Advisory: My allergies are off the charts today making me extra crispy cranky.
Sitting on the train this morning, waiting for the Claritin to kick in, I spy it from 20 feet away. Hell, I could have seen it from 100 yards away. There, in what must be at least 300-point type, on the cover of the New York ComPost blares the headline:
WMD: Nerve-gas blast in Baghdad
The opening:
A bomb containing the deadly nerve agent sarin exploded near a U.S. military convoy in Iraq – the first discovery of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction since the war began.
The frightening development, along with the recent finding of a mustard-gas shell near the Syrian border, raised fears inside the Pentagon that Ba’athist terrorists may have gotten their hands on a chemical arsenal of unknown size.
Ooooo….I smell a Pulitzer!
Buried at the bottom of this alarmist tripe is the necessary CYA acknowledgement: In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld cautioned that the sarin results were from a field test, which can be imperfect.
Which brings me to the glaring need to mock these ersatz “editors”* so desperate to exculpate their earlier doomsday editorials, so anxious about possibly having been duped, that they’ll elevate two crusty cannisters to represent a (what’s the latest WH-approved term?) “imminent” (no), “gathering” (?) threat.
Wait until they find the pea shooter in the third-grader’s desk. Holy Armageddon!
Pathetic.
*See Heavy Handed Headline for more
Waiting and seeing, folks. Waiting and seeing.
Yup, the only thing more annoying than the media blowing a story out of proportion is when people make silly ha-ha jokes about what the White House described as a “grave and gathering danger” – the fact that you can’t recognize that stockpiles of old weapons or even the mere capacity for Saddakm hussein to produce WMD are a serious threat scares the bejesus out of me.
Cling to that Bill. I’m sure it will go a long way toward making you feel better about all the lives that have been lost in this FUBAR fiasco.
IMHO, the absence of WMD shouldn’t automatically invalidate the decision to invade, nor should the discovery of WMD automatically justify it. The decision needs to be judged in the context of what was known at the time it was made.
As an analogy, if I bet my life savings on one spin of the roulette wheel and I happen to win, does the fact that I won mean that I made a good decision?
I’d agree kenB, mostly. I would have still opposed the war, regardless, but context is important.
But in the context of what was known at the time: someone, ANYONE, in the administration should have known that they hadn’t done enough post-combat planning to avoid the current situation. They should not have gone in without such planning.
My beef now is this lame attempt to editoriallly justify the invasion through the discovery of those very scary cannisters of “possibly” Sarin gas.
Even if a stock pile of 50 cannisters turns up, the idea that this represented a “grave and gathering danger” so threatening we had to invade before we had the post-combat planning ready is beyond wishful thinking. It borders on willful delusion.
Even if a stock pile of 50 cannisters turns up, the idea that this represented a “grave and gathering danger” so threatening we had to invade before we had the post-combat planning ready is beyond wishful thinking. It borders on willful delusion.
Nearly as delusional as the idea that such a stockpile represents the sum total of why we invaded in the first place, no?
Strongly seconded, kenB.
My beef now is this lame attempt to editoriallly justify the invasion through the discovery of those very scary cannisters of “possibly” Sarin gas.
C’mon Edward. You give them waaaay too much credit. They’re just trying to sell a few more rags today using erroneous headlines. Nothing more than that. And nothing less surprising….
Let’s not revise history, ok? Paul Wolfowitz clearly stated the reasons why this administration felt invading Iraq was necessary. They were: WMD and links to terrorism. Wolfowitz specifically noted humanitarian reasons were not a justification to commit troops.
i think it’s unfair of Rupert Murdoch to sell the NY Com-Post without a box of crayons attatched.
Nearly as delusional as the idea that such a stockpile represents the sum total of why we invaded in the first place, no?
When I see 300-point headlines about any other rationale for going in, I’ll agree to this Slarti.
Not that it’s relevant, but Colin Powell’s reasons for invading Iraq as stated to the UN began with Iraq’s failure to comply with UN Resolution 1441. Not that Powell’s Secretary of State or anything, or that he speaks for official US foreign policy.
When I see 300-point headlines about any other rationale for going in, I’ll agree to this Slarti.
Don’t hold your breath, Edward. For most people, paying attention the first time did the trick.
Powell himself acknowledges that he would not have gone before the UN and argued that Iraq was in violation of the Resolution if he knew then what he knows now.
at least Edward admitted allergies were making him ‘extra cripy’ on the cranky scale. What’s your excuse today Slarti?
the Claritin is kicking in finally, but that just makes me morbid…
At least there’s Michael Moore’s rave reviews to cheer me up.
