They will never be fogotten

[scaredyclassic]

Saddam mightve done better if his name didn’t soundlike Sodom. Could Barack Obama have perhaps not been elected if his name were saddam Obama.

Instead of regime change perhaps a simple name change mightve worked.

[briansd1]

Coulter, who upon Tillman’s death described him in her inimitably creepy fashion as “an American original–virtuous, pure and masculine like only an American male can be.”

Would Ann Coulter meet the description of “an American original — virtuous, pure, graceful and feminine like only and American female could be”?

That’s my idea of a conservative woman.

[Allan from Fallbrook]

[quote=Jacarandoso]Thanks for saying what you did about our discussion of Pearl Harbor, Allan.[/quote]

Russ: You’re welcome, man. That was a fun discussion and I enjoyed it. I’ve always wondered about the “what if” aspects of that scenario and how much FDR truly did know (regardless of what the history books say). He (FDR) had to be aware that America was going to be in the war at some point, but he had been adamant on the stump that America wouldn’t get embroiled in another European war. We had broken the Japanese code, so we knew what was afoot and then… Interesting that the radar station monitoring what would ultimately be the Japanese flight path to Pearl broke down, huh?

Anyhoo. Have a good weekend.

[Allan from Fallbrook]

[quote=Arraya]He was a US strongman that became unpredictable and went rogue. I understand the policy of preemption and the rational behind it. However, to me it looks like there was ulterior motives. First and foremost, there was NO intelligence agency that thought he was a threat to anybody, but his own people. Actually Colin Powell was out in early 2000 talking about how he was a “junk yard dog with no teeth” living in constant fear. Yes, *some* thought he could *possibly* have, loosely defined, WMDs. And he liked to pretend he did as well. But so do a lot of tin pot dictators. They DID, however, completely twist facts and somebody slipped a the “Yellow Cake” charge in for good measure(I have an idea where that came from)

Sure, he was a piece of shit – but his real estate made him a powerful piece of shit.

In a sense, the precarious nature of the oil market, made him too powerful and potentially very dangerous. So, I understand the rationale behind wanting to take him out beyond what was sold beyond just monetary gain.

Still, where we stand today, is Iraq has aligned with Iran due to ethnic ties. So, even from the conspiratorial view, it did not work out. To really make it work then need to take out Iran and I highly doubt that is going to happen.[/quote]

Arraya: How about Saddam’s use of chem weapons at Halabja and throughout the Iran – Iraq War? I’d also point out that Saddam was actively seeking to weaponize both anthrax and botulin for strategic/theater-wide use. While I now realize that the Iraq war was ill-considered, given that there were no WMDs (and the fallback excuse of removing Saddam as a dictator is thin soup, given how many of his ilk we’ve supported over the years), there was credible intel on his weapons program over the years, supported by events like Halabja. Further, the Brits, French and Germans had actionable intel on the same programs. It wasn’t cut from whole cloth as many on the Left assert (especially given that a good many Dems were also stridently for regime change).

[NotCranky]

You have a good weekend too,Allan.

I think both sides knew that the U.S. direct particpation was going to be more than “defense” too.

[Arraya]

[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]

Arraya: How about Saddam’s use of chem weapons at Halabja and throughout the Iran – Iraq War? I’d also point out that Saddam was actively seeking to weaponize both anthrax and botulin for strategic/theater-wide use. While I now realize that the Iraq war was ill-considered, given that there were no WMDs (and the fallback excuse of removing Saddam as a dictator is thin soup, given how many of his ilk we’ve supported over the years), there was credible intel on his weapons program over the years, supported by events like Halabja. Further, the Brits, French and Germans had actionable intel on the same programs. It wasn’t cut from whole cloth as many on the Left assert (especially given that a good many Dems were also stridently for regime change).[/quote]

Well, it’s interesting. Saddam came to power in a coup a few months before the Iranian revolution. A few months after the revolution he attacked Iran.

It came out in congressional testimony that western firms “unwittingly and wittingly” helped him with his chemical weapons.

As well, when Iran went to the UN to complain about the chemical weapons, the US and Britain blocked any serious condemnation. So, I have a hard time when people condemn his use of chemical weapons, as some sort of horror without them acknowledging that western powers helped him with attaining them as well as protected him from international response. 1.5 million people died in that war.

As far as the intel we had, well yeah, we sold him the weapons back in the day so it’s understandable that we think he might have them. Though, I would say, that the aggregate of intel would not be labeled “actionable” by 2000. With an overall assumption, that he was not even a threat to his neighbors at that point. The, spotty at best, intel was trumped up by a magnitude. Most of the fear mongering was think tank twisting of data. This can be tracked back to a few think tanks.

