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

Einherjar wrote:

The offer you have described Ican, is the palestinian starting point for negotiations.

Cool! What do think the Palestinians will agree to?

... Sharon currently demands the complete disarmament of palestinian terrorist organizations and militants before negotiations are to be initiated. Palestinians will never agree to disarm until Israel has not only agreed to terms for peace, but is in compliance with them. This might likely kill a peace initiative before it ever gets off the ground.

This is as far as I think the palestinians would go, or rather as far as Arafat was willing to go. I seriously doubt any palestinian leader could get Hamas and similar organizations to go along with a worse settlement from a palestinian perspective though, Arafat had trouble enough. The Israeli's would likely demand much more though. Sharon at least will never agree to these terms, his past actions show that he would rather get elected.

Thank you for your detailed and insightful response.

I think much of what you describe is obtainable if both sides were to agree to a one year armistice and an end to expansion of Israeli settlements, while these things are negotiated.

It seems to me that a large minority of the Israeli electorate would agree to pulling out of some of those settlements and agree to the conditions you specified for the remaining settlements. Probably with time and discussion free of mutual fear that minority would become a majority.

I think Sharon's insistence on an Israeli pull out from Gaza despite a very vocal opposition in the Israeli parlament is evidence that Sharon might be more flexible than he would otherwise be while Israeli civilians are being murdered by terrorists. I would expect Israeli pre-emptive killings would stop as well.

At the moment each side perceives the other as implacable. Perhaps one of the arab states might soon succeed in brokering such an armistice.

Hamas has actually offered a cease fire, on the condition that Israel be a party to it. (I kid you not) Sharon declined.

Historically no Israeli PM has been party to successful peacetalks without suffering for it politically.

mesquite wrote:

I think it far more likely that the incentive is to make sure that we stay occupied in Iraq as long as possible. Isn't that ironic, seeing as we showed how effective that strategy could be against the Soviets in Afghanistan? I know you pooh pooh that analogy because Iraq has oil, but how can you so easily discount the $1.25 billion we are expending each week without even considering rebuilding what was broken just this week?

Do you really think Afghanistan is what brought down the Soviets? I think you are severely underestimating resilience of the United State's economy as well as the ability of her armed forces. Again, time will tell.

Sorry Bill, but it seems to me we were suckered by a simple minded yet powerful few that bought into Chalabi's version of an invasion aftermath. A few that disregarded our own State Department , top generals, and other experts on the area.

NARRATOR: While Rumsfeld was making his move inside the Pentagon, on the outside, Wolfowitz was making the case for taking out Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

BOB WOODWARD: Wolfowitz had been mentioning it a lot. He felt that it would be easy and actually proposed an enclave strategy of going in and seizing the oil fields in southern Iraq and using that as a base for other attacks against Saddam's regime.

NARRATOR: Wolfowitz pushed the idea of attacking Iraq first. Powell disagreed. He pushed Afghanistan.

BOB WOODWARD: Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, to a much larger degree, was very worried that Afghanistan would not be a success. We had no war plan for Afghanistan. Obviously, we had the war plans for Iraq, and Wolfowitz felt very, very strongly that we needed to put a success on the board and felt that-- always that Iraq was going to be easy.

NARRATOR: The president put it to a vote. Powell and others voted against attacking Iraq at that time. Rumsfeld abstained.

REPORTER: Army chief of staff General Shinseki said it would take several hundred thousand troops on the ground-

DONALD RUMSFELD: There's so many variables that it is not knowable. It is- however, I will say this. What is, I think, reasonably certain is the idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces I think is far from the mark.

PAUL WOLFOWITZ, Deputy Secretary of Defense: It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army. Hard to imagine.

THOMAS WHITE: All of us in the Army felt just the opposite, that there was a long history of that being absolutely true, that the defeat of the Iraqi military would be a relatively straightforward operation of fairly short duration, but that the securing of the peace and the security of a country of 25 million people spread out over an enormous geographic area would be a tremendous challenge that would take a lot of people, a lot of labor, to be done right.

Both sides are justifiably ruled by fear at the moment. But there's even more to be feared in the status quo than in an armistice established to facilitate negotiations to end the status quo.

