Will this be the "Big Bang" September disclosure on Iraqi Weapons?

Great Debates
121

Pantom:

That is an excellent post. Thank you for making it.

Allow me to address an issue or two.

I do not expect everything to go smoothly and easily in postwar Iraq. I am immensely pleased that the execution of the war itself went as well as it did.

We got most of the country intact, and casualties were a lot less than I had expected on both sides.

The military today has produced a report grading itself. It tends to agree with me that the war itself went well, and it acknowledges problems in the aftermath.

Oddly, it blames the latter on the former. Things went so well in the warfare that we were not yet ready for the reconstruction when the time came.

Again, I expect there to be problems. The criticism that things could be a lot better and could have been handled better is a valid one.

But, I don’t think that’s an indictment. I think it’s a fact that simply needs to be dealt with.

Now, I am not a military expert, but I know some. My father is one, and I know professionally members of the faculty of the Army War College in nearby Carlisle.

To a man, they say the same thing. The problem right now is not one of military force. We have phenomenol force, in place, at our disposal.

Force allows us to destroy. We have all that is necessary to destroy the entire nation and everybody in it.

So why do we need more troops? What are we going to do with them? Unless we are planning on retaliating massively to every act of terrorism and waging war in a wholesale fashion against the populace of Iraq simply because it contains terrorist elements, than we don’t have a role for them to execute.

Our soldiers wage war. They are not policeman. They are not civil servants. They are not engineers. They wage war. That’s what they do.

The terrorists and guerrillas in Iraq are competing with us for the goodwill and cooperation of the Iraqi people. Every time something gets blown up and blamed on us, every time we retaliate killing innocents, we lose.

What we do need is better military intelligence, not military force. We are trying to convince the Iraqi people that we are their partneres, that we will help them rebuild and then get out of the way.

We do not further this goal with a larger, more overt, more intrusive military presence.

I am not against sending more troops if we need more troops. I think it works against us. We need better intelligence so that we can execute with the force we have in place. We are not going to get that intelligence without the cooperation and goodwill of the Iraqi people.

What we really need is good PR.

122

Scylla, I largely agree with all of your points, particularly as regards to the US needing better intelligence and the fact that our soldiers are not policemen. Intelligence is unfortunately sometimes hard to come by, and soldiers are really all we’ve got. MP’s would be great, but even if the entire US and Coalition forces were trained in peacekeeping and pure police action, we’d still need a substantial military force since they are somewhat one and the same. My real problem (aside from not favoring the war) is with failing to anticipate substantial guerilla action after the conventional phase of the war and not providing troops to deal with it upfront. While nothing can ever be foreseen with perfect clarity before an event, anticipating and planning for the worst while hoping for the best is one of the oldest of military precepts. Perhaps the scale of looting and guerilla action would have been the same regardless, but my take on the matter is that Rumsfeld and others in the Defense Department felt that technology could take the place of having substantial numbers. It’s a mistake as old as technology itself, but a mistake nonetheless.

123

Scylla: Well, we’ve ranged pretty far afield of the initial topic, but I’m sure we’ll be plowing this same ground again. I hope the news is a little better when we do. (But you know, I’ve got real money, in the form of gold investments, that say the odds are it won’t get any better, only worse. My heart hopes I’m wrong, but my head calculates I won’t be.)
Off for tea, some aspirin, and some sleep.

124

Well, here’s the WMD bombshell. Britain and US back down on weapons of mass destruction claim

125

Weapons Search Proves Elusive

This report is sounding less and less like a blockbuster. -Maybe a whimper ?

126

Avenger:Milum , we are currently waiting for cites for:

  • Your assertion that the car bomb the other day was an example of “Iraqi state-sponsered terrorism against the Western world”
  • Your assertion that “Saddan and Bin Laden have always been good pals”. Particularly looking forward to the evidence for that one.
    *If you have any proof at all for laying the car bombing at the door of Al Qaida, feel free to make with that too.

** Advenger**, do you Yahoo?

** Al Qaeda Plans A Front in Iraq**

Sun Sep 7, 8:45 AM ET
By Peter Finn and Susan Schmidt, Washington Post Foreign Service

BERLIN – Two years after the attacks on the United States, Osama bin Laden’s leadership cadre has been isolated and weakened and is increasingly reliant on the violent actions of local radicals around the world to maintain its profile. But the** al Qaeda network** is determined to open a new front in Iraq to sustain itself as the vanguard of radical Islamic groups fighting holy war, according to European, American and Arab intelligence sources.

The turn toward Iraq was made in February, as U.S. forces were preparing to attack, the sources said. Two seasoned operatives met at a safe house in eastern Iran. One of them was Mohammed Ibrahim Makawi, the military chief of al Qaeda, who is better known as Saif Adel. He welcomed a guest, Abu Musab Zarqawi, who had recently fled Iraq’s Kurdish northern region in anticipation of the U.S. targeting of a radical group with which he was affiliated, Arab intelligence sources said.
The encounter resulted in the dispatch of Zarqawi to become** al Qaeda’s man in Iraq**, opening a new chapter in the history of the group and a serious threat to American forces there.
“The monster is already near you,” said one Arab official who is familiar with the intelligence and who spoke on condition that he not be identified by name or nationality. “I don’t know if you can kill it.”

And so forth…

127

Milum, that cite is

  1. Not responsive to your allegation of state-sponsored Iraqi terrorism. 0 for 1.
  2. Not responsive to your allegation of a Saddam-Osama partnership. 0 for 2.
  3. Not responsive to your allegation that Qaeda committed the car bombing. Well, you can count.
    Rather, it seems from that cite itself and from a number of other recent reports that the American presence in Iraq is now acting as a magnet for attacks, not only from Al Qaeda, mainly from the occupation of an Arab country but also from simple opportunity. That was, if you’ll recall, one of the many expectations that many of us had before the war.

