Should the Decision Points Theater interactive exhibit in the George W. Bush Library give you a choice to keep UN inspections as a means to avoid starting a war since historically that is what happened. Saddam Hussein did let the inspectors in as Bush demanded that inspections needed to happen to avoid war?
Should UN inspections be mentioned as part of this exhibit if it is meant to be historically accurate for participants to get a feel for wearing Bush’s cowboy boots and the tough decision he had to make.
I have taken excerpts from the Rachel Maddow Show which sent a camera crew to the Bush Library and filmed what happens when you enter the interactive exhibit that is supposed to allow you to get a feel what it was like for Bush to make the tough decisions of his presidency.. such as should I invade Iraq
They tell you:
And if you choose the wrong answer… which is ‘leave Hussein in power’ then Bush comes to you via video tape to tell you that you are wrong
Would it be appropriate and a good idea to preserve the truth to ask the curator for a write in answer which would be what six of ten Americans thought before the invasion - and that was to Decide to allow the inspections to continue and not seek war?
Does any one disagree with that?
The problem with the inspections was that they weren’t supposed to just go to sites and say, “Nope, no WMD here.” What was supposed to happen was for Iraq to account for all their WMDs, either by bringing them to the inspectors, or documenting their destruction.
The idea to avoid war was for Saddam to allow inspectors back in and allow unrestricted access to sites. They did that from the start. That was called cooperation on process by Dr Blix and Dr El Baradai.
Cooperation on process (unlimited access to sites) was implemented very early.
What you address is on what Dr Blix referred to as cooperation on substance. That is pro-active engagement of the sort you mention.
According to Dr Blix by the end of February Iraq was cooperating not only on process as they had from the start, but were cooperating on substance as well.
That was several weeks prior to the war.
There is another point that must be made against your problem. Iraq offered to allow the CIA etc come into Iraq to search for WMD directly. That offer was made and reported on Fox and other networks in mid December 2002.
There is no doubt that the offer was an attempt to cooperate on substance from the early get go.
Regarding the materials that were destroyed in the early nineties, it was reported prior to invasion that the inspectors and Iraqis were dealing with as it was the last major issue that Dr Blix said must be dealt with.
Making a justification for war in 2003 over materials destroyed in 1991 without proper documentation should be weighed against the Trillion dollars spent and the 4500 American soldiers killed and ten times that wounded plus all the Iraq dead wounded displaced… just doesn’t get it done for me.
And the Iraqis could not hand over WMD if they didn’t have it. And they did not have it.
The authorization to use force referred to Diplomatic Means needing to be exhausted prior to the use of force actually going forward in that the determination to use force must mean that diplomatic means had failed. There was no distinction about cooperation on process or on substance in that document.
The cooperation by the Iraqis in January was the best cooperation the inspectors had ever seen.
The threat of force if they didn’t cooperate this time I believe contributed to this success.
By February 2003 the issues you submitted as a ‘problem’ no longer existed.
And along with that was the common sense conclusion available that the threat was greatly reduced with 200 UN inspectors on the ground in Iraq, and an invite for the CIA to come in the whole time. That was reduced greatly from just five months earlier when no inspectors were in.
I take it that you see a problem and that you agree Bush was right to ignore the inspections on the ground which produced a reduced threat from the level of threat in October 2002 and decide to invade Iraq anyway after advising the inspectors to get the hell out of his way.
We can disagree over whether the war was justified. Time has proven you right on that issue, and me wrong. I was just disputing your characterization of the “Decision Point”. Bush clearly did not get the cooperation from Iraq that he was looking for and if he was going to invade Iraq, he had to do it no later than March due to weather considerations, and he couldn’t keep those troops in the desert indefinitely.
Saddam was trying to run out the clock. He did not want to give up his WMD, nor did he want to provoke a war. So he tried to get away with toeing a fine line. It worked with world public opinion, failed with the opinion of the one guy who mattered: GWB.
That my friend is a not a fact that you can support any Iraqi actions. SH openly invited the CIA, The US Military and FBI to come into Iraq because he had his spokesman at the UN in NYC in December 2002 make that offer.
His spokesman called Tony Blair, Colin Powell and GW Bush liars for claims that Iraq had stockpiles of WMD or active programs of any type.
