About that Sunday New York Times story headlined “Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat,” has anyone tried running the numbers on where we’d be if Saddam Hussein were still in power? Odds are, the terror threat would be worse yet.
Saddam, when toppled, had not just been sitting around hallucinating about WMDs and happily bribing UN officials through their own Oil-for-Food relief program. He had a deadlier strategy. As the CIA’s own Charles Duelfer reported, based on massive evidence found in Iraq, Oil-for-Food had become Saddam’s weapons program – giving him cover to skim and smuggle billions in illicit funds and use the money to set up a sanctions-busting global network of secret bank accounts, front companies, arms dealers and easy access to anyone he pleased. That all-star cast included Hamas, Al Qaeda, and — among other pals– the new sensation of the UN stage, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, who in 2000, despite UN sanctions, dropped in on Saddam in Baghdad.
And, though Duelfer did not find WMD stashed in Saddam’s liquor cabinets, he did spend hundreds of pages of his report documenting Saddam’s preservation of WMD know-how and aim of re-booting his WMD programs as soon as sanctions were gone — a goal that under corrupt UN oversight Saddam had de facto almost reached by 2000-2001.
As for the global jihadis, they were on quite a roll long before Saddam’s overthrow in 2003 — or for that matter, long before Sept. 11, 2001. By 1998, the grand jury indictment of Osama bin Laden, issued in the Southern Dictrict of New York, outlined Al Qaeda’s involvement not only in Afghanistan, Sudan, and — yes– Brooklyn, but went on to cite Al Qaeda’s affiliation with “jihad groups” in Egypt, the Palestinian territories, “Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia, Eritrea, Kenya, Pakistan, Bosnia, Croatia, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, the Philippines, Tajikistan, Chechnya, Bangladesh, Kashmir and Azerbaijan,” as well as Al Qaeda alliances with “the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezballah.” Map the trajectory, and the real question to stack up against where we are today is what Saddam, in power, seasoned in the use of WMD, with billions in his pockets, and a worldwide reach, would by now be contributing to “Trends in Global Terrorism.”
(Editor’s Note: A reader writes in to note that the global jihadi club above does not include Iraq. Actually, make of it what you will, the 1998 indictment of bin Laden did mention Iraq, stating “In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that Al Qaeda would not work against that government, and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.” I omitted that mention because it leads on to debates that have by now filled volumes, and I figured the point can be made without it. But since it’s come up…. )
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madmatt:So can you site any documentation that doesn’t come from fox news or a right wing think tank or are you just making crap up?
” outlined Al Qaeda’s involvement not only in Afghanistan, Sudan, and — yes— Brooklyn, but went on to cite Al Qaeda’s affiliation with “jihad groups” in Egypt, the Palestinian territories, “Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia, Eritrea, Kenya, Pakistan, Bosnia, Croatia, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, the Philippines, Tajikistan, Chechnya, Bangladesh, Kashmir and Azerbaijan,” as well as Al Qaeda alliances with “the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezballah.”
Your source here doesn’t even mention Iraq!!!!
Sep 25, 2006 - 12:45 pm MattM:Since when does “preservation of WMD know-how” give us justification to invade a country?
(And that’s not a rhetorical question.)
And thanks for not addressing the issue. The issue is this fact: The war in Iraq has made us LESS safe. Period.
Sep 25, 2006 - 1:08 pm dubya:good point, claudia. what do the combined intelligence agencies of the US government know, anyway?
Sep 25, 2006 - 1:08 pm announcerguy:Claudia.
Claudia,Claudia,Claudia.
You’re going to get hammered for this piece of commentary, and deservedly so. Yes, global Jihad was a threat before the debacle in Iraq, but you’re conflating here. Launching a war on Saddam would never have made us safer in that regard; you don’t need to be an expert on the Middle East to understand that…you just have to use common sense. The administraion “cooked the books” to get us into this mess. Now over twenty thousand Americans have paid the price for that, almost three thousand paying the ultimate sacrifice. And for what, Claudia? Your entire premise, that the terrorist threat would have been worse regardless, rings as hollow as the administrations’ rationale for starting the fiasco. Here’s a tip: read up on the history of the Middle East. Then try to understand how you would feel if you were an Iraqi today. And how you might be thanking George Bush if you were a Jihadist. In the meantime, I’ll remain with the sixty-or-so percent of America who disagrees with the convoluted arguments that brought us to this shameful point in our history.