Actually, there was practically an intelligence community revolt over the misuse of intelligence.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2004/03/10/osp_moveon

From May 2002 until February 2003, I observed firsthand the formation of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans and watched the latter stages of the neoconservative capture of the policy-intelligence nexus in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. This seizure of the reins of U.S. Middle East policy was directly visible to many of us working in the Near East South Asia policy office, and yet there seemed to be little any of us could do about it.

I saw a narrow and deeply flawed policy favored by some executive appointees in the Pentagon used to manipulate and pressurize the traditional relationship between policymakers in the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies.

I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president.

The “downy street memo” was the acknowledgment by the M16 that the case was paper thin and not supported by the intelligence community.

What you have are either manipulations of facts based on extreme and detrimental paranoia(with nobel intent) with those manipulations expressed to the public as fact or the twisting was done for ulterior motives.

Regardless of motivations, which can never be proven,(though I think an analysis of the confluence of interests in power at the time could give a good hint), the complete abandonment of standard operating procedure, in the form of, I guess what you could call, intelligence management towards policy, turned out to be wrong.

[Anonymous]

[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]While I now realize that the Iraq war was ill-considered […][/quote]

Allan, I know I said I wouldn’t butt heads with you here but that one almost made me spit out my morning coffee.

You are a master of “semantic drift” – taking a particular word and changing it as the conversation moves along. Upthread you questioned my comment about the us being engaged in the war prior to Pearl Harbor; several posts later you have rephrased it to “when was the US actively participating in hostilities?”

Now we could start pulling out excerpts from dictionary.com that support our respective uses of the word engaged, but like I said earlier, I don’t want to get into a semantic quibble.

But I do like your use of the term “ill-considered” as a euphemism for “completely fucking wrong.” Because I’m sure that’s what you really wanted to say above.

I think that particular substitution may be appropriate in many contexts, but not this one.

As for the Iraq war and the events that lead up to it: It all comes down to simple common sense. We either knew that Saddam had no viable NBC weapons programs, or else our massive intelligence apparatus (and it’s massive budget) was a total failure.

When it comes to explanations of government folly, I tend to favor incompetence over malice, but I think the Iraq war was an exception. It was a power/money grab – nothing more. Every other explanation is just rationalization.

[Allan from Fallbrook]

[quote=pri_dk]
You are a master of “semantic drift” – taking a particular word and changing it as the conversation moves along. Upthread you questioned my comment about the us being engaged in the war prior to Pearl Harbor; several posts later you have rephrased it to “when was the US actively participating in hostilities?”

But I do like your use of the term “ill-considered” as a euphemism for “completely fucking wrong.” Because I’m sure that’s what you really wanted to say above.

I think that particular substitution may be appropriate in many contexts, but not this one.

As for the Iraq war and the events that lead up to it: It all comes down to simple common sense. We either knew that Saddam had no viable NBC weapons programs, or else our massive intelligence apparatus (and it’s massive budget) was a total failure.

When it comes to explanations of government folly, I tend to favor incompetence over malice, but I think the Iraq war was an exception. It was a power/money grab – nothing more. Every other explanation is just rationalization.[/quote]

Pri: Dude, if I wanted to say “completely fucking wrong”, I would have said exactly that. Words mean things and, as the nuns taught me, precision and concision are key in expressing one’s self. You either fail to pick the right word(s), or you do pick the right word(s) and then back water by attempting to say you meant something else.

As far as massive failures of intelligence go: As a former Army officer, I cannot even believe I’m hearing this from you. They’re the norm, not the exception. The CIA’s HUMINT failings and over-reliance on ELINT and SIGINT are well-known and well-documented (Tet Offensive, anyone?).

Hussein not only had a well-developed chem- and bio-weapons capability, he had used it before and inflicted tens of thousands of casualties in so doing. You can assert the familiar neo-con conspiracy argument, but that runs into trouble when you look at the facts and facts from sources outside of the US and the US intelligence community (a point I made above).

So, no, pri, I didn’t mean to say anything other than what I did say. Which remains a constant in my postings, unlike yours.

[Arraya]

[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]
Hussein not only had a well-developed chem- and bio-weapons capability, he had used it before and inflicted tens of thousands of casualties in so doing. .[/quote]

Yes, it’s a well established fact that we helped with that in the early 80s. Then provided cover with the UN when Iran complained about it to them.

[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]
You can assert the familiar neo-con conspiracy argument, but that runs into trouble when you look at the facts and facts from sources outside of the US and the US intelligence community (a point I made above)..[/quote]

Talk about assertion. It’s a well known fact that the intelligence was crap and twisted by dozens of intellgence officers across the globe. The downy street memo was the M16 admitteding it was cooked as well as, at least a dozen, former intelligence and insiders in the US

Oh, are you saying we relied on some secret report from the netherlands that nobody knows about? That also turned out to be wrong?

The neo-cons have names and put out reports – it sure IS NOT secret that they were gunning for him in the mid 90s. No conspiracy needed, the publically announced the severity of the matter in 98 and 2000.

