Not at all. Clinton has said on several occasions that he wanted to take Saddam out in 1998. He brought it up, but there simply wasn’t enough political support for it, either domestically or with the allies. In all honesty, I’d have to say that he would have had a hard time selling me on it at the time.
9/11 changed everything, and enabled Bush to do what Clinton had wanted done.
I guess I’ll accept that that’s the way you read it. I never once had the impression that a clear, proven, connection was made, or that they were trying to make one. What I always heard --and still hear in that speech – was that there were some tenous connections that suggested or implied a linkage, and that the important thing was that waiting until such a connection was unequivocally proven was foolhardy:
"Some believe, some claim, these contacts do not amount to much. They say Saddam Hussein’s secular tyranny and al-Qaida’s religious tyranny do not mix. I am not comforted by this thought. Ambition and hatred are enough to bring Iraq and al-Qaida together … "
As a sighting shot I would guess that Powell knows that the supporters of GW can make him personally rich beyond his wildest dreams if he just plays along with their game.
If you are rich enough who cares what the ordinary people think of you? You never have to mingle with them anyway.
Ambition got him to high position. Greed can do the rest.
Furt:
As well as entirely sufficient to keep them at each other’s throats!
It is naive and simplistic to pretend that all our enemies, real and potential, are mutually aligned in some malicious cabal. Even more so now, as we seem bent on dissolving any friendship not demonstrated by abject subservience.
Let’s say you are Saddam. How does the prospect of an Al Queda attack on America appeal to you? Say, a radiological attack. With massive casualties.
You would have to be aware of the fact that America already halfway blames you for 9/11, and would be perfectly content to fill in the other half. (For those with a taste for irony, submitted for your approval: 9/11 was the only crime Saddam didn’t committ.) You must conclude that within an hour after such an incident. Baghdad would be nothing more than a glowing crater at the center of a sheet of fused green glass.
There was no advantage for Saddam in assisting Al Queda in a terrorist attack on America. Point of fact, there would have been enormous advantages for an enemy of Saddam to make such an attack and leave clues leading to Iraq. Think we would have analyzed and scrutinized the evidence thoroughly? Or would we have torn Saddam a new one that very day?
The last thing in the world Saddam wanted was a terrorist attack on America. He would have had to know we would blame him. Point of fact, we did.
furt,
This tenuous connection is so tenuous that the CIA doesn’t find it worthy.
Even if you advocate “just in case” tactics, you still have to draw a line somewhere. Otherwise you have to act on every report regardless of its credibility.
The CIA, among others, have checked the the intel of this tenuous connection and found it wanting.
What more do you want? Where’d do you draw the line?
Re-examine what the intel pros have said and compare it to what the politicians said.
Would you trust a plumber to remove your appendix? Or would you go to the professionals in the feild of appendix removal?
Would you trust politicians ,(and political appointees) to make intel evaluations, or would you rather go to the professionals in the filed of intel evaluation?
Well, now, the cat has been set amongst the pigeons…
Mr. Simon, former Sec. of Treasury, on the Bush admin. as regards Iraq…
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/09/60minutes/main592330.shtml
" The Bush Administration began laying plans for an invasion of Iraq, including the use of American troops, within days of President Bush’s inauguration in January of 2001 – not eight months later after the 9/11 attacks as has been previously reported.
That’s what former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill says in his first interview about his time as a White House insider. …"
For broadcast on 60 Mintues this Sunday.
Now, if you will excuse me, I’ve got to find my dancing shoes.
Oh my.
Maybe the wash has started and things are coming out.
“pre-emptive” is repeated used when what is meant is “preventive”
Preemptive war is perfectly legitimate and needs no defense. It’s predicated on an imminent threat, however. Preventive war on the other hand is a different bunch of roses and is on much shakier ground.
The National Security Strategy said we were “adapting” the concept of imminent threat in such a way that “preemptive” now has a great deal of overlap with “prevention.”
With 500 American soldiers dead in Iraq, Powell is no longer eligible for “honorable.” He’s a Teflon-coated, GOP-lockstepping, aw-shucks confidence man who will resign not over principle, but instead to once again sup at the lucrative lecture/memoir/talk show/corporate board grazing table.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by elucidator *
It is naive and simplistic to pretend that all our enemies, real and potential, are mutually aligned in some malicious cabal.
[QUOTE]
Agreed. It is equally naive and simplistic to assume that they could not ally. Enemy-of-my-enemy alliances happen all the time.
I’m not sure where you’re getting the idea that anyone is saying SH was directly behind 9/11. I don’t think that anyone serious ever said that.
What they did say, was that there was definte connection between SH and terrorism in general – Abu Nidal, Hamas, etc, there was a definite history of SH supporting terrorism outside his borders (Palestine, Iran), there was, everyone at the time agreed, some sort of WMD program in Iraq (and there was a definite refusal to prove otherwise), and there was evidence that AQ people had at least been in Iraq and had some contact.
Given all that, they made the case that the possibility of a linkage --when in combination with the human-rights abuses and violations of the UN resolutions – was so great as to justify premptive war. Others said it still wasn’t enough.
Subsequent events have shown that: 1) to everyone’s surprise, Iraq’s WMD program was not all that advanced. If the latest reports are to be believed, this is news to Saddam himself. Again, this points to our sadly deteriorated intelligence agencies, but there’s plenty of blame for that to go around.
An ultimatum was given, SH did not comply, and we went to war. Whether or not the US ever had the “right” to issue such ultimatums has been debated for over a year, and I think both sides made credible cases. Subsequent discoveries are meaningful, but they do not affect the legal/philosophical issues.
