I quite take your point, Sevastapol. On the other hand, we don’t really need the peasants to form mobs (torches and pitchforks) to advance on the White House. A modest tilt in the voting population will be more than enough.
The Bushiviks were counting heavily on wrapping themselves in the flag. Pouring praise upon our brave troops while standing close enough so that some splashes onto GeeDubya. A campaign of pep rallies at military bases.
But if only 10% of the people who previously voted for him even begin to think he is not a trustworthy Commander in Chief… If doubt blossoms like a flower in the sidewalk…
Here’s what I remember immediately pre-invasion… please refresh my memory if you disagree with my version of the pre-war propaganda campaign.
The largest mass media machine in the history of the planet inundated America non-stop with a fear campaign based on “clear and present danger”, “imminent threat”, “proven” evidence of holding massive amounts of WMD’s in all forms.
Because we were regaled ON THE MINUTE EVERY MINUTE thru CNN, FAUX, et al with horror stories of the scary boogie men that never existed, we bacame scared, and the public consciousness largely became one of “Better them than us”. Quite a clever smoke screen to allow Bush’s cronies in Saudi Arabia to pull this off, and business with the ordinary gamut of terrorist groups is as per usual.
We were told in no uncertain terms, by people whose job it is to know, a pack of outright lies. It’s that simple and I pity anyone who still doesn’t get it… The words they used will be revised for history books, I’m sure, but I sat thru all those WMD news stories, the “intelligence” briefings on the news, the whole nine yards. Bush said that Saddam was gearing up to strike at America with the largest pile of WMD’s anybody had ever seen. HE said it again and again and again, and all of his backers said the same thing. If you say what we all saw on TV those months was any different, you lie.
They claimed that they were so absolutely convinced of the evidence at the time, and now that the deception has come to light in even the dimmest of consumer brains, their only defence is “Well we really didn’t know better, you never get the whole picture with this intelligence stuff like that there thingy.”
Ordinary citizens were so outright taken in by this that they resorted to duct-taping their windows. The country was taken to extremely heightend levels of outright paranoia, because of illusory enemies and absolutely non-existent threats. No matter now, the oil is flowing, at least enough to pay Halliburton, now that the idea of oil-based revenue for “reconstruction” has shown itself to be another pipe-dream.
Meanwhile, back in Iraq, lections are cancelled “until further notice”, the razor wire and attack dogs (you dont see them on CNN, do ya?) keeps the “Ba’athists and insurgents” at bay, children are dying of preventable starvation and disease and the IMF has called a spade a spade in warning America of its’ ridiculous fiscal irresponsibility. America is doing DICK to fix anything in Iraq but Halliburtons balance sheet, same as in Afghanistan. Very close associates of GWB are making TENS OF BILLIONS in unaccountable taxpayer revenues while ordinary Iraqis suffer from lack of basic amenities, that REGARDLESS of Saddam’s regime, they had prior to the war and don’t now… The stink of contract fraud and corruption is overwhelming even the most jaded Neo-Con analysts, and the books are sealed forever under the convenient guise of “national security”.
One of my first thoughts pre-Bushkrieg was “How can a country of 350 odd million people with the most massive armed forces in history actually consider a totally bombed-out, sanction starved, over-inspected, has-a-million-enemies-already-without-waking-the-giant, tin-pot psycho third-level loser like Saddam a threat?”
They can’t… but they must somehow convince themselves of this in order to retain any illusory sense of propriety or virtuous motive…that’s the only way I can see it. It really sucks when you realize “Hey…we ARE the bad guys…”
Didja ever see that Star Trek where Kirk catches the space Voyager in a logical contradiction and that fries it’s motherboard? Its kind of like Cognitive Dissonance, the number one threat to the Republic…
Well, how about Alekhine? He was always my favorite, really…
Anyway, regarding this:
I saw your link and downloaded it, and also intended to thank you for it; but I hadn’t had the chance to read through it when I posted. Thanks for the link, by the way, it answered a lot of my questions.