Powell himself acknowledges that he would not have gone before the UN and argued that Iraq was in violation of the Resolution if he knew then what he knows now.
So…Powell’s said that Iraq wasn’t in violation of any UN resolutions? How odd. Still, I’m going to have to see a cite.
What’s your excuse today Slarti?
You find me cranky today? I’m feeling downright charitable. I’ll kick caffeine one of these weeks and you’ll see what cranky really means, in the context of me.
Still, I’m going to have to see a cite.
the cite:
emphasis mine
Edward –
I love how the conventional wisdom is “before we had the post-combat planning ready.”
1. I’d like to see you take a crack at considering all contingencies … but even if I conced post-war planning error –
2. Yes, timing WAS important. If the current admin definitively considered Iraq a threat (which if you could gather your head out of your partisan blinkered ass you might acknowledge was an honest claim), then the pressure to invade Iraq NOW was legitimately based on:
a. rapidly evaporating political capital conferred by Sept 11.
b. The timing of the administration’s run – Bush needed to invade during waht might be his only term.
c. The emplacement and use of forces. Logistically, the US cannot maintain an attack force capable of credibly threatening Saddam Hussein to comply indefinitely.
Of course these realities may be a little tricky for you and your conventional narratives.
Critize the Bush admin’s ability to make a case for war? Fine. Criticize post-war planning? Ok, to a point.
Float bullshit conventional narratives that deny a threat posed by saddam Hussein that was taken very seriously in an apolitical environment BY BOTH SIDES OF THE AISLE BEFORE the Bush admin took office? Put on your asshat, Eddie – you’re a MOONBAT! Or at least a partisan automaton.
I am bone tired of this bullshit ankle-biting. There was a serious case for war – just because Bush made it does not invalidate its merit.
emphasis mine
The “it” Powell is regretting is the presentation of intel data as something we had confidence in. Not the invasion of Iraq, or the certain knowledget Iraq was in violation of 1441.
Damn. Should have read certain knowledge that, not the gobbledegook I actually typed.
Bill,
I’ll take your tone to represent a sincere frustration, but would ask you to respect the posting rules here and avoid digressing into “moonbat” this or “asshat” that type chatter. Save that for LGF or wherever please.
Regarding the substance of your post. I sincerely disagree the case for war was made. Bush dreamt up an entire new doctrine to validate the choice to invade. The onus is on him to make sure he’s right.
The rationales for the invasion were 1) WMD present a threat to our security; 2) Hussein was somehow responsible for 9/11 or connected to it or however you want to twist that…, and 3) we needed to liberate the Iraqis from their awful lives under Hussein.
Which of those three are you still willing to claim demanded we invade when we did? No points for the bad intelligence meme (you want to change the rules of the game, you own it baby). There were plenty of people arguing the intel was hyped. No points for wishful thinking that Hussein was involved in 9/11. Even Bush has admitted there’s no eveidence of that. And truly, truly, truly, no points for the idea that we’d bring democracy to Iraq.
If that was our first and foremost goal then NOTHING was more important the post-combat planning.
Dredge up all the nonsense you want about Conventional narratives or ankle biting. Bush ran this war incompetently. At this point his only defense would be he had no choice. I’m still waiting to hear why.
Bill of INDC Journal says:
“deny a threat posed by saddam Hussein that was taken very seriously in an apolitical environment”
yes, bill, but it wasn’t true. If it wasn’t true, then there was no war justification, no matter who believed it.
If BushCo says Mexico is going to invade the US and shows intelligence to “prove” it, and we all believe it, are we justified in invading Mexico? Isn’t there some major blame attached to BushCo for not doing their homework and finding the intelligence incorrect (or perhaps lying about it)?
Really… something is “justified” even though it isn’t.
Hey, Edward: don’t forget the supply of spitwads that could be launched from Iraq on DC and NYC by robots. very dangerous.
Justified is one thing, strategically wise is quite another. But that’s a discussion for another day …
LGF? My comments are nothing near the vitriol spilled at LGF.
Do you know what “FUBAR” in your use of “FUBAR fiasco” stands for? In the future, I’ll use BS instead of “bullshit,” if you prefer acronyms.
