The US, UN & Iraq II

I think there we reach the point at which we nod sagely, lift our glasses to one another, and call it an evening. I've enjoyed our back-and-forth immensely, and wish I were not too tired to pursue it. Thanks for one of the most enjoyable web conversations I've had in a while. We'll do this again, perhaps even revisit this topic ... there is plenty here to debate and expand. G'nite.

'Twas indeed a pleasure. Few people evoke responses that take me more than a minute to type. Even at my regular flurried pace my post to you took many times more effort and time than normal.

That I am reminded of my nightly arguments with my brother is my highest compliment.

Copulating with poodles and murdering cats! What is this thread coming to!

Something has been bothering me since today morning, would love to hear what other's think..

Today morning in the Times I read that after 9/11 - Bush wanted to go hammer and tongs fro Iraq, but ws persuaded by Tony Blair to get rid of Al-quayda and Taliban first and for Iraq Tony advocated the UN route.

The article can be found Here

Now all reports indicate that the Bush regime had made up its mind to get rid of Saddam much before 9/11. Could it be that Bush used the UN and Hans Blix to ensure that Saddam had no chemical or biological weapon, and once he got this proof - he attacked Iraq ??

Just some early morning ramblings....

Gautam,

Anything is possible my friend. I strongly suspect that you may be on the money. However you are never going to find something someone wants to hide, especially if as many papers have been saying the French were tipping the nod to the Iraquis of where and when the visits were going to be.

Lets hope that the coalition forces or ourselves do not find out the hard way that the MWD do exist.

Geoff Hoon, the UK Defence Secretary, is a smooth politician who relies on nuance to do his dirty work. He did not say, in plain terms, that he disbelieves The Independent's accounts of civilian casualties sustained in Iraq. He did not say that Robert Fisk, the award-winning reporter, is a willing dupe of Saddam Hussein's regime. He simply allowed those suggestions to hang, unspoken, in the House of Commons chamber yesterday.

"A piece of a cruise missile was handed to the journalist," he said, to explain how we were able to publish the serial number of the missile likely to have been responsible for the second Baghdad marketplace explosion last Friday, which killed about 62 civilians.

Robert Fisk has a proud record of reporting what he sees. He has travelled to dangerous places and described unflinchingly what is happening. He prefers to speak to the people caught up in conflicts rather than report what the generals, politicians and spokesmen are saying.

Any careful reader of his reports from Iraq would know that he holds no brief for the Saddam regime. Indeed, he was among the first journalists to report Saddam's use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war. Anyone who read his reporting of the Kosovo war will remember that, when Nato headquarters denied that its aircraft had hit civilian convoys, he went to the spot on the ground where the missiles fell and found the markings on casings of US munitions. Nato spokesmen later admitted responsibility.

Mr Hoon's handling of the news from this war has been characterised by exaggeration, half-truth and backtracking. It was Mr Hoon who claimed on BBC Radio that local people had "certainly" risen up in Basra. When asked how he knew, he blustered. It does not seem to have been wholly true. It was Mr Hoon who claimed that chemical suits found by advancing coalition troops showed "categorically" that Saddam was preparing to use chemical weapons, to be contradicted by Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, Chief of the Defence Staff, who warned against jumping to conclusions. Last night, the MoD was forced to concede that an estimate of PoW numbers given only hours earlier by Mr Hoon was wildly inaccurate.

Yesterday's innuendo against The Independant and Robert Fisk was a miserable attempt to brush aside unwelcome truths. This is no way to reassure a doubtful British public that the Government genuinely wants to minimise civilian casualties, rather than simply the reporting of them.

The Iraqi officials were aware of Fisk's Kosovo reporting. There is enough coincidence in his having found an allegedly incriminating serial-numbered piece there and his having been handed one in Baghdad to arouse curiosity at least. Nothing clearly implicates or exculpates Coalition munitions, and in fact the cratering, blast damage, and incindiary effect are atypical of, if not, as claimed, inconsistent with, US munitions. It may have been a tactical air-defense suppression missile, such as a HARM (which would have followed a radar emmission to its source). Could be ... could be something else. Neither, as a final finding means much; a missile damaged by AA fire could have been the cause, an Iraqi missile failure or other Iraqi-caused explosion could have been the cause, it could even have been an errantly targeted US missile. None of the possibilities is significant, really. A few will see it one way, others will dismiss it as among the costs of war. The pattern of US bombardment clearly shows there is no focus on non-military targets. A typo or two does not invalidate a book. A few shops and homes do not indicate a focused attack on civilians, particularly in the presence of overwhelmingly contraindicating evidence. This is not an issue, it is an attempt to manufacture an issue.

Well after the Craven Timber show, and the 'what was it you really implied that I quoted someone else might have said' debate, I think its time you people went to bed at a sensible time (about 5 pm) and stopped giving me all this catch up reading to do every time I check in!

