All good points. “Imminent danger”…meaning of attack by those same proscribed weapons on US soil? I thought it very unlikely. I have no rational basis whatsoever for thinking it wasn’t going to happen, but there it is. Our civilians and staff outside of US borders is a different story. I think they’ve been in imminent danger for years now, but one doesn’t really need military capability to kill people and strike at the US when a truck bomb will do. “Secular” Saddam recruiting would-be martyrs was always more of an issue with me than possible chemical or biological attacks.
I believe that they had a nuclear program on ice all through the 90’s, and never doubted the probability of them having nuclear weapons within a few years. I had serious doubts whether their supposed paranoid recluse of a leader was actually running the whole show. But whoever was actually running it sure outsmarted the West at every opportunity. David Kay’s latest remarks haven’t changed any of this for me. Within all that is my opinion on “imminent danger.” Yes and no.
The other things like timing, the UN, the state of occupation…still debatable. Like I said I supported the decision to overthrow the regime by force but I wouldn’t defend each and every step of the process. And it’s not over yet. Overall, imo, it was worth doing.
All things considered, elucidator, as you only attacked my last paragraph involving the whole partisan angle on all this, I’ll just leave it at you agree with me then that the war was just for the reasons I outlined. I just threw that in there as a mention of the fact that we are allowed to change our leader every four years. I know, the horrible courts and their dastardly decisions. Whatever.
The intelligence failure, as I’ll still call it, is a wonderful example of bureaucratic blameshifting.
As is so often the case, I can’t tell who is playing CYA more, the White House, Blair, the CIA, the Iraqi dissidents (some military types, not just Chalabi) that still claim he had them, MI5, Syria, whoever.
Your hatred for Bush is noted. He does scare me with his simplistic language and analysis. Clinton was a MUCH better off the cuff. Now that Bill’s a hawk and all statesmanlike, I want to vote for him. I’ll just have to wait for Hillary in 08. She’s ready to put in more troops to finish the job. Good for her.
Well Jack Straw is certainly articulate and intelligentvut this still hasn’t turned up those WMD and without those the urgency that led to war does not exist.
That statement could still be true, without the lies for war scandal.
Sanctions cut Saddam Hussains regime off at the knees, inspections appeared to make little progress simply because there was little progress that could be made.
We had to wait decades for Franco to die before we could get a democracy in Spain, we have been prepared to bide our time in other cases too, there is no reason to suggest that doing so with Hussain would not have returned a more favourable result, at least we could have waited a few months to bring on board the rest of the world.
…and the rest of the world would have done so, because I really think that Saddam Hussains obfuscation and evasions would have finally frustrated even Hans Blix.
That’s fair enough, Mr Svinlesha, the US Intel community is engaged in a blame battle with the White House and this planted (Sunday) story is a fairly simple (counter) shot across the bows to the “I want the facts” bullshit (by Bush) on Wednesday.
Reason it can be seen as a shot across the bows is because it doesn’t come right out and say “You bastard Bush, we know you knew from the end of 2001 and we can prove it” - it’s saying to Bush ‘Ease off, pal’, imho.
Interesting, though, from a UK perspective that Blair is so soon caught up in this US domestic tiff.
Fwiw, I much prefer Wolfowitz’s explanation; that WMD was the (false) pretext all parties could agree on as a reason to oust Saddam (okay, he may have termed it common ground, or similar) – disarmingly candid and has the ring of truth. That statement (by Wolfowitz) also fits the facts as we knew them to be from the UNSCOM reports (about the state of Saddam’s bio, chem and nuclear capabilities and development), as well as the predetermined nature of the Bush/Cheney agenda from the turn of 2001/2. Recap:
We can no longer rely on Saudi to supply at the rate and price we need
We and capitalism cannot afford to be this exposed
We need to control other major supplies
Saddam must go
Justify why Saddam must go
The story is Sunday that serves both the papers’ needs and the sources needs – just another Sunday in the papers.