Let’s try to discuss this on the basis of what is documentable by contemporary news reports of what took place during that time.
Can we do that?
The choice to invade should have solely decided upon the threat level and allowing the UN Security Council to determine if cooperation was sufficient to avoid war.
It should not have been decided on the basis of weather conditions for a proper time to invade.
The proper invasion time would be if the threat had exceeded a level that could no longer be resolved by diplomatic means.
With 200 UN inspectors on the ground which were not there a few months prior it is difficult for me to accept that the threat had increased to a need for war by March - that coincided with when temperatures began to rise.
The majority of the US public figured it out that it would be best to let the inspections continue. They did not see a threat level rise. So why did Bush.
You’re right on almost all counts. Here’s why Bush had a “decision point” though: he committed the military to a buildup in the Kuwait. From there, he had only two options: 1) Attack, or 2) Pull them out
Now if we assume good faith on bush’s part, admittedly, a hard sell, but work with me here, then he would pull the troops out if Saddam let the inspectors in, presented them all of Iraq’s remaining prohibited weapons, or showed evidence of their destruction.
But if Saddam gives only partial cooperation, and Bush pulls the troops out in March instead of invading, what are the chances that Saddam goes right back to his old tricks? I’d say pretty high.
I think that Bush made a mistake by focusing on Iraq when he did. But once he decided to focus on Iraq, his decisions from there were entirely rational. He put pressure on Saddam with the buildup, got a UN resolution demanding the return of inspectors, and demanded full cooperation from Saddam to end the crisis. That cooperation was not forthcoming, so he had to invade, since he was committed to invasion of complete surrender on Saddam’s part on the WMD issue.
You keep on talking about Saddam’s WMDs and prohibited weapons. Please give some cites about these things existing at the time. I’m not interested in cites about how he might have been able to build some in the future.
Since Bush (or more accurately, Cheney and Rumsfeld) decided they wanted to invade by September 2001, all that happened was reasonable in pursuit of that goal, no matter what the facts were.
WHether the WMDs existed is not relevant to the discussion we are having though. At the time Bush had to make his decision, the intelligence communities of the entire world were positive he had prohibited weapons.
Once Bush made the decision to pressure Iraq by deploying troops, he essentially had made the decision to go to war unless Saddam capitulated completely. And let’s face it, Saddam probably thought he had WMD. He probably also thought he had an air force.
More that he was keeping the disintegraton of Iraq’s WMD programs a secret.
The problem with the decision point one-guy-who-matteded idea is that wars are caused by historical forces, not one man buffeted by them. Standing up to, not just his party, but also to hawkish moderates* like the foreign policy columists of the Washington Post and New York Times, was implausible. Congressional Democrats were mostly for invasion while taking the oppositional stance that GWB had the wrong timing and wasn’t doing it right. Al Gore, September 23, 2002:
I believe in free will, but only up to a point. You can’t be enough of a people pleaser to get elected and then defy almost everyone around you.
Liberals by DC standards, but I’d rather not argue labels.
I thank both Adaher and Voyager for keeping this a reasonable discussion from the get go. I hope that continues.
In just a few posts, both have provided points that I find interesting and worthy of continued discussion. I say that in part because Adaher holds a position completely opposite to mine on when Bush’s decision making was a mistake.
I hold a view that Bush was correct to confront Saddam Hussein in 2002 or after 2011 which is a view that is not held by many liberals at all. While on the other hand Adahar is expressing a view, if I understand it correctly, that Bush made the decisive mistake in 2002 and prior to the inspectors being allowed back in.
If it is ok with you Adahar, I’d like to get back to (no hurry) how we take two opposite views of the same thing on whether Bush made his mistake concerning the invasion of Iraq prior to the vote to authorize force in 2002 or after the inspectors returned in the ‘final days of decision’ in March 2003.
There is no hurry on a continuation of that, but I’d like to see if it is possible to keep this going over a while - with other things thrown in from time to time - all hopefully in a constructive way.
This can’t be resolved if it can be resolved at all among us by cramming it into a few quick posts and replies.
Just my view. Let me know if you agree.
Now to this commentary:
As far as Bush having only two choices in March 2003 as inspections were reaching the most constructive disarmament activities over the previous decade, I am convinced that Bush had at least a third option that you have not mentioned and that would be to leave a major troop presence in the region around Iraq for a while… and here is my main point on that.
