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

... So, we fight the fight and others use the freedoms that previous wars have provided for them to voice their dissatisfactions of present policy.

... how much more troublesome that the American Public historically has shown itself to be easily manipulated.

Friday September 10, 2004

What could inspire a smart human being to vote for George Bush? Andrew Brown on what makes the American world view so very different from the European one


My friend Matt Hoffman may become the first Independent contributor to be burnt in effigy by its readers. He announced last week that he might be voting for George Bush.
He actually has a vote in the American elections, unlike most suppliers of opinion (wholesale or retail) to the British public. And, though he has lived her for a very long time, he retains a knowledge of the gut hatreds of American politics which foreigners cannot acquire without living there a very long time.

You might expect these feelings to diminish with distance; in fact, it seems to amplify them in moments of crisis. The most pacifist and Thatcher-hating British expatriate could be surprised by a storm of patriotism in the Falklands War. You never feel more strongly 'My country right or wrong' than when all around you think it must be wrong.

But it's still a surprise. Hoffman is the kind of American who adds lustre to any country he chooses to live. He's optimistic, energetic, cultured and smart. He is a life-long Democrat; by the standards of mainstream American political debate, a crazed socialist, which means he probably voted for Tony Blair (he holds dual citizenship). For him even to consider voting for Bush suggests something very strange and important is happening that we just don't understand.

A poll last week showed that if the whole world had a vote in the election, Bush would be beaten 4-1. The only countries he would carry are Nigeria, Kenya, and the Philippines, none of which are actually supplying troops for the Iraqi war. In this country, he would poll 16%, rather less than Robert Kilroy-Silk got in the last election - a figure that seems to me about right. Mr Bush couldn't run a daytime television show, and neither he nor Kilroy-Silk could run the country. So why are sane, smart Americans prepared to vote for him?

The answer is that they don't share an assumption so obvious to the rest of the world that it's almost invisible: that the world would be better and safer if America were less powerful. We assume that nice, sane, liberal Americans must agree with us. But we're wrong.

If you look at the pictures and read the speeches, both candidates are running on a message repulsive to the outside world: that we can all be saved only by a strong and powerful America, and they will save it by making America still stronger. This is true of John Kerry as much as George Bush.

I know there is a minority which thinks differently. In November 2001, I went to a peace rally with Patti Smith and others in Boston. Those people certainly didn't want war in Afghanistan. They wanted justice in Palestine, and a whole lot of other policies self-evident to Europeans.

They could have sung along in chorus to most Guardian leaders. And in one of the most liberal cities in America, there were no more than a couple of hundred of them.

And even this tiny minority reaches its 'European' conclusions from very American premises. They believe just as much as the neocons that America has a mission to transform the world. They just disagree about how it should.

The unnerving consensus in the presidential campaign is that America must save the world and itself through war. Outside the USA, the proportion of people who believe that is probably the same as those who would vote for Bush.

A further disagreement is that Americans think the war has already started. We don't. The war in Iraq certainly doesn't feel, in this country, like one in which we are actively engaged. British casualties are very low, and more or less nothing appears in the papers about the activities of British troops. Even the Daily Telegraph complains that there is no access to the army's operations in Basra. Other European countries, of course, have no troops there at all, or very few.

No matter how the Pentagon plays things down, no American can feel that Iraq is someone else's problem. They don't have the option of pretending that it's not happening. Their options are simpler: to win, lose, or settle with the enemy. Since they have defined an enemy - 'terror' - that doesn't exist, it is going to be difficult to negotiate a settlement.

So the question becomes who will best prosecute the war. Even here, Kerry, with his experience and competence, would seem to be the natural choice. But wars aren't fought on rational grounds. The one thing we can be certain of is that however much the rest of the world may dislike an incompetent warmonger like George Bush, we wouldn't like a really competent and energetic American war leader very much better.

* Andrew Brown is the author of The Darwin Wars: The Scientific War for the Soul of Man and In the Beginning Was the Worm: Finding the Secrets of Life in a Tiny Hermaphrodite,

I know that one big difference between Americans and Europeans is that we are Americans and they are Europeans.