The section you quoted wasn’t really relevant to my point, though. On the other hand the paper does touch on the question I raised, i.e., the ambiguity surrounding the term “self-defense.” The more I study the issue the more I realize this phrase is not quite as clear-cut as it would appear at first glance.
Reading the text of Article 51 it seems quite straight-forward: states are prohibited from unilaterally engaging in military actions unless they have themselves been attacked, and then only until the UNSC can arrange for a common defense. As Ackerman argues:
Ackerman asserts that this interpretation is also supported by, for example, the ICJ’s ruling against the US in Nicaragua vs. The United States of America (1986).
However, a strong case can be made that such a reading actually subverts the purpose of the Article, by compelling a defender state to grant the aggressor the first, possibly lethal, blow, i.e., “to protect the aggressor’s right to the first strike,” as one commentator would have it. I disagree with the language here, since the Article does not grant the aggressor a “right” to a first strike; but the gist of the objection – that in practice, defending states would be made vulnerable to aggression by states that chose to ignore the dictates of the Article – seems clearly problematic. This is because if a state facing an imminent military threat chooses to strike preemptively then it would, by a literal reading of Article 51, nevertheless have to be considered in violation of the UN Charter. Ackerman presents the historical example of Israel’s preemptive strike in 1967 as a justifiable act in the face of a clear military threat from surrounding Arab nations. Obviously, if Israel had simply waited until Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq had launched a military assault before reacting, it might very well not have survived; and clearly no state, bound as it is to protect the well-being of its citizens, could be expected to live up to the requirements of Article 51 in such a situation. And this is further borne out by the fact that neither the UNSC nor the General Assembly condemned Israel for its actions at that time. Their refusal to do so provides a kind of “case law” justification for the use of preemptive strikes in the face of imminent threat, as it were, and is but one example of many (I suspect).
The position articulated above continues by asserting that the Article merely emphasizes one aspect of military defense without superseding customary state practice or necessarily excluding “other possibilities.” However, I find that line of argument weak.
The article goes on to succinctly reviews some of the pros and cons of a broader interpretation of 51, concluding that while “preemption” does appear to be an accepted prerogative for the UNSC, this right is less clear cut when it comes to individual states:
By the way, Simon X has also presented these views in whole series of articulate and informative posts over the past couple of months. (Blessed be, Mr. X, blessed be!) As an aside, I was surprised to learn that the US did not justify its blockade of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crises as an exercise under Article 51, since, as the State Department’s Legal advisor argued, such an application “would have signaled that the United States did not take the legal issues involved very seriously, that in its view the situation was to be governed by national discretion, not international law.” Would that the later US administrations had taken the precepts of the Charter as seriously as Kennedy!
Finally, Ackerman argues that the invasion of Iraq can be viewed as a kind of “litmus test” for the argument present in Bush’s NSS for an extended right to wage “preventative” war (as Simon has pointed out so often). The NSS paper argues that, in the face of modern threats like “WMDs,” states can no longer afford to wait for an “imminent” threat, but must act even prior to that. Hence Ackerman’s conclusion, “But Iraq may have possessed WMD, and it may have had ties to terrorist groups that seek to use such weapons against the U.S. If evidence is forthcoming on both of those issues, then the situation necessarily raises the question that the Bush Administration articulated in its national security strategy, i.e., whether the traditional law of preemption ought to be recast in light of the realities of WMD, rogue states, and terrorism.” Obviously, had we discovered oodles and oodles of “WMDs” hidden in post-war Iraq, along with piles of signed documents in which Saddam and bin Laden had agreed to work together to launch a chemical, biological, or nuclear attack on the US, then even a hard-headed opponent to the war (such as myself) would have been forced to take a step back and reconsider. The lack of such evidence, on the other hand, merely reinforces a thesis I’ve submitted here on a number of occasions, to wit, that the doctrine of “preventative war” can be exploited by decision-makers to launch essentially unnecessary “wars of aggression” against states that refuse to “toe the line,” so to speak, or kow-tow to the interests of power. AQA:
You’re welcome, and I certainly hope that you didn’t take my tongue-in-cheek reply as a disparagement. It wasn’t intended as such – I didn’t in any sense mean to imply that you are “slow.” Roland Saul:
Yup. The entire run-up was little more than a highly-successful exercise in propaganda, if you ask me.
