheap shot”, it’s a pretty damn serious charge in a democracy where people are expected to be involved in the direction of their country. But if you honestly believe that it doesn’t matter how we got here, just as long as we’re doing what you think of as the right thing, then I doubt I’ll be able to convince you of the importance of intellectual honesty and accountability any time soon.
And Mark, real quick: we surely don’t have the power to engage with any other country because our forces are engaged in Iraq – we had one military bullet available, and we used it. My point stands.
And you’re being extremely unfair towards your opponents, if you think that just because they opposed the Iraq war, they wouldn’t be on board in a war with a regime that really does have nukes, and really is likely to share them or sell them to terrorists, such as Iran and NK.
As for taking my case re: Syria to the American people, it’s already been done, and they seem to think that 2000+ American troops in exchange for some tarted up “democratic rumblings” wasn’t a good trade – look at the polls sometime.
Bye now.
“And Mark, real quick: we surely don’t have the power to engage with any other country because our forces are engaged in Iraq – we had one military bullet available, and we used it. My point stands. ”
No, you are wrong. We could engage Iran or NK decisively with air and naval assets alone. I fail to see how the bulk of our army assets would aid us in eliminating nuclear assets either way. Smart bombs would seem a more sure silver bullet than infantry divisions.
“And you’re being extremely unfair towards your opponents, if you think that just because they opposed the Iraq war, they wouldn’t be on board in a war with a regime that really does have nukes, and really is likely to share them or sell them to terrorists, such as Iran and NK. ”
Please enlighten me how the evidence for Iran having or developing nuclear weapons is more compelling than Iraqs WMDs. The situation is in fact very similar. Every intelligence agency _believes_ Iran is developing a nuclear weapon, but then again every intelligence agency was wrong about Iraq. I am entirely encredulous that anyone who opposed the Iraq policy _at that time_ would now favor using force against Iran at this time. Smells like a red herring to me.
And to clarify my thoughts on using force against Iran or NK, the point is that invasion and occupation would indeed be impossible, but that is not necessary to end a WMD program or cripple a regime. I dont think it is wise at this moment, but it is certainly not impossible, or even problematic from a logistic viewpoint. The consequences would be painful (shooting war in the Persian Gulf and Iranian oil off the market, Saigon leveled by NK artillery), but those are givens that Iraq has nothing to do with. Boots on the ground cant stop mining the straights of hormuz or raining destruction on SK in the first half hour of war. In short, our resources in Iraq dont change our options with NK or Iran much either way.
Well, perhaps I do need to apologize. It appears that WMD weapons have been found in Iraq – “and even worse, they have been used.”:http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article325560.ece
Oops – wait a minute. If this story is true, it seems that the user of WMD’s are US troops.
Like torture, IOKIYAAR (It’s OK If You Are A Republican), I suppose.
Funny that.
… Which would be exactly why myself, the Weekly Standard, Ramesh Ponnuru, and the overwhelming majority of the Republicans in the Senate support McCain (himself a Republican) on this one, right JC?
As praktike would say, weak.
JC, if white phosphorous is WMD, then Saddam Hussein had piles and piles of WMD. Dozens of WP artillery rounds were removed from the Qaaqaa facility alone.
Congratulations, you’ve found the WMDs in Iraq. You’d be a hero, except that US troops found them first. And, BTW, you can kiss their lowquarters.
Dan,
Then WRITE it man! Then WRITE it!!
Use that incredible intelligence, analysis, and even-temperedness to WRITE it. Greg at BD can do it, why can’t you?
In the last month, here at WOC you’ve said:
“Leaving aside the obvious issues concerning prisoner abuse ”
And then your main post on this “is here”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/007600.php#more
That post is a qualified “no” on torture, but the qualifiedness stands out.
If you are willing to call me “weak”, for simply writing IOKIYAAR, how much more is Dick Cheney weak, for continuing to oppose the McCain amendment? Let’s see condemnation of a White House official, what do you say?
Greg can do it, how about you?
Glen,
If you can’t see a problem with “”Phosphorus burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone … I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150 metres is done for.”, and this being used by US troops – you need to have yor moral sense examined.
JC:
You obviously didn’t hear my radio interview on this one, lol …
That was on an issue as far as al-Libbi goes, that was about him being extradicted back to Egypt for torture, which is rendition, which is a very different thing from the interrogation procedures performed by US citizens on a number of levels, Gerecht has a pretty good piece on this awhile back that pretty much summarizes my views on this one. I also don’t think that saying “Conservatives who have for many months now defended American troops against what they regard as a sickening smear campaign against them by elements of the anti-war left should not shrink from adopting this measure, as it clearly defines right from wrong as far as interrogation techniques are concerned” is all that qualified unless you’re referring to my support of using narco-interrogation, which I’m more than happy to discuss.
If you are willing to call me “weak”, for simply writing IOKIYAAR, how much more is Dick Cheney weak, for continuing to oppose the McCain amendment? Let’s see condemnation of a White House official, what do you say?
Sure. He definitely shouldn’t be opposing it, not that it matters since I’m sure it’ll pass anyway.
Use that incredible intelligence, analysis, and even-temperedness to WRITE it. Greg at BD can do it, why can’t you?
Well given how often I was told over at BD last month that I don’t measure up to Greg, what can I say? As it now stands, the measure in question was approved by the overwhelming majority of Republican senators and I fully expect the president to sign it into law. If Bush vetoes it or it gets dumbed down to the point unintelligibility, then you’ll hear more from me, but until then my time online is limited and I would refer you to item #1 in my main post on the subject.
How about that nasty chemical that launches projectiles and shrapnel at velocities high enough to tear a limb right off a person, put holes throughout their body, are _designed_ to maim or kill outright, and shows no preference for man, woman, or child? Gunpowder, the most prolific and terrible of all chemical weapons. This idea of nerfifying war is as insidious as it is stupid. Phosphorous flares arent used for the pure joy of burning human flesh, they are used because they are effective at what they do, which ends wars quickly and with less casualties.
Mark,
“I love the smell of phosphorus in the morning”
I’m of half a mind to agree with you, especially since it is such an “effective tactic”. But if I follow links, and then suddenly come across a photograph of a child that looks like it belongs as an extra set piece on the horror movie, House of Wax, well, that’s a real problem.
I can provide the link here, but it isn’t work safe, and I really didn’t want to look at it again to link to it – but if you want the link, I’ll provide it.
No, i’ll pass. On the other hand i dont think it would take much effort to come up with a picture of a kid with the back of his head blown out by a bullet or torn apart with HE artillery shells. Is that any prettier? I still dont get the difference. If you want to argue that war is inhumane in its essense, fine, thats intellectually cohesive. But this creeping assault on our military is dangerous. People are upset by landmines right? Well how many tens of thousands of Iraqi lives (not to mention American) have it cost because we dont have the political will to mine the Syrian border? Does it make any sense to ‘save’ the few accidental deaths likely from landmines at the cost of thousands of others? Only in the fantasy world where combat can be clean and these decisions so neatly black and white.
