At 01:12 AM 2/16/2004 -0800 Doug Pensinger wrote:
> This week Tenat said
>that "analysts never said there was an imminent threat" yet prior to the
>war, Administration officials including the President repeatedly made the
>case that there was (quotes available upon request.)
That's funny because in a major speech to Congress (I think it was a State
of the Union), Bush explicitly rejected that logic - saying that if we wait
until the threat is imminent, then it is already too late.
This is the point I have hammered time and time again in regards to the
DPRK. We were worried in 1994 that the DPRK might someday develop
nuclear weapons and become an imminent threat. So, we cut a deal.
Well, now the DPRK has taken our bribes and built nuclear weapons which can
now hit the United States. And now, it is too late.
This situation would be 10x worse for the United States if it repeated
itself in Iraq, where Saddam Hussein has attacked no fewer that four of his
nieghbors, where we have a close ally in Israel, where we have serious
strategic intrests.
Make no mistake, the possibility of Saddam Hussein acquiring such a weapon
was a *grave* threat to the United States.
>Without passing judgment on the motivations of the administration,
>however, it is my opinion that it was dead wrong for the administration to
>stovepipe the intelligence and then mislead the public with the results of
>that manipulation; it's never OK to lie to the public, and it's a
>particularly egregious violation of the public trust when the lives of
>their young people and the fruits of their labor are at stake.
O.k., allow me to paint the history of the Iraq War in entirely positive
motivations.
1) Iraq was a grave threat to the United States. As Gautam has noted, the
official policy of the United States has been to pursue regime change in
Iraq for many years.
2) The events of 11 September 2001 significantly amplified the nature of
Iraq's threat to the United States.
2.1) The destruction on that day was carried out using airplanes - a
technology that was essentially 70 or so years old. Nuclear bomb
technology was about 55 or so years old, and in the hands of the wrong
people could bring about several-times great destruction on the United
States. Moreover, the possibility of Iraq acquiring a nuclear weapon
would be disastrous for US interests in the region. Moreover, the track
record of US Intelligence suggested that we would not be able to predict
with absolute certainty Iraq's acquisition of the 55+-year-old technology
necessarily to produce a nuclear weapon.
2.2) The possibility that Iraq could sell some of its chemical and
biological weapons stock to the highest bidder was of grave concern to the
United States. Iraq was known to have had these stocks in the past, and
the disposition of these stocks was unable to be verified. Given Iraq's
near decade of non-compliance with UN Weapons inspections to verify the
disposition of these stocks, he was almost certainly hiding them. Ths US
had already suffered a biological terrorist attack, at substantial cost.
2.3) One of the primary recruiting tools of Al Qaeda was the presence of US
troops in the Muslim Holy Land of Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, the US
could not remove its troops from Saudi Arabia without creating strategic
risks for US interests and losing substantial face in the eyes of the world
without bringing about regime change in Iraq.
2.4) Another primary source from which Al Qaeda sprung was the lack of
democracy and liberty in the Middle East, and indeed, the perceived US
support for brutal dictatorships in the Middle East. The US, however,
could not beging criticizing the abuses of the Saudi regime, without taking
serious strategic risks to US interests until there was regime change in
Iraq. Moreover, there was the great possibility that instituting then
first liberal democracy in a majority-Arab country would be good for Iraq,
good for the Middle East, good for the World, and good for US interests.
2.5) Saddam Hussein was a tyrant who was responsible for the deaths of
millions of his own citizens, most recently by denying them basic food and
medicine under the UN's Oil-for-Food Program. The World had previously
endorsed life-saving interventions in other countries without UN approval -
i.e. in Serbia, and it seemed reasonable to do so again.
3) The Bush Administration was simply unable to admit to reason 2.3 in
public, and had to play down the specifics of 2.4 in public. In large
part, this is because we wanted the cooperation of Saudi Arabia in taking
on Iraq - in addition to the obvious reason that as soon as you admit to
2.3, the effects of 2.3 are undermined. n addition, the Bush
Administration couldn't really admit to reason 2.1, because obviously it
looks very bad to admit to the limitations of our intelligence services.
Thus, the Bush Administration was already in an ethical pickle, especially
if you believe, as I do, that each reason *alone* provided sufficient
justification for the War, you nevertheless had to be discreet about how
you made your public case for justification of the War. Is this lying?
I think not. I think that it is reality. Especially when you consider
the following paragraph to be true:
In any event, it soon became clear that the opponents of the war were
succeeding in insisting upon going ot the United Nations to legitimzie the
war. In some respects, this was convenient, as it provided a very tidy
case for justifying the war.
UN Resolution 678 authorized the United States to use "all necessary means
to enforce this and all subsequent resolutions."
It was an open-and-shut case that Iraq had not abided by those subsequent
resolutions. After all, we KNOW that Iraq HAD WMD'S. It had USED THEM
in the past. Iraq had very clearly then not complied with subsequent
resolutions to provide unfettered access to inspectors and to verifiable
dismantle all of its WMD-related activities. It did not do so.
Given that in the eyes of the Bush Administration Saddam Hussein surely had
to understand that his failure to do so was impoverishing his country,
turning him into a pariah, and brining about the war that would remove him
from power - it seemed completely irrational to believe that Saddam Hussein
would have just simply givne up his weapons and not even told anyone about
it. Thus, I have no problem with any Bush Administration official
believing that Saddam Hussein still had these weapons and programs - it was
the only conclusion that made sense at the time.
Moreover, Iraq was in TOTAL NONCOMPLIANCE with UN Resolutions - resolutions
which the UN had authorized the US to enforce with "all necessary means."
QED. I don't see any sinister dealings and machinations gonig on here.
JDG
_______________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world,
it is God's gift to humanity." - George W. Bush 1/29/03
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