Colin Powel from Feb 2001. Maybe he did not get the secret Dutch report you are talking about.

[Allan from Fallbrook]

[quote=Arraya][quote=Allan from Fallbrook]
Hussein not only had a well-developed chem- and bio-weapons capability, he had used it before and inflicted tens of thousands of casualties in so doing. .[/quote]

Yes, it’s a well established fact that we helped with that in the early 80s. Then provided cover with the UN when Iran complained about it to them.

[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]
You can assert the familiar neo-con conspiracy argument, but that runs into trouble when you look at the facts and facts from sources outside of the US and the US intelligence community (a point I made above)..[/quote]

Talk about assertion. It’s a well known fact that the intelligence was crap and twisted by dozens of intellgence officers across the globe. The downy street memo was the M16 admitteding it was cooked as well as, at least a dozen, former intelligence and insiders in the US

Oh, are you saying we relied on some secret report from the netherlands that nobody knows about? That also turned out to be wrong?

The neo-cons have names and put out reports – it sure IS NOT secret that they were gunning for him in the mid 90s. No conspiracy needed, the publically announced the severity of the matter in 98 and 2000.

Colin Powel from Feb 2001. Maybe he did not get the secret Dutch report you are talking about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOMGyxIaBxE%5B/quote%5D

Arraya: I agree that the intel was crap. I’ll take it one step further and say that the intel, regardless of time and situation, is generally fucked up and thus you have to operate off of what you have. When I was in the Army, I can count on the fingers of one hand the times that the intel was solid. However, given the fact that Hussein had chem/bio weapons and had used them before and was also actively developing weaponized anthrax and botulin and was also actively supporting groups like al-Qaeda, the risk was simply too great to ignore, IMHO. As it turned out, I was clearly wrong and admitted that. If I had it to do over again, I’d go the same route. Neo-cons notwithstanding, Hussein was a weapons-grade asshole of the first order and one with delusions of a pan-Arab state with himself at the helm. Was it worth the blood and treasure expended to take him out? Nope. But most of that I ascribe to a really shitty “winning the peace” plan versus a really good “winning the war” plan (meaning we knew how to remove him from power, but didn’t have a fucking clue how to run the place after that happened).

Also, much of what came to light after, came to light after, meaning that we were operating on either leveraged intel (designed to bolster a thin case for war) or improperly managed intel (meaning the usual inter-agency bullshit obscured getting a proper picture of the whole situation). Again, this underscores the weakness of SIGINT/ELINT (which the NSA and CIA prefer) versus HUMINT (which we’re admittedly shitty at and is the most effective to develop/glean intel).

[briansd1]

[quote=walterwhite]Ok I guess there was a reason. We were freaked out. Fair enough.[/quote]

Summarized so well like a good lawyer would. ;).

[briansd1]

The problem with American thinking is we want to go blow up the place when we perceive something as fucked up. That’s how a bully behaves.

[NotCranky]

We don’t randomly blow up messed up places.

Where is the most advantageous place for us to lose it next? There are lots of places and and stuff to freak out about. They just don’t have Kirkuk in them. Then you had the threat to trade Iraq’s oil in Euros. There are other countries in the region for extraction.

As much as anything,we must control the terms on which these countries wage war,including civil war, and also how they make peace internally and with their neighbors, and how things are setup for us to wage war against one of more of them.

Blasting Iraq comes from all of this.

[scaredyclassic]

Problem I have w the idea that intelligence is usually wrong is well why rely on it at all? Might we get better results w an oracle or tea leaves or analyzing say rumsfelds bowel movements for patterns?

[Arraya]

[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]
Arraya: I agree that the intel was crap. I’ll take it one step further and say that the intel, regardless of time and situation, is generally fucked up and thus you have to operate off of what you have.[/quote]

Yeah, I understand this, Alan. However, I would say they were not concerned with weapons and they certainly did not see it him as a threat. I would also say they thought they would find some reminisce of a weapons program. I also think the evidence is clear that they manipulated the data to make the case. In other words, “cooked” the data. Also, it’s no mistake that 80% of the population thought Saddam was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks in the run up to the war.

America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
George W. Bush

Seriously, that quote is crazy talk.

To me, whether the intel indicated he had weapons or not is kind of a fake debate. I agree, they thought he might have something to hold up and say “Hey looks at this!” And *some* intel supported a possibility. But, that was not their motivation.

If he did have some weapons program, really, how far would he go if he started flinging Anthrax at his neighbors. Not very far. Well, if it was Iran there would be cheering in DC and Tel Aviv. His speculative weapons program was not conceivably a threat to the US. And after a decade of sanctions, what ever he possibly did have was incredibly weak at best.

I was just flipping through Chomsky’s “Power and Terror” in the book store today. If anybody’s interested in cutting through all the realpolitik concerning the middle east, this is a fantastic book for that.

[Author]

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