THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

Counterquestion: how many books of this author have you read ? [zero; I obtained the quote from something else I read a few years ago. I'm in the midst of a manual search now. I think but cannot prove that I encountered it in one of Thomas Paine's essays.]

(Since no European -public/university- library has listed one, could you perhaps name the one, you know?) [not yet!]

Ican

You shall enter your final resting place with your certainty on this matter unshaken. I know this and so do you.

... In June 2002, the Pentagon drafted plans to attack a camp Zarqawi was at with cruise missiles and airstrikes. ... In January 2003, the Pentagon drew up still another attack plan... According to NBC, "Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi's operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case [to the UN] for war against Saddam.

Sources:

3. "Avoiding attacking suspected terrorist mastermind," NBC News, 3/02/04, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=3382691&l=56811.
4. Ibid, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=3382691&l=56811.

Maybe he's playing devil's advocate for fun. No-one could be that boneheaded.

How about if Sudan decided to drain all the water from the
Nile for irigation, leaving Egypt desperately short of water, would Egypt be able to apeal to any sort of authority?

I'm OK with the rest.

Talking Points Memo, by Joshua Micah Marshall

(October 23, 2004 -- 06:39 AM EDT // link // print)

Last night when discussing the White House's truth-bending revisionism on Tora Bora, I wrote that I had been "pretty skeptical of the Bush team's revisionism on this

Advertisement
count since the outlines of the Kerry critique have been a commonplace in national security and counter-terrorism circles for literally years."

You'll remember that what I'm referring to here as 'Kerry's critique' is the charge that the US let bin Laden get away at Tora Bora because we 'outsourced' the job to local warlords and militiaman. The Bush campaign is now calling that a lie. Dick Cheney says it's "absolute garbage" and the campaign has enlisted retired general and now Bush surrogate Tommy Franks to help back their case.

Now Steve Soto points out one more reason why I and other who've followed this story for years were so skeptical.

Look at the lede of this Washington Post article from April 17, 2002 ...

The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge.

That really says it all.

And there's more.

Was bin Laden there, a claim Cheney and the Bush campaign now discount or treat as mere speculation?

Again from the Post: "Intelligence officials have assembled what they believe to be decisive evidence, from contemporary and subsequent interrogations and intercepted communications, that bin Laden began the battle of Tora Bora inside the cave complex along Afghanistan's mountainous eastern border."

The article goes on to say that though the administration had never publicly acknowledged that bin Laden slipped the noose in this way, "inside the government there is little controversy on the subject."

Then the paper quotes a government official "giving an authoritative account of the intelligence consensus," who says that, "I don't think you can ever say with certainty, but we did conclude he was there, and that conclusion has strengthened with time."

And as to the issue of outsourcing?

One more time from the article ...

After-action reviews, conducted privately inside and outside the military chain of command, describe the episode as a significant defeat for the United States. A common view among those interviewed outside the U.S. Central Command is that Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the war's operational commander, misjudged the interests of putative Afghan allies and let pass the best chance to capture or kill al Qaeda's leader. Without professing second thoughts about Tora Bora, Franks has changed his approach fundamentally in subsequent battles, using Americans on the ground as first-line combat units.

In the fight for Tora Bora, corrupt local militias did not live up to promises to seal off the mountain redoubt, and some colluded in the escape of fleeing al Qaeda fighters. Franks did not perceive the setbacks soon enough, some officials said, because he ran the war from Tampa with no commander on the scene above the rank of lieutenant colonel. The first Americans did not arrive until three days into the fighting. "No one had the big picture," one defense official said.

I quote here at length for a simple reason, to make a simple. Though we cannot in the nature of things have absolute certainty about bin Laden's whereabouts, there is little doubt that bin Laden was there. We had a "reasonable certainty" he was there when the critical decisions were being made. And subsequent intelligence has only tended to confirm that belief. As to the issue of 'outsourcing,' the claim is unquestionably true. And it is widely believed that this was a key reason for the failure to capture bin Laden.

One might well argue, we hadn't hunted a bin Laden before. And I don't mean that flippantly. Had the Afghan tribesmen killed OBL in those hills, the decision might have seemed an inspired one, since it no doubt saved American lives. Perhaps a Gore or a Kerry administration would have made the same mistake.

What you simply cannot say is that the whole thing never happened. And yet that is precisely what the president and the vice president are now doing: Simply denying everything. Who you gonna believe? Me or your lyin' eyes?

They are, in old fashioned English, lying.

And the major news outlets covering the campaign -- as nearly as I've seen so far -- are just treating the disagreement as a he said/(s)he said in which both sides' arguments have equal merit.