I don’t disagree with your analysis. However I can’t help but mention the contrast between this and the current war justification, i.e., freeing the Iraqi people from Saddam’s tyranny and spreading democracy throughout the middle east.
There were three (public) justifications for the war: WMDs, links with Al Qaeda, and spreading democracy/ending tyranny. The first two have been exposed to be complete and utter bullshit. Only the third remains.
For how much longer? Bear in mind that the same fucking idiots that pushed justifications one and two are the same fucking idiots now pushing justification number three.
What are the chances of a pro-US democracy surviving in Iraq? Pretty much zero. The Sunnis won’t be happy about being tossed out of power, and both the Kurds and the Shiites are still pissed about the US encouraging an uprising and then standing idly by while the masacres took place more than a decade ago.
Bush and Co have been forced to give up the bullshit about the US being welcomed as saviours, but they’re still promoting the line that everything will be rosy once the elections take place and democracy flowers. That’s just complete and utter crap.
What’ll happen is that a new pro-US dictatorship will be installed, and it’ll be exactly the freakin’ same as Saddam’s regime. A bunch of Texans will make money out of it, and the US will have recruited a few tens of millions more potential terrorists.
I’d be quite happy for history to prove me wrong here, but given the batting average of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al, I think I’m on pretty safe ground.
Err yes, but this is not rocket science; installing friendly so-called democratic leaders has been the MO of the US for 40 and years across Central and South America, bits of Africa and Asia . . . same old same old. Where shall we begin . . . Chile, perhaps ?
So sure, but anyone with an inkling for realpolitik surely left the ‘Shining beacon’ nonsense behind sometime around Kissinger’s war crimes in Cambodia.
Unless, of course, you put your trust in the empire media. In which case, you probably still believe in Santa Claus and 9/11 must have been something of a shock.
Well, regarding elucidator’sNY Times story, I wonder if I should re-post my own analysis of Powell’s speech for a third time, or if simply saying, “I told you so,” will be sufficient.
I’ll go with “I told you so,” for the time being. LC:
Well, you’re awfully sanguine about the whole thing….
Actually, I think the knot is rather more complicated. I suspect that there are factions within the intel community that are also involved in a conflict among themselves. As I see it right now, many in the top echelon of the intelligence community are aligned with the White House against a subordinate group of internal skeptics – skeptics who have the unfortunate tendency to be RIGHT in their assessments of the intelligence:
I strongly suspect this is an attitude that emanated, so to speak, from the White House (especially the office of the Vice-President) and the DoD (Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz), through Tenet, and into the CIA; an attitude that was powerfully reinforced by the intelligence failures surrounding 9/11. As Pollack notes in his piece, which I linked to earlier:
As I pointed out previously, the one doesn’t necessarily exclude the other: that is to say, the Cheney administration (and I mean, from now on, let’s call a spade a spade) could have been spinning evidence that was already an overestimate on the part of the intelligence community But it’s interesting to compare the two stories from today. The Independent cites a “career intelligence official” who states:
It also quotes David Albright – research fellow at ISIS, and an authority who draws a lot of water with yours truly.
The Times story quotes a “senior intelligence official” who says:
The assessment in the NY Times is the diametrical opposite of that in the Independent. Talk about cognitive dissonance….
That last statement from the Times piece, however, is the giveaway, since we have infinitely more evidence regarding Hussein’s “WMD” programs now than we did prior to the invasion. So this “intelligence official’s” contrary assertion is just one more example of typical, neo-con upside-downism: we did it, but we deny that we did it and accuse you of doing it instead. I’m dumbfounded by the ubiquity of that technique among the administration’s defenders – do they all take some sort of special course together, or what? Desmo:
Both Saddam’s Anfal extermination program and his treatment of the “Marsh Arabs” would seem to fall under the category of genocide.