Asshat I can give or take, but “moonbat?” You can pry moonbat out of my cold, dead hands. I let the accusation stand – you are a moonbat when you define highly serious arguments in terms of foolish, conspiratorial and expedient leftist political narratives. If you do it on the right, you are a wingnut. Suck it up and be proud, or stop doing it.
And here his is how you reconfirm this assertion:
1. What proof do you have that there were no WMD that present a threat to our national security? How do you know that material was not moved to Syria or scattered? David Kay’s analysis? Where did it go/ where is the PROOF that it was destroyed? There is no convincing testimony either way.
And if the weapons were indeed destroyed, but the Iraqi regime failed to account for this action despite the enormous Int’l pressure, how is this a failure of the decision-making process by the Bush administration? Given the same circumstances, the same CIA assessments, I would want any president, Democrat or Republican to make the decision based on the fundamentals of the assessed threat; which were not doubted by any major intelligence service in the world.
These were not “lies.” Woodward’s all-access book, clearly outlines a reasonable decision tree based on the best available information. In light of this knowledge, your back-slapping haw-haws about no WMD are sheer moonbattery. Your confidence about a lack of a threat from the continued stewardship of Iraq by Hussein, who had the industrial infrastructure to produce chem weapons at a moment’s notice, had recently tried to assassinatea former President and was a proven supporter of terrorism is also ludicrous. This problem was never going to magically go away.
2. No one ever made the argument that Hussein was responsible or involved with 9-11. Once again you present blinkered disinformation. The only arguments that came close were:
a. That a terrorist group loosely affiliated with Al Qaeda was opearying freely in Northern iraq.
b. Al Qaeda operatives had met with Iraqi intelligence (there exists proof of this)
c. That the POTENTIAL nexus of a WMD armed state passing off material to a terror group is a threat that is unacceptable in the post 9-11 world.
You may have heard “BushCo tried to convince the world that Saddam was behind 9-11,” but it likely has to do with where you get your news.
As for this:
3. “And truly, truly, truly, no points for the idea that we’d bring democracy to Iraq.”
The capstone in your fifth columnist moonbat marginalization! I can almost see the smug satisfaction in your eyes, even as the fate of Iraq remains yet to be determined. I would say definitively that halting the genocide and systematic murder of nearly a million people qualifies as fulfilling this goal. Any rationalization that somehow implies that the iraqis were better off under Hussin is morally bankrupt and indicative of events sickenly morphed to fulfill a personal ideology. I find it repellent.
This war is not over. It has been run alternately brilliantly and poorly. It’s not over, and the loss of 1 year’s time and 700 lives are inconsequential when placed in historical context – or next to the ambition and wondrous potential pay-off of the enterprise.
If you can’t level serious criticism of this war, then yes, your efforts are those of an ankle-biting partisan at best, a gnawing fifth-columnist at worst. throw in a case of immoral isolationism regarding the moral judgements for war, and the picture ain’t pretty.
We can win this war and deliver a sound peace – despite the irrational carping glee of people like you.
PS – JimPortland – “yes, bill, but it wasn’t true.” This is where you’ve gone wrong jim … saddam Hussein was and always would be a threat. You just don’t have the facts.
Not that I think it’s all that important, but apparently sarin has been confirmed in further testing.
At the risk of cross-threading the whole works, Edward, I invite you to try to understand where he[Bill]‘s coming from, you’ll at least appreciate what he’s trying to communicate.
PS – I’ll do you a favor and decist posting here due to my egregious use of the moonbat hate-speech. If you want to take this argument to a different level, I’m up for the Iron-blogger thing. I have the utmost confidence that my argument will destroy yours in a more gentle, white-gloved environment …
PS – I’ll do you a favor and desist posting here due to my egregious use of the moonbat hate-speech. If you want to take this argument to a different level, I’m up for the Iron-blogger thing. I have the utmost confidence that my argument will destroy yours in a more gentle, white-gloved environment …
The “it” Powell is regretting is the presentation of intel data as something we had confidence in. Not the invasion of Iraq, or the certain knowledget Iraq was in violation of 1441.
Bizarre.
Powell’s Feb. 2003 UN presentation was to present “evidence” Iraq was in violation of UN Res. 1441. Powell now admits what he probably knew at the time: the evidence was weak to nonexistent.
Further, various accounts show Powell opposed (or at least had deep reservations) invading Iraq, prefering a continued containment policy.
The irony here is, I guarantee you no one wants to be convinced more than I do that we had to invade Iraq. That I was wrong about the invasion.
I want to believe that this was all necessary and that my protests were unfounded.