I would just like to point out that the Bush administration itself has pushed for a broader, less strict definition of the term “imminent.” From the URL=http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/print/nssall.html]2001 National Security Strategy:
Since they are arguing for an expanded definition, it seems quite acceptable for critics to highlight the administration’s use of synonyms like “grave and gathering” to show that they did indeed mean “imminent.” By the way, this is not my own observation; I heard it first on Daniel Drezner’s blog, who moderated a debate on the use of the term back in October that you may find interesting. The question was: “It is a complete fabrication that the Bush administration argued in the runup to the war that there was an imminent threat from Iraq,” and Drezner decided for the negative largely on the strength of this argument.
saddam was trying to buy uranium from africa and rocket technology from the koreans…did you want bush to wait until saddam had all the stuff and then risk the lives of the army against wmd ?
Dude, the sanctions worked.
Saddam never would have gotten a nuke.
He had no bioweapons programs.
Why’d we go after the SOB Saddam, when bin Laden was the guy who killed thousands of americans, and North Korea is the country building nukes and the missiles to deliver them to american cities?
Real threats should trump fake threats. When a nation’s leader can’t see that, that nation is in deep trouble.
Hamsters seem to have eaten my previous posts on this, but…
I have never seen any real document that lays out the Administration’s case, rather I am referring to the statements of Bush, Powell, Rumsfeld, and others in reponse to questions of legality.
I’d be happy to collect a few quotes for you, if you’re interested.
Well this sums up the give me propaganda and “CLOSE YOUR MIND” attitude… have you read any newspapers or news in the last months ? The uranium story was BS.
The Bad guy was bad… now he is gone… jeezz… your still into black and white coloring in your fairy tales ?
There are still people around who believe in this african uranium story which ridiculized the british, italian and american governments/intelligence services? (In case ** dude ** wouldn’t know, the documents used to make this accusation were blatant forgeries, and both the UK and the US admited to it).
It shows that regardless how blatant a lie is, it will always somehow impact people’s beliefs/opinions (either because they’ll never heard/will want to ignore it was a lie, or because they’ll still keep a “I know it wasn’t true, but nevertheless I feel that there must have been something to it” feeling. “Calomniez, calomniez…il en restera toujours quelque chose” is a french saying which sum it up well.
Nobody has made a case that Bush ever said Iraq was an imminent threat, and indeed there are clear examples of him saying that we must strike BEFORE it is imminent (which I guess means that he DID say that it was an imminent imminent threat)
There are some examples of administration people saying that the threat was imminent, though all in response to reporter questions using that word.
The administration cannot be said to have made any sort of clear assertion about the therat being imminent, in those words, but they certainly did not go to great lengths to avoid that impression either, and the press secretary and communications director both endorsed the words
Scott McClellan was off in claiming that the media entirely made up the term. They took it from those positive responses from him and other administration officials who may or may not have realized that the word they were agreeing to was making a distinction that would later be analyzed exensively.
There are liberal sources so desperate to catch the Bush team in a lie that they used a bogus out of cotext quote to justify their position.
Regardless of whether the threat was “imminent” or not, it is still a fair question as to whether the situation was really so desperate that war had to be joined at exactly the moment that was chosen, especially in light of poor post-war planning, some deficiences in military supplies which could have been remedied, and indeed the chance to get more countries behind us by not demanding war right that very second. So the whole “imminent” hubbub is basically beside the point no matter what.
Oddly enough, I find myself in a position where I feel compelled to defend this administration’s actions.