But having read it, of course I can't help a brief (?) comment.

nimh

Agree totally with your analysis/comparison of Iraq with N Korea. It admirably demonstrates how the weapons inspections in Iraq were nothing but a charade, as many of us suspected at the time. In the words of one neo-conservative American (Bolton I think about July 2002) "We are going to make him (Saddam) an offer he cannot accept".

I believe coalition forces will discover WMD in Iraq in due time, I would guess weaponised VX, but whether this will prove to be genuine Iraqi material, or stuff imported to make a point, we might never know. (And many won't dare ask).

kara wrote



There is no doubt to my mind that 911 has been used to sell a pro war message to the American public. In Europe we find it absolutely staggering (and alarming and inexplicable) that such a high proportion of Americans believe Saddam was behind 911. (Or for that matter that 10% of Americans believe they have been abducted by aliens).

Joe Nation wrote



Exactly Joe.

Look at me. Described by some on this thread as an anti American peacenik. Castigated for "inflaming Republicans". Of being disloyal to my own PM, my country, our allies. Of wishing to see American troops slaughtered. (a scurrillous libel btw)

Yet it was only 18 months ago when the Household Cavalry played the Star Spangled Banner at the changing of the Guards outside Buckingham Palace, that a tear stung my eye.

Well don't despair Joe, I'll have a beer with you anytime.

Just don't bring across Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Scooter Libby or any other of the dangerous weirdos who have taken over your government and who are taking us down the road to hell.


This from the Newstatesman magazine

by Michael Lind

Vague enough?
Instructions?
"read faster Habeeb they are coming"

Officer: Troops Find White Powder Vials
Email this Story

Apr 4, 6:49 AM (ET)

(AP) Engineers from The 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment dispose of unexploded bomblets found in...
Full Image

NEAR BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - U.S. troops found thousands of boxes of white powder, nerve agent antidote and Arabic documents on how to engage in chemical warfare at an industrial site south of Baghdad, a U.S. officer said Friday.

Col. John Peabody, engineer brigade commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, said the materials were found Friday at the Latifiyah industrial complex just south of Baghdad.

"It is clearly a suspicious site," Peabody said.

Peabody said troops found thousands of boxes, each of which contained three vials of white powder, together with documents written in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare.

He also said they discovered atropine, used to counter the effects of nerve agents.

There are reports of at least one more, and possibly other, similar finds in the past few hours. More questions are raised than answered, IMHO.

Timber you wrote in relation to the market missile,



It is an attempt by coalition commanders to put just enough doubt in peoples minds by blackening the good name of a well respected war reporter to divert people's attention away from the horror they (accidentally) caused.

Still all is fair in love and war. I suppose Fisk can count himself lucky not to be a victim of friendly fire, as has happened to other non embedded journalists.

Craven, excellent post of 12:44 am today.

[quote]The case for this war was made in a way that insults one's intellectual curiosity. The decreased interest in validation of threat accessment is understandable. After all, "better safe than sorry" but anecdotal campaigns, though prevalent in political history, do not suit a plan to creativeky interpret self-defence. [/quote]

This is an important point. Creative self-defense is much more diffiicult to prosecute and to sell politically, and to maintain through continuing dialogue among nations, than is a war. Creative self-defense or containment makes people uneasy because it is ambiguous and seemingly indecisive; people are intolerant of ambiguity. They want black and white.

Craven wrote re 9-11:

[quote]Naivete was at a high when this case [the creating of double-think over 9-11] was introduced and though no substantiation was ever made this continues to be widely belived. The Anthrax attacks were used o gain some political capital for this war as well. while the connection is possible, once again, no substantiation was offered and yet it was widely belived. A pattern emerged in which a specter is rased, no probable cause shown, and each specter helps form a series of unsubstantiated allegations.[/quote]

One could see this happening in the media, hints and suggestions gaining momentum by the day, the words themselves, in print or by TV talking heads, gaining credence by being there at all, by being out there and presented as possible. They needed no proof. We needed to find a bogeyman for 9-11, and it could not be as amorphous as "terrorism."


[quote]I suggest that the priorities are wrong. If stabalization and the reduction of the statistical probability of terrorism is one's goal it seems likely that the excuse that pitiful extremists use to validate their rage would be a more pressing concern. Saddam himself wuld have had to find some new speeches. [/quote]

Small stabs at understanding terrorism were made in the US press after 9-11, but such intellectual searching never took wing as an in-depth and continuing debate. The subject is and continues to be poorly understood, and we could well advance our safety and that of other nations by digging more deeply. We have enough examples in the US of terrorism -- hate groups in the NorthWest, Oklahoma City, school bombings -- to make a beginning in the research. I have read enough about terror schooling in Saudi Arabia to wonder why it isn't seen as valuable to study this in depth and try to figure out how to obliterate the causes of such organized hatred.

[quote]Any effort made to consolidate natios behind an ideal is hampered by the USA's undermining of what it views as a equalizing threat. Justice is by its nature equal, equality is by it's nature unfavorable to those with disproportionate power. Iraq was not an urgent scenario. The impatience with the UN is not because the UN was brick walling but because the UN was considered a distraction from the very beginning.