The alternative is to accept that there’s no amount of arguing that we’re not morally justified in killing other innocent people here that will do any good. That we cannot keep this nation from going to war against the next best thing to our real enemies when we feel threatened. That will undoubtedly strike some as hyperbole, but as each new part of this puzzle falls apart, it simply seems to be the truth to me.
And, that, to me is much worse than acknowledging I was wrong. Only problem is, I’m still waiting to be convinced. Intellectually, I’ve been close a few times, but then my worse doubts prove to have been true. Spiritually, I just know it was wrong. No debate at all there. Those people had done nothing to us. 15,000 plus of them are now dead and none of the rationales for going in justifies that to me. The ONLY chance we had to redeem ourselves was to leave them better off than they had been under Hussein. There again, I’m still waiting.
Slarti: You’ve seen this, right?
Study Says Bush used 27 different rationales for war in Iraq
[NB: headline from a different source than the one cited, to make clearer what the citation contends.]
I fully agree that WMD were only one of a vast panoply of rationales presented by the Bush Administration, which is why I described Iraq as “a war in search of a justification”. Per Wolfowitz’ comments, however, WMD was their primary public rationale; a pity, all things considered.
Powell now admits what he probably knew at the time: the evidence was weak to nonexistent.
You couldn’t be more wrong, although you’ve come close on occasion.
It probably doesn’t bear examining that 1441, itself, notes serial violations of previous resolutions.
Heh. A THESIS for a BA?
Slarti: I’m well aware of the poverty of the source, especially in the light of the Dodgy Dossier. That said, have you actually read the citations she (I think it’s a she) provides?
Bill,
Me thinks you doth protest too much the “moonbat” issue. And besides, that term’s so watered down by your comments here you might as well discard it.
I haven’t read rants like that for ages. You’re like a time capsule of commentary. And you argue against yourself much more efficiently than I can, so I’ll limit my response to this one example:
What proof do you have that there were no WMD that present a threat to our national security? How do you know that material was not moved to Syria or scattered? David Kay’s analysis? Where did it go/ where is the PROOF that it was destroyed? There is no convincing testimony either way.
You’re resting your case on my inability to proof something doesn’t exist? You realize what you’re asking here, right?
The onus is not on me either way. I didn’t have to be convinced. For this thing to work, all Bush had to do was convince the U.N. He didn’t, which kind of gnarls a hole through your assessment that “the assessed threat [was] not doubted by any major intelligence service in the world.”
Bill: What proof do you have that there were no WMD that present a threat to our national security?
Wrong standard: Edward wasn’t the one who greenlit the invasion of a sovereign nation. The correct standard is, what proof did the Bush Administration have that there were WMD, in the quantities they specifically claimed that the Iraqis possessed, posing a threat to our national security?
[By your standard, incidentally, I can authorize the invasion of any country on the planet. How do you know Burkina Faso doesn’t have WMD present to threaten our national security, hmm?]
No one ever made the argument that Hussein was responsible or involved with 9-11.
Does the name “Laurie Mylroie” ring any bells?
It may be true that no senior Bush Administration official made that precise argument — I’m not conversant enough with the historical record to say for sure — but the notion that no-one was linking Hussein to 9/11 is ludicrous.
I can almost see the smug satisfaction in your eyes, even as the fate of Iraq remains yet to be determined.
Mind-reading: Schadenfreude. Fifteen yards.
Any rationalization that somehow implies that the iraqis were better off under Hussin is morally bankrupt and indicative of events sickenly morphed to fulfill a personal ideology. I find it repellent.
That’s certainly a noble attitude. It is one that, however, strikes me as too much derived from axioms — we are Good and Saddam is Bad — and not enough from reality on the ground. The fact that we have much better intentions (and are much better people) than Saddam doesn’t change the fact that, at the practical level, Baghdad seems to be worse now than it was under Saddam. Does our innate goodness really matter with the crime rate skyrocketing, rape and murder rates higher now than under Saddam*, erratic utilities, random search and seizure, censored press and all the pragmatic calamaties of our “liberation”?
Is Iraq as a whole better? I have no idea how you’d begin to average the suffering of a country like Iraq to arrive at a normalized measurement. The Marsh Arabs and the Kurds are certainly better off; Baghdad seems to be worse; and I have no idea how to compare Fallujah, Um-Qasr or Basra. The point, though, is that this is a comparison that must be made in the context of what is actually happening, not on our relative merits as individuals nor by what we’d like to happen.