If WMDs were discovered, or firmer evidence of connections to AQ, would that mean that that the legal arguments against the war were unjustified? I say no, in the same way that the cops finding drugs doesn’t redeem an illegal search. In the same way, not finding anything doesn’t make a search unjustified post facto.
Absolutely. Which is why no one ever supported action agains SH based solely on that. As has been explained on these boards a thousand times, it is/was a laundry list of things: Terrorist connections AND the possibility of WMD AND defiance of his treaties AND ecouraging unrest beyond his borders AND human rights AND everything else.
After the first Iraq war Hussien was known to posses a large quantity of biological and chemical weapons. He had also proved his willingness to use these during the Iran war. According to his surrender he was supposed to document these and destroy them. The purpose of the inspectors was to verify that these large quantities of weapons were destroyed not to play WMD hide and seek. After approximatley 12 years Saddam still had not completed this task.
Without verification that these weapons were destroyed it is most logical to assume that Hussien was hiding them. Further having showed that he was willing to use these weapons it is logical to assume that given the right oppurtunity he would use them again.
As to the question of why now I provide the following analogy. Suppose that the world is a human and Saddam is a cancer growing in a place that is not life threatening. He does not himself directly pose a threat to the world. However at any moment part of the cancer could break off and travel to another part of the body becoming life threatening. In other words he could give his weapons to someone else and they could attack the rest of the world causing grave damage. Although the person in this analogy is not in immediate danger he needs surgery to remove the tumor before it spreads. Just as the world needed war to remove Saddam. So the question is not Why now? but Why wait.
Even if we had certain knowledge that Saddam hadn’t destroyed his weapons stockpiles from 1991, we had certain knowledge that they would, by this time, be utterly useless. Here’s a quote from Robin Cook, former British foreign minister:
So, unless we had evidence that there were current efforts to produce new stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, we went to war to make sure no-one could ever use something that wouldn’t work anyway.
But only a few of these things were used for justifying acting outside of the UN.
Excluding some elements in the broad category of “everything else,” these are the UN’s problems, (unless, when I wasn’t looking, the US somehow became the UN’s punked bitch). Let the UN deal with their problems in their own way.
These were the issues directly related to the US. The threat from these two things together are what justified the US action outside our UN agreements to “defend itself.” And, unfortunately, so far, these’ve turned out to be non-issues.
What’s missing from these scenarios is the assessment of likelihood. FWIW, according to the NIE and the CIA said that it was unlikely that Iraq would iitiate an attack against the US.
If this assessment of probability were to be included in your analogy it would fundamentally change things. The tumor is unlikely to spread and is withering away on its own, in part because the body is actively depriving it of nutrients. Surgery would be contraindicated as it’s riskier than letting the tumor die out on its own.
I realize that Saddam was not going to directly attack the United States but other groups using weapons that they obtained from Saddam possibly could.
well, since there’s money involved I suppose I’ll have a go at this…
You want to know if the administration has done anything to distance itself from any suggestion of impending threats, I think…I doubt it. Haven’t seen anything like that. They seem to be holding fast to the original case made for war, which was not entirely centered around possession of WMD as you know. Much of Powell’s case to the UN last year was about Iraq being intent on acquiring and developing these weapons surreptitiously. Whether this will suffice as a “threat” I don’t know, how much of this weapons stuff represents the whole threat I don’t know, and whether it justifies what we did is a whole 'nother thing too…yes, for some, no for others…we’ve done that.
So this is in the narrow sense of how Powell’s role - the case made to the UN, to the world - has played out. The lack of found weapons agents is a definite problem. Some things are vindicating - finding the Iraqi Air Force buried, finding some integral design piece stashed in a scientist’s backyard, a found mobile unit matching what a defector had described…from the humanitarian angle, finding mass graves, millions in cash hidden in rock walls while people starved…for terrorism, finding supplies of suicide bomb vests and stockpiles of C4…of course it’s not evidence that they could destroy New Jersey at any time, but it is evidence of the behaviors and objectives of the regime outlined by Powell to the UN.
That was an attempt to get the world community on board. Intelligence wasn’t his responsibility (in fact he distrusted much of it), acting without support of the international community was entirely Bush’s decision, nothing to do with Powell…but if you’re going to blame “failed diplomacy” for anything, this is probably your man. That’s his department. But otherwise Powell in a lot of ways I think represents the American wide-lens view of our actions in Iraq…did he or did he not believe Saddam was a threat to America? I think yes, that he hated the idea of military action for it from experience, that he disliked the unilateralism approach on principle, but he did ultimately see a greater danger in inaction. It’s hard to say if this is “imminent” or not. And, he was one of the principle figures involved in the decision to not continue the action against Saddam in '91 while we were amassed in Kuwait. He was in a unique position to review himself here, more so than anyone else in the administration, and weigh the results of his own decision.
JMO, FWIW.
Fortunately, the CIA and the NIE already thought to take this possibility into account when they evaluated the probability of an Iraqi initiated attack on the US.
Given the relative short shelf life of Saddam’s older WMDs (see MrVisible’s message above), why would terrorists even bother to buy useless biological sludge from Saddam? They’re not a bunch of idiots who will fork over a briefcase full of money to any idiot with a canister with “Anthrax” stamped on the side.
And let’s not even mention al Qaeda, shall we? After all, AQ and Saddam have been bitter enemies for over a decade. Despite what Bush would like us to believe, the odds of Saddam and Osama working together are right up there with Dean hiring Karl Rove for his campaign…
SimonX from the page you quoted
Which supports my contention that Saddam would not attack us directly but provide weapons to other groups that would.