Each little step seems reasonable enough in its own context, but any look at the larger picture makes it laughable. There is this movement to take our soldiers weapons away and take them back perhaps to the age of knights and chivalry, as if it ever existed. That wont make warfare any prettier, particularly when we start losing them, and particularly to this enemy who makes it his MO to inflict as much carnage against innocents as horrifically as possible. Going after him with rubber coated bullets and pepper spray (oops, “chemical weapon”:http://www.aclu.org/PolicePractices/PolicePractices.cfm?ID=8654&c=117 , scratch that) isnt going to save any lives or make the world a less awful place. Quite the opposite, the nerf warrior advocates notwithstanding.
JC –
There was an old song in Vietnam that went something like:
We first used WP in WWII against the Axis. Some of them got nasty burns, no doubt. I guess you should save some of your sympathy for them.
Do you have a problem with a human being getting burnt to an instant crisp by a superheated aluminum dart traveling at six times the speed of sound? That’s what happened to the crews of Iraqi T-72s hit by our HEAT rounds. Another device that was first used in WWII.
Killing people and breaking their stuff is kind of what war is all about. It’s not all as humane and precise as lethal injection. To think that it is (or can be) is moral idiocy.
Mark,
I understand what you are saying – war is hell, right? We all know that.
But there are lines a military shouldn’t cross. Saddam crossed those lines, by using gas on both his own people, and on Iranian troops.
There’s a reason why after WWI, those types of weapons were banned. I believe you still believe in those bans, correct?
So where are those lines?
Let’s take your comment “Phosphorous flares arent used for the pure joy of burning human flesh, they are used because they are effective at what they do, which ends wars quickly and with less casualties”
And replace it with “(Chemical weapons) aren’t used for the pure joy of burning human flesh, they are used because they are effective at what they do, which ends wars quickly and with less casualties”.
I still have a problem with the “uranium-enhanced” tank busting shells, as that stuff remains around, poisoning the water and food supply, causing radiation sickness, long after the war is over.
Where do you draw your lines on what is acceptable? And do you have one line for the United States, and another line for the enemies of the United States?
It goes without saying, of course, that the repugnant terrorists view of acceptablity – suicide bombing and the link – are far over the line.
The differnce is that phosphorous cannot by any stretch be classified as a WMD. The effects are very localized. The same goes for napalm and daisy cutters, remember those. Just because it’s a chemical element, doesn’t make it a chemical weapon. Salt petter is a chemical too, but bullets are not considered WMD.
And the depeted uranium that is used in armor piercing shells has been shown in study after study to not cause radiation posioning. It’s “depleted” uranium after all.
“I still have a problem with the “uranium-enhanced” tank busting shells, as that stuff remains around, poisoning the water and food supply, causing radiation sickness, long after the war is over.”
Despite what the “UNWHO”:http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs257/en/ found? This is the kind of bad information that drives these decisions. Depleted Uranium is literally safer than the dirt in my basement yet people want to ban it, meanwhile left over artillery shells from 1986 are blowing up thousands of people in Iraq _right now_.
Even setting that aside, do you know what happens when a conventional HEAT round like Glen talked about melts throw the aluminum armor of a troop carrier (or a lot of civilian buildings btw)? The superheated aluminum gas burns every square inch of the occupants bodies including the lungs and the lucky ones suffocate with their seared lungs while the unlucky ones live a few extra moments in agony. No fancy DU or WP, just common metals and high impact physics. How do we outlaw that?
Is there a line? Yeh, i suppose there must be. But dont think chemical weapons were banned for any reason other than the likelihood of both sides managing to wipe themselves out with it, essentially the same reason nukes arent used. If no-one is left to fight the war is over and everyone loses. Nerve gas et al is too effective, not too horrific.
That being said, again we come back to it. How many people have been maimed or killed by WP? Why is that the cause de jure? I guarentee you HE has killed and maimed exponentially more people. Why not ban all artillery? Mortars? Grenades? I return the question, where is the line?
Fine, then educate me and tell me where the line should be?
I say again – do you have a universal standard or not?
At any rate, that UNWHO link is good, and reassuring. “I have seen stories like these”:http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/180333p-156685c.html about our brave soldiers exposed to these weapons, and suffering ill health effects, and it concerned me.
Depleted uranium is not “uranium enhanced”. It is used because of its great density. People who make an issue out of the fraudulent claims regarding its effects are merely ignorant of the toxicity of tungsten, the more common material that armor penetrators are made from.
As for the use of flammable chemicals in warfare, perhaps a reference to “greek fire” in antiquity might be illuminating.
I would say the US military’s “definition”:http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/new_pubs/jp1_02.pdf of WMD is a good place to start:
“Weapons that are capable of a high order of destruction and/or of being used in such a manner as to destroy large numbers of people. Weapons of mass destruction can be high explosives or nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological weapons, but exclude the means of transporting or propelling the weapon where such means is a separable and divisible part of the weapon.”
Here is something for the chemist in the crowd –
What is the relations of “White Phosphorus”:http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1108/dailyUpdate.html to the list of “banned substances in “Schedule 3 of the Chemical Weapons Convention”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Schedule_3_substances_%28CWC%29
Lots of different phosphate derivatives on that list.
A couple of phosphate derivates on “Schedule 2”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Schedule_2_substances_%28CWC%29 as well
Thanks in advance.
We should only give up phosphorous flares after Iran renounces nuclear weapons.
Chris:
You can reply or not, as you see fit. I stayed on the rails and made some rhetorical points. Sorry if you were disinclined to appreciate them.
I can certainly understand your not wanting to reply, for you have backed yourself completely into a corner. We have reached the point of truth. Let me illustrate:
“In short, we, the American people, have to rely on the government to tell us what we need to know in order to make this kind of military decision.” — Negative. In fact, the constitution is specifically set up to be run by a lying pack of political fools. The system should work anyway. Hence Congressional oversight of wars and intelligence. You can start with the Federalist Papers here for background.
“when he makes the decision to go to war..” — not true again. The president has no war-making authority at all. See the Consitution, Article 1, Section 8.
“he did surpress information that almost certainly would have made at least some people rethink their support for the war…” — not in evidence. An intelligence analysis is not suppressing the other evidence, it is simply reaching a conclusion. If you are arguing for public intelligence analysis, that doesn’t make sense to me. If the analysis is inside government (and subject to congressional oversight) then you’re going to get it wrong once in a while. Lying has nothing to do with it.
“we were pushed into war for the wrong reasons…” Who is “we”? It’s certainly not me, or anybody else who could care less about WMD. Is it some of the people? Okay. Don’t these people have representatives? Pray tell what are these representative’s responsibilities?
“it’s a pretty damn serious charge in a democracy..” IF you had proved your point, which you didn’t, misleading people would be a political charge. After all, the president has a right to lie to us. We, in turn, can impeach him. But your charge is nowhere near proved, it is simply (to me) a long string of half-truths and generalizations.