* Disclaimer: I’ve phrased these claims more definitely than I’d like to make the paragraph flow more smoothly, but I understand that some of these statistics (e.g. rape) are difficult to obtain reliably and thus the comparisons are not certain.
Saddam Hussein was and always would be a threat. You just don’t have the facts.
Then please provide them.
That said, have you actually read the citations she (I think it’s a she) provides?
No, I only got far enough to realize that it was basically based on Google statistics (not precisely, but close enough) and that it’d take a great deal more work on my part to muddle through it all. I’d file it under “questionable” until it’s been sanity-checked to a much greater degree than I have time for.
“discovery of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction”
That’s incredibly assumptive. It’s not like anyone can’t make sarin in a backyard, so they had to paw at the secret stashes Hussein’s demonstrably brilliant weapons scientists crafted in their massive labs.
First, threat analysis is not “is there a threat or not” but rather “what is the nature of threat”.
Second, threat response is not “invade or do nothing” but rather “what is the best reponse”
This seems completely obvious to me, but some would disagree.
I’d agree on both counts Oberon, but what in particular is the antecedent to your comments?
Let me see if I can change your mind then, Slarti…
The short version of why this particular BA thesis should be trusted, or at least not automatically dismissed, on this particular matter is that it’s a convenient summation of sourced quotations, which are publically available, primary material. This has a few key advantages: first, that any dubious-sounding quotation can be checked; second, that the bulk of the thesis (consisting of the acquiring, and collating, of the quotations) is objective and thus immune to the usual deficiencies of an undergraduate’s work.
[Waxing technical, the author is attempting something akin to a Sigma-1 search, i.e. collecting as many examples of things the Bush Administration actually said, not a Pi-1 search, i.e. attempting to prove that the Bush Administration didn’t say something. This means that the accuracy (and strength) of the thesis can, at first approximation, only be improved by the addition of more quotations.]
[Added in proof: The more nuanced version of her thesis — that the Bush Administration shifted its rationales over a period of time {a Delta-2 question at best} — is vulnerable to those weaknesses, however, so I wouldn’t offer this thesis as anything definitive without substantial further work.]
The particular analysis whereby exactly 27 rationales are found is, of course, not to be trusted, but who cares? Provided the answer is “many”, where “many” > 5, say, the point will stand. I’d say that her research methods — which were a tad more sophisticated than a “Google search”, I’m afraid, see pp164-165 — were adequate; that her list of citations (pp173-205) are extensive; that her quotes themselves seem accurate; and that her analysis meets the requisite level of complexity; and therefore that her thesis is worthy of consideration.
WHOMMT, WHOMMT, geek alert… : )
Anarch, you’ll only encourage him!
…therefore that her thesis is worthy of consideration.
Again, I don’t agree. Neither do I disagree. I simply don’t have time to fact-check to the extent that I could legitimately do either. If this had been a published Ph.D. thesis, I’d consider that it’d passed peer review to the point where it might be interesting.
And at first blush, a compilation of words that Bush or his administration might have said sans context (I might be mistaken about that; dunno) isn’t all that indicative of anything at all.
Edward –
I said “fundamentals of the assessed threat.” this is an important distinction, because countries that worked counter to US interests did so based on their own self-interest. You can’t convince a nation of anytghing if your goal runs contrary to THEIR self-interest.
“You’re resting your case on my inability to proof something doesn’t exist?”
Um, no, but I’d say that you resting your case on the administration’s ability to prove that something does exist (which is pointless, it EXISTS, it’s just a question of what happened to it) in teh timeframe of a year in a state the size of California is a bit unrealistic as well. And besides that, the leftist meme blithely skips over the fact that the production of chemical weapons with the proper infrastructure could be initiated in a snap – you make jokes about that, but it actually makes the case against Saddam STRONGER rather than weaker. Once again, it was a problem that would never go away.
As I mentioned before, I’ll have to back out of this, because we are going to get into a never-ending cycle of point hurling without a moderator of some sort.
Anarch – “By your standard, incidentally, I can authorize the invasion of any country on the planet. How do you know Burkina Faso doesn’t have WMD present to threaten our national security, hmm?”
Because Burkina Faso doesn’t have previously discovered stockpiles in the thousands of liters that were unaccounted for, hasn’t used them, and hasn’t failed to fulfil the cease-fire conditions of an UNFINISHED war with … the United States. Burkina Faso also has a GDP less than 1/4 taht of Iraq’s at post-sanction levels and has displayed no overt policy of hostility towards the United States and the world’s oil reserves. Got any other completely silly comparisons?