Surprise, surprise! Iraq Survey Report Concludes NO WMD IN IRAQ!

Tony Blair will be confronted with a fresh challenge over Iraq within the next two weeks when the long-awaited final report of the Iraq Survey Group concludes there were no weapons of mass destruction in the country at the time of the US-UK invasion.

The Prime Minister's Official Spokesman

Asked for a reaction to a report in today's Guardian suggesting that the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) was due to publish a report shortly in which they would conclude that no WMD had been found in Iraq, the PMOS said he thought it would be best to wait until the report was actually published before commenting on any speculation about it. The timing of publication and the contents were all matters for Mr Charles Duelfer, the head of the ISG. We would not be passing comment until we had seen a published text. Asked if he was implying that the Prime Minister had not yet seen a copy of the report, the PMOS said that as he understood it, the report was still being drafted.

Saddam agents on Syria border helped move banned materials

Saddam Hussein periodically removed guards on the Syrian border and replaced them with his own intelligence agents who supervised the movement of banned materials between the two countries, U.S. investigators have discovered.

The recent discovery by the Bush administration's Iraq Survey Group (ISG) is fueling speculation, but is not proof, that the Iraqi dictator moved prohibited weapons of mass destruction (WMD) into Syria before the March 2003 invasion by a U.S.-led coalition.

Two defense sources told The Washington Times that the ISG has interviewed Iraqis who told of Saddam's system of dispatching his trusted Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) to the border, where they would send border inspectors away.

The shift was followed by the movement of trucks in and out of Syria suspected of carrying materials banned by U.N. sanctions. Once the shipments were made, the agents would leave and the regular border guards would resume their posts.

"If you leave it to border guards, then the border guards could stop the trucks and extract their 10 percent, just like the mob would do," said a Pentagon official who asked not to be named. "Saddam's family was controlling the black market, and it was a good opportunity for them to make money."

Sources said Saddam and his family grew rich from this black market and personally dispatched his dreaded intelligence service to the border to make sure the shipments got through.

The ISG is a 1,400-member team organized by the Pentagon and CIA to hunt for Saddam's suspected stockpiles of WMD, such as chemical and biological agents. So far, the search has failed to find such stockpiles, which were the main reason for President Bush ordering the invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam.

But there is evidence of unusually heavy truck traffic into Syria in the days before the attack, and with it, speculation that some of the trucks contained the banned weapons.

"Of course, it's always suspicious," the Pentagon official said.
The source said the ISG has confirmed the practice of IIS agents going to the border. Investigators also have heard from Iraqi sources that this maneuver was done days before the war at a time of brisk cross-border movements.

That particular part of the disclosures has not been positively confirmed, the officials said, although it dovetails with Saddam's system of switching guards at a time when contraband was shipped.
The United States spotted the heavy truck traffic via satellite imagery before the war. But spy cameras cannot look through truck canopies, and the ISG has not been able to determine whether any weapons were sent to Syria for hiding.

In an interview in October, retired Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr., who heads the U.S. agency that processes and analyzes satellite imagery, said he thinks that Saddam's underlings hid banned weapons of mass destruction before the war.

"I think personally that those below the senior leadership saw what was coming, and I think they went to some extraordinary lengths to dispose of the evidence," said Gen. Clapper, who heads the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. "I'll call it an 'educated hunch.' "

He added, "I think probably in the few months running up prior to the onset of combat that I think there was probably an intensive effort to disperse into private homes, move documentation and materials out of the country. I think there are any number of things that they would have done."

Of activity on the Syrian border, Gen. Clapper said, "There is no question that there was a lot of traffic, increase in traffic up to the immediate onset of combat and certainly during Iraqi Freedom. ... The obvious conclusion one draws is the sudden upturn, uptick in traffic which may have been people leaving the scene, fleeing Iraq and unquestionably, I'm sure, material as well."

He also said, "Based on what we saw prior to the onset of hostilities, we certainly felt there were indications of WMD activity. ... Actually knowing what is going on inside a building is quite a different thing than, say, this facility may well be a place where there may be WMD."

