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

 
 
Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Tue 13 Jul, 2004 11:11 am
Congress, not simply a Senate Committee, gave the Shrub his war powers . . .

c.i., i am sadly no longer amazed. And yes, i agree that our conservative posters here seem to be privy to information not vouchsafed to the Senate.
0 Replies
 
Gelisgesti
 
  1  
Reply Wed 14 Jul, 2004 04:16 am
This might be a long post but it covers about everything .....

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Arguing with Bush yet Again

President Bush gave a speech on Tuesday in which he made specific claims about how the United States is safer as a result of his military action. I dispute assertions about particular Middle Eastern or South Asian countries.

' "The world is changing for the better because of American leadership. America is safer today because we are leading the world. Afghanistan was once the home of al-Qaeda. Now terror camps are closed, democracy is rising, and the American people are safer," he said. '

Cole: The Afghanistan war was the right war at the right time, and it did break up the network of al-Qaeda training camps from which terrorists would have gone on hitting the United States. But the fact is that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld did not want to fight that war after September 11. Rumsfeld sniffed that "there were no good targets" in Afghanistan. Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney all wanted to leave al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and attack Iraq first. At first Wolfowitz was leaked as the proponent of this crazy idea, and although he did back it, it is now clear from insider accounts like that of Richard Clark that the three top leaders just mentioned wanted Iraq first. The UK ambassador to the US maintains that it was Tony Blair who talked Bush into going after al-Qaeda in Afghanistan first, with a promise that he would later support an Iraq war. MI6 would have been briefing Tony about the dire threat coming from Afghanistan, and he, unlike the Bush team, could see the dangers of getting bogged down in an Iraq quagmire while al-Qaeda and the Taliban were still in control of Afghanistan. (Can you imagine the full scope of that disaster that Bush had planned for us?)

Even after Bush was dragged kicking and screaming into doing the right thing by Blair, he did it half-heartedly. He let Bin Laden and al-Zawahir escape. (I'll repeat that. He let Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri escape). Instead of rebuilding and stabilizing Afghanistan, as he promised, he put almost nothing into reconstruction for that country.

Then he let the poppy growing industry come back with a vengeance. Afghanistan's GNP is $5 billion a year. At least $2 billion of that is poppies, and Afghanistan has become the top source for heroin in Europe. With al-Qaeda and the Taliban still powerful in the country or its borderlands, Afghanistan is on the way to becoming a terrorist's dream-- a place worse than Colombia from which narco-terrorism can be funded and launched. This looming disaster will certainly blow back on the American homeland. Yet Bush is doing nothing to avert it.

As for democracy and liberating 50 million people, neither the people of Afghanistan nor that of Iraq have elected national governments by popular sovereignty. It is not entirely clear when they will be able to do so. For the moment, there hasn't been any introduction of anything like democracy. The US invaded each and installed a government of its choosing. That isn't democracy. In Iraq, Paul Bremer repeatedly blocked democratic municipal elections. That was a great lesson for the people in democracy, all right.

' The dictator in Iraq had the "capability of producing weapons of mass murder. And now, the dictator is a threat to nobody, and the American people are safer." '

Bush must think we are a nation of retards if he believes we will buy this language of Saddam having the "capability" to produce weapons of mass destruction. All countries have the "capability." The point is that Iraq had given up its WMD programs and destroyed the stockpiles. The US was not in any danger from Iraq, and so cannot be safer because it was invaded.

Worse, the American invasion of Iraq is a major recruitment poster for al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda's message was that the Americans are coming to Muslim lands. 'They will invade your countries, expropriate your property, rape your women, and humiliate your men,' al-Qaeda screams. What does Bush do? He proves al-Qaeda right. More angry young Arab men are ready to fight the United States now than ever before. Bush is less popular than Bin Laden in most Muslim countries according to polls.

Not only has the Bush administration angered the Sunni Muslim world with its invasion and hamhanded occupation of Iraq, but it has managed to turn the Shiites against us too, by desecrating the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala this past spring.

The US is arguably much less safe because of the invasion of Iraq.

' He said Pakistan used to be a safe transit point for terrorists on missions of murder. "Now Pakistani forces are rounding up terrorists, and the American people are safer." '

This is a nice sound bite but bears no resemblance to reality. The major jihadi groups in Pakistan are still operating, and the Pakistani government has been largely unable or unwilling to stop them. The Pakistanis did arrest some 500 al-Qaeda Arabs, but Pakistani courts have not cooperated with its attempts to subject the jihadis to mass arrests. A major jihadi leader was sitting in parliament until he was assassinated recently!