Sep 25, 2006 - 1:39 pm zenless:Somehow, despite all the billions that Sadaam was stashing away, he didn’t give ANY to terrorist groups, and had no connection to Al-Quaeda (sorry, an agreement not to interfere doesn’t count as a connection). And somehow that means that if he was still in power the terrorists threat would be worse? I’m missing the logical here. Perhaps because there isn’t any.
Sep 25, 2006 - 1:51 pm JM Hanes:Criticism always assumes a return to the status quo ante, doesn’t it?
To your alternative scenario, I would add the spectre of a nuclear arms race between Iraq & Iran. If that’s not enough, factor in a post-Saddam Iraq under Uday & Qusay.
Sep 25, 2006 - 2:15 pm bobdevo:.
Well, since it has been pretty well demonstrated that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were antagonists - both vieing for bragging rights over the oil-bearing sands of the ME - and that the only discernible terrorist activity going on in pre-invasion Iraq was in the protected no-fly zones controlled by the Kurds - the answer is - the Islamic fundamentalist terrorist numbers would be WAY DOWN if the secular Sunni Saddam Hussein were still in power.
But why let facts get in the way of a good bodice-ripper, eh?
The swarthy Saddam and his al-Qaeda henchmen loomed above the heaving bosoms of Lady Liberty . . .
Sep 25, 2006 - 3:39 pm Brian:Well, Claudia, it looks like you’ve drawn a swarm here . . .
zenless writes:
Saddam paid $260,000 dollars to 26 families of suicide bombers who plied their deadly trade against the Jews. So the claim that Saddam didn’t give money to terrorist groups, even if true (which I doubt but am too lazy to track down), is disingenuous in the extreme: he supported suicide bombing with cold, hard cash. End of story.
And as far as there being no connection between Saddam Hussein and al Queda, that assertion has been thoroughly debunked (see page 2, especially).
In passing, the notion that secularists like Saddam and Islamic fundamentalists would never make common cause is demonstrably false, given the recent alliance of Mr. Chavez and Mr. Achmadinejad at the UN.
The fact of the matter is that an Islamic trajectory of terror against the west and western modernity (especially the US) had been established well before 9/11, but it had been ignored by everyone, democrats and republicans alike, all of whom appear to have viewed the world through the postmodern (which is to say western) prism of race, class, gender and (western) oppression, rather than see it as the Islamic fascists see it.
(Hey! Aren’t postmodernists constantly telling us we create our own truth? Why would they deny that right to the Islamic fascists? And where it is written that we can understand Islamic fundamentalist “truth” according to our own profoundly western philosophical benchmarks? To try would be an exercise in ethnocentricty, would it not?)
What OBL managed to do with 9/11 was to create an incident that could neither be ignored nor responded to without causing a spike in the recruitment to his radical Islamic cause.
But it is not clear that we are any less safe for having invaded Iraq than we would be had we not. As one reader of Captain’s Quarters pointed out:
I’m not a big supporter of Sen. McCain, but I find his point about the choice between war now and something far worse in the future to be very persuasive.
JM Hanes has it exactly right: “Criticism always assumes a return to the status quo ante, doesn’t it?”
For those who advocate negotiation: how do you persuade religious fundamentalists away from their deepest beliefs — their faith — by resorting to the same standards of logic, materialism, tolerance and democracy that they have specifically rejected, and have committed themselves to destroy?
Brian
Sep 25, 2006 - 4:06 pm gil:Claudia.
Let’s run the numbers as you put it.
With Saddam in power:
1) 0 Americans killed or wounded
in Iraq.
2) 0 Dollars spent on the war and
occupation in Iraq.
3) 0 number of new terrorist
created as a direct result of
our invasion of Iraq.
With Saddam in jail.
1) Almost 3,000 American soldiers
killed , and over 20,000 wounded
2) 600 billion dollars and
counting on this war. None of
the money has been paid.
3) Thousands of new terrorists
created by the most
conservative estimates as a
direct result of the Iraq war.
You want more numbers and real facts?
How about the percentage of Americans now in direct opposition to the mess in Iraq, how about the billions of people around the earth that oppose this war, and the justification for it?, how about the fact that Iran now feels free to pursue a real nuclear Program right in front of our noses, how about the fact that the president of Iraq has extremely close ties to the Iranians?, etc, etc.