“But if you honestly believe that it doesn’t matter how we got here..” — of course I care about this. The president made a statement and the Congress had its checks on the decision. If you can make a case that somehow Congress needs better oversight into intelligence analysis, I might be inclined to agree. I would imagine, however, that the nature of intelligence is such that whatever the president, and whatever the analysis, we could have this same conversation if the analysis fails to hold out. That makes this a political discussion, with you stating that the president is somehow defective, not the system. Like I said, vote the other team in. I agreed with the analysis at the time, even though it was not _my_ reason for supporting the war. Collapsing the entire war issue down to the WMD issue is an oversimplification for political purposes, in my opinion.
Thanks for the good posts. I enjoyed them.
Glen,
Phosphorus flares used by our military have killed children, and there are pictures to prove it, in all its gruesome detail.
I’m not talking soldiers here. And remember, this was a war initiated by the US, who short-circuited the route to an acceptable reason for launching the war – which was working through the U.N., misleading on WMD, and then not listening to what Hans Blix and the IAEA was saying AFTER they had been in the country – in fact, once the Bush administration realized that the inspectors weren’t finding anything, they ordered them OUT.
And the IAEA crew was absolutely right, Bush and crew were wrong.
So –
where’s the justification for using phosphorus, in this case? For a war started by the U.S., that didn’t get Security Council approval, that was based on misleading information, and then have these napalm-like devices (phosphorus, MK77), what’s the justification for using these on children??
I found other links that amplifies what others have said here – white phosphorus is a conventional weapon.
You must be uncomfortable with these devices being used on children, right?
JC, you are crossing a line. Nobody is ‘using WP’ on children, as in some soldier targetted a child and fired a flare at him.
Exactly how many children would you estimate have been burned? How many have been maimed by ‘smart bombs’? I dont know but i will guarantee you it is many, many more. You still have completely failed to address that point, and i find it repugnant that you are suggesting we are ‘using’ _any_ weapon ‘on’ children.
Even if we buy into everything you are saying about WP, how is it any different than simply gun powder? We know for certain kids have been horribly maimed and killed by American bullets (unintentionally). Does that mean we have an equal absolute moral responsibility to not use bullets? Why or why not?
Moreover, i find your entire argument rather disturbing. You suggest that since we are attacking children we should maim them with less horific weapons. Isnt that an odd line to take?
“James Joyner seems to have the definitive info on White Phosphorus”:http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/12607
I would say that as “conventional” weapons get more and more lethal, the distinction starts to blur between what is or is not conventional.
So yes, “war is hell”, and “collateral damage happens”.
Two points though:
a. This is a “war of liberation”, right? What do you say to the Iraqis who have been “liberated” by having their son melted?
b. We are talking about using these devices in a city, not in an open environment against an opposing army. WHY?????????
a.you still havent explained why it is any different to explain to an Iraqi why we blew his sons arm off with high explosives.
b.If you are going to fight a battle in Fallujah, dropping ordanance on ‘an open environment’ is rather difficult. WHY? BECAUSE THE OPPOSING ARMY IS _IN_ THE CITY. Isnt it bad enough you want to hand our army nerf swords, now you want them to swat where the enemy _isnt_?
JC, in sheltering among the civilian population, it is the insurgents who are committing war crimes.
Mark,
You simply keep missing the point.
a. War of “Liberation”.
b. Melted children by US troops, for this war of liberation.
I understand the rationalizations that you are speaking of. They make some sense, “in war”.
Nevertheless, there’s a problem there – if you can’t see it, then God help you.
Maybe I’m still getting over those pictures…I’ll be able to “see clearly” without reacting in horror later…
JC
On D-Day, Twenty-Thousand people in France lost their lives to friendly fire. Heads melted, bodies blown apart. All sorts of deaths, including by WP.
Would you like pictures of these victims of “Liberation” as well? Dead civilians are supposed to have a powerful impact on moral people. But not to the point on inaction. Abhorrence and denial are two different things. I mourn each loss, but I am thankful that so few were killed.
Daniel:
Your pedantic recitation of basic civics is deeply condescending, but that’s pretty much par for the course around here.
(Newsflash: yes, Congress has the official power to declare war, but there has never, ever been a declaration for war that a President wasn’t pushing for to begin with. And to suggest that the executive branch wasn’t the primary driving force behind the Iraq war is just idiotic.)
What’s much more annoying is that you completely ignored the arguments supporting my quotes you used in your post. I repeat:
bq. But [the public being able to judge the facts on its own] is not the case with WMDs, firstly because the information, and the information sources, tend to be sensitive and classified, and secondly because unlike, say, tax cuts, you really do need a great deal of training and expertise to properly interpret the data.
Also:
bq. Congressional oversight is well and good, but they’ll never be as involved in intelligence matters as the executive branch, and they had no reason to think that Bush was acting in bad faith with his intelligence presentations.
I also find a great deal of contradiction in your assertion on the one hand that Democrats on the one hand are unreasonable in talking about “Bush’s war”, and your assertion on the other hand that _of course_ Bush can trump up WMD intel, and it’s the job of Congress to stop him. Should we, or should we not, be scrutinizing the hell out of the President?
Although, truth be told, it doesn’t matter now. Bush has completely shattered any trust the majority of the American people have had in him, and next time he, or nearly any other US President wants to go to war, even with the best of reasons and intentions, the scrutiny on that President will be so unbelievably high that we may not even be able to go to war when we really have to.
Hoorah! The system as you have defined it works!
As for some of your other remarks:
bq. “he did surpress information that almost certainly would have made at least some people rethink their support for the war…” — not in evidence. An intelligence analysis is not suppressing the other evidence, it is simply reaching a conclusion. If you are arguing for public intelligence analysis, that doesn’t make sense to me. If the analysis is inside government (and subject to congressional oversight) then you’re going to get it wrong once in a while. Lying has nothing to do with it.
This paragraph contains so many straw men I think I’m in Kansas. I never talked about intelligence analyses, nor am I suggesting a public intelligence analysis. But public opinion does matter a great deal in the decision to go to war, especially a war of choice, and public opinion depends heavily on the information the executive branch chooses to publicize… or not publicize, as the case may be. Kevin Drum has a good roundup of the stuff that’s “not in evidence” as you say.
Meantime, I’ve gone to great lengths not to say the president lied: I’m saying he exaggerated some intelligence, and held back other intelligence that was harmful to his case. Period.
bq. That makes this a political discussion, with you stating that the president is somehow defective, not the system. Like I said, vote the other team in. I agreed with the analysis at the time, even though it was not my reason for supporting the war. Collapsing the entire war issue down to the WMD issue is an oversimplification for political purposes, in my opinion.
I have no idea why you keep harping on the idea that this is a political discussion. There are political aspects to it, and there are apolitical aspects to it. And the sky is generally blue, and grass is generally green. What of it?