Sums up the whole campaign.
-- Josh Marshall

In December 2001, Afghan forces, with limited U.S. support, engaged al Qaeda elements in a cave complex called Tora Bora. In March 2002, the largest engagement of the war was fought, in the mountainous Shah-i-Kot area south of Gardez, against a large force of al Qaeda jihadists. The three-week battle was substantially successful, and almost all remaining al Qaeda forces took refuge in Pakistan's equally mountainous and lightly governed frontier provinces. As of July 2004, Bin Ladin and Zawahiri are still believed to be at large.

Iraqi police said Sunday that 49 bodies of soldiers from the new Iraqi army were found south of Baqouba.

Gen. Walid al-Azzawi, commander of the Diyala provincial police, said the bodies were discovered in an area 31 miles south of Baqouba, he said.

"After inspection, we found out that they were shot after being ordered to lay down on the earth," he said.

A U.S. military source in the region confirmed the incident, but said there appeared to be fewer dead Iraqi soldiers, around 30 to 35.

They have sattelites orbiting that region that can pick out liscense number on a motorcycle yet .... they can't find a man that is 6'6'', riding a donkey, and towing a dialysis machine?

The bottom line is the Ace of Spades in the War on Terror deck should be Osama bin Laden but some joker made it Saddam Hussein.

The most extreme Islamists in the world now have their Alamo, something they didn't have before we pre-emptively invaded Iraq without the necessary troops to secure the peace. Radicals of every sect are overjoyed at the chance to battle the great and powerful OZ, uh, US.

This is going to be a long war. No matter who is elected on Nov 2nd, this war is going to take years to find a place from which the United States can begin it's withdrawal. There are disturbing signs that the current administration is not only preparing (finally) for the long haul but for the foreseeable future, a plan of not years but decades. Meanwhile, the real work of fighting terror, the reprochment with the Arab World, the reduction of poverty-stricken mis-educated young men heading out into the world full of hate, the real chance of finding ways to peace amongst the nations of the world may escape us again.

Joe

I would love to discuss the matter at greater length with you but the reality is that you simply do not have clearance at that level. ...

They have sattelites orbiting that region that can pick out liscense number on a motorcycle yet .... they can't find a man that is 6'6'', riding a donkey, and towing a dialysis machine?

The bottom line is the Ace of Spades in the War on Terror deck should be Osama bin Laden but some joker made it Saddam Hussein.

Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq's WMD capability--which was essentially destroyed in 1991--after sanctions were removed and Iraq's economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that which previously existed. Saddam aspired to develop nuclear capability--in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks--but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities.

To protect his own ties with Iraq, Turabi reportedly brokered an agreement that Bin Ladin would stop supporting activities against Saddam. Bin Ladin apparently honored this pledge, at least for a time, although he continued to aid a group of Islamist extremists operating in part of Iraq (Kurdistan) outside of Baghdad's control. In the late 1990s, these extremist groups suffered major defeats by Kurdish forces. In 2001, with Bin Ladin's help they re-formed into an organization called Ansar al Islam. There are indications that by then the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al Islam against the common Kurdish enemy.54

The most extreme Islamists in the world now have their Alamo, something they didn't have before we pre-emptively invaded Iraq without the necessary troops to secure the peace. Radicals of every sect are overjoyed at the chance to battle the great and powerful OZ, uh, US.

1. 10/1983 US Marine Corps Headquarters in Beirut--241 dead Americans;
2. 2/1993 WTC in NYC--6 dead Americans;
3. 11/1995 Saudi National Guard Facility in Riyadh--5 dead Americans;
4. 6/1996 Khobar Towers in Dhahran--19 dead Americans;
5. 8/1998 American Embassy in Nairobi--12 dead Americans;
6. 12/2000 Destroyer Cole in Aden--17 dead Americans;
7. 9/2001 WTC in NYC, Pentagon, Pennsylvania Field--approx. 1500 dead Americans.

... Meanwhile, the real work of fighting terror, the reprochment with the Arab World, the reduction of poverty-stricken mis-educated young men heading out into the world full of hate, the real chance of finding ways to peace amongst the nations of the world may escape us again.

Recommendation:The U.S. government must identify and prioritize actual or potential terrorist sanctuaries. For each, it should have a realistic strategy to keep possible terrorists insecure and on the run, using all elements of national power. We should reach out, listen to, and work with other countries that can help.

Recommendation: Where Muslim governments, even those who are friends, do not respect these principles, the United States must stand for a better future. One of the lessons of the long Cold War was that short-term gains in cooperating with the most repressive and brutal governments were too often outweighed by long-term setbacks for America's stature and interests.