I just read this article today and I was really surprised by it for a number of reasons. First and foremost, Kwiatkowski seemed to offer plausible motives for the rush and insistence for war:
Particulalrly that last bit about dollars vs euros was interesting to me. Now, having read this, I immediately go to look to see what’s being said about Kwiatkowski elsewhere–to sort of gauge her credibility. Pages and pages on google, mostly excerpted from or reporting on this interview. I don’t know, but I think this is the original interview, so naturally, my next question is, what is L.A. Weekly’s reputation? And why there and not the NY Times or even the LA Times… I couldn’t find anything specific on google when searching for variations of “L.A. Weekly” + “reputation”, so I guess part of this thread is dedicated to these questions.
The other aspect that I’m trying to explore is, if her allegations are credible, what does that mean for our political future and/or the future of politics? Is this going to be a problem for the Bush administration?
I suspect we’ll be able to gauge how serious it is by what happens to Col. Kwiatowski. If the Bush people ignore her or call her a loon then it’s probably not that serious. If the Justice Department and the IRS announce investigations of her, and her CIA life partner is ratted out to the conservative press, and naked pictures of her appear on the Internet, then we’ll know she’s hitting pay dirt.
I wish I could say the above is entirely tounge in cheek.
The bit about the euro seems a real stretch. Could a President who’s shown such a cavalier attitude about budget deficits and their effect on the dollar’s value care so much about so abstruse a point? The part about having bases in the region is also a stretch, considering US relations with Qatar, Bahrain, and even SA. Getting a serious amount of *contracts * from the same Saddam we’d spent over a decade trying to personally kill just wasn’t ever going to happen either, was it?
Bush can dismiss her as a loon if he wants. Hell, *I * do. The reasons for this war were adequately (and even more reasonably) laid out by PNAC long before the last election, and don’t include any of this.
For what it’s worth, the L.A. Weekly is our local “alternative” paper, much like the Chicago Reader. Their journalism is generally straight up, though – being an alternative – they don’t have nearly 1/10th the readership of the two big local newspapers, the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register. But there’s nothing in the Reader to suggest that they’re total loons (unlike, say, the Washington Times or the NY Post).
If Kwiatkowski gets more attention in the mainstream media, expect the Bushies to drop the hammer on her. I’m not sure about the whole “convert to the Euro” bit, but her points warrant further discussion IMO.
Thanks for the information rjung. I suspected it might be a weekly alternative; I used to work for our local Louisville Eccentric Observer. I do wonder why the story is breaking there, considering its limited audience. Still, I agree, these issues merit more discussion. I’d be particularly interested in a learned analysis of her currency claims. I just don’t understand how that stuff works much, and because of my ignorance on the issue, it’s an idea I never considered before. Anyone?
As a regional analyst, Lt. Colonel Kwiatkowski’s information here is probably based on her expert opinion, rather than true Bush Administration Policy, because I doubt someone on her level would be privy to Iraq Strategy briefings by the "neoconservatives who dominated Iraq policy.” Further, she freely admits there was a powerful propaganda machine working within the Pentagon to ensure widespread policy adoption by its analysts. I suspect the Colonel’s contribution has been colored less with factual data than by Pentagon scuttlebutt.
Specifically:
Emphasis mine. She didn’t write her columns about “official statements within the Pentagon,” but about “internal Pentagon dissent.” I think that’s a critical problem into which the reporter should have dug more deeply. (Does she have any cites? Is anyone else willing to come forward? If not, why not?)
Additionally, while I’m certainly no apologist for the Bush Administration’s Iraq actions, I think Kwiatkowski’s information is quite facile in its explanation of the economic benefits of the invasion/occupation. For that reason alone, I can only conclude that her version is based primarily on her highly qualified conjecture.
In other words, to the White House, she’s not a terribly important threat, and therefore, Plame-style retribution will not be forthcoming. Which leads to my point in responding here: don’t discount her information just because the Bush Administration leaves her alone. In this case, absence of Dick’s Dirty Tricks does not necessarily indicate loonery.
Where this article really shines is in one seemingly buried gem: On Libya, really a small player, the facts did not fit [the Pentagon’s] paradigm that we have all these enemies. Colonel Kwiatkowski says she was asked several times to re-write her report on Libya’s threat, until eventually she was asked to “just send…the file,” possibly for further edits. Apparently, her bosses wanted language that would “…present their case on Libya in a way that said it was still a threat to its neighbors and that Libya was still a belligerent, antagonistic force.”
Same kind of flim-flam they used with Iraq, only in this case, Libya decided to simultaneously toss out its six-shooters and hunker down publically to kiss our ring. Boosting the Libya threat makes the Administration, with a wink and a nod, look more like a hero for putting Qaddafi “in his place.”
So, is the Colonel Kwiatkowski’s information an outline for the PNAC’s push to Iraq? No. But she brings forth an interesting perspective, one which contains an excellent exposition of the machinations within the Office of Special Plans. The thing she succeeds in getting across is a detailed account of the people, the propaganda and the methods our government uses to sell a war.
This “War Marketing” story is as fascinating as it is disturbing. It’s a tale more Americans should know. In fact, with regard to the OP, if the Colonel’s tale were the tip of the Democrats’ spear, we’d have an unprecedented overturn this November. I’d bet my eye teeth on that.
From the [thread [url=http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=3813356&postcount=37]post #37, 08/07/03](]Office of Special Plans[/url)
There’s a lot more out there than just her LA Weekly interview. She’s got a whole slew of articles she’s written @ some of conservative site. At the moment, I forget which one. Maybe later.