“Laurie Mylroie”
I was making the implication that the case was never made by any administration official. Mylroie was largely dismissed as a conspiracy theorist and she is remarkable for how alone she is in the wilderness, no? I don’t hold Michael Moore against John Kerry.
“Mind-reading: Schadenfreude.”
Yet correct. Nothing else explains the desire to declare the effort a failure a mere year into it, at the height of the struggle. It’s not what I would describe as pleasure; it’s more like defeatism custom-built for ideology.
RE: “That’s certainly a noble attitude. It is one that, however, strikes me as too much derived from axioms — we are Good and Saddam is Bad — and not enough from reality on the ground. The fact that we have much better intentions (and are much better people) than Saddam doesn’t change the fact that, at the practical level, Baghdad seems to be worse now than it was under Saddam. ”
The most ridiculous point of all. Noble broad-brush sentiments aside, by what objective measure is Bahgdad worse? because of terror? Well saddam sure did know how to keep people in line, didn’t he?
I’d say freedom from having your wife raped and killed by an official government official because your neighbor informed that you were a rebel sympathizer is a fundamental, sweeping improvement that defies estimates about electrical power or oil output. But if you’d like to know the truth about such statistical measures, fee free to educate yourself:
http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/accomplishments/
Generated 4,518 MW on October 6, surpassing the pre-war level of 4,400 MW.
USAID is working to add 827 MW of capacity through new generation and rehabilitation projects.
Conducting water and sanitation projects worth $183 million that will benefit 14.5 million people.
Rehabilitating three key bridges (Khazir, Tikrit, and Al Mat) critical to the flow of passengers and goods throughout Iraq. Al Mat Bridge was the first to be completed and reopened March 3.
Reopened Umm Qasr seaport on June 17. Approximately 40 ships offload cargo per month.
Completed emergency work to prepare Baghdad and Basrah airports for operations. More than 5,000 flights have arrived and departed Baghdad International Airport since July, which now averages more than 20 non-military movements per day.
Restored international calling service and activated more than 140,000 subscriber lines in Baghdad.
Patience and historical perspective is essential to any judgement about the success of Iraq. you and edward sorely lack this perspective – because it doesn’t fit your ideology.
Doesn’t fit my “my ideology”? Quite an unsturdy limb you’re crawling out there on without a way back, Bill.
Nothing else explains the desire to declare the effort a failure a mere year into it, at the height of the struggle.
What effort in particular are you referring to here? I have not declared the war a failure yet. Just the hunt for WMD. They are not one in the same. I know you know this, because you said so way up thread. You’re lumping several things together here and deciding that’s my ideology. Careless.
You’ve seen Kay’s report, though, no? How many more billions do you want to spend tracking down stray cannisters? As you note yourself, the real threat of those weapons was a leader willing to use them…now that he’s in captivity, where’s the threat? Oh, that’s right, we created a new one by sending too few troops and letting terrorists pour across the borders. Oopsie Daisies. That damned poor planning bites us in the ass again.
And I thought the height of the struggle was back before Bush landed on the air craft carrier. Sorry, gratuitous snark.
Your dedication is admirable Bill. Believe it or not, I’m repeatedly on record as saying we must not fail in Iraq, but that doesn’t mean I have to let mealy mouthed editors of yellow rags trump up bogus defenses of their highly offensive arrogant taunts on such flimsy evidence without comment.
You realize that you’re defending the New York Post ultimately here, right?
At least there’s Michael Moore’s rave reviews to cheer me up.
…but that doesn’t mean I have to let mealy mouthed editors of yellow rags trump up bogus defenses of their highly offensive arrogant taunts on such flimsy evidence without comment.
I just thought that was odd, reading both statements from the same person, and on the same page. It gave me a little chuckle, it did.
Might be worth putting the posting rules on the comments page, under “Post A Comment.”
Because Burkina Faso doesn’t have previously discovered stockpiles in the thousands of liters that were unaccounted for, hasn’t used them, and hasn’t failed to fulfil the cease-fire conditions of an UNFINISHED war with … the United States. Burkina Faso also has a GDP less than 1/4 taht of Iraq’s at post-sanction levels and has displayed no overt policy of hostility towards the United States and the world’s oil reserves.