Claudia your pig is too darn ugly. No make up in the world is going to make it look any more presentable…. Give it up.
Sep 25, 2006 - 4:33 pm peteathome:WMDs - Saddam had been building what are now called WMDs ( crude chemical weapons, mostly) for use in the Iran/Iraq war and against what he considered internal insurgents (the Kurds, mostly).
None of these so-called WMDs would have been useful as a terror weapon against the USA. Too bulky for transport and crude. There was a worry that he might try making true biological weapons, but very little reliable reports on this.
The adminstration tried to segway these crude WMDs to nuclear weapons. AFAIK, there was absolutely no credible info for this.
Just before the beginning of the USA/Iraqi war, the UN inspectors, who had FINALLY been given full acess, said that their inspection was almost over and they had found nothing. Bush said “too late” and started the war. So the info was pretty good before the war started that the Iraqis no longer had WMDs.
Even if Saddam had had real WMDs, there was no credible information that he would give these to groups to use against the USA. He was a very paranoid person and was very unlikely to give anything powerful to groups that might turn around and use them against him. There was certainly no credible evidence that he had ties to Al Quada - a rather odd association on the face of it ( a secular socialist dictatorship and a fundementalist extremist group that wished to topple Saddam).
What would have happened if Saddam had been left in power? Hard to say - it was certainly an unstable situation as many people wanted to assasinate him. And soorner or latter he would die and dictatorships seldom have smooth transitions after the death of the dictator.
While he remained alive he would have acted as a brake on Iran. My guess is his sons would have taken over after his death, with probably a bit of a bloody shootout in the process. But because the sons didn’t seem to be the sharpest crayons in the box, some general probably would have staged a successful coup against them.
Sep 25, 2006 - 4:44 pm MattM:Brian,
Your own Congress just issued a report saying that Saddam and Bin Laden had no link whatsoever.
When asked what connection Saddam had to 9/11, the President simply said “None.”
Saying he did over and over doesn’t make it true.
You wrote: “But it is not clear that we are any less safe for having invaded Iraq than we would be had we not.”
Um…yes it is. The assessment by America’s 16 intelligence agencies found that the war in Iraq, rather than stemming the growth of terrorism, had helped fuel its spread across the globe.
Sep 25, 2006 - 4:58 pm Settembrini:MattM,
Sep 25, 2006 - 5:27 pm JR:Don’t you see, it doesn’t matter what the Senate Intelligence report said about Saddam and bin Laden being enemies. That is too definitive of a source, and makes too much sense (a secular dictator trying to keep his Shiite majority in check isn’t going to “team up” with Islamist rogue terrorist). We should instead listen to Cheney’s handpicked biographer and known prevaricator Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard, the only idiot in the world who still believes what he writes.
There is an interesting phenomenon in conservative circles, where the true believers hold on to their one glimmer of faith in Bush’s divine mission. For them, as long as one guy, Hayes, keeps writing about the link, or as long as one nutjob like Santorum keeps saying we found WMD’s, or one obscure blogger on the ever-stumbling Pajamasmedia keeps saying the Iraq war made us safer, they’ll believe it. John Dean’s latest book gives interesting insight into this sort of collective submissive brainwashing.
The problem is, we didn’t go into Iraq because Saddam was a bad guy. We went into Iraq because we were told there’d be a mushroom cloud over our heads if we didn’t.
If the mission of the United States is now to remove every bad guy from power across the globe, as some right-wing pundits are trying to frame it, then perhaps the American people could be informed of such, at some point, like before the November elections.
Sep 25, 2006 - 5:48 pm Brian:MattM:
The link I presented is a specific response to the flawed congressional report you’re referring to.
Please review the linked article (entitled: “How Bad is the Senate Intelligence Report?“), and if you can find any factual inaccuracies in it, I’d appreciate your bringing them to the attention of the readership.
Beyond this, the fact that there may be more terrorists now does not necessarily mean that they are as effective as a smaller group was 5 or 10 years ago. After all, we have been bumping off their leaders, tracking and interrupting their funding, and intercepting their communications (though less successfully now, probably, than before the NYT decided to assume the responsibility for declassifying classified information, and spreading it across their front page . . .).
