[CLUE-Talk] a new note in the usa/iraq tune

[Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

On Mon, 26 Jan 2004 16:34:50 -0800
Randy Arabie <randy at arabie.org> wrote:

> Quoting Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier <jzb at dissociatedpress.net>:
> 
> > On Mon, 26 Jan 2004 07:18:01 -0800
> > Randy Arabie <randy at arabie.org> wrote:
> > 
> > > Quoting Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier <jzb at dissociatedpress.net>:
> > > > 
> > > > Well, we'll get a lot of "it doesn't really matter that the
> > > > administration [was totally lying about WMD being the rationale for 
> > > > war | was completely incompetent] because Saddam was a bad, bad, bad 
> > > > man."
> > > 
> > 
> > > After years of sanctions and inspections we were left with:
> > 
> > Note that the "sanctions" were U.N. sanctions. Note that the U.N. did
> > not approve of the use of force against Iraq. 
> > 
> > The administration continually sold the war with Iraq as something that
> > had to be done to protect the U.S. -- right now! That assertion is being
> > proven wrong -- there was no immediate threat from Iraq. 
> 
> I disagree.  The policy of "regime change" in Iraq goes back to Clinton.  

A policy of wanting Hussein out of power, yes. A policy of going and
forcibly removing him, no.  

> It 
> was the Bush Administration who insisted that the UN WMD Inspections resume.  
> Prior to that, the UN was doing little to stop Iraq's WMD programs, or "Weapons 
> of mass destruction-related program activities".  Whatever it is you, the 
> press, or David Kay want to call them.  The bottom line is, Iraq was not in 
> compliance with the UN Resolutions.  These resolutions would have gone on on 
> unenforced, had the Bush Administration not pressed the issue.

And we wind up at the same place again: Why is it the Bush
administration's place to enforce U.N. sanctions when the U.N. itself
says "no"?  

> After being pressured, the UN passed yet another resolution regarding Iraq and 
> WMD.  Resolution 1441 demanded that, within 30 days, Iraq provide "a currently 
> accurate, full, and complete declaration of all aspects of its programmes to 
> develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and 
> other delivery systems such as unmanned aerial vehicles and dispersal systems 
> designed for use on aircraft, including any holdings and precise locations of 
> such weapons, components, sub-components, stocks of agents, and related 
> material and equipment, the locations and work of its research, development and 
> production facilities, as well as all other chemical, biological, and nuclear 
> programmes, including any which it claims are for purposes not related to 
> weapon production or material." 
> 
> Iraq failed to meet the 30-day deadline, and in fact didn't comply within 90-
> days.  So, this wasn't the "rush to war" scenario you've attempted to paint.

Yes, it is -- We had been going along one course of action for more than
a decade, but suddenly it wasn't enough for Bush and his cronies. 

> > > 1. A very incomplete picture of what was going on in Iraq;
> > 
> > Wait -- I thought we *had* a complete picture -- that's what all that
> > intelligence was that they sold us, right? A complete picture that was
> > convincing to the Bush administration that Iraq was pursuing WMD. You
> > can't have it both ways, Randy -- either we *knew* that they had WMD and
> > that justified the war, or we had an incomplete picture and went to war
> > on a hunch. First the story was one way, now you want it the other way. 
> > Powell stood up before the U.N. to say that we had this convincing
> > picture of Iraq's WMD production and we know this and we know that and
> > so on and so forth. All the sudden it's now an "incomplete" picture. We
> > wanted the world to believe we were the experts on Iraqi WMD programs
> > last year, now we're supposed to convince people that we really had a
> > fuzzy picture of what was going on, but that it was compelling enough to
> > invade another country over? 
> 
> We *had* as complete a picture as any foreign intelligence could expect to have 
> without either Iraqi cooperation and/or inside informant(s).  No one hid the 
> fact that the WMD noted in the intelligence reports were based on 
> weapons/stockpiles unaccounted for during the 1998 inspections.  The whole 
> premise of the UN WMD inspection regime was that Iraq had to account for the 
> weapons they had previously admitted to producing.  If Iraq refused to account 
> for them (ie hand them over or show credible evidence of thier destruction), 
> then the UN was to assume Iraq is in non-compliance.
> 
> We are talking about intelligence assessments here.  They are not mathmatical 
> equations where one can get a precise answer.  At the time, no one knew how 
> incomplete our picture was.  

But the Bush administration continued to tell the public that they had a
complete picture. This, again, leads us to incompetence or lies. My
vote is that the administration deliberately painted a picture that far
oversold the "intelligence" that suggested a threat and deliberately
underplayed the contrary reports. 

> > "Weapons of mass destruction-related program activities" is what Bush said
> > this
> > year. Not "programs" -- "related program activities." In short -- there
> > weren't even full-fledged programs to create WMD, much less actual WMD
> > in Iraq.
> 
> I'm afraid I don't know the technical difference's between a "WMD program" 
> or "Weapons of mass destruction-related program activities".  It sounds like a 
> buch of CYA wordsmithing to me.  Either you are working to develop WMD or you 
> aren't.

Well, I agree here -- it's a bunch of CYA wordsmithing all right, and
the A that's being CY'ed is Bush's. 