The Iraq Survey Group, which periodically briefs senior officials and Congress, is due to deliver its next report in September. In addition to interviewing hundreds of Iraqis, the ISG has collected and cataloged millions of pages of documents, not all of which have been fully examined.

Although Syria and Iraq competed for influence in the region, they shared the same Ba'athist socialist ideology and maintained close ties at certain government levels. The United States accused Syria during the war of harboring some of Saddam's inner circle.
____________________________________________________________

Seems about right.

McGentrix wrote:

Saddam agents on Syria border helped move banned materials

Saddam Hussein periodically removed guards on the Syrian border and replaced them with his own intelligence agents who supervised the movement of banned materials between the two countries, U.S. investigators have discovered.

The recent discovery by the Bush administration's Iraq Survey Group (ISG) is fueling speculation, but is not proof, that the Iraqi dictator moved prohibited weapons of mass destruction (WMD) into Syria before the March 2003 invasion by a U.S.-led coalition.

Two defense sources told The Washington Times that the ISG has interviewed Iraqis who told of Saddam's system of dispatching his trusted Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) to the border, where they would send border inspectors away.

The shift was followed by the movement of trucks in and out of Syria suspected of carrying materials banned by U.N. sanctions. Once the shipments were made, the agents would leave and the regular border guards would resume their posts.

"If you leave it to border guards, then the border guards could stop the trucks and extract their 10 percent, just like the mob would do," said a Pentagon official who asked not to be named. "Saddam's family was controlling the black market, and it was a good opportunity for them to make money."

Sources said Saddam and his family grew rich from this black market and personally dispatched his dreaded intelligence service to the border to make sure the shipments got through.

The ISG is a 1,400-member team organized by the Pentagon and CIA to hunt for Saddam's suspected stockpiles of WMD, such as chemical and biological agents. So far, the search has failed to find such stockpiles, which were the main reason for President Bush ordering the invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam.

But there is evidence of unusually heavy truck traffic into Syria in the days before the attack, and with it, speculation that some of the trucks contained the banned weapons. "Of course, it's always suspicious," the Pentagon official said.

The source said the ISG has confirmed the practice of IIS agents going to the border. Investigators also have heard from Iraqi sources that this maneuver was done days before the war at a time of brisk cross-border movements.

That particular part of the disclosures has not been positively confirmed, the officials said, although it dovetails with Saddam's system of switching guards at a time when contraband was shipped.

The United States spotted the heavy truck traffic via satellite imagery before the war. But spy cameras cannot look through truck canopies, and the ISG has not been able to determine whether any weapons were sent to Syria for hiding.

In an interview in October, retired Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr., who heads the U.S. agency that processes and analyzes satellite imagery, said he thinks that Saddam's underlings hid banned weapons of mass destruction before the war.

"I think personally that those below the senior leadership saw what was coming, and I think they went to some extraordinary lengths to dispose of the evidence," said Gen. Clapper, who heads the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. "I'll call it an 'educated hunch.' "

He added, "I think probably in the few months running up prior to the onset of combat that I think there was probably an intensive effort to disperse into private homes, move documentation and materials out of the country. I think there are any number of things that they would have done."

Of activity on the Syrian border, Gen. Clapper said, "There is no question that there was a lot of traffic, increase in traffic up to the immediate onset of combat and certainly during Iraqi Freedom. ... The obvious conclusion one draws is the sudden upturn, uptick in traffic which may have been people leaving the scene, fleeing Iraq and unquestionably, I'm sure, material as well."

He also said, "Based on what we saw prior to the onset of hostilities, we certainly felt there were indications of WMD activity. ... Actually knowing what is going on inside a building is quite a different thing than, say, this facility may well be a place where there may be WMD."

The Iraq Survey Group, which periodically briefs senior officials and Congress, is due to deliver its next report in September. In addition to interviewing hundreds of Iraqis, the ISG has collected and cataloged millions of pages of documents, not all of which have been fully examined.

Although Syria and Iraq competed for influence in the region, they shared the same Ba'athist socialist ideology and maintained close ties at certain government levels. The United States accused Syria during the war of harboring some of Saddam's inner circle.
____________________________________________________________

Seems about right.