And do I need to remind you that Iraq could have connections with al Quaeda without actually participating in 9/11? (What is it about this conflation, this strawman, that has made opponents of the war take a death grip on it?)
FWIW — history is full of examples of where “greater numbers” doesn’t necessarily translate into “greater threat.”
Germany was producing far more U-Boats in 1944 than they produced in 1940, one year after WW-II began. But trans-atlantic shipping was much safer than in 1940 because the allies had finally recognized the U-Boat threat for what it was, and had developed countermeasures to it.
The Luftwaffe and the Imperial Japanese Navy were producing lots of fighter planes and pilots in 1944 - 45, but the pilots were simply too poorly trained to be of much use (remember the Great Mariannas Turkey Shoot?). The fact is/was that one axis pilot from 1942 was a far superior weapon to 10 poorly trained pilots of 1944 - 45.
And why, on earth, after bashing the intelligence community for so long over their incompetence, are opponents Bush and of the war so un-skeptically accepting part of an NIE now? As the Counterterrorism Blog’s Andrew Cockburn said:
So what we’re faced with is a partial release of a classified document which I refuse to view in isolation (without historical context, both of the NIE and of history itself) nor will I accept it as prove positive that we’re losing, or even worse off now than we were 5 years ago.
Feel free to believe otherwise.
(Oh — is it as important to track down the leaker of the partial NIE as it was to nail Karl Rove [Oh dear! I meant Richard Armitage] for leaking unclassified information about Valery Plame?)
Brian
Sep 25, 2006 - 6:14 pm Another Matt:“There was no question in our minds that there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda,” said 9/11 Commission co-chairman Thomas Kean.
“Saddam Hussein’s regime welcomed them with open arms and young al Qaeda members entered Iraq in large numbers, setting up an organization to confront the occupation,” said Hudayfa Azzam, the son of bin Laden’s longtime mentor Abdullah Azzam.
“I believe very strongly that Saddam had relations with al Qaeda,” said former Iraqi prime minister and longtime CIA asset Ayad Allawi. “And these relations started in Sudan. We know Saddam had relationships with a lot of terrorists and international terrorism.”
“What our report said really supports what the administration, in its straight presentations, has said,” noted 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman. “There were numerous contacts; there’s evidence of collaboration on weapons. And we found earlier, we reported earlier, that there was VX gas that was clearly from Iraq in the Sudan site that President Clinton hit. And we have significant evidence that there were contacts over the years and cooperation, although nothing that would be operational.”
And late last week, following the release of the Senate report, Barham Salih, deputy prime minister of Iraq, had this to say: “The alliance between the Baathists and jihadists which sustains al Qaeda in Iraq is not new, contrary to what you may have been told.” Salih continued: “I know this at first hand. Some of my friends were murdered by jihadists, by al Qaeda-affiliated operatives who had been sheltered and assisted by Saddam’s regime.”
No, I don’t think that Saddam was “behind” the 9/11 attack. But can anyone guarantee that NOT ONE CENT of the BILLIONS of dollars Saddam scammed from the Oil for Food program made its way into the coffers of OBL?
The most important lesson we have learned from this whole decades-long adventure is that our “Intelligence” services DO NOT know what is going on. The collapse of the USSR took us by surprise. They do not know how a billion dollars in aid to Haiti went missing. They do not know where The stockpiles of WMD the UN documented went from 1998 until 2003. They did not track how AQ Khan of Pakistan was supplying nuclear technology to anyone who would pay for it until it was too late. The extent of the Libyan nuclear program was a surprise…etc.
If Bush says: Our intelligence, and that of the World says that Saddam is a threat and…etc.” Well obviously He is lying and cooking the books for nefarious reasons.
But now if our “Intelligence Community” says” “Oh, of course there were never any ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq, and besides Iraq was a blissful paradise of chocolate rivers and candy trees until we ruined it…!” Well, that is obviously the truth isn’t it?
We have, for decades believed that our superior technology would protect and inform us. We went from a country that actually made things to a service economy. Spy satellites and listening posts took the place of human informers. And we were (and are) wholly unprepared for a person simply willing to drive a car into a crowd, or a boat into a ship, or walk into a pizza parlor wearing an explosive belt, or fly a plane at 500MPH laden with thousands of gallons of fuel into a building.