Moreover, Pakistan remains virtually a military dictatorship, where parliament is not sovereign and where Gen. Musharraf basically appoints and removes prime ministers by fiat (PM Jamali was recently forced out).

' In Saudi Arabia, terrorists were meeting little opposition, but today the Saudi Government is taking the fight to al-Qaeda, and the American people are safer, he said. '

In Saudi Arabia, Americans were relatively safe before the Iraq war. Now Americans are in danger in Saudi Arabia, and are fleeing the country. This is an improvement?

' Not long ago, Libya was spending millions to acquire weapons of mass destruction. "Now, thousands of Libya's chemical munitions have been destroyed. Libya has given up nuclear processing equipment, and the American people are safer," he claimed. '

Oh, give it up. Libya had been trying to make that deal for years. (The European pressure and boycott was what had done the trick). What really changed was that the Americans became more receptive to such a deal. But then right in the middle of Qaddafi coming in from the cold it surfaced that he had gotten up a plot to assassinate a Saudi leader! Made it hard to crow too loud about rehabilitating him.

Plus Bush does not mention that the entire Muslim world is royally pissed off at the United States for coddling Ariel Sharon while he gobbles up nearly half of the West Bank, expropriating and brutalizing the Palestinians in the process. Even the World Court has condemned his greedy fence, which annexes massive amounts of Palestinian land. Bush has just lain down on the ground and pleaded with Sharon to walk all over him with hobnail boots, and then smiled for the privilege. Arab satellite television shows Israelis repressing Palestinians every day. The Bush administration has actually endorsed the forcible Israeli annexation of Palestinian land, which violates the United Nations Charter and the Geneva Accords!

Pursuing a policy that makes us highly unpopular with 1.3 billion people is not a means of making us safer.

So, no, Americans are not safer, Mr. Bush. They face the threat of substantial narco-terrorism from Afghanistan. Iraq is a security nightmare that could well blow back on the American homeland. Pakistan remains a military dictatorship with a host of militant jihadi movements that had been fomented by the hardline Pakistani military intelligence. Saudi Arabia is witnessing increased al-Qaeda activity and attacks on Westerners. And the Israeli-Palestine dispute is being left to fester and poison the world.

These are not achievements to be proud of. This is a string of disasters. We are not safer. We face incredible danger because of the way the Bush administration has grossly mishandled the Middle East.

posted by Juan @ 7/14/2004 09:07:16 AM

http://juancole.com/
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Wed 14 Jul, 2004 07:38 am
'Serious flaws' in Iraq intelligence

Quote:
Tony Blair told MPs he "accepted" the findings and that Iraq may not have had WMD stockpiles when the war started.
[...]
Lord Butler's main findings were:

- The 45 minutes claim was "unsubstantiated"

- No individuals were to blame for failures

- Intelligence had been pushed to the "outer limits but not beyond"

- There was no deliberate distortion of intelligence by politicians

- Limits of intelligence not "made sufficiently clear" in September 2002 dossier


However:
Quote:
Lord Butler said the prime minister "acted in good faith".

"It would have been very foolish thing indeed for him to have put something in the dossier which he knew and believed to be untrue, when the consequences of the war was going to establish the truth pretty soon," he told reporters.

But he said it was a "serious failing" that the dossier did not contain warnings and caveats about intelligence known to the JIC.

"More weight was placed on the intelligence than it could bear," Lord Butler said, and he criticised the government for publicly stating the JIC had "ownership" of the dossier, lending it more credibility than it might otherwise have had.

[...]
Lord Butler agreed his committee had been less critical than other inquiries, for example in the US, but he insisted that they had been critical of some of the procedures of the way intelligence was assessed

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timberlandko
 
  1  
Reply Wed 14 Jul, 2004 09:12 am
Thus, as with our own Senate Committee's similarly themed report, opening the gates to trimphal cries both of "Vindication" (by both parties) and "Whitewash".
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au1929
 
  1  
Reply Wed 14 Jul, 2004 09:15 am
Inquiry: U.K. Iraq Intelligence 'Flawed'

LONDON (AP) - Iraq had no useable chemical or biological weapons before the war, and British intelligence relied in part on "seriously flawed" or "unreliable" sources, an official inquiry reported Wednesday. Prime Minister Tony Blair accepted the report's findings and took "personal responsibility," although his government was absolved of "deliberate distortion or culpable negligence."