They are entirely consistent.
I have no real disagreement with the conclusions of Apos. He seems to be correctly summarizing that which we know now.
The NSS claims it does not predicate itself upon an imminent threat. Instead, it advocates knocking over those nations which appear to be a potential imminent threat. If they have a program in development which may imminently threaten us in the future, they are today’s enemy.
I rather disagree with that theory, now. It disregards the theory that every nation can plan to defend itself, and when confronted with a world as dangerous and complex as ours, one solution is to explore and develop weapons of mass destruction. Just as the United States did.
“… who may or may not have realized that the word they were agreeing to was making a distinction that would later be analyzed exensively…”
Slip of the tongue, was it? Ooopsy? And when it became clear that the words had been so interpreted, did they rush to correct the misapprehension? Not as I recall, perhaps you have some information otherwise.
“…3) There are liberal sources so desperate to catch the Bush team in a lie that they used a bogus out of cotext quote to justify their position…”
My dear sir! Desperate to catch a lie? They are thick upon the ground, you cannot step without crunching one underfoot and the stench assail your nostrils! These weren’t special and rare lies, but lies in bulk, wholesale, in carload lots!
How many times did we come in here with the most recent towering inferno of crapola? Only to have determined and flexible apologists wrap themselves into rhetorical pretzels to find some rationale. Over and over and over.
Did you ever hear a retraction? An admission of error? Not more than a week ago Dick Cheney was still insisting that the Dreaded Mobile Labs of Doom were a fact when he knew otherwise! In the light of Mr. Kay’s report, wouldn’t you expect some sort of explanation? Telling us which of these mutually contradictory statements is truth, and which false?
It wasn’t a slip of their tongue, since the words didn’t come out of their mouths. They assented to things that other people said to them, and they may or may not have thought a lot at the time about the difference between imminent and a merely gathering threat. Heck, even in this thread nobody is quite sure what imminent really implies, as illustrated by my usage of imminent imminence. How imminent to being imminent does something have to be to be just plain imminent?
No one started parsing these quotes until long after the war started.
Yes, but claiming that an attack on the US by Iraq was imminent doesn’t seem to really be one of them.
I agree. For an administration who ran on the idea that it was better than the Clintons because it believed in taking responsibility, this administration has been a miserable failure at taking responsibility for mistakes, misjudgements, or really anything at all. It’s always the doing of some external factor. And they have been rankly dishonest in trying to spin the WMD issue. Bush said in Poland that they found Weapons of Mass Destruction. The administration
Uh, politics much? The problem isn’t that it’s surprising that politicians do not want to give the media grist with a mea culpa soundbite to run with, it’s just in the fact that anyone ever pretended that Bush was in any way different from the Clintons in this respect.
Well we saw some big trucks moving around, and he embarrassed George Sr., ooops, and I mean, we thought maybe they were carrying WMD. So, we figured we better drop the bomb on them just in case. Turns out there were no WMD, oh well, only a couple thousand people have lost their lives, no big deal.
This is some obvious wordspin by Karl Rove and company. A combination of ‘grave danger’ and ‘gathering storm’. Sounds all brow-furrowing and Tolkien-esque and Churchilly, doesn’t it? I’m surprised it isn’t capitalized whenever used.
Interesting development: it seems that an intelligence analyst that Bush Co. fired when he wouldn’t tell them what they wanted to hear (so he says) says:
“‘I couldn’t deal with these people.’ They are such ideologues that they knew what the outcome should be and they thought when they didn’t get it from intelligence people they thought they were stupid. They start with an almost pseudo-religious faith. They wanted the intelligence agencies to produce material to show a threat, particularly an imminent threat. Then they worked back to prove their case. It was the opposite of what the process should have been like, that the evidence should prove the case.”
In a related vein, George Tenet said today that the CIA never claimed Iraq was an imminent threat – which seems to blow David Kay’s “it’s the intelligence agency’s fault for lying to Bush” argument out of the water.