NY Times
September 10, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST

How Many Deaths Will It Take?
By BOB HERBERT

It was Vietnam all over again - the heartbreaking head shots captioned with good old American names:

Jose Casanova, Donald J. Cline Jr., Sheldon R. Hawk Eagle, Alyssa R. Peterson.

Eventually there'll be a fine memorial to honor the young Americans whose lives were sacrificed for no good reason in Iraq. Yesterday, under the headline "The Roster of the Dead," The New York Times ran photos of the first thousand or so who were killed.

They were sent off by a president who ran and hid when he was a young man and his country was at war. They fought bravely and died honorably. But as in Vietnam, no amount of valor or heroism can conceal the fact that they were sent off under false pretenses to fight a war that is unwinnable.

How many thousands more will have to die before we acknowledge that President Bush's obsession with Iraq and Saddam Hussein has been a catastrophe for the United States?

Joshua T. Byers, Matthew G. Milczark, Harvey E. Parkerson 3rd, Ivory L. Phipps.

Fewer and fewer Americans believe the war in Iraq is worth the human treasure we are losing and the staggering amounts of money it is costing. But no one can find a way out of this tragic mess, which is why that dreaded word from the Vietnam era - quagmire - has been resurrected. Most Washington insiders agree with Senator John McCain, who said he believes the U.S. will be involved militarily in Iraq for 10 or 20 more years.

To what end? You can wave goodbye to the naïve idea that democracy would take root in Iraq and then spread like the flowers of spring throughout the Middle East. That was never going to happen. So what are we there for, other than to establish a permanent military stronghold in the region and control the flow of Iraqi oil?

The insurgency in Iraq will never end as long as the U.S. is occupying the country. And our Iraqi "allies" will never fight their Iraqi brethren with the kind of intensity the U.S. would like, any more than the South Vietnamese would fight their fellow Vietnamese with the fury and effectiveness demanded by the hawks in the Johnson administration.

The Iraqi insurgents - whether one agrees with them or not - believe they are fighting for their homeland, their religion and their families. The Americans are not at all clear what they're fighting for. Saddam is gone. There were no weapons of mass destruction. The link between Saddam and the atrocities of Sept. 11 was always specious and has been proven so.

At some point, as in Vietnam, the American public will balk at the continued carnage, and this tragic misadventure will become politically unsustainable. Meanwhile, the death toll mounts.

Elia P. Fontecchio, Raheen Tyson Heighter, Sharon T. Swartworth, Ruben Valdez Jr.

One of the reasons the American effort in Iraq is unsustainable is that the American people know very little about the Iraqi people and their culture, and in most cases couldn't care less. The war in Iraq was sold as a response to Sept. 11. As it slowly dawns on a majority of Americans that the link was bogus, and that there is no benefit to the U.S. from this war, only endless grief, the political support will all but vanish.

(This could take awhile. In a poll done for Newsweek magazine this week, 42 percent of the respondents continue to believe that Saddam Hussein was directly involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.)

We've put our troops in Iraq in an impossible situation. If you are not permitted to win a war, eventually you will lose it. In Vietnam, for a variety of reasons, the U.S. never waged total war, although the enemy did. After several years and more than 58,000 deaths, we quit.

We won't - and shouldn't - wage total war in Iraq, either. But to the insurgents, the Americans epitomize evil. We're the crazed foreigners who invaded their country and killed innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, by the thousands. We call that collateral damage. They call it murder. For them, this is total war.

President Bush never prepared the nation for the prolonged violence of this war. He still hasn't spoken candidly about it. If he has an idea for hauling us out of this quagmire, he hasn't bothered to reveal it.

The troops who are fighting and dying deserve better.

The bush administration releases new color alert system

...................................O..................................

They need one to match that yellow stripe running down Bush's back.

I have heard that Bush is afraid of riding horses: is that correct? Just wondered. Can't blame him if he is. But I can't think of any aspect of him which is satisfactory. You'd have thought they would have found one by now.