Could you imagine Bush uttering those words "Personal responsibility" for a mistake.
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Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Wed 14 Jul, 2004 09:16 am
The full Butler report:

Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction
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cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Wed 14 Jul, 2004 10:07 am
Walter, The full Butler report is tooooooo looooong. Wink
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Steve 41oo
 
  1  
Reply Wed 14 Jul, 2004 10:11 am
When I say things like

The war was fought to secure oil supplies
The war was fought for the benefit of Israel
President Bush is not very bright

(oil and Israel being only my opinion, the other I would have thought, is an indisputable fact Very Happy ) - people here get very excited, ascribing to me all sorts of dubious motives and even suggesting I might be a dimwit myself. Sad

But I've not made any moral judgements. I'm content to leave that to professionals in that sphere such as bishops and religious leaders, (they have far more experience of starting wars).

Similarly I'll leave it to the lawyers to pronounce on the war's legality or not. (And if I don't like what the first lawyer says, I'll get another one to say differently).

But what does interest me is truth, in so far it can be known.

And when the Prime Minister tells me categorically that Saddam Hussein has chemical and biological weapons and can use them in 45 minutes, and therefore Britain must go to war to disarm him, I don't think it unreasonable to

a) initially believe him
b) get pretty pissed off when it turns out to be a lie
c) wonder what motivated it.

And the conclusion I have come to is not that the war was a good thing or a bad thing, or was legal or illegal, but simply that there were some very understandable reasons for the invasion and occupation of Iraq - none of which provided sufficient moral or legal justification for doing so. And as governments do worry about such things (even if its only for appearances sake), so began the project known as Weapons of Mass Distraction.
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cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Wed 14 Jul, 2004 10:18 am
Steve, It's a bit more than that, buddy. Most of the Arabs/Muslims are now distrustful of our government and our motives in whatever we do - rightly or wrongly. It has become a recruiting tool for terrorism which will not be easy to mitigate. All because of the failure of our governments to seek the truth about Saddam's WMDs.
0 Replies
 
Steve 41oo
 
  1  
Reply Wed 14 Jul, 2004 10:26 am
I'll summarise it for you ci

British secret service personnel are the best in the world
They screwed up over Iraq
No one in government did anything wrong
There is "no evidence" we invaded Iraq to secure oil supplies
The 45 minute claim was bullsh1t and should not have been used
But no-one embellished or "sexed up" intelligence for propaganda purposes Wink


For America's point of view however, what Butler has to say about al Qaida is pretty interesting. Basically he said MI6 have been on the case of bin Laden and al Qaida for a long time....well before 9/11. And if British intelligence knew all about UBL then so did American intelligence. In which case why was 9/11 so unexpected? Should make the 911 enquiry next week interesting.
0 Replies
 
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Wed 14 Jul, 2004 10:58 am
Steve, If the Brits have the best intelligence in the world, where did we "screw up" on Saddam's WMDs?
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Steve 41oo
 
  1  
Reply Wed 14 Jul, 2004 11:38 am
Well you're right ci

It is more than that. I get so mad with Bush not just because he took America and Britain into an unnecessary war but because through his own incompetence and the incompetence of his administration he has missed the opportunity of some good coming out of bad.

Back to the Butler report

Blair is a brilliant politician (and not bad lawyer). So he realises he had to give some ground today. First he accepts the report in full. Then he accepts responsibility for mistakes that were made (note he never said he made any). But he is absolutely adamant that there was no intention to mislead or deceive, i.e. IF he's done anything wrong, he's only made an honest mistake.

But his credibility really is on the line. Last weekend the Independent reported that the Prime Minister, defence secretary Hoon and Foreign secretary Straw had all said they did not ask which weapons systems the 45 minute claim refered to until AFTER the war. I quoted it in red font a few posts back.

Can you imagine, the PM is about to invade a foreign country, he is told the enemy has chemical or biological weapons that can be deployed in 45 minutes, and he never bothers to ask what it means? Are they referring to battlefield artillary shells, or longer range missiles? Wouldn't it be a good idea to get a good assessment of what we are about to face?

Have we prepared our troops as best we can? Or can we expect a missile attack with nerve agent on London? HE NEVER ASKS!!!!

The ONLY explanation for this is that they weren't that bothered about the 45 minute claim because they knew it to be bullsh1t.

Which is exactly what BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan said in a radio broadcast in May 2003. His contact turns out to be Dr David Kelly (later found dead in the woods). What Gilligan reported Kelly as saying is that the 45 minute claim was inserted in the September Iraqi Weapons document, against the advice of the Intelligence professionals, "KNOWING it was probably false".

Gilligan only used the word "knowing" once. At 6.07 am when virtually no one heard him. But it seems to have driven Tony Blair and his rottweiller press officer Alastair Campbell absolutely wild. The result was they pursued it to the bitter end and forced the resignation of the Director General and the Chairman of the Governors. In fact they wrecked the BBC over it. Why were they so keen to discredit this report? Could it be that it was true? That in fact so called intelligence was indeed "sexed up", exaggerated embellished etc etc to make the case for war?