OCCOM BILL wrote:

mesquite wrote:

I think it far more likely that the incentive is to make sure that we stay occupied in Iraq as long as possible. Isn't that ironic, seeing as we showed how effective that strategy could be against the Soviets in Afghanistan? I know you pooh pooh that analogy because Iraq has oil, but how can you so easily discount the $1.25 billion we are expending each week without even considering rebuilding what was broken just this week?

Do you really think Afghanistan is what brought down the Soviets? I think you are severely underestimating resilience of the United State's economy as well as the ability of her armed forces. Again, time will tell.

I suppose you would rather believe that it was our Star Wars Programs, but really, what did the Soviets spend on as a counter to those programs?

I belive the murder of Rabin and the subsequent election of Netanyahu disillusioned them with respect to Israels desire for a lasting peace. Perhaps now they underestimate such desire.

The conceptually flawed Soviet Union built more Nuclear weapons than the whole rest of the world combined in an attempt to match our might.

... I think any references by Bush to "it not being easy" were in regard to his War on Terror, which is distinctly different from Iraq IMO.

Didn't think my word was good enough, Dys?

www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2003/17300pf.htm
But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi an associate and collaborator of Usama bin Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants.
…
Now let me add one other fact. We asked a friendly security service to approach Baghdad about extraditing Zarqawi and providing information about him and his close associates. This service contacted Iraqi officials twice and we passed details that should have made it easy to find Zarqawi. The network remains in Baghdad. Zarqawi still remains at large, to come and go.

www.9-11commission.gov/report/index.htm
[Chapt. 2.4]
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

With the Sudanese regime acting as intermediary, Bin Ladin himself met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Khartoum in late 1994 or early 1995. Bin Ladin is said to have asked for space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but there is no evidence that Iraq responded to this request.55 As described below, the ensuing years saw additional efforts to establish connections.

[Chapt. 2.5]
In mid-1998, the situation reversed; it was Iraq that reportedly took the initiative. In March 1998, after Bin Ladin's public fatwa against the United States, two al Qaeda members reportedly went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi intelligence. In July, an Iraqi delegation traveled to Afghanistan to meet first with the Taliban and then with Bin Ladin. Sources reported that one, or perhaps both, of these meetings was apparently arranged through Bin Ladin's Egyptian deputy, Zawahiri, who had ties of his own to the Iraqis. In 1998, Iraq was under intensifying U.S. pressure, which culminated in a series of large air attacks in December.75

Similar meetings between Iraqi officials and Bin Ladin or his aides may have occurred in 1999 during a period of some reported strains with the Taliban. According to the reporting, Iraqi officials offered Bin Ladin a safe haven in Iraq. Bin Ladin declined, apparently judging that his circumstances in Afghanistan remained more favorable than the Iraqi alternative. The reports describe friendly contacts and indicate some common themes in both sides' hatred of the United States. But to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States.76

[Chapt. 10.2]
In this restricted National Security Council meeting, the President said it was a time for self-defense. The United States would punish not just the perpetrators of the attacks, but also those who harbored them. Secretary Powell said the United States had to make it clear to Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Arab states that the time to act was now. He said we would need to build a coalition. The President noted that the attacks provided a great opportunity to engage Russia and China. Secretary Rumsfeld urged the President and the principals to think broadly about who might have harbored the attackers, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Sudan, and Iran. He wondered aloud how much evidence the United States would need in order to deal with these countries, pointing out that major strikes could take up to 60 days to assemble.34

[Chapt. 10.3]
Having issued directives to guide his administration's preparations for war, on Thursday, September 20, President Bush addressed the nation before a joint session of Congress. "Tonight," he said, "we are a country awakened to danger."80 The President blamed al Qaeda for 9/11 and the 1998 embassy bombings and, for the first time, declared that al Qaeda was "responsible for bombing the USS Cole."81 He reiterated the ultimatum that had already been conveyed privately. "The Taliban must act, and act immediately," he said. "They will hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate."82 The President added that America's quarrel was not with Islam: "The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them." Other regimes faced hard choices, he pointed out: "Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."83

www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/Comp_Report_Key_Findings.pdf
[Regime Strategic Intent; Key Findings]
Saddam Husayn so dominated the Iraqi Regime that its strategic intent was his alone. He wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when sanctions were lifted.