There are 16 THOUSAND+ cases of Iraqi government documents in Qatar waiting to be translated. Who knows what they will reveal? The likelyhood is that they will point to further ties between Saddam and ALL the various terrorist groups, not fewer.
Look, I didn’t vote for Bush (twice). I am not thrilled with what is going on in Iraq and how it came about. But, I believe it was inevitable.
I’ll leave you with this Fun Fact: Did you know that Saddam’s Iraq had a special prison for children? Yep, kids whose parents were found to be “Traitors” to Saddam and his regime had their own kiddie prison to go to. Don’t believe me? Ask Scott Ritter…
Sep 25, 2006 - 7:11 pm MattM:I love it when you make it this easy guys.
And do I need to remind you that Iraq could have connections with al Quaeda without actually participating in 9/11?
Could have had connections? Please tell me where “could have” is a reason to go to war.
After all, we have been bumping off their leaders, tracking and interrupting their funding, and intercepting their communications
And what does this have to do with the Iraq war. You actually just proved the point that we could have made the world safer WITHOUT attacking Iraq.
“Another Matt” - nice work of taking quotes out of context. All those quotes were from BEFORE the report. Of course everything thought that - they weren’t getting the full story from Bush.
Sep 25, 2006 - 7:41 pm spynverzyon:Gil: How marvelous that an appeasement-minded critic of Bush would reduce the concept of “more dangerous” or “less dangerous” to a crude calculus of money and lives! As Brian’s reference to the Captain’s Quarters points out, if the absolute objective is to save money and preserve lives, the better option in war will always be to surrender. Relatively few lives were lost and little money spent on defense in France between the occupation of Paris and the invasion of Normandy, but that last year of the war was costly and deadly. Does that imply that we should simply have left well enough alone on the Continent? No, because wars are fought for lasting principles, freedoms, a way of life - not tallied and scored in terms of money and bodies.
In essence, your policy of appeasement says, “Don’t anger them, don’t oppose them; just give them what they want and nobody will get hurt.” But history proves otherwise. Show your enemy that aggression promises low-cost rewards, and they’ll invest in more of it. Show Saddam (who, as Another Matt has catalogued, had plenty of ties to al Qaeda and to terror sponsorship generally) that defying (or bribing and corrupting) the UN, rebuilding his weapons capacity, exporting terror, stealing billions meant for food and medicine, and brutalizing his own people would increase his wealth and power, and he’ll do more of the same - and it will eventually reach us in a far more expansive and dangerous form.
So, at what point do we step in? Do we let Israel go, like the Sudetenland? Do we worry about the Kurds, or Turkey, or another Kuwait, or do we wait until Baathism starts to show up west of the Hellespont, perhaps in the politcally volatile and religiously restive region of the Balkans? If we believe that a Saddam would never ally with Shiite fundamentalists, do we worry about an ascendant Saddam allying with Arab states that do have Sunni majorities?
Really, you’re arguing not that invading Iraq made the world more dangerous, but rather that it provoked a conflict too soon, before things came to a truly critical state. The result is that you’re able to point to bodies and dollars now and call them facts, coupling them with the absurd fantasy that these quantities would all be zero, permanently had we not gone to war. You entirely ignore how much more costly it would become to defend the principles we fight for had we waited until the war came to us - which it was bound to, as long as we kept living as a free, democratic, productive people.
Yes, we took the war to them, and forced them to fight and kill us and cost us money before they might have otherwise, but by invoking static analysis you only prove a truism: that fewer people died before the war started than after. That says nothing about the cost of the war we would have had to fight as an alternative, and which the delusion of appeasement imagines would never have become necessary at all. If we really wanted to save lives and money, we could have surrendered right after 9/11: simply said, “Okay, we give up! We’ll stop being to rich and free and democratic and Christian and Jewish and feminist and educated and tolerant!” Is that what we should do now?
Sep 25, 2006 - 9:07 pm Brian:spynverzyon wrote:
Indeed . . .
But alas, even that wouldn’t stop the campaign against modernity in general and us ‘mericums in particular . . . to stop the slitting of throats and the suicide bombings altogether, we’d have to submit to Islam and Sharia, and become dhimmi — or convert to Islam. And even then, we’d have to keep our fingers crossed (while facing east . . .).