And I’d love to vote the other team in – and making the argument that Bush (and his supporters) are defective as often as possible is a big part of that process. Again, why are you stating this like it’s news to anyone?
And I don’t particularly enjoy your “rhetorical points”, but I’ll argue them as long as it takes, Daniel. But in the meantime, for Ghod’s sake, learn how to make proper paragraphs, ok?
Chris, Chris, Chris. (shakes head sadly)
As Yoda would say, taking it slow I was, being pedantic was I not.
“to suggest that the executive branch wasn’t the primary driving force behind the Iraq war” — If I had wanted to suggest that, I would have. Instead I pointed out how the government works. It’s a checks and balances kind of thing (not trying to be pedantic, but if I have to repeat myself I wonder if you actually did well in that civics class)
“public being able to judge the facts on its own] is not the case with WMDs” — Would you like for me to explain a representative republic? Or are you going to get offended again?
(in regards to Congressional oversight) “…they’ll never be as involved in intelligence matters as the executive branch, and they had no reason to think that Bush was acting in bad faith..” — maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. Not in scope. It is their responsibility, constitutionally, to be comfortable with their vote. If they made mistakes, then they should be voted out of office. Congress is equally responsible (and some would argue must more powerful than) the executive branch.
“Should we, or should we not, be scrutinizing the hell out of the President?” — absolutely. Go to it. Rally for his impeachment if you feel like it. But these are political concerns, not legal ones. Legally the system worked. I could play out the same scenario with Gore in the WH and 9-11 and (imo) we’d be in the same position, only all the people would be on the different sides! I’m simply trying to rise above all that BS and get to the heart of the matter. Bush made a political case, not a legal one, and tried to bolster support for the war. If he used rhetoric or bad analysis for that argument, who cares? That’s his job. Unless you are alleging a conspiracy it’s just some dumb schmuck living at 1600 PA Ave trying to go to work everyday.
(regarding Bush destroying trust)”…the scrutiny on that [next] President will be so unbelievably high that we may not even be able to go to war when we really have to…” — I’m not sure you are making much sense here. If I am voting to go kill other people, whether as a Congressman or a voter, you can durn sure bet that I’m going to be scrupulous. After all, I’m not buying a used car here. The past performance of all the idiots who have lived in the WH is enough for me to do that. Why would it be any other way and how would it be different now? We’re going to go kill a hundred thousand Oxmorians but jeesh, I’m just not sure I like the president? What kind of twisted thinking is that? I just don’t understand your point. I’m not going to trust the president even if I voted for him. In fact, especially if I voted for him.
“…I never talked about intelligence analyses…” pushing aside your imaginary scarecrows, what else would we be talking about. When a president stands up and says, “I read all of the intelligence, and this is my conclusion” what else is that except for an analysis?
“public opinion depends heavily on the information the executive branch chooses to publicize” — this is an excellent point. Not relevant in a representative democracy, because the founders kept us away from playing “pollster-based-wars” but an important point. Fortunately, the truth will out, and the next election you are welcome to your political viewpoint on the value of outing various bits of information. Not that I think you are going anywhere constructive – -as I said, anytime the analysis is wrong we can have this discussion, no matter who is president or what his beliefs are. So it seems rather pointless. We elected this bunch to make decisions, they made them. If we don’t like it vote a new bunch in (or impeach the current ones). Put up or shut up, as it were.
When I say “this is a political discussion” I mean we are talking about whether you like ice cream or not. I don’t like ice cream. Maybe you do. We are certainly not going to convince one another in this fashion. There is not even a different political ideology that you are prescribing. You’re just saying, “that ice cream you have sucks!” You’re perfectly able to say this, but I’m not sure it accomplishes much. In other words, you do not have a point. (sorry for the bluntness)
Hope these paragraphs suit you. Like I said, you seem like a smart person, and I enjoy the mental exercise. I keep asking myself what if it had been the other party in power? Sadly, I am afraid that I may have been making the same arguments you are now. This is what I mean by “political” Show me where the system is broken and we can both agree to go fix it. But if it is just a matter of personal taste, then this is a lot of noise without a lot of result. We’re never going to get anywhere. Presidents are going to say things that are true as best as they believe — heck presidents are just going to stand up there in front of the cameras and lie. And people are going to die, war or no. Any decision you make about 300 million people is going to result in deaths. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.
Chris,
Daniel isn’t even a quarter as condescending as you are. And you seem to have quite a pile of straw yourself.
As for the issue of white phosphorous, folks, guess what happens when you’re hit by shrapnel from “normal” explosive shells. The fact that it always seems to surprise the Left that, well, war breaks things, never ceases to amaze. The only thing more surprising is how understanding, exulpatory, and silent most of them become when the things broken are American troops, or people with their heads sawed off, or people who die in gulags (REAL gulags), as a result of tricothecene mycotoxin poisoning in Laos, etc.
“Mark,
You simply keep missing the point.
a. War of “Liberation”.
b. Melted children by US troops, for this war of liberation. ”
JC, i am not missing your point. I am asking a very, _very_ simple question. This is _not_ a rationalization. If you believe you have some point with any logical cohesion to it, you need to address my question, because it is a mortal dagger over the heart of your argument.
It is very simple: how can we dump WP and not all our other explosives that cause _far_ more suffering?
“Nevertheless, there’s a problem there – if you can’t see it, then God help you.”
OK. Fine. I’ll play devil advocate with you. Lets say there is a terrible problem. Yet you and I know _for a fact_ that that problem is the tip of the iceberg. Do you, or do you not advocate stripping our soldiers of phospherous flares _as well as_ every weapon that creates equal or greater suffering to civilians? And either way, why?
Would you please answer that simply question or at least tell me that you cant or wont do it.
So, we’re way off the original post… but I’m a chemist… my library doesn’t have much but here’s the best paper I could find….
Acute exposure to white phosphorus:
a topical problem in Ecuador (South America)
Fabricio Gonza´lez-Andradea, Legal Medicine, 4, 2002, 187-192
Ecuador gets on here for the production of ‘little devil’ fireworks. They weigh about 0.3g, and contain 1~10% WP. Potassium Chlorate (KClO, also very toxic but considered sepeartely in the paper) is also available in these explosives, as well as being mixed with flour and undeclared goods. It sounds like most of the cases being written up are swallowing these things as depressive reactions or suicide attempts; but not sure…
WP is used to manufacture insecticides in pasteform, made up of a mixture of yellow phosphorus crushed with water and flour; it is also used in fume control systems and to analyse gases [2,6,7]. In Ecuador, the clandestine use of WP is aimed at the manufacture of homemade explosives and firecrackers. The toxic dose is 15–100 mg (1 mg per kg weight) in adults, and a small dose of 50 mg can be lethal [8]; although there have been cases of survival after ingesting 1570 mg [9]. The lethality rates vary
between 20 and 50% and the prognosis is good if
the patients survive for more than 6 days [12]. The prognosis depends on the quantity of phosphorus absorbed in the intestine, which seems to be greater if the absorption vehicle is liquid.