It’s not clear how qualified she is at making economic theories. But that aside, there’re are her first-hand accounts of odd behavior.
Other material by Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski can be found here.
Maybe we could get pantom in here to discuss the currency issue…
ElvisL1ves -
I’m not quite sure why you object to her military-basing posture thesis. To me it makes perfect sense within the broader context of the Admin’s/Neocon’s Project for a New American Century policy.
I’m not an economist, but here is my understanding of why euros for oil would be a terrible blow to the US.
The dollar, like any currency, has value internationally because of what you can buy with it. Mostly, it can buy goods and services, real estate, and financial instruments from the United States. OPEC also requires all of their sales to be made in dollars. (This goes back to a deal Kissinger made with Saudi Arabia.)
America is not exactly an exporting powerhouse at the moment. The huge trade deficit we have with, say, China means that on net we are sending them dollars and they are sending us goods. They are counting on the fact that they will be able to use those dollars somehow, which is why they continue to accept our pieces of paper in exchange for real goods.
In the old days (pre-1971) when dollars were backed by gold, China could have exchanged their excess dollars for our gold. That’s why trade imbalances are a relatively new phenomenon; previously, our gold reserves limited the amount of one-way buying we could afford.
With no gold backing, there’s not a lot for them to buy from us at the moment. They can invest in Treasury Bills and earn pitifully low interest. The American stock and real estate markets are not terribly attractive investments either. But at least they can use their dollars to buy oil.
Now think what would happen if OPEC decided to accept euros instead of dollars. Then China (or any other country that has a trade surplus with the United States) could only use the dollars we give them to buy American exports. And if we don’t have anything to sell them, we are essentially getting all their goods for the price of the paper the money is printed on. They will catch on to that soon enough and end the trade imbalance. Subsequent shortages of imports will cause the cost of every consumer good in the United States to skyrocket. Foreign investors will be more likely to swap their dollars for euros, and Americans will have to do the same in order to buy oil. The glut of dollars on the currency market will lead to further devaluation of the dollar. To attract buyers of our Treasury bonds, interest rates will have to rise. Things would get ugly in the US fast.
I’ve oversimplified things a bit, but I agree with Kwiatkowski that Saddam’s switch from the dollar to the euro hastened his demise. Oil for euros would be devastating to the US.
There is an excellent and more detailed explanation of the economics here.
I seriously doubt it. Elections are won and lost on stuff like whether or not you look goofy riding a tank; the best way either side can use Iraq as a campaign issue is to keep it much, much simpler. “Saddam was a bad guy!” or “The war was based on lies!” type stuff is probably as complex as you can get and still get traction.
That’s news to me, as well as the government of Iran, Clinton, and apprently Saddam himself. Sanctions did nothing to stop Saddam.
Being a quasi-neocon myself, her “big-game” theory partly correct. Iraq was absolutely the best and only place to start the revolution in.
First, it was a hated and despised country. Nobody liked Iraq. The Iraqis didn’t even like their own government.
It was Arab, and it had on some level a modern military. In other words, the victory would show that Saddam - and by extension all the other tin-pots in the area - were paper tigers.
It is strategically well-placed
It means there can be a quasi-permanent military presence in what will be a friendly country, not Saudi Arabia.
In the long run, it proveds an alternative to Saudi oil, meaning we can afford more latitude in dealing with Abdullah.
It repays a certain moral debt we owe
It prevents Saddam (or his sons) from ever restarting their programs in ernest. God, I could have nightmares about what mgiht have happened with those cans of botulism alone, if someone even less stable than the Big S got ahold of them.
Iraq has been making hefty payments to unpleasant Palestinian causes for a long time. There’s also open records of deals he made to cooperate with Al Quaeda on local levels. AQ seems to have been moving some people to southern Iraq after their Afganistan debacle. This all had to stop.
It shows that the US is well and truly serious. Sure, after Afganistan, they should have realized this. However, most of the ME dictators were still under the delusion that the US would go limp and stop prosecuting.
Doggone it, where’s London_Calling when you need him? He had a very nice summary of the oil-currency issue in some recent thread that my leaky brain can’t recall. mr_m’s explanation looks good too.
Umm . . . what? Sanctions did EVERYTHING to stop Saddam. After Gulf War 1 Saddam’s regime was basically a neutered thugocracy whose depradations were inflicted solely within its borders. It never again posed a serious threat to its neighbors, although I can’t blame them for wanting him deposed, and quickly.
As we have seen, the threat of WMDs has proved to be a false one. There has been some controversy over this, you may have noticed.
Now, as to whether sanctions were good for the people of Iraq, of course they weren’t. And of course Saddam personally was shielded from their worst effects, and wasn’t brought down by sanctions.
But if you want to argue that we shouldn’t have imposed sanctions, we should have just gone in and toppled Saddam, take that up with the current president’s father.
And that is why I don’t automatically dismiss the beliefs of conservatives and libertarians, though I don’t consider myself one. Especially the military ones. Nearly all are good, honorable people with valid opinions (meaning they agree with me) on many issues, though perhaps cheapskates when it comes to social policy.
Thank you mr_moonlight. That brings some clarity to the situation, and I can see how that would be a more convincing motive than WMDs. It also, at least initially, appears to make the whole thing more insidious. Of course, the counter-point to that is: I benefit from this. It’s a quandry; something immoral is good for me. Wow, where do we go from here? I’ll be thinking about that for a while, I suspect.