I suppose some postmodernist could make a compelling case in favor of stoning tainted women to death, even if the taint was from rape, could argue in favor of the forced circumcision of women (well, girls, really . . .) and could defend honor killings, on the grounds that such customs are merely examples of diversity, which like colorful costumes, rhythmic music and exotic dishes should be celebrated . . ..
But if you don’t mind, I’d prefer to stick to western values.
Brian
Sep 25, 2006 - 9:42 pm Jason:JM Hanes has it exactly right: “Criticism always assumes a return to the status quo ante, doesn’t it?”
Um, no, certainly not. Think about it for a second and you’ll see why.
Sep 25, 2006 - 10:36 pm Dave:I’d have to summarize my view thusly: It’s doubtful that Saddam had NO relationship with various and sundry nasty guys from the middle east, being one himself. It was a means to assure his protection, and to spread around adequate feelings of Arabist/Islamist/Whateverist comraderie, so necessary to insure against the ever-present risk to his grip on power since the end of the first Gulf War. Not unlike similar alliances between various politicians here at home (who probably don’t really have any religious convictions one way or another), and the vast numbers of dogmatic religious denominations spread far and wide. (Does Rick Santorum really believe that homosexuals are a pox on humanity and a threat to the stability of marriage? Highly doubtful.)
It’s even possible to consider that no matter what course had been set in policy and diplomacy, we’d still have wound up at war with Hussein ultimately. Once Saddam came to realize that his regime was doomed, he might just have been nuts enough to attempt to draw a line in the sand, if only to save face among his counterparts and not be hacked to pieces by his own generals or citizens.
But crucially, the many examples set forth in the linked article were not made available to the public or adequately explained (meaning patiently I might add) to the general public. It was clear from virtually 9/12 that Bush had made up his mind, and that was going to be that, no matter that virtually the entire world (and a not insignificant portion of the American public) believed that the timing was bad. In the battle of marketing, Bush and his crew were epically inept. They relied on the same types of bluster so given to characters like Saddam himself, and so likely to elicit a response of “that guy’s frickin’ nuts.” Why the big rush? What were they hiding? It’s a natural enough reaction under the circumstances.
In the process of fumbling away world opinion and, yes, credibility, Bush lost substantial world support. And that is critical. It has made the difference between a war waged unilaterally and one with broad support. Allowing, almost willing the “Unilateralist” label upon the United States, Bush and the Iraq War have provided all the fodder for recruitment that extremists in the region could have desired. It fomented mistrust, if not disgust, within our traditional Western allies, and as such has weakened support for US policy. And of course that’s nothing compared to how it’s damaged the perception of the U.S. in middle eastern countries.
So it is not proper to make comparisons of our WWII experiences here. This is not the same thing; there’s certainly not the same broad coalition of men, money and resources — it’s largely just the U. S. and A. It needn’t have worked out this way. Had we taken the diplomatic process seriously enough (while doing so cynically, but that’s ok because it’s more about protocol than honesty in such cases) many nations currently resistant to our cause would have had little choice but to have jumped on the bandwagon. Why didn’t Bush have the patience to really make a case, rather than just several claims? That’s open to debate, but my own opinion is that he knew that Saddam would have sought, and perhaps gotten, compromise in order to save his skin. Bush wouldn’t have gotten his war then, and maybe he thinks that would have left a dangerous character in place. Me? I don’t know about that. But certainly Bush’s missteps have played directly into the extremists’ hands, whereas properly played, the whole conflict should not have done so.
In essence, I’m saying that a deft handler of the region would have known how to make Saddam into a poster child of what’s wrong, and convince PEOPLE THERE to do something about it while thinking the whole thing was their own idea. Instead, people perceived Bush and the U.S. as dangerous actors in their own right, however misinformed that opinion may be, and have sought the usual macho glory in fighting against us. These seekers of macho glory are now the danger we face, and their numbers are substantially higher than they would have been in virtually any alternative scenario.
I regret I’m not very skilled at expressing my viewpoint — I hope it’s more or less clear. Again, to summarize, if Bush knew how to lead, he’d have known how to make it “uncool” to be a jihadist against America, at least in some critical quarters. Instead he has done the opposite, and made the world a more dangerous place, not a safer one.