The acute intoxication normally develops in three
stages. (1) Contact with the skin produces painful second and third degree burns that are slow in healing. Ingestion causes burns in pharynx, oesophagus and stomach, nausea, vomition, diarrhoea, acute abdominal pain, garlic-smelling breath; luminescent faeces and vomition have been described, which facilitate
the diagnosis. Shock may occur, which causes death 24–48 h after ingestion. (2) Relative periods of 7 days free from symptoms, which seem to indicate recovery [10]. (3) Nauseas, copious vomition, diarrhoea, profuse and massive haematemesis, hepatomegalia, jaundice, pruritus, haemorrhages on skin and mucosa due to important coagulation alterations; renal damage with oliguria, haematurai, albuminuria and anuria. In the terminal phase there may be convulsions, delirium and coma. If the patient survives, the brain symptoms may persist for a long time. The WP by-products cause second and third degree burns when in contact with the skin, as well as respiratory symptomatology when inhaled. Death occurs 4–8 days later [11].
A total of 590 cases were described in this period.The age of the intoxication cases ranged from 2 to 70 years, with an average of 18.27 years. With respect to genre, women were the most affected (68%). The aetiology observed was intentional or violent in 98.6% of the cases registered, the onset of the problem being the most commonly cited cause. The quantity consumed varied between 1 and 70 tablets (0.3–21 g). WP
produces hepatic and renal failure, which leads to secondary cardiac failure, which is the cause of death….
So could potential white phosphorus poison others in the water supply? It doesn’t directly answer that question; however if 15-100 mg is all that is needed for a toxic dose; it wouldn’t suprise me if there were some bad side effects from the wells of fallujah.
Joe,
As soon as you use “the left” boogyman, there really isn’t any reason to pay attention to what you say, as that is a shortcut in thinking that you always use.
Mark,
At least Daniel addressed my concern – you want this logician’s argument when children are being melted, well, guess what. I’m not coming from there. It’s a shame you can’t see that.
To the larger point – there’s a tragic irony in that:
a. We go to war, ostensibly for the “imminent threat” of Saddam.
b. That imminent threat turns out to be false, and known to be false.
c. Because we invade and take over the government, then we become responsible for the people in Iraq.
d. Unfortunately, we don’t send enough troops for peacekeeping operations, nor enough translators, nor do we have a good plan.
e. Because of this lack of foresight, places like Fallujah are allowed to fester, spawning a witches brew of civilians, insurgents, and terrorists.
f. We “go to war” with Fallujah, and so “war is hell” thinking applies, and so we use very powerful and destructive weapons in this battle, which then ends up melting children (but saves some troops).
g. The use of these weapons in Iraq is eerily reminiscent of other powerful and destructive weapons that are banned, however, these that the US use, are not banned. This is a somewhat legalistic approach however.
The important thing is this – unlike World War 2, the United States have caused the conditions for which step F above, was required. The fact that children were melted in Iraq is a direct consequence of a war based on misleading information, and a post occupation that lacked any type of planning.
Mark, you keep referring to f as justified – and on this level, as I’ve said before, I see your point. I look at the entire sequence of events, and say this was a war of choice, that has killed over 2000 US soldiers, and 30,000 Iraqis.
And that is a tremendous tragedy, as well as being COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY.
And if you want to say, “Iraqis are better off”, well, that’s still up in the air, but yes, we still have a chance of pulling off a good result in Iraq – and I’m hoping for the best.
On the other hand, saving Darfur – and a lot more people there – didn’t seem to be a high priority for this administration, did it?
JC.
It seems you want to be sad about those deaths. I join you, but I believe there is a larger picture.
Before the Gulf war, we were presented with a geopolitical situation that was untenable: allies were begining to refuse us permission to use airspace to enforce the no-fly zone, Saddam had bought off most of the UNSC, and _all_ of the major intelligence agencies believed Saddam was working on a nuke or other WMD.
Given this preamble, in my opinion we could have never believed Saddam had no WMD, no matter what the source of that information. We would have left the region, and Saddam would have kept pushing the limits. The WOT would have still been centered around the area we were leaving.
The only endgame I could come up with was a nuclear strike against Baghdad, and/or a large-scale conventional war with chemical weapons, without the use of the regional bases. Note that I didn’t say Saddam had WMD at the time, only that it was the endgame I was foreseeing.
I hate like hell that we sent those kids over there and lost and wounded so many of them. I mean that. I have cried on more than one occasion thinking about their suffering and sacrafice. I am disgusted and mad as hell that we have hurt so many innocent Iraqis. But we saved more than we hurt, and I believe our actions will continue to save lives in that region. I would send another ten thousand, another hundred thousand, my own family, for the cause we are engaged in. God forgive me.
Darfur is a different situation.
Hmm, how many falsehoods do we have here? Gee, as many as your idol Joe Wilson, a confirmed liar based on several official reports. A fact which isn’t mentioned much on the other side of the aisle or in the media, because it gets in the way of the useful lies he peddles.
Speaking of which…
a. We go to war, ostensibly for the “imminent threat” of Saddam.
Lie.
The USA specifically went to war to avoid being faced with an imminent threat. This was clearly stated in prominet official speeches. Too bad you’re still peddling the lie.
b. That imminent threat turns out to be false, and known to be false.
Enough of an exaggeration and partial truth that we can label this one “lie.”
We’ve dealt with the imminent threat in “a” – a deliberately bogus assertion, based on a claim that is itself a lie. Nice double-down.
There proved to be no WMD stockpiles found… a matter which would come at some surprise to many intelligence agencies, not to mention President Bill Clinton and many prominent Democrats who had professed otherwise before forgetting that fact became convenient. Oh… and to Saddam and his generals as well, who also believed in their existence and apparently issued orders for their use.
What a shame the USA didn’t know more about goings-on in Iraq than Saddam did.
c. Because we invade and take over the government, then we become responsible for the people in Iraq.
Actually, no, you don’t. You may choose to become responsible, but it doesn’t follow of necessity. you could have simply wrecked the place as an example and gone home, as many countries have done throughout history. Not infrequently, that approach even works; the USA has a different agenda behind the current version of its war effort, however.
I’ll put this one down as an honest misconception.
d. Unfortunately, we don’t send enough troops for peacekeeping operations, nor enough translators, nor do we have a good plan.
Yes, it’s too bad the idiots in the State Department resisted and largely throttled the Pentagon’s advance efforts to recruit and train a Free Iraqi corps to provide this translation and cultural literacy. As it happens, there were some, but not enough. Titan Corp. (now Titan L-3) thanks the State Dept. for this profitable service; I trust their checks were well spent.
The typical liberal religious belief that perfect plans exist is also on display here, as well as the willful ignorance of what the top priorities were and how many have (not) come to pass. I do not believe there was any plan that would have avoided all bad consequences. I trust that if something like this is required again, the plan will be better next time – but still not perfect.
e. Because of this lack of foresight, places like Fallujah are allowed to fester, spawning a witches brew of civilians, insurgents, and terrorists.
