So who thinks the U.S. will bomb the crap out of Iraq in the relatively near future?

Great Debates
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Gunning for Saddam Frontline has done a group of interesting stories on Iraq, terrorism, and Saddam. This one seems particluarly topical.

Biological weapons labs, as Mr. Hatfield has shown much to his chagrin, can be in a kitchen. The requisite basic materials (germ samples) fit in a briefcase. Chemical weapons can be reconstituted quickly underground, in a truck, or in a small building. Nuclear weapons technology is approaching 60 years old. Sattelite intelligence can be fooled, or Osama Bin Laden would have been killed during the Clinton Administration and Saddam would be a bad memory. Furthermore, Saddam has not agreed to inspections.

OTOH, unilateral action based on preempting a foe who appears to be doing nothing without international legal justification, internal debate, and strategic allies seems a fool’s errand at best, illegal, unconstitutional, and reckless at worst. Unless Saddam drops the big one on us (NBCs). Then, whoops, I was wrong.

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MIGs not a threat? Montezuma, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you mean that MIGs are not long range bombers, and thus not a threat to the U.S. literally. Sukhoi fighters are not exactly chopped liver either.

Yes, F-15s are good, great even. This has more to do with the electronics, sensors, and well trained pilots than anything else. F-15s are getting old and do not feature vectored thrust as the new Russian fighters do. Russian airframes, maneuverability, and weapons systems are excellent. We don’t really know how they might perform with good Russian pilots in them, nor do I wish to find out the hard way. Never underestimate your opponent.

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Salman Rushdie made some good points yesterday:

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Wow, I’m very impressed with everyone’s memory for the detail of U.S.-Iraqi relations over the past few years! Please keep at it; this is very interesting and educational.

Equally interesting, however, is the direction in which this thread seems to have mutated. Hardly anyone has addressed the O.P. per se; it seems the general consensus among respondents here is that the U.S. will almost certainly take some sort of direct military action in Iraq, and that only the type, magnitude, and timing of the action are still up in the air (so to speak). (Well, also the reasons for attacking and how justified they are seem to be debatable, but that’s a separate issue.)

A minor nitpick: I find it fascinating from a politico-linguistic viewpoint that during the Gulf War, George Sr. seems to have managed to get Americans to call the leader of Iraq by his first name only. OK, one might argue that to call him by last name only would create confusion with the leader of Jordan, but to me it shows a concerted attempt to strip away any remaining shreds of respect (even though I don’t believe even Hitler was ever called by first name only in world leadership or journalistic circles).

Personally, I think this is not only silly, but unwise; I certainly don’t think we should underestimate the Iraqis as military adversaries, and I think that denigrating Saddam Hussein by taking away his last name in public discourse falls dangerously into the realm of not knowing thine enemy.

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“it seems the general consensus among respondents here is that the U.S. will almost certainly take some sort of direct military action in Iraq,”
I am not sure I believe this. My best guess is that there will be some kind of compromise involving inspectors especially since that seems to be the public British position now and a big chunk of the GOP establishment has advocated such an approach. I also think the Iraqis will be smart enought to accept inspectors and let them work. Let’s see.

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Give me a break, Beagle, the US has the largest and the most powerful airforce in the world, and is the forefront of air technology. Yes, the MiG aircraft are good with excelled trained pilots, but are they really that much of a match against the US airforce? No they are not.

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True, but what else can one conclude from anything Bush or his people have said? And even if he’s having second thoughts, hasn’t he forced himself to do something anyway by those statements? All we can hope for at this point is some targeted attack against some targets he can claim were WMD facilities, and then claim victory. Something like Tomahawking an aspirin factory, maybe? “I’m a patient man” sounds a lot like “I don’t have a friggin’ clue, but maybe events will bail me out somehow”.

I think you’re reading too much into that. During the Gulf War, that was adopted precisely to avoid confusion with the King of Jordan, who had much more public recognizability here. There were even some news reports that the practice of using only his less-common given name had been normal in the Arab world for some time. By now, it’s just habit, not conscious or even subconscious denigration, and I doubt he cares anyway.