If I may add one more thought: Has anyone else noticed that after Bush came along, a host of equally wacky and scary guys have appeared on the international scene, all extremists and extraordinarily dumb? For example, Ahamadenijad, Chavez, Lula, and Turkmenbashi? I don’t think that’s a coincidence. America leads, people, and we have led the world down the Dangerous Nutjob path lately. All because a fractious group of crazies got extremely lucky on that sad day on 9/11. Can we please move off this trail? That is, if it’s not too late?
Sep 26, 2006 - 12:01 am Brian:Here’s more on the leak of part of the NIE assessment, as evaluated by someone who claims to have had 20 years experience as a spook and who has had access to parts of the document that were not referenced in either the NYT or the WaPo stories.
Just for what it’s worth.
Personally, I’ve come to believe that I get only part of the story from the MSM these days.
Those who wish to accept the MSM at face value are welcome to do so. But you do so at your peril (think Reuters fauxtography; think Rathergate; think Eason Jordan trading soft-on-Iraq stories for access; think outrage over Plame leak, but zilch over NSA leaks; think self-censorship over Danish cartoons but celebration of the piss Christ; etc.).
Brian
Sep 26, 2006 - 12:10 am Phoenician in a time of Romans:Gil: How marvelous that an appeasement-minded critic of Bush would reduce the concept of “more dangerous” or “less dangerous” to a crude calculus of money and lives! As Brian’s reference to the Captain’s Quarters points out, if the absolute objective is to save money and preserve lives, the better option in war will always be to surrender.
Of course, the teeny weeny flaw in your logic is that there was not a choice between fighting and surrender. Lest we forget, the US invaded Iraq. That is to say, the US launched a war of aggression, a crime against humanity.
The US had the same choice to “surrender” to Iraq that Germany had to “surrender” to Poland in 1939.
No, because wars are fought for lasting principles, freedoms, a way of life
Congratulations. The principles you have fought for are torture, war crimes, crimes against humanity, dead Americans, dead Iraqis, the shredding of the US’s reputation, irreparable harm to your domestic constitutional liberties, and the beggering of the commonweal.
Well done.
Sep 26, 2006 - 1:07 am jeff who doesn't belong here:First off, enough with the WWII rhetoric. Different war, different time (finished up over 60 years ago if you want to look it up), different players, different goals, different rules, different…well, everything.
Sep 26, 2006 - 1:15 am Bill Biddle:You don’t want to believe your nation’s intelligence services because they screwed up? I’d give you that but your alternative trusted source seems to be Fox news and talk radio who, last I checked (OK, I never checked) do not have the resources in place the government does. Most of them have never left their mike or keyboard so forget that. They have opinions, not facts, however flawed.
What should we have done after 911? If we had done nothing, we would have demonstrated that we can’t be scared and f**k them all. Of course we are scared so second best would be to move into Afghanistan, take out the taliban, chase OBL until caught, even into northern pakistan if we had to and then secure and improve Afghanistan as a beacon of democracy and American goodwill. The world would have loved us and we could have pulled all our troops out of Saudi Arabia which is what had OBL’s underwear in a bunch anyway.
No, Saddam wasn’t a nice man. No thinking person says he was. But he was a non-player in the area having been marginalized after the first gulf war. One of his sons had already been in a plot to depose him. Eventually one of them would have suceeded.
We are not safer. We are more scared and we are despised in much more of the world now than we were on Sep 12, 2001. And you if you think that’s not going to bite this country in the ass someday, you are sorely mistaken.
> Saddam paid $260,000 dollars to 26 families of suicide bombers
> who plied their deadly trade against the Jews
So, he acted as a kind of life insurance company?
Why does that affect America?
I hope you’re not suggesting that America needs to spend its treasury and young soldiers lives to benefit Israel. Are you?
Sep 26, 2006 - 2:11 am Dread Pirate Robert:Wow, where would the world be if Saddam were still in power indeed.
3,000 Americans wouldn’t be dead.
30,000 Americans wouldn’t be injured.
Iran wouldn’t have the unprecedented freedom to develop weapons programs that it does now.
The Taliban might have been wiped out in Afghanistan.
Osama bin Laden would be dead.
50,000+ Iraqis wouldn’t be dead.