> Also, according to this article in the Telegraph (sorry the link may break): 
> 
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?
> xml=/news/2004/01/26/nblair226.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/01/26/ixnewstop.html 
> 
> <quote>
> Mr Kay offered some hope to Mr Blair when he told The Telegraph that there was 
> evidence that unspecified material "including some components of Saddam's WMD 
> programme" went to Syria before the war.
> </quote>
> 
> So in this case, Saddam did have a WMD program.  I dunno, it seems pretty clear 
> to me that Saddam was hell bent on getting WMD.  The only point in question is 
> how far along he was.  Personally, I don't care how far along they were.  The 
> Iraq regime had WMD programs and they had no intention to comply with the UN 
> Resolutions.  They were beyond diplomacy.  War was the only option.

Even if I agreed with you about war being the only option, I do not see
why that obligation fell to the U.S. when Iraq was not a direct threat
to the U.S. -- if Saddam was such a huge threat to his neighbors, as
Bush was fond of saying, then let Saddam's neighbors take care of the
threat. I have seen no evidence that suggests Saddam was a threat to the
U.S. -- even if he possessed some of the weapons he was accused of
having. 

This policy of intervening in a part of the world where we have no
business being is going to bite us in the ass down the road. 

> > > Given that, I still believe the war
> > > was justifiable.  
> > 
> > Of course you do. Better than admitting you were wrong. 
> 
> > Obviously, the course of action we were taking *had* prevented Iraq from
> > actually developing WMD. Again, the urgency to do something *right now*
> > was artificial.
> 
> It's only obvious now that the Iraq regime has been removed!  Sure, you can 
> look back now, after the fact, and assert that the UN Sanctions were working in 
> Iraq.  Perhaps Iraq had no stockpiles of WMD.  However, without going to war 
> and removing Saddam's regime, it was impossible verify that.

How convenient. "We can only prove that we needed to go to war with Iraq
by going to war with Iraq."  

> Go back and look at Blix's reports to the UN Security Council.  He never 
> concluded that Iraq didn't have WMD, nor did he conclude there were no active 
> WMD programs, nor did he conclude that Iraq was in compliance with the UN 
> Resolutions.  
> 
> And, with recent relevations about the WMD programs in N. Korea, Iran, and 
> Lybia, it appears that other UN efforts at non-proliferation have proven 
> equally ineffective. 

Great, so now we have to invade those countries next? 

BTW -- why do we get to pick which countries get to have WMD? Are we
going to invade Israel if they're pursuing WMD? Why are we entitled to
thousands of nuclear warheads, but any country we don't like is
restricted? 

I'm not saying that I relish the thought of N.Korea having WMD -- far
from it, but I also don't relish the thought of the U.S. playing
supercop to the world -- nor the consequences when enough countries get
tired of the U.S. telling them how to run their affairs. 

> Please tell us Joe, when would the right time have been? 

When and only when Iraq posed a direct threat to the U.S. 

> The UN is supposed to be a great, multinational framework where nations can 
> work out issues under a unified, agreed upon set of rules.  Well it sounds good 
> on paper, but after 12-years we had no meaningful measure of it's success with 
> regard to Iraq.  Hanz Blix and his team did not conclude that Iraq was in 
> compliance with the UN Resolutions.  Subsequently, the UN refused to enforce 
> any meaningful consequences for Iraqi non-compliance.  This lack of consequence 
> only strengthened Saddam's resolve to obstruct the process.
> 
> In my opinion, that's a very dangerous precident to set.  What's the point of 
> setting up a system of rules if there are no consequences for not adhering them?

*ahem* 

And exactly what consequences should the U.S. face now that we've gone
against U.N. resolutions, Randy? 

> Do you honestly believe the UN Security Council would have forced Iraq into 
> compliance?

I honestly believe that it wasn't the U.S.'s place to perform a
pre-emptive invasion against a country that did not pose a direct threat
to the U.S. 

Though this is somewhat off the discussion, I believe that a better
leader could have persuaded the U.N. to vote for military action or some
stronger course of action to ensure that Saddam was in compliance. 

> > > I think the Administration needs to 'fess-up.  Explain why the
> > intelligence
> > > analysts came to the conclusions they did.  Come up with a plan for making
> > our
> > > intelligence agencies better.
> > 
> > Oh, nice way to toe the party line. Shift the blame to the intelligence
> > agencies.  
> 
> I'm not toeing anyone's party line.  Nor have I assigned any blame.  I think 
> you and I are seeking the same thing...identify the problem WRT to our 
> intelligence gathering/analysis/reporting and fix it!

Not quite. Well, yes, I'd like to "fix" our intelligence system, if such
a thing is possible. But I'd also like a regime in this country that's
more interested in solving our problems at home rather than trying to
enforce their will abroad. 

> > I think they need to 'fess up as well -- but not for the same reasons.
> > The administration cherry-picked intelligence reports to make a case for
> > a war they'd already decided on. Our intelligence could be better, but
> > the Bush administration ignored any evidence that did not support the
> > conclusion they had already reached -- that we were going to invade
> > Iraq.
> 
> Were they "cherry-picking" or were they looking at the body of evidence, the 
> information available at a given time, and coming to a worst-case scenario type 
> conclusion?

I believe they were cherry-picking.  

> That was my choice.  I stand by it.

Good for you. At least you get to do so. There are more than 500
American soldiers and thousands of Iraqis who don't get to stand for a
damn thing anymore. 

Zonker