And that Tony Blair knew what was going on from the outset? See bold type above.
0 Replies
 
timberlandko
 
  1  
Reply Wed 14 Jul, 2004 11:43 am
Just an interjection here ... I'd say The Beeb pretty much wrecked itself, but then, that's just my opinion. I don't really have much sympathy for PBS or NPR, either.
0 Replies
 
Steve 41oo
 
  1  
Reply Wed 14 Jul, 2004 11:47 am
ci

The British secret intelligence services are the best in the world because they not only produce the best intelligence, they make the best screw ups when they get it wrong. Smile
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Wed 14 Jul, 2004 11:48 am
timberlandko wrote:
Just an interjection here ... I'd say The Beeb pretty much wrecked itself, but then, that's just my opinion. I don't really have much sympathy for PBS or NPR, either.


I would apostatise, if it was the other way round. :wink:
0 Replies
 
Steve 41oo
 
  1  
Reply Wed 14 Jul, 2004 11:57 am
I thought BBC America was pretty popular, but if you dont like it Timber, I won't pay my lisence fee so they can't afford to broadcast it, and you wont have to watch it . Smile
0 Replies
 
timberlandko
 
  1  
Reply Wed 14 Jul, 2004 04:27 pm
Appreciate the thought, Steve, but I'm a Premum Service subscriber myself.
0 Replies
 
Steve 41oo
 
  1  
Reply Thu 15 Jul, 2004 03:46 am
Can anyone give a satisfactory answer to this question

Why did Tony Blair, Geoff Hoon and Jack Straw leave it to after the war to find out what John Scarlett (then Chairman of Joint Intelligence Committee...the route via which all intelligence is fed to the Prime Minister) meant when he said Saddam had chemical or biological weapons which he could use in 45 minutes?

This may seem pedantic, but its important.











Because if they didn't enquire what was meant, then they were clearly failing in their duty to safeguard the welfare of this country, and the welfare of its armed services. They were negligent...in gross dereliction of duty and not fit to be in government.

And if they did enquire what was meant, they would have found out it refered only (maybe) to battlefield artillary shells and not missiles. Yet they made no attempt to correct the misleading headlines the 45 minute claim made, and illustrations in newspapers showing radii of Saddam's cbw capability reaching Cyprus. "British soldiers and tourists in Cyprus face annihilation" was one headline in Rupert Murdoch's Sun newspaper.

They allowed such stories to go uncorrected. Why? to deliberately scare people thats why. I remember. People in Britain were stocking up on bottled water and tinned food. They succeeded...people were scared. And all the time they knew there was no danger to British interests outside of Iraq from Saddam's cbw. Spreading scare stories and causing panic (ok it was a rather understated British sort of panic...like the shop's out of tea WRECK IT) is what we expect of the enemy, not our own government. This was a crime committed by the British government against the British people and therefore Blair Hoon and Straw disqualify themselves from office.

So which was it Tony? Gross negligence, or deliberate deception?
0 Replies
 
nimh
 
  1  
Reply Thu 15 Jul, 2004 06:34 am
Slate reviews the press and discovers some salient stuff in the LAT about that Powell speech to the UN and the evidence he purported to present about WMD stuff:

Quote:
A front-page LAT piece says State Department analysts objected to many of the allegations contained in drafts of Secretary Powell's U.N. speech on Iraq but some of the assertions made it in anyway. As the Times puts it, analysts warned that Powell, who was handed the draft speech by Vice President Cheney's office, "was being put in the position of drawing the most sinister conclusions from satellite images, communications intercepts and human intelligence reports that had alternative, less-incriminating explanations."

The outlines of this have been known for a while. (Powell reportedly threw drafts in the air and screamed, "This is bullshit!") But the Times adds details, particularly on The Times notes that details of the original assertions are still sketchy since Republicans on the Senate committee blocked attempts to get the first drafts.

The LAT's apparent exclusive on Powell's speech is based on an appendix included in the (long) Senate Intel Committee's report released last week. Did no other journos bother to leaf to the back of the report? [..]

Back to the partially dismissed State Dept. analysts ... The LAT, as is its habit, posts the relevant document
0 Replies
 
nimh
 
  1  
Reply Thu 15 Jul, 2004 06:42 am
So lemme get this right.

When Powell, as Secretary of State, went to the UN to present America's case that yes, the US knew for sure that Iraq still had WMD that actually posed an immediate threat - he was handed his speech by Cheney? And he himself thought that part of the suggested case was "bullshit" - and his analysists warned that much of it didn't hold up?

And yet countries like France are supposed to be cynical, ungrateful cowards for having refused to buy into it?
0 Replies
 
 

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