Actually, what caused Fallujah to fester was the early end of the initial operation that was crushing the terrorists there. This was done at the behest of the provisional Iraqi government, who were given leeway to make such decisions on the basis that it’s their country, and they weren’t just pawns of the USA.
This failure of will did indeed spawn “a witches brew of civilians, insurgents, and terrorists.” And personally cost the man who requested the stand-down (Allawi) a close relative later on. Which is tragic, but educational and fair in a queer sort of way.
Meanwhile, we’ll put this one down as “partial misconception, didn’t do his homework.”
f. We “go to war” with Fallujah, and so “war is hell” thinking applies, and so we use very powerful and destructive weapons in this battle, which then ends up melting children (but saves some troops).
Lie.
The move into Fallujah was well telegraphed, and most of the population was allowed to leave the city. Including many terrorists, who proceded to cause problems elsewhere in Iraq (esp. the Mosul and Anbar areas) thereafter. Rules of engagement remained far more restrictive than anything seen in World War 2, or even Vietnam.
This is hardly anything goes, war is hell thinking.
Unfortunately, war is still war. When weapons are used, people still in the city may be shot, burned, ripped open by flying metal, or have large objects fall/collapse on them. Other unspecified unpleasant things may also happen – though arguably less unpleasant than the torture chambers, snuff film production suites, et. al. that allied troops found when Fallujah was taken.
That’s the way it is, and I really have little time for JC’s latest effort to manufacture another bogus case.
g. The use of these weapons in Iraq is eerily reminiscent of other powerful and destructive weapons that are banned, however, these that the US use, are not banned. This is a somewhat legalistic approach however.
Well, that last sentence is correct – or would be, except that a legalistic approach requires reference to, uh, accepted law rather than “whatever agitprop we happen to make up today.”
I could also add, snarkily, that this rhetoric is errily similar to the rest of the lying, b.s. agitprop weve been hearing from the left-liberal side of the aisle since before the invasion of Afghanistan – full of deliberately manufactured cases based on squishy feelings and vague claims of similarity with horrible things (Hitler, Gulags, Soviet defeat in Afghanistan which I guess was horrible to the Soviets, etc.), with no grounding in fact or core understanding of the details of the subject being discussed.
Here’s one for JC… without using Goggle or any other research, can you kindly explain to the forum (a) how white phosphorous is delivered to its target (b) what its uses are, and (c) why it is used by just about all militaries for this purpose.
JC, im sorry but i cant let you make self admitted appeals to pure emotion and then use those tools to try builing a logical case regarding the war. Emotion can be built on logic, but never vice-versa. I could as soon throw the suffering of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Iranians, and Kuwaitis Hussien has butchered over the years in your face and bid you dare look at the pictures of Halabja and oppose the takedown of Hussein.
It is fine to be outraged, to be incensed, to scream against the unfairness of the world. But that is not the way to build, nor debate, policy. It _cant_ be. There are too many outrages in the world to toss away logic when each one pops up and agree to an emotionally satisfying but wrongheaded and scattershot response. That is a certain path to greater tragedies down the road.
Like I said, if i showed you a picture of children shot up with bullets next would you have our soldiers throw away their rifles?
Well said, Joe.
JC –
I think the core of your point is found here:
bq.”Mark, you keep referring to f as justified – and on this level, as I’ve said before, I see your point. I look at the entire sequence of events, and say this was a war of choice, that has killed over 2000 US soldiers, and 30,000 Iraqis.
bq.And that is a tremendous tragedy, as well as being COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY.”
Basically, because the war was – in your eyes – unnecessary, _no_ death caused by it can be justified.
And I don’t see a lot of French troops in Darfur, either.
A.L.
_a. We go to war, ostensibly for the “imminent threat” of Saddam._
See comment #40: “[T]he words “imminent threat” did not appear in official statements of the administration but became the catch-phrase in the media and the public.”
Joe,
Well, the good thing, as your squawking becomes more and more strident, and less connected to reality, people pay less and less attention to you. At this point, I just shake my head in wonder at your well-meaning insanity.
I mean, I could reproduce all the Cheney misleading statments, the Rice “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud”, etc, etc. But it’s been hashed out enough, that it isn’t worthwhile.
At any rate, a “timeline for the lead-up to war”:http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/000390.php
As far as white phosphorus, if you pay attention, I link to the James Joyner article, which explains quite a lot.
I like the mis-attribution, by the way. I say “the attempt to smear Joe Wilson”, and suddenly Joe Wilson is “my idol”. So in calling me a liar, you lie in the same post.
A.L,
That’s actually correct, I suppose. The great chasm that will never be crossed. And then when I saw those photos of a melted boy, it triggered that in me again.
But two things.
a. The “public case’ stated for the war, in the common perception, ended up being far from the truth, as did the estimates for the cost of the war, the estimates of the troops needed for the war, and the estimates for how long troops would need to stay in Iraq.
b. I would point out that public opinion is moving more and more to my view, because of the gulf between the expectation and the reality. Not that you personally had that expectation, but nevertheless, it was what it was in how it was sold to the public.
Mark, there’s your answer as well.
bq. As Yoda would say, taking it slow I was, being pedantic was I not.
Right. Because recommending people read the Federalist Papers in the course of a blog argument is completely commonplace.
bq. “to suggest that the executive branch wasn’t the primary driving force behind the Iraq war” — If I had wanted to suggest that, I would have. Instead I pointed out how the government works. It’s a checks and balances kind of thing (not trying to be pedantic, but if I have to repeat myself I wonder if you actually did well in that civics class)
Let’s review, shall we?
I said:
bq. We have to trust the President to show us all the relevant information he can, pro and con, or, failing that, trust that when he makes the decision to go to war because of WMDs, he has a damn good reason for doing so that he just can’t share with us.
You said:
bq. not true again. The president has no war-making authority at all. See the Consitution, Article 1, Section 8.
That is to say, I talked about the President making a decision to go to war, you attempted to contradict me by saying the President had no power to make that decision – thereby implying that he _didn’t_ make the decision in the first place. Which is nonsense. Clear?
bq. “public being able to judge the facts on its own] is not the case with WMDs” — Would you like for me to explain a representative republic? Or are you going to get offended again?
Would you like me to explain that in a mass media environment, elected representatives are exceedingly concerned with the moment-to-moment opinion of the electorate, and that public opinion is always a major component of the decision making process?
bq. (in regards to Congressional oversight) “…they’ll never be as involved in intelligence matters as the executive branch, and they had no reason to think that Bush was acting in bad faith..” — maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. Not in scope. It is their responsibility, constitutionally, to be comfortable with their vote. If they made mistakes, then they should be voted out of office. Congress is equally responsible (and some would argue must more powerful than) the executive branch.