On another tangent, “MiG” is a sort of brand name used by the Mikoyan-Gurevich Design Bureau, which has been creating fighter designs since WW2. Anyone wanting to compare the capabilities of “MiG” aircraft with others should at least know which model they’re referring to, if they want to be taken seriously. It’s like calling all US aircraft simply “Boeings”, ya know. As for Iraq’s air capability specifically, it’s also not too hard to find out what they have and how many - and there ain’t too damn much even now, just some helicopters they were allowed to keep after the last round. Most Iraqi fixed-wing aircraft wound up in Iran, courtesy of defecting pilots, and they haven’t been replaced.

So what interests me? The same crowd who, in the 2000 election, were denouncing how Clinton had gutted America’s military capability to the point of uselessness now think it can accomplish the same things it did 10 years ago, except without bases or allies. These are some of the same people who think Vietnam was “winnable”, too.

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<<The same crowd who, in the 2000 election, were denouncing how Clinton had gutted America’s military capability to the point of uselessness now think it can accomplish the same things it did 10 years ago, except without bases or allies.>>

Right. But for the gutting of the military, we could have attacked Iraq many months ago. By now the war would be long since over, and Iraq would be a democracy. It has taken a year to re-build military strength.

<<These are some of the same people who think Vietnam was “winnable”, too.>>

Not so. The people who thought Vietnam was winnible were Lyndon Johnson and his liberal advisors. The people who support war against Iraq are hard-line conservatives.

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I’m not sure what the relevance of this statement. I thought the debate was over whether there was sufficent justification to attack Iraq now. Wouldn’t attacking earlier have been even MORE debatable, rather than less? In other words, why WOULD we have attacked Iraq “many months ago”? I hardly think we could’ve made a BETTER case months ago than we could now.

I think it’s a tad overoptimistic to state that “Iraq would be a democracy” by now. I also didn’t know that all this lead-up to the war rhetoric was to “re-build military strength”; I thought it was to recover from 9/11 and figure out what to do. At any rate, what exactly did Clinton do to “gut the military,” and what has Bush been doing (especially before 9/11) to “re-build” it? This isn’t a rhetorical question, because I’m frankly not sure. Not that it’s the important one for this thread, but I at least thought I’d toss it out there…

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From a POV of either international law or realpolitic, the case looks pretty equal then and now. YMMV. However, if we do attack, many believe the sooner, the better, because it gives Saddam less time to build up his weapons.

Right. I was exaggerating a bit. But, it’s not unreasonable to hope that we would win a war with Iraq very quickly.

Some pundits said we had used up too many of our smart bombs and other modern weapons in Afghanistan, and we needed time to re-stock.

Supposedly he let our store of weapons run down.

I don’t know.

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That is why I posted a link. I was thinking MiG 29s and 31s. Of course a 21, 23, or a 25 with modern electronics and weapons could pose a threat to the unwary. I think the 25 is still one of the fastest interceptors ever built. As for the Sukhois, the 27 and up.

Mostly, Saddam has older MiGs, some 29s. During the Gulf War much of his airforce flew into Iran to escape. I was objecting to the blanket statement:

His airforce may not pose a threat, but it is not because MIGs are lousy airplanes.

Clinton and the military: remember when we had a shortage of non-nuclear cruise missiles?

Well, some things cross party lines.

You had to further hijack Eva Luna’s thread with that one last stupid cheap shot at me.

Fine, I’ll answer. Only if someone tried to win it. In order to do that North Vietnam had to be attacked. Since you are such an expert, name an operation where U.S. troops were slated to invade North Vietnam. Cue final jeopardy music

You still don’t understand the China - Vietnam connection do you? Or, the North South split going back thousands of years? Nor, I am sure, are you aware of the Soviet military pilots who were the backbone of the ‘North Vietnamese’ airforce. I gave you a reading assignment. No extra credit for you.

Just keep bringing that up on every topic, I’ll be happy to show how ill-informed you are every time.

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Resurrecting this thread…

Yesterday’s Meet The Press was very interesting. They had a debate on Iraq between Senator Fred Thompson and Former SoS Lawrence Eagleburger (first Bush Administration).

Thompson has no baggage in this - he’s not running for re-election, he’s not an inside the beltway guy with ties to big business or anything like that. He’s a Hollywood Actor-turned-Senator (soon to be an actor on Law and Order again), and he’s one of the best ones in the Senate. He’s also on the Intelligence Committee, and has access to classified intelligence. He’s also not your typical law-and-order Republican. He leans more towards Libertarianism. He’s certainly not a neo-con.