Inspections were called a "dangerous distraction" and the UN was included only because of domestic pressure to do so. Since little import was placed on their cooperation this was done with the implication of, "either way we are going to do this, this is a done deal, care to play along?" [/quote]

We are coming to realize that war against Iraq was a plan of this administration from the beginning, and in fact from long before Bush II took office. It is clear now that we are seeing the drama play out that was scripted in secret, a scenario that we were never allowed to edit because we had to be kept ignorant so as not to interfere with The Plan.

Again Craven said:

[quote]Civilization is threatened by any deviance from the determined manner in which conflict is to be resolved. Civilization is threatened when civility is less likely to be employed than agression.[/quote]

Civility is the basis for civilization and conflict resolution; civility shows respect for a world body of opinion and gives equal weight to the beliefs of other conversants, even when their ideas -- perhaps especially then -- may differ from ours. If we make no effort to understand where they are coming from, and why their ideas are different from ours, we are not seeking equality; we are seeking dominance. The rule of law demands codification of agreed-upon ideas of what is right and just. Sometimes we don't live up to or achieve the goals of these laws, but we must work toward them. The US must be a partner with other nations in codifying and enforcing an international rule of law. We will destroy such goals only if we refuse ourselves to be bound by an international rule of law.

frolic wrote:

[quote]Robert Fisk has a proud record of reporting what he sees. He has travelled to dangerous places and described unflinchingly what is happening. He prefers to speak to the people caught up in conflicts rather than report what the generals, politicians and spokesmen are saying.

Any careful reader of his reports from Iraq would know that he holds no brief for the Saddam regime. Indeed, he was among the first journalists to report Saddam's use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war. Anyone who read his reporting of the Kosovo war will remember that, when Nato headquarters denied that its aircraft had hit civilian convoys, he went to the spot on the ground where the missiles fell and found the markings on casings of US munitions. Nato spokesmen later admitted responsibility[/quote]

I respect the BBC as a well-balanced news view, but Robert Fisk is in a category of his own. And he has been doing it for years, long before the US citizenry became interested in even-handed reporting in the MiddleEast.[/color]

Kara wrote



The Plan has a name. Its called the Project for the New American Century, and was formulated in the mid 90's by the same Likudnik neo-cons who are now running the show in Washington.

Gautam (love your avatar!): "Now all reports indicate that the Bush regime had made up its mind to get rid of Saddam much before 9/11. Could it be that Bush used the UN and Hans Blix to ensure that Saddam had no chemical or biological weapon, and once he got this proof - he attacked Iraq ??..."

Please don't request links -- this Iraq QED is in my brain's "erat" file system. That Bush & Co. had planned the Iraq invasion well before 9/11 -- and in fact well before he bulldozed his path to the White House -- is common knowledge, isn't it? Sources? I don't have TV, so no link there. I listen to NPR and (in the car, mostly) AM righties and grieving constitutionalists. I subscribe to the NY Times, Nation, Harpers, LRB, NYRB, NY'er (and lots of other stuff with no relevance here) and have the same internet that everyone else does (though sometimes I wonder about that!).

The aroma of a long-planned invasion has reached all of us, no? We know that Cheney, Rummy, Wolfowitz, Perle, Libby and others never got over the frustrations of 1991, don't we? I think we can safely buy "Operation Freedom" as the product of that frustration along with resentment and opportunism. That the frustrated would also get to slap down, in the process, international institutions which never gave them the respect they thought they deserved, not to mention that they could gratify campaign funders some of whom own the broadcast media, and the defense profiteers, AND feather their aeries all at the same time, had to make Iraq "evil" and "rescue" even more compelling.

If we had a respectable news media and greater tolerance for questions and self-examination, I doubt the invasion would have taken place.

craven, kara, timber, nimh, and everyone...you're all making your mommas proud here. This is exciting debate. Separate category for dlowan, who just HAD TO mention the poodle.

Well, everything else had been said! I hate to be redundant.

You're on holiday now, you are redundant, put your ears up and relax.

this is the department of redundancy department.

Gautam wrote:

Today morning in the Times I read that after 9/11 - Bush wanted to go hammer and tongs fro Iraq, but ws persuaded by Tony Blair to get rid of Al-quayda and Taliban first and for Iraq Tony advocated the UN route.

Gautam

If you read Bob Woodwards book "Bush at War" you'd know that Rumsfeld, along with Cheney are the ones that kept hammering at Iraq. Bush kept saying that Iraq was just part of the puzzle but was eventually persuaded that the time was right for Iraq to go.

perception, that is correct. Donald Rumsfeld is the scariest person I know, and Ashcroft runs a close second. Ashcroft can only erode the rights of US citizens; Rumsfeld has an agenda for US domination of the world that is terrifying. And you are right in that Bush is just a pawn, being moved by the strong players.