Really? Where’s the “legislators must be comfortable with their decisions” language in the Constitution, Professor Markham? And as I’ve now pointed out three times, legislators are never gonna be able to have the same kind of leverage on the intelligence gathering process as the executive branch. If they make a bad decision because they’re given bad information, I tend not to place the blame on the party providing the bad info, not the person making the decision. You may disagree.
bq. “Should we, or should we not, be scrutinizing the hell out of the President?” — absolutely. Go to it. Rally for his impeachment if you feel like it. But these are political concerns, not legal ones. Legally the system worked. I could play out the same scenario with Gore in the WH and 9-11 and (imo) we’d be in the same position, only all the people would be on the different sides! I’m simply trying to rise above all that BS and get to the heart of the matter. Bush made a political case, not a legal one, and tried to bolster support for the war. If he used rhetoric or bad analysis for that argument, who cares? That’s his job. Unless you are alleging a conspiracy it’s just some dumb schmuck living at 1600 PA Ave trying to go to work everyday.
First, I’ve never made the case to you that the system didn’t work. I’m disappointed in the electoral decision my fellow citizens made, and I’m horrified by the performance of the President. But I never said the system didn’t work. My point at the top of this thread was that AL’s implication that torture was limited to a few bad apples who were being dealt with by the system, so everything’s ok, was wrong, but that’s rather different than the systematic failure you’re talking about.
Second, the system may be able to function even with extremely poor officials running it, but it’s pretty much inconcievable that anyone could write, as you do: “If he used rhetoric or bad analysis for that argument, who cares?”
I do, and every American should. It’s pretty simple.
bq. (regarding Bush destroying trust)”…the scrutiny on that [next] President will be so unbelievably high that we may not even be able to go to war when we really have to…” — I’m not sure you are making much sense here. If I am voting to go kill other people, whether as a Congressman or a voter, you can durn sure bet that I’m going to be scrupulous. After all, I’m not buying a used car here. The past performance of all the idiots who have lived in the WH is enough for me to do that. Why would it be any other way and how would it be different now?
Are you honestly this dense? Whatever your own cynical posturing may be, Congress and the American people are less likely to support a President they don’t trust. If you honestly believe what you’re saying, why not start posting here on WoC encouraging the pro-war camp to start saying things like “Your support for the President and the war doesn’t matter at all, suckers!”
bq. “…I never talked about intelligence analyses…” pushing aside your imaginary scarecrows, what else would we be talking about. When a president stands up and says, “I read all of the intelligence, and this is my conclusion” what else is that except for an analysis?
Er, his personal opinion, perhaps? Analysis tends to suggest a certain degree of expertise and professionalism that’s generally beyond the grasp of most elected officials. That’s why they _hire_ people to do the intellectual heavy lifting, you see.
bq. “public opinion depends heavily on the information the executive branch chooses to publicize” — this is an excellent point. Not relevant in a representative democracy, because the founders kept us away from playing “pollster-based-wars” but an important point.
Wow. If you think public opinion isn’t extremely important to our elected officials, you really are living in your own little world.
bq. When I say “this is a political discussion” I mean we are talking about whether you like ice cream or not. I don’t like ice cream. Maybe you do. We are certainly not going to convince one another in this fashion. There is not even a different political ideology that you are prescribing. You’re just saying, “that ice cream you have sucks!” You’re perfectly able to say this, but I’m not sure it accomplishes much. In other words, you do not have a point. (sorry for the bluntness)
Shrug. Think what you want – I’ll just repeat the point I was making about your post #19 and leave it at that.
bq. My point isn’t that none of your arguments have any validity, but that the case is most definitely a debatable one – and I’m not sure it’s one Bush could have made without WMDs.
That’s all.
My apologies to all for letting my emotion carry me away – we ended up going far afield from the original post.
JC: And do you have one line for the United States, and another line for the enemies of the United States?
It’s obvious that you do.
You called White Phosporous a WMD when you heard that we use it. When I pointed out that Saddam had lots of WP (as do many other countries) you seem to have changed your mind suddenly.
God forbid that the unjustly deposed Saddam Hussein should be in possession of some weapon that violated the tenets of Quakerism.
Mark Buehner (way back at #39):
He claims that this:
would not constitute a recommendation . . .
It doesn’t constitute a recommendation. It recites certain matters of fact, that tend to support sending Wilson. It doesn’t state any opinion on the overall question, whether Wilson should be sent or not.
You might argue that there’s an implicit recommendation in there. In my limited experience of public service process, when you make a recommendation, you make it very explicitly, beginning “I propose” or “I recommend”, and likely using bold face.
There might possibly be other wording in Plame’s memo that does constitute a recommendation. But the excerpt we’ve got is the excerpt that the Republican-controlled SSCI chose to make their case; it wouldn’t be likely that they’d excerpt the weaker evidence and omit the stronger. More likely, they’ve quoted what supported their case, and omitted what didn’t.
The little excerpt that we have been given could have perfectly well come from a broader discussion that in the end recommended for sending Wilson, or recommended against, or took no position. (Most likely, it took no position; there’s no reason to think that Plame was ever asked to recommend for or against, or eever took it upon herself to do so.) To claim it proves that Plame recommended Wilson is just absurd.
It’s not just you and “Steno Sue” Schmidt who are acting squirrelly here, it’s the SSCI too. The Committee wallows about trying to find who proposed sending Wilson, finds that “some CPD officials” can’t recall, and eventually reaches a conclusion based on a remark by the CPD reports officer and a part of a sentence in Plame’s memo. At the same time they studiously avoid the obvious steps, of asking the CIA through regular channels or asking directly the officers in the line of command.
Trouble was, if they had proceeded regularly, they would have got this:
So rather than ask those directly involved what should have been a very simple question, they fossick about in odd corners till they find a few scraps that, in isolation, “indicate” the desired conclusion. This was not a sincere search after the truth, it was concocting spurious talking points to feed to the right wing noise machine.
concocting spurious talking points to feed to the right wing noise machine.
That reminds me: the right-wing noise machine ate my change again. That’s $5.37 it owes me.
Armed Liberal (#34):
The simple fact is that in every recounting, Wilson was told by a former President of Niger that said President believed that the Iraqis had asked to meet in order to buy uranium.
No, that’s not a simple fact but a simple falsehood. In Wilson’s public recounting, in his book, the “said president” “offered that perhaps the Iraqi might have wanted to talk about uranium” (emphasis in the original). “Offered that perhaps he might have” is different from “believed that”.
He may or may not be correct in believing it. But the fact that he said it does represent the base of fact that we all have to deal from.
Mayaki did “speculate” (by one account) or “believe” (by another) that an Iraqi official had “asked to meet in order to buy uranium”. The notion wasn’t based on anything that happened in the meeting, because it arose before the meeting, and because uranium wasn’t discussed in the meeting.
There were, it seems, quite a few people around that time, when Iraq was making trade overtures to various African countries, speculating that perhaps Iraq was seeking uranium. The only basis for the speculation was the fact of the overtures and the fact that some of those countries exported uranium. Mayaki’s speculation, for all that he was directly approached in one of those overtures, was based on the same public information as everyone else’s. And that off-the-top-of-the-head speculation, together with a set of forged documents, is the only basis that the Niger uranium story ever had.