See? That’s a much better standard than the one you actually used 🙂
With that said, that still doesn’t answer the fundamental problem with your remark, namely that it’s not Edward’s place to prove the lack of existence of WMD in Iraq, it’s the Bush Administration’s requirement to prove the existence of WMD — in quantities and at locations they specified very precisely, may I remind you.
Let me be perfectly clear here: if the Administration had merely said “We think there’s good reason to believe Saddam might still possess WMD, and here’s why”, you and I would be in perfect agreement. They didn’t. They claimed specific, precise knowledge about the nature, quantity and location of Saddam’s WMD with no acknowledgement of the doubts possessed by the intelligence community as to the accuracy of that information. They have thus far been proven completely and utterly wrong on all of these specific claims. Technically, removing all the appropriate qualifications is only mendacity of the highest order; in practice, AFAIC it’s tantamount to lying.
I’ll be happy to be proven wrong in this regard — well, not “happy”, but you get my drift — but understand that I’ll accede only to proof and not ad hominems about my “smug satisfaction” or “lack of perspective”.
I was making the implication that the case was never made by any administration official.
The statement you made was:
“No one ever made the argument that Hussein was responsible or involved with 9-11.”
With a restricted universal quantifier that statement becomes tenable, and I acknowledged as much in my response. [I should note that I think I remember someone, probably Cheney, making the connection explicitly but I lack cites to that effect; if someone could help jog my memory, I’d appreciate it.] Without it — and I dispute that your implication was clear, hence my comment — your statement is false.
“Mind-reading: Schadenfreude.”
Yet correct.
No. I’m afraid it’s not.
Nothing else explains the desire to declare the effort a failure a mere year into it, at the height of the struggle.
Your inability to conceive does not preclude the existence of other alternatives. I could just as easily, and just as erroneously, attribute your optimism to blinkered loyalty and a “lack of perspective” that prevents you from seeing the catastrophe that is Iraq. w00t!
The most ridiculous point of all. Noble broad-brush sentiments aside, by what objective measure is Bahgdad worse? because of terror? Well saddam sure did know how to keep people in line, didn’t he?
I don’t have time to grab the statistics right now, but when last I checked the murder, rape, theft and assault statistics in Baghdad were far higher now than under Saddam. Likewise, despite the talk of power generation there were (are?) frequent brownouts/blackouts in Baghdad; there were gasoline shortages; vastly higher incidents of religious violence; and a reduction in women’s freedoms (those last two are correlated).
[I’ll try to grab actual cites when I get back later this evening.]
As for Saddam… you seem to be operating under the assumption that living under a tyrant is inherently preferable to living in anarchy. Let me just suggest that not everyone agrees with you.
I’d say freedom from having your wife raped and killed by an official government official because your neighbor informed that you were a rebel sympathizer is a fundamental, sweeping improvement that defies estimates about electrical power or oil output.
What about the freedom from having your wife beaten and killed because she violated the religious strictures of the fundamentalist down the road? Which do you think is the more common occurence?
Patience and historical perspective is essential to any judgement about the success of Iraq. you and edward sorely lack this perspective – because it doesn’t fit your ideology.
Well, there’s only one response to that: bullshit. I, like Edward, have been on the record as saying that we can’t afford to lose in Iraq. I’ve said from day minus three hundred that we shouldn’t commit to Iraq unless we were sure we could (and would) see it through. I’ve repeatedly insisted that the “War” would be swift and easy, that the reconstruction effort would be hard and require real, tangible sacrifices, that there would be a nasty guerilla-style insurrection, and that things in Iraq would necessarily get worse before they got better. And hey, I’m doing pretty good so far.
Got all that? Good. Now stop imputing motives where they don’t exist.
All that said, I also possess the ability to look at current trends and extrapolate; I possess the ability to gauge and analyze systemic flaws; and I’m well aware that, while patience is a virtue, it should not be used as a excuse for inaction. In my estimation, our current path is disastrous: unless a radical change is enacted we won’t turn the corner in time, meaning that our entire endeavour will be a waste. I’ll note that I’m not alone, as everyone from Atrios to Kevin Drum to Tacitus to Bill Kristol agrees with this basic contention.