He thinks we need to attack Iraq, and soon. He thinks the threat is too severe, and Saddam is too close to having nuclear weapons for us to try to ‘time’ it more closely (i.e. wait until either he has the bomb, or closer to when we think he will).

Eagleburger is in the same camp as most of the other Bush 41 ex-cabinet members (Brent Scowcroft, James Baker). He thinks that the costs of going alone are huge, that attacking Iraq will destabilize the middle east, etc.

However, he also said that none of this matters if Saddam is close to getting the bomb. Then he has to be stopped, at all costs. The most important overriding principle to him in all of this is that Saddam can never be allowed to get his hands on nuclear weapons.

Thompson then said that that’s exactly HIS position, but he feels that Saddam is already too close to having one, and must be stopped now.

Eagleburger said that he’s seen no evidence of this. He respects Dick Cheney a lot, though, and if Cheney says that the time to attack is now, then that gives him pause.

But on the other hand, if the administration has good enough evidence to make this claim, why can’t they convince their allies of this? Surely in a matter this important, the Bush administration would be sharing their intelligence with their reliable allies. So far, the allies have balked. How come?

This is a very good question.

This exchange completely describes the difficulty I have with either position. It leaves me confused. Thompson is on the Senate Intelligence Committee. He thinks the danger is imminent. But why can’t the administration communicate this danger to the public and allies?

Could they have intelligence that is so sensitive that they can’t even share it with allies other than maybe Great Britain? This might explain the recent intense pressure the FBI is putting on the Intelligence committee regarding leaks?

Any thoughts?

Interestingly, when Russert asked both of them if he thought the U.S. was going to invade Iraq in the near future, Thompson instantly said yes. Eagleburger thought about it for a minute, then said, “yes”.

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<<Could they have intelligence that is so sensitive that they can’t even share it with allies other than maybe Great Britain? This might explain the recent intense pressure the FBI is putting on the Intelligence committee regarding leaks?

Any thoughts? >>

Here’s another theory. On a CNN talk show yesterday, a couple of the speakers said that our intelligence in Iraq ihas been terrible. There were periods when we didn’t have anyone at all there, they said.

So, ignorance might be the answer to Sam’s question. Both sides agree that Saddam is working on nukes, but we don’t really know how far along they are. The hawks say, we must attack and take no chance that he’ll get nukes. The doves say that in a state of ignorance, we should not attack, because an attack has various risks and costs.

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So the US’s inability to gather intellegence now warrents the death penalty for you and your people?

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Well, that was a totally useless comment.

The U.S.'s inability to gather intelligence might mean the death penalty for you IF you make it a habit to use weapons of mass destruction on your people and your enemies, employ 40,000 scientists and engineers in an attempt to make nuclear bombs, invade your neighbors, pay terrorists to blow themselves up, launch missiles at Israel without provocation, and attempt to murder the President of the United States.

Yeah, if you do all of those things, then if the U.S. can’t find out exactly what you’re up to right now, AND you refuse to let them find out by barring inspectors from your country, THEN it might be time to find yourself a better bomb shelter.

If Saddam IS attacked, I won’t shed a tear for him. The big question is whether the cost to the United States is greater than the benefit. As for Saddam himself and his close advisors, I hope they burn in hell.

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Everybody agrees the world would be a better place without Saddam Hussein but that is not the point. The point is whether the US has the moral right to attack him. To say the guy is bad because he has used gases and stuff is plain silly. He used gases in the war with Iran with the help provided by US intelligence who knew he would use it for that purpose and yet helped him anyway. So it seems it is not a matter of morality but a matter of convenience. The US has also stood by recently in Iraq while friendly forces piled Taliban men into containers where they would die of suffocation. Mass graves have been uncovered. Let us not get all righteous about being 100% right and moral and the other side being 100% wrong and evil.

Whether Saddam Hussein is anywhere close to having nukes I do not know but most of the world and a great part of the US think he is not. Even if he does get his hands on a nuclear bomb the chances that he would use it on the US are miniscule and he knows that if he did use it his country would be wiped off the map the next day by a coalition of the whole entire world. I do not see any chance that he would use a nuke even if he had it.

The rest of the world who, BTW, would more likely be targets of SH than the US, do not seem so preocupied with this. Could it be that president Bush and Co. are just a tad paranoid?