And America might still have a Constitution, not to mention an administration with some credibility. (Not likely, but still…)
Sep 26, 2006 - 1:59 pm DRF:The left argues that the NIE report
Sep 26, 2006 - 4:25 pm spynverzyon:is accurate. Are you happy the President is going to release it?
Is the NYT happy it is being released?
I am. I bet Claudia Rosset is.
Jackpot: http://dni.gov/press_releases/Declassified_NIE_Key_Judgments.pdf
Claudia right, NYT wrong. Again.
Meanwhile, Phoenician plays the old “Bush is Hitler” card. Um, yeah. Let’s meet for coffee at the crematorium down the street and talk it over. Snore.
Sep 27, 2006 - 2:36 am Dave:I just read the PDF linked to by spynverzyon. How anyone can read that document and come away concluding the NYT assessment was wrong is beyond my comprehension.
The best case is that we’ve seriously damaged Al Queda’s operations and structure. But we now have many more terrorist and jihadist groups to contend with, and the document emphasizes that these are both homegrown and foreign cells.
Though it’s certainly true that success of our democratization agenda in Iraq would undermine jihadist sentiments and reduce the recruitment lure, it’s not looking like the Iraq situation is playing as a “success” on the Middle Eastern street right now (though the document doesn’t delve into that question). It is certain that it serves as probably THE focal point in the jihadis’ campaign for hearts and minds in the area.
I’m quite amazed that, if this is the entirety of the declassified portion of the NIE, the White House could possibly think of this as a defense of its position. It clearly states that terrorism is a more broadly-based and widespread issue now, clearly states that Iraq is a keystone in this spread, and does nothing to suggest the Iraq war has had any but a negative impact on our goals to quell the terrorist trend worldwide or domestically. While it does offer hope in the form of statements to the effect that “if everything goes right for us from now on, we could see some progress,” it importantly does not offer judgements on the current or future prospects for that success.
I can only imagine that they’re assuming the mere release of the document will seem sufficient defense for their supporters, who in turn will not read the document, or who will only focus on the hopeful possibilities it mentions and ignore the rest. It’s truly remarkable to me. And if this is the best they could come up with, what then is contained in the 90% of the NIE that remains classified?
Sep 27, 2006 - 9:36 am Brian:Wretchard analyzes the NIE report here. It’s lengthy, but the best I’ve seen, and well worth reading since he touches on lots of interesting points (like perception vs reality; kinetic battlefield vs propaganda war; OBL’s fatwa of the 1990’s, which specifically targeted William Perry; Iraq vs Afghanistan; etc).
Andrew McCarthy also quotes some of OBL’s fatwa against the US in his thoughtful piece.
What comes out of both pieces is consistent with my own bias: that it is a huge mistake to view the WoT (or whatever you wish to call it) as anything other than a “faith based initiative.” My jumping off point is that the Islamist fascists view themselves first and foremost as God’s sword, and that it is the radical Islamic ideology, not the contrived grievances against the west, that attracts muslims to the cause. As McCarthy (op cit) says:
Brian
Sep 27, 2006 - 1:00 pm DRF:Dave you make some solid points I understand your position.
Do you see the NY Times article as
a fair objective representation of the
NIE report?
I find Strategy Page dot com as an invaluable source in my understanding of the War in Iraq.
Sep 27, 2006 - 9:15 pm Peter Shalen:The headline about the Flat Earth Society reminds me of this fake news item: “The UN has resolved that the Earth is flat, and that Israel flattened it.” I’m not sure whether it’s from Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” or some other source. It seems especially timely.
Sep 27, 2006 - 10:47 pm Dave:“Do you see the NY Times article as a fair objective representation of the NIE report?”
Yes. It identifies the main thrust of the document, that being that the Iraq War has made terrorism more widespread and the risks greater.
You’re no doubt fishing for me to say “but it doesn’t mention the hopeful statements about what could happen if we win in Iraq,” which you would view as more balanced. Perhaps fair criticism, but on balance, can you assess that the document really emphasizes that viewpoint in any meaningful way? Those points are practically parenthetical, and are not the central judgements of the NIE, at least as far as we can see.
The main point of the article is to contrast (yet another) official government assessment of the poor situation in Iraq and elsewhere with the president’s insistences that “we are safer” because we went into Iraq.
Should they do nothing when presented with such conflicting information, or is it not their duty to publish it?
Sep 29, 2006 - 12:57 pm