peace !

i'm sometimes baffled as to why the threat posed by saddam, his minions, and his progeny was not 'felt' or 'seen' by the critics of the campaign. the evidence that the ba'athists were pathological liars was overwhelming. the fact they continued to nurse wmd capabilities was overwhelming. i always found the arguements against to be needling on intelligence particulars that could never have been accurate to the letter, but possessed enough truth to make the obvious obvious again, namely that the ba'athist were possessed of no serious intent to tell the truth and would reconstitute their wmd once the sanctions (and focus) had been lifted.

1- both david kay and charles duefler, isg heads, found that iraq had not been telling the truth to hans blix (surprise, surprise) citing numerous violations, and thereby putting them in violation of res. 1441, their 17th broken resolution. the fact that no stockpiles were found and that hussein had scaled back wmd development was a transparent ruse that jived with his previous attempts to appear to conform when all he ultimately desired was to maneuver enough for sanctions to be lifted.

worse yet, duefler found in march 2004, as reported to congress, nuclear weapons lab material that had been deliberately withheld
from inspectors. in may 2004, he also discovered that sites were sanitized, as powell had said, and vital information destroyed.
ho hum.

2- terrorism . . . while there is no direct evidence that al-qaeda and iraq conspired to effect 9/11, that is not for any lack of trying. we do know that iraq and al-qaeda had extensive flirtations from osama's days in the sudan and after their relocation to afghanistan. they met, discussed, and expressed mutual interest in possible collaborations.
ba'ath iraq has a long history of abetting terrrorism and aiding terrorists, from their internal campaigns against their native peoples, to aiding the ppk, palestinian groups,
being home to abu nidal, and conducting assasination campaigns against dissidents overseas.

according to richard butler, former unscom director, the 'greatest threat' to any region's security is the harboring of wmd by rogue states. specifically, he and rolf eckaus let the world know that the ba'athists only wish was to remain overlords of one the world's worst, if not the worst, police states. all else, first off the truth, was second. lies
from them became the only predictable event in
the course of first two inspection regimes.

flash forward . . . hans blix is placed in the
seat of unmovic director. this is the same blix who while head of iaea (1981-97) declared hussein's iraq had not weaponized their nuclear program, when in fact they had. oops. hans admitted the obvious ('he had been fooled'), as a face saving measure to no doubt build confidence in his abilities among iraq's favorable security council members. surprise, surprise, it worked. the new-old choice of rolf eckaus, put forward by u.n. and britian, was rejected by the iraq-friendlies on the council. so off to iraq we went with the outcome predestined.

Let me add a little: David Kay, during one of his senate hearings, described an interesting phenomenon with respect to intelligence and Iraq. He asked the question: If you could get inside one person's head, anyone in the world, to obtain information on whether Saddam had stockpiles of WMD, whose head would you want to be in? Saddam, of course. And if you couldn't get into Saddam's head, you'd go for his generals, right?

Well, the nature of Saddam's terror regime lead to a couple of interesting results. Saddam demanded that his military develop weapons to threaten his neighbors. His generals & other military leaders, all felt that pressure from above (develop WMDs or DIE!!!!), and to the extent they weren't successful in developing the full slate of weapons requested, they LIED to each other and to Saddam about having those weapons. So not only did Saddam's generals -- hearing that their fellow generals had developed weapons -- think Iraq had developed the weapons, but so did Saddam himself. So in answer to the question on the most reliable source of intelligence in the state of Iraq regarding WMD, neither Saddam nor his generals, because of the nature Saddam's terroristic regime, had any true idea as to what they actually had.

So the English, the Americans, the Russians, the Egyptians, and the Jordanians all believed Saddam had WMDs, and SO DID SADDAM AND HIS GENERALS, and the U.S. decided to enforce the U.N. resolutions based on this and other intelligence... I would suggest that not enforcing the resolution in the face of this enormous evidence would have been reckless.

My own simpler explanation for where the WMD's probably are: (1) in holes; (2) in rivers; (3) in Syria (likliest).

I'm not as in tune on alot of these facts and stories as some of you are. My thoughts are fairly general/theoretical:

1. I am roughly a defender of a standard Just War theory, and as such, it's hard to justify a war for anything other than actual self-defense.

2. BUT...I'm willing to open up to have war to defend others who are being assaulted. So, a war to liberate Iraqis for human rights reasons might be legit. I'm skeptical that's why we actually went to Iraq, however.

3. I'm not as comfortable with preemptive or preventative war, on the level of theory. While it may be a little scary thinking that Iraq or whoever is developing WMD's, I'm not sure that justifies invasion. I'm not convinced of my position here, though. A lot of the current work in the Just War tradition focuses on this new position, but I'm yet to see a knock-down argument for either side.

4. It does strike me that, despite our reasons and intentions for being there, we didn't have a great plan for what happened AFTER the war was over. Oops.

quote:

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Originally posted by SparkleMotion:
Well, the nature of Saddam's terror regime lead to a couple of interesting results. Saddam demanded that his military develop weapons to threaten his neighbors. His generals & other military leaders, all felt that pressure from above (develop WMDs or DIE!!!!), and to the extent they weren't successful in developing the full slate of weapons requested, they LIED to each other and to Saddam about having those weapons. So not only did Saddam's generals -- hearing that their fellow generals had developed weapons -- think Iraq had developed the weapons, but so did Saddam himself. So in answer to the question on the most reliable source of intelligence in the state of Iraq regarding WMD, neither Saddam nor his generals, because of the nature Saddam's terroristic regime, had any true idea as to what they actually had.

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you could say this paranoia is a 'natural' byproduct of any police state's culture. ba'athist iraq was particularly severe because the murder count soared into the hundreds of thousands. mass graves will continue to turn up for years. no one was immune. crimes were conjured up for reasons the culprits could not keep track of. a feeding frenzy ensued and only the most vicious prospered. that would help explain why uday's exile after killing his father's food taster was so temporary. daddy needed his boy's bloodlust to insulate himself from clannish insecurities his own sicko policies created.

but saddam survived and thrived. the man withstood a civil war on three fronts for years, from the shia south, kurdish north, and from the lethal intrigues emanating from within his own intellgience superstructure.

don't overlook the actual material kay and duefler did discover. the paranoid mutterings that were leaked to the west led to over-estimates of iraq's true program strength. the real value of kay and duefler's work is what was found because that alone proved the ba'athists had lied again.

quote:

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Originally posted by philosopherEric:
4. It does strike me that, despite our reasons and intentions for being there, we didn't have a great plan for what happened AFTER the war was over. Oops.

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This has been my concern since before the invasion and was the foremost reason for my opposition to going into Iraq. I was incredulous at suggestions from within the administration that we would be greeted by happy Iraqis showering our troops with flowers. Yet it was a pervasive attitude and I can hardly dismiss the intelligence of those who espoused it. Before the invasion, a friend who is a Marine Colonel e-mailed his own conviction that our troops would be greeted with smiles. This is an individual who has has considerable experience in the field and at the Pentagon, attached to the NSA. In short, he's nobody's fool.

I also feared and still fear that the absence of Hussein will ultimately prove to further destabilize the region, which leaves me with a small, sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. There is no denying the evil of the man. His people, however, have no history of self-rule and in the absence of his iron fist, are more likely to go the direction of Afghanistan than not. Anarchy tends to have that effect. Witness Putin's ever-expanding powers in Russia.

At this point, I suspect the only thing worse than staying, would be hastening our depature due to the vagaries of political expediency.

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