Where reasonable people can, and do, disagree is whether any course correction at this juncture can redeem our Iraq adventure. Those on the left tend to say no which, if true, means that a pull-out is the correct strategy. Those on the right tend to say yes which, if true, means that all we need to do is to find that new course and we’ll be set. I, being a cynic, believe that there is a course correction that will work, but the costs will be prohibitively high — not in terms of money or lives, but in terms of the political willpower required to enact the necessary changes. Argue against those positions all you want, but please respect the fact that not everyone who disagrees with you is necessary blinkered by ideology, giving up back-slapping haw-haws, acquiring news from dubious sources, a fifth columnist (marginalized or gnawing, take your pick), smugly satisfied at the problems in Iraq, morally bankrupt, repellent, unserious in their criticism, ankle-bitingly partisan, irrationally and carpingly gleeful, failing to possess the facts or, of course, a moonbat.*
*And all that’s from just one of your posts!
PS: There’s no official post-length limit here, but even in its absence this has one has gone on too long. Should this discussion continue, due to length constraints I’ll be forced to reply only to the totality of your argument and few (if any) of the specifics. My apologies in advance.
Slarti: And at first blush, a compilation of words that Bush or his administration might have said sans context (I might be mistaken about that; dunno) isn’t all that indicative of anything at all.
A quick note before I hasten off to the shower I so desperately need after that previous post: from what I’ve read of the thesis (about 30 pages of the main text, as well as the entire introduction and appendices), the author seems good at providing the requisite amount of context. You’re quite correct that a deeper analysis would require a more stringent review process (hence my remarks about “a first approximation” above) but I think you’re being unnecessarily skeptical for the weaker claim.
[Although, I must confess, I desperately want to copy-edit her writing. Now I remember why I hate undergrads so much… ;)]
15,000 plus of them are now dead and none of the rationales for going in justifies that to me.
Well, I’d guess if they could all talk, the 70,000 kids under five that UNICEF estimates would have died while we continued the containment policy for the past 14 months might voice their unconcern for the rationale* and be happy with the result.
Is that a good enough comparison that must be made in the context of what is actually happening ???
*Yup, I know it wasn’t a stated rationale and agree that the post-war planning has been poor, but 50,000+ kids alive today that wouldn’t have been is one good thing that’s come of this war.
OK, last one and then I’m out. First, I appear to have violated the posting rules with the use of the word “bullshit” above. My apologies; it won’t happen again.
Second (and last, really, I promise!), crionna, I agree completely. FWIW, I regard the callous maintaining of the Iraqi sanctions in the face of the humanitarian crisis it was creating as one of the greatest failures of the Clinton Administration. I wholeheartedly supported efforts to produce viable “smart sanctions” (odious term though) and wish that the Bush Administration had spent more time on that angle — the cost/benefit ratios of the sanctions vis a vis acquisition of banned materials, creation of banned weapons and threat to world security v. the humanitarian crisis and deaths of innocents — and less on faux certainty about WMD.
crionna, it’s not obvious (to me, anyway) that doing the various things that Bush opponents would have preferred to invading or the status quo would have led to those deaths. And you ought to factor in the deaths we caused directly, which I feel deserve to be weighed differently. And your point may be susceptible to questions of resource allocation in places where children are dying at similar or worse rates.
rilkefan, I’m not trying to justify the war on those grounds alone, I thought of it as one heck of a happy byproduct and a decent trade-off. 70,000 vs. 15,000 is and will always be a good thing to me. Even better that the disprepancy will continue to get larger unless we MOAB a decent sized city there.
Opposite you, I guessed that Hussein wasn’t all of a sudden going to change his habits if the status quo was left alone. What other options were there that wouldn’t have left Hussein in charge of the money that came into the country?
I’ve mostly been watching this thread, but “smart sanctions”? Really? Come on. That was the stated rationale of the Food for Oil program–trying to mitigate the damage of sanctions to poor people. But in a tyrannical system you that isn’t possible because the dictator or power structure will just take from everyone else. (See for example North Korea.)
crionna, I don’t know what you mean by “opposite you”. I’m no great fan of the pre-war status quo.
Anyway, there were smart sanctions, intrusive inspections, pressure on the Arab states, grown-up diplomacy post 9/11, not-this-war-now-but-eventually threats, … The stuff Powell was pushing in 2001, for example, back when he was saying publically that Saddam was a contained and beaten threat.
And I don’t know how to weigh n murders we allow a tyrant to commit in order to keep him from attacking his neighbors vs m civilians we kill by bombing them, destroying most their organizational infrastructure, and permitting social disorder.
And then there’s still the Congo/Sudan/etc etc argument.
I just thought that was odd, reading both statements from the same person, and on the same page. It gave me a little chuckle, it did.
We aim to amuse.