It’s always difficult to predict the future, but I don’t know if this scenario is really feasible, given 1) the current pressures in Iraq, especially among Shiites, for a quick free election, and 2) the scrutiny which current US actions are currently subjected to by the international community. At this point, the Cheney administration has almost no choice; to maintain any sort of credibility at all, it must live up to its pre-war promises. And that’s one mighty big crap shoot, that.
Here’s an interesting article from the NY Times on the current situation “on the ground” in Iraq. Given the potential strength of the Shiite resistance, I doubt installing a puppet will be an easy task for our current Puppet Masters.
Stop the presses. If I’m not mistaken, this is another move in the direction of moderation. I’m also 100% behind the clerics that suggest stampeding is not a good idea.
Powell’s case was devoted almost entirely to holding Saddam to his obligations under relevant UNSC resolutions, and was more about the deceptive practices of the regime and its unwillingness to comply than the cumulative threat it posed to other countries. I’ve gone years without registering to access the NYT and won’t bother now either…but afaik there was no doubt that Iraq was blocking the efforts of the international community to find out what it had. There was no serious doubt (according to Pollack) that Iraq had active weapons programs either, but at the very least, lowest-common-denominator UN stance there was agreement that Iraq would try to thwart any of the controls placed on it, and this formed the basis for Powell speeches. Yes, there is an internal dispute within the CIA - old news. Bush and Cheney favored removing Saddam by force with or without UN approval - old news. Powell being State Dept is independent of this, and is probably the sole reason for bringing the case to the UN in the first place. David Kay summed it up a whole year ago, “It is easy, if painful, to see how the United Nations slid back into the fool’s game of trying to find a smoking gun inside a totalitarian country such as Iraq. What is much harder to understand is why the Bush administration, which so clearly seemed to have understood that this was not a game that they wanted to play or could win, let itself be trapped like this. But trapped it is.” (my underline). http://www.useu.be/Categories/GlobalAffairs/Iraq/Jan1903IraqSmokingGunKay.html
Pollack’s article also mentions the “shameful performance” of Security Council members France and Germany in 2002-2003, and that containment policies weren’t working, which is pretty funny. He seems to contradict himself in places. There is “no doubt” among those in intelligence that Saddam has an active nuclear program for example, but analysts still complain that the administration is cherry-picking evidence. Which is also old news, but I never understood that one in particular. Everyone talking about it is always “senior” but "unnamed"and even “former.” These people expect to have their allegations taken as seriously as those specific people accountable to the public?
He already explained this underlined part in the previous quote…
If you say it is OK to kill Americans just because of who we are – thus supporting al Qaeda – we have a problem. I learned about Wahhabism the hard way, as they say.
Now, with a new take on terrorism, if true, things would be quite different.
And a nitpick. If Saddam was not the worst guy in the region, isn’t it time to do something for the region? What did toppling Saddam gain us?
Leverage on Syria and Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah.
The primary external threat to Saudi Arabia was removed along with our troops there. Technically, we should earn al Qaeda points for that.
Saddam, the mass murderer (once dupe of the CIA, Chirac, Rumsfeld, Russia, France, Poland, Germany – I mean, this guy got around), is in jail.
One potential missile shooter in the ME is out of commission. The other biggest candidate (Iran) is cooperating with international bodies regarding their WMD. Or, so I’ve heard. Take Iran off “Axis of Evil,” add it to “Not Quite a Democracy, Yet”.
The notion that the US wanted to steal the oil is not borne out by this story. To me, it sounds more like Saddam, the Europeans, and the UN stole the oil, mostly Saddam.
Don’t worry, there is plenty more in there for the terminally interested.
Having Saddam in power kept Iraq in a dark age. The sanctions, cold-blooded murder, wars, and corruption were truly epic. He was not your average dictator. To even suggest so is an insult to less bloodthirsty dictators everywhere. Musharraf comes to mind.
Powell wove skillfully between accusations that the regime was not cooperating with the inspectors, on the one hand, and insinuations that this lack of cooperation constituted proof that Iraq possessed “WMDs,” on the other. When he held up a vial of white pulver to demonstrate how much anthrax it would take to kill see-and-so many people, he was definitely emphasizing the threat Iraq posed to other countries.