Scylla, click away any time. I await the laughter in response (I refer to your “fighting ignorance” comment to me earlier in this same damn thread, for simply one example). Or take it to the Pit. It’s nice to know you’ve suddenly found religion on the subject of delivering personal insults instead of discussing debate material, though, and I am certainly not alone here in hoping you can keep it up in the future. Good luck.

128

Milum,
Did you realize that the article you cite has nothing to do with the three topics you posted above it?

There’s no mention whatsoever of Iraq’s state sponsored terrorism.
Since Hussein is no longer a sovereign, he has no state. W/o a state, the attack cannot be an example of state-sponsored terrorism, (even if Hussein himself set the explosives).

There’s no mention whatsoever of even a cursory relationship between bin Laden and Hussein.
As a matter of fact, the article you posted implies that AQ wasn’t “turned toward Iraq” until February this year. This means that teh invasion of Iraq brought about this particlular cionnection between Iraq and AQ.
Zarqawi was associated w/ an anti-Baathist Islamic movement that fought against Hussein’s gov in Iraq. Rather than supportive, this is somewhat contradictory to your assertion about the level of cooperation between UbL and Hussein.
Al Qaeda had operatives inside the US, too; however, that doesn’t mean that GW Bush and bin Laden have been good pals.
There’s no mention whatsoever of the car bombing.
There’s just no mention of any of the evidence from the car bombing. If you had an FBI report or something of a similar nature, it might bolster your case some. At best, this article is irrelevant to the car bomb.

There’s a stronger trail of evidence that shows the US gov supported the Taleban and were crucial in the formation, funding and training of Al Qaeda operatives, notably bin Laden than there is that Iraq did any of these things.

129

Oh heck, ** Elvis**, I hate it when you declare my cites non-responsive. Sometimes I wish I was a member of the social cartel here so I could call my own cites non-responsive. Oh well.

130

SimonX wrote:

Milum,
Did you realize that the article you cite has nothing to do with the three topics you posted above it?

There’s no mention whatsoever of Iraq’s state sponsored terrorism.
Since Hussein is no longer a sovereign, he has no state. W/o a state, the attack cannot be an example of state-sponsored terrorism, (even if Hussein himself set the explosives).

So right you really are, ** SimonX**, if there is no state there can be no state sponsoring.

(Ssh… I wish you hadn’t brought this up. It is an embarrassment to Avenger. He quoted me as saying something I never said. I don’t mind, but I wish he hadn’t put it in quotation marks, namely…
** “…Iraqi state-sponsered terrorism against the Western world”)**

Oh well.

131

Nothing to do with any kind of social cartel, Milum, and everything with addressing the damn topic.

132

Today on Meet The Press, Colin Powell said this:

133

Then there’s this story, today:

Errors May Have Inflated Iraq Arms Claims
I do wish David Kay would get off the pot, and release something !

134

Sam, Powell says “exist, existed”, which could mean “existed and continue to exist”, or it could mean “exist, oops, sorry, I mean existed”.

But then he goes on to say that his UNSC speech was “solidly supported by the best analysis”, which is stretching the truth a long way.

I’m inclined to ingore Powell’s remark altogether.

135

So that is great. To support the assertions (lies) of the US government we get cites of the US government. Wonderful. Please. Let’s be serious. Those claims are self-serving bunk. That’s like producing cites from Saddam Hussein to support what Saddam Hussein said. Yes, of course he said what he was saying. I suppose you could find cites of the pro-choice coalition supporting the point of view of the pro-choice coalition and cites by the Pope supporting the point of view of the Catholic Church. It does not even prove the US government do not contradict themselves as you can find cites showing there is plenty of dissent within the Administration.

If you read the cites of US officials these days they are so qualified and so carefully worded that they leave wiggle room enough to cover every possibility. I interpret them as a recognition that they were wrong all along.

136

>> “Under that sort of regime, you don’t admit you got it wrong,”

Sounds like the US government is “that sort of regime” too where you just don’t admit you got it wrong.

137

According to the Sunday Times, the Kay report will be “delayed indefinitely.” As the Sunday Times is subscription only, here’s a story about the story.

I guess we’ll get to read the Kay report right after we get to read the 9-11 commission’s findings, huh?

on the other hand, Cheney did assert to Tim Russert yesterday that Saddam “had a robust plan” for building nuclear weapons, and that’s all the evidence some people around here seem to need.

138

Of course, Cheney in this LA Times story is still citing those centrifuge parts that were buried in somebody’s garden for 21 years.

*"He [Cheney] cited the case of an Iraqi scientist who came forward with plans and components for a centrifuge that could be used to process uranium for use in nuclear weapons.

‘That’s physical evidence that we’ve got in hand today,’ Cheney said. ‘So to suggest that there is no evidence that [Hussein] had aspirations to acquire nuclear weapons, I don’t think is valid. And I think David Kay will find more evidence … that, in fact, [Hussein] had a robust plan, had previously worked on it and would work on it again.’

The materials the scientist turned over had been buried since 1991 and are only a small part of the equipment needed to produce nuclear arms."*

But then Cheney is well known, to me at least, as being amoral.

139

I’m surprised he didn’t give the contract to search for these weapons to Haliburton.

140

Okay, so CBS News is reporting that the Kay report won’t be delayed, but that it is likely to be inconclusive.

Strange, then, that both Bush and Cheney can continue to assert that WMD have already been found. How much longer can this go on?