Now you want to spin this up into “Amb. Wilson was personally told that Iraqi agents were seeking uranium ore”. Bullshit.
Chris:
Thanks for the review. It seems you are falling apart here. Not sure I can help any but make you thrash around some more, but I’m willing to give it a shot.
“…recommending people read the Federalist Papers in the course of a blog argument is completely commonplace…” — do you want material sourced or not? I prefer sourced if possible, even when I already know it. Perhaps you don’t. For all I can see, your knowledge of how the government works does not seem up to par.
(about the president going to war)”…implying that he didn’t make the decision in the first place. Which is nonsense. Clear?…” The president makes the decision to advocate war, not make it. (after the 90 days WPA provision, of course). I believe I am correct and you are not on this. I could refer you to the WPA, or Congress cutting off funding for Vietnam, etc.
“…public opinion is always a major component of the decision making process?…” Says who? Show me where this is a requirement for office. Are you saying that politicians can’t do unpopular things? That’s ludicrous. Some politicians watch polls constantly. Some do not. Arguing that something is right or wrong because it is popular or not in a democracy is a little beneath you, I would think.
“…Really? Where’s the “legislators must be comfortable with their decisions” language in the Constitution, Professor Markham?…” — My bad wording. How about the word “vote” One would assume that leglistlators would have some responsibility to those people you worry about so much. But it is implied, not spelled out. You are correct.
“…legislators are never gonna be able to have the same kind of leverage on the intelligence gathering process as the executive branch…” — Gee, Chris. If what you are saying is true (it is not), then this would be a great area for Congress to get together and pass some laws to fix the problem. Once again, this is a Congressional issue, not a presidential one. Keep on wiggling.
I do disagree. Each Congressperson is required to represent his constituents. If you are telling me that when the president stands up and says “to end poverty, we need to do X” that all of the Congress should believe him? Get real! Or perhaps it is only on super secret intelligence matters? Gosh. There was a lot of information in the public domain before the war on Iraq — items like every western intelligence agency believed SH had WMD. There were verified breaches of binding UNSC resolutions. Poor little me was able to put the pieces together without feeling lied to. If you wanted a one-issue war, guess you are mad. Mad at who? beats me, but mad. Funny that if the one issue had been WMD and it was valid, some folks would now be making the argument that we should invade every country with WMD — that we are being hypocrites. Go figure.
(I wrote ‘If he used rhetoric or bad analysis for that argument, who cares?’) “I do, and every American should. It’s pretty simple.” — yeah. After I wrote that I figured you would demagog it. Consider that a freebie. I do not care if the president is an idiot or a liar. If I did, then whenever my party was out of power, they would always convince me that the current occupant of 1600 PA Ave is a lying evil idiot. I’m not playing that game anymore. Maybe you like riding around the parisan merry-go-round. I do not. I just assume that presidents are stupid, lying, and dangerous. That’s why I put my faith in the system, not the people.
“…why not start posting here on WoC encouraging the pro-war camp to start saying things like ‘Your support for the President and the war doesn’t matter at all, suckers!'” — I read this three times and I do not understand you. Certainly one’s support or opposition do matter, for your political party. This is why they feed the suckers in the base little scandals every so often — to keep the base motivated. It matters a lot. Never said that it didn’t. I simply am trying to expalin to you _why_ it matters, which you seem to not get. (or care to get)
“…Analysis tends to suggest a certain degree of expertise and professionalism that’s generally beyond the grasp of most elected officials. That’s why they hire people to do the intellectual heavy lifting, you see…” — and this is different from monetary policy, deployment of nuclear submarines, civil engineering, etc how? The presdient isn’t supposed to be uber-smart-man. He’s simply supposed to form an opinion, tell us about it (if he feels like it), and act on it. Heck. He’s not even required to act. Many presidents do just fine doing a lot of nothing. In either case, when I hear the president say something like “we need better schools to fight poverty” I assume he is making a political analysis based on his personaliy and the information available. That is an anlysis, Chris. No intelligence or mental muscle proof is required. BTW — this by no means implies that the entire Federal government agrees with the president, which is of course an impossibility. There is a reason that agencies are staffed by political appointees — they have a political, not bureaucratic role.
(case for war) “…most definitely a debatable one – and I’m not sure it’s one Bush could have made without WMDs…” All I can say is that WMDs did not affect my personal decision. Your argument seems to be that Bush made a persuasive political campaign using facts that were not supported by later discoveries. I agree. Did he know at the time? This is a dumbass question, in my view, because we can spend the next hundred years nit-picking intelligence reports here and there and playing these debating games on blogs. The answer is — The administration knew that it was a mixed bag. They decided, politically, to pick one or the other. At the time, it looked like “falling off a log”, but later on didn’t turn out that way. Some people won’t like him because it turned out that way, some people will like him for taking a stand. But this is going to be true no matter what the subject, right? It’s just that you’re trying to get a lot of mileage out of the “I’m appalled!” line, which quite frankly, is running out of steam with me.
“It doesn’t constitute a recommendation. It recites certain matters of fact, that tend to support sending Wilson. It doesn’t state any opinion on the overall question, whether Wilson should be sent or not.”
Again, see my note on denying the universality of language. Do you really expect me to believe that when a woman _puts forward_ her husbands name and qualifications she does it with complete ambivalence over whether he is qualified and/or wants him selected? Sorry, im simply not willing to play that ridiculous game. There is a slight disturbance in the earths rotation today, _Occam spinning in his grave_.
to the continuing discussion from #91)
I think we can all agree that democrats in this situation reacted spinelessly. It was an election year, the public was still terrified from 9/11, and here was an enemy who was known to kill his own people, who has had weapons in the past… and now evidence was being presented which indicated a nuclear weapon was within the hands of terrorists. You may remember the “I don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud” comment being repeated a million times.
And the senate and house did little to investigate these claims because 1) their consituents were freaked out 2) any attempt to investigate this intelligence was ridiculed as ‘giving Saddam time to prepare his weapons’ or charged as ‘weak on terror’ 3) as was anyone who pointed out that the Iraq plan was flawed or understated. So our congress and senate buckled, and gave the authority to the president (w/out giving a formal declaration of war, which should have been their job).
So did the system work? Technically. However I think it shows a little better how flawed our system is becoming. If rhetoric grows so out of hand that we discuss something as serious as war with only insults and alarming statements, when our politicians undermine their opponents instead of welcoming a sincere debate, when the american public can no longer keep up with the lies and deceit on both sides of the aisle; then the whole point of our democracy is dead.
On the bright side, these blogs are great. The fact that hundreds of hours have probably been put into this single point-counter point debate is healthy and refreshing.
Alchemist.
I agree with the thrust, but not the conclusions, of you argument.
I think there are some flaws in the system, and i worry that partisanship will keep us from fixing them.