Oh yes, of course, indeed – if we chose to ignore his faulty analysis of the aluminum tubes, his accusations that Iraq had significant ties to Al Queda, that tiny section of the speech that was plagiarized, literally word for word, from a 12-year-old doctorate thesis somebody found on the net, and so on. If we simply chose to ignore any of the specific claims made by Powell, then of course you’re right.
There were in fact no “WMDs” in Iraq – new news! That Bush and Cheney were just making it up as they went along – old suspicion, new news again! That some people prefer to stick their fingers in their ears and go “LA-LA-LA-LA” in a loud voice – old news.
Your cite, as far as I can see, isn’t really relevant to this discussion – unless you think that finding even a modicum of what the Cheney administration originally claimed to be in Iraq is the equivalent of locating a “smoking gun.” Kay is trying to point out that it was foolish for the administration to try to locate such a gun prior to the invasion – remember, when he wrote that little snippet back in January of 2003, he was one of those who firmly believed Iraq possessed “WMDs.”
Yeah, I noticed some inconsistencies in his paper as well. But he is quite clear about the way in which the administration pressured intelligence personnel to produce analyses that followed the party line, wasn’t he? Or did you chose to simply hop over that bit?
That’s one of the inconsistencies I also find puzzling, since Pollack’s claim appears to contradict the CIA’s assessment in 1999:
According to the Carnegie report, Iraq and WMD:
These claims contrast quite starkly with Pollack’s assertion that all the UNSCOM inspectors at a certain meeting in spring 2002 were convinced that Iraq was operating a secret centrifuge plant.
You think backwards, it’s really strange to read sometimes.
They make statements to reporters on the condition of anonymity, because they might otherwise suffer negative consequences by going public – loss of job, etc. The question is not whether they expect to be taken seriously – the question is do you chose to take them seriously, or not?
After all, unnamed “senior officials” revealed the identity of Valeria Plame, and folks sure are taking that seriously. And an unnamed insider dubbed “Deepthroat” brought down the entire Nixon administration, you may recall….
… or do we take seriously only those “unnamed sources” that tell us what we want to hear?
Oh I do agree. Not just aspects of the CIA vs. Bush either; one can imagine ‘Bush’ fires breaking out all over fuelled by not a little bloodletting between State and the Pentagon and both of those with the White House. Never mind the NSA and any other Agencies that fancy themselves as coming out with some advantage
It has all the potential of the bar room brawl scene in The Producers.
I just hope none of this is beneath Colin Powell as I’d live to see the departing SoS give George a couple of kicks in the nuts.
Dammit, Werewolf of London, look what you’ve done! Now I’ll be awakened repeatedly tonight by spontaneous spasms of chuckling as I see that image in my dreams…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: all going in there accomplished was to put our troops smack in the middle of Iraq’s simmering ethnic rivalries, and no matter who the US decides to favor, the troops are going to be targets for the disaffected of the side that feels it lost. Utterly absurd.
Preaching to the choir, isn’t it? The council had already passed 1441, inspectors were already in the country, so he didn’t need to sell them on the threat of WMD. He was going for noncompliance. This is actually supported by your bringing up the plagiarism in the British dossier…that was more to do with Iraq’s practicing deception than its weapons capability, I think. And the Kay quote is relevant. The piece itself is all about how Iraq is mocking the rest of the world wrt inspections and noncompliance.
Not at all, I just brought it up. The administration “pressured” intelligence to produce findings that they had been talking about amongst themselves for years…“misled” the public into believing what was contained in the (public) National Intelligence Estimate…yes, I am having a tough time taking all that seriously. The CIA was probably as surprised as anyone else that scores of banned weapons haven’t been found and now we’re reading “we knew that but Bush wouldn’t listen.” Just a WAG - that probably began last May.