The UN inspectors were already beginning to set up a long term monitoring and surveillance regime that was in accordance with Iraq’s disarmament agreement.
Preliminary work on that aspect of the ‘final but everlasting’ phase of UN disarmament programs had begun I believe prior to March 2003.
It’s purpose was to prevent what you are concerned about happening had Bush chosen not to invade and let inspections go on.
So to me as a practical person, I would think Bush could have easily figured out that as long as things were going pretty well between Iraq and the UNSC that it would be cost effective and much less bloody and dangerous to see what would happen during the start of a long term UN monitoring regime that would be stationed in Iraq indefinitely.
The cost of monitoring would have been shared across many other nations and the cost of keeping troops on for a year or so would still be lower than the eventual Blitzkrieg to Baghdad that was decided upon.
How is this a great debate? Should the Decisions Point Theater at the GWB Library have more choices where dubya appears to tell you why you are wrong for not doing what he did?
If the policy of the GW Bush Library is to present the Dubya Presidency in the best possible
light, then I think the director is going to try every possible gimmick to achieve this mandate.
I think that any debate about our entry into the Iraq domain is important because of all the
negative consequences this war has wrought.
The library just opened so it is a current topic. I beleve there should be a serious discussion about the success of the inspections that should have averted war because I see that that a video of GWB appears in this exhibit to tell onlookers that his first choice was diplomacy not war.
That is blatantantly untrue.
Bush had a choice at the end of the run up to war to use diplomacy that was succeeding toward a peaceful outcome.
I don’t see how Bush gets to have it both ways.
Not so much a debate as seeking to find a consensus that there has been too little attention on the success of the inspections and too much myth still prevailing as Bush himself has said - Saddam Hussein did not let the inspectors in.
Of course some may seek to debate the success of inspections.
I think that can be a great debate should there be an opposing proponent bringing facts and sources and more than sound bites or bits of news from here or there.
Think about the historical context of what was going on with Iraq though. This was the third administration playing a very expensive cat and mouse game with Saddam over his WMD programs. Plus there were constant other provocations between 1991 and 2003, from an attempted assassination of a former President to a couple of invasion threats towards Kuwait. There was also the problem of the sanctions regime starting to unravel due to the huge amount of human suffering it was causing, suffering that may have exceeded the suffering caused by the actual war that came later.
So, Bush was resolved to end things one way or another in 2003. Anything short of complete compliance by Saddam would have kept the whole problem going. I guess Bush could have kept a large presence in Kuwait another year and many Presidents would have taken that tack. But Saddam likely would have simply outlasted the US’s resolve. Think about it: he’s got inspectors running around looking for WMD. If he did still have the 5000 tons of chemical weapons the UN said he had, that’s one warehouse. Or they could have been buried, or like Iraq’s air force during the Gulf WAr, temporarily relocated to another country. They would have never found it. It just wasn’t going to get to the result Bush wanted.
So I maintain that Bush’s mistake was to focus on Iraq immediately after the overthrow of the Taliban. But once he did decide to focus on Iraq, everything he did flowed logically from that point. Any other decisions he made would have defeated his purpose. And that’s true whether you think he was acting in good faith or whether he was determined to go to war.
Do you agree on this basic point that the NIE was hastily written in September or so of 2002 but the decision whether to invade Iraq or bring the troops home or let the inspections continue took place in March 2003?
You must agree that in September 2002 that there were no UN inspectors seeking intelligence on Iraq’s WMD and WMD programs. Therefore you must agree that there was a changed condition between September 2002 and March 2003 with respect to the gathering of intelligence. That changed conditions was that there were at least 200 UN inspectors on the ground in Iraq by March 2003.
Foreign intelligence (at least that of France, Russia and China) did not suspect that Iraq had chemical weapons in March 2003. They agreed that the UN inspectors were not finding any.
If he had them, they still wouldn’t have found any. The previous inspections regime only found WMD when they got intelligence and surprised the Iraqis. This was the “spying” that so enraged Saddam.
I think it’s a ridiculously lame waste of time to ask the Bush Library to address such a thing. It’s as big a waste of time as writing to Pizza Hut and asking them to include Coke as well as Pepsi in their fountain machines. Seriously, why even bother?
