Asymmetrical Information

I realized not long after enlisting (in 1980) that I had no choice but to trust the decisions of the NCA (National Command Authority). So I did - and I still do.

I do not ask that everyone trust in the NCA. I simply view the opinions of the general public as opinions - and nothing more.

At the risk of appearing credulous, I have to agree, generally, with Randy, though I may reach that conclusion for different reasons (or I may not). First, just as s/he implies, the government in its "providing for the common defense" role certainly has more and better information than I, in my "homemaking mom of three" role. Second and just as importantly, war is not recreational. What president would go to war on a lark or a whim? The (so far) men are elected; they're obviously going to seek as much clear justification as is available before putting society's most precious lives, barring children's and maybe pregnant women's, on the line, knowing that some-to-many will die even if we win. And the corollary: no matter how convinced they themselves are of the necessity of war, if they find that war can't be adequately justified to the mothers of vulnerable sons, they're not going to pursue that avenue.

Vietnam: the mothers of vulnerable sons were apparently sufficiently convinced by the threat of rampant Communism in the Soviet/nuclear era; the sons themselves, some of them, weren't, but those in office didn't yet feel they had to pay much heed to a voter demographic that didn't. Vote, I mean. Gross oversimplification. Now, that generation is the mothers of vulnerable sons, and the justification for war has correspondingly taken a turn from protection from a relative abstraction, plus prevention of the spread of a damaging ideology (both of which would apply in this case too), to prevention of a clear and present threat. But what president would make up a casus belli, with the stakes, for himself and the country, as high as they are?

To believe that Bush deliberately ignored good information (that we've none of us yet seen) indicating that Saddam didn't have WMDs, in favor of bad information that he knew was bad indicating that Saddam did have them, requires that you postulate that Bush is (1) malevolent personally, (2) blinded by his own arrogance and possibly a desire for revenge, which doesn't seem to be the case given reverses like the Meirs nomination as a recent example, and (3) stupid, which also doesn't seem to be the case given that he speaks without notes to the public and to world leaders regularly, with no one pulling his strings, and the occasional mispronunciation and malapropism appear to be his primary sins. (So far no "little Eichmanns"-esque comments or photo ops with sleazy broads have surfaced.)

Jamieb,

But those three things are exactly what the Bush haters in my liberal town believe. Rational discussion is impossible. I've always wondered about the sort of personality that can believe that Bush is an ignorant idiot and an evil genius at the same time.

Rex: here is one liberal ex ante case against the war:

This country has no idea how or ability to run Iraq after we invade.

that's really it; everything else is window dressing. The Powell speech, the leaks about stovepiping, the Rice speech about mushrooms clouds, the fights about the inspectors, the Iraqi unmanned aerial vehicles ready to spray poison gas ... if you couldn't tell that the administration was grasping at straws to come up with a legitimate basis to invade you weren't paying attention.

so, the case for war came down to: Saddam is a bad guy. And the case against war came down to: What happens after we win?

Is Bush a moron or an evil genius? He's neither. He's a man who had a particular goal -- depose Saddam -- and achieved it. The rest of us are just living with the consequences.

if you couldn't tell that the administration was grasping at straws to come up with a legitimate basis to invade you weren't paying attention.

You say 'legitimate', others say "compelling to the international community and others who disbelieved/were threatened by the 'neocon' rationale for the war". The point was to convince the UN and non-hardliners, so the administration 'grasped at straws' to use reasons that those factions had already used to condemn and put sanctions on Saddam. To the country, the President outlined many more reasons. Donald Rumsfeld might say 'you make the arguments you think your opposition might accept'.

so, the case for war came down to: Saddam is a bad guy. And the case against war came down to: What happens after we win?

"It strikes me that critics and supporters would extract different quotes."

--Do you mean war critics/supporters or critics/supporters or Mindles H. Dreck?

And the case against war came down to: What happens after we win?

hmmmm

The rape rooms are closed.

The mass killings have stopped.

Saddam can no longer harbor or fund terrorists.

Iraq has held two successful national elections.

This is the case against the war?

JamieB - Well said.

By the way, my credulity extends only to lawful orders. I never experienced any other kind, nor am I aware that any have been given in this war. In short, I think my trust in the NCA has been earned.

and: there is now the first democratically-created constitution in the history of the Mideast..

and: the UN Oil-for-food expose shows the UN as a corrupt cesspool (anyone think that the current govt's in France,Germany (oops, they're gone), and Russia are diplomatically STRONGER vis a vis the US now then they were before this exposure?)

and: Syria, mindful of the US presence next door, pulls out of Lebanon rather than use violence to suppress the Cedar revolution

and: Libya drops out of the WMD wannabe club

all at the (regrettable) cost of the lives of 2,000 volunteer servicemen in 31 months -- for perspective, we would need to fight for 71 years at that rate to equal the blood cost of Vietnam

whenever I hear about the 'gross incompetence' of the Admin in the post-invasion era, I wonder by what historical measurement they can be found wanting.

Francis,

It was clear to me (and evidently to many others) on the day that Bush announced his GWOT that we would have to invade Iraq. As Mindles points out above, the WMD issue was an add-on to the many reasons already existing to invade Iraq. And don't forget that Bush delayed the invasion for over 14 months to give the UN an opportunity to get its act together. Those 14 months were paid for by our men and women in uniform with increased casualties and deaths.

Our post-war plans have changed, but only in the implementation. The original plan was, and still is, to train Iraqi forces to the point where they can provide their own police, intelligence, and military forces to control their own country. We're doing that, but it takes time. Hell, it takes us about one year to train a grunt in the military before he is ready for combat, and we have a force structure already in place! It takes several years to train a junior NCO (Corporal) and six or seven years to train an SNCO (staff sergeant). Junior officers can be minimally ready in one year (2d Lts) while more seasoned officers take more time for the seasoning. The time it is taking to train the Iraqi forces is not unreasonable by any real-world standard, and the plan is working.

Have mistakes been made along the way? Of course--I don't think there has been any undertaking like this in history where mistakes weren't made. But mistakes are ALWAYS made; the trick is to minimize the mistakes and to learn from them. Our forces in Iraq are doing this, but the politicians and media stateside don't seem able to grasp this concept.

Mindless,
Hate to be too much of a stickler, but the link you provided isn't the president outlining anything. It's a Congressional resolution. More to the point, yes, other reasons were given, but let's be realistic. WMD and the possiblity that they could fall into the hands of terrorists were THE reason for the war. The other stuff is throw ins, mostly designed to provide cover. It's like when a buy a new car. Yes, technically they advertised a lot of things. But did you buy it for the cupholder, dome light, floor mats and rear spoiler, or were you more interested in the power train. I think its highly doubtful that this war could have been sold to the American public and their elected representatives if it were sold on rape rooms, torture, mass graves etc.

Willie:

You make a bald assertion that WMDs were THE reason for the war and everything else was an add-in. Would you mind backing that up with some evidence?

There was never a single rationale for the war, and WMDs were far, far, far from being the main rationale for the Administration. It may have been the main rationale the media focussed on (hey - scaring people sells papers and increases viewership, after all), and it may have been useful to Bush's opponents for post hoc political maneuvering, but the fact stands that it was only one of many given by the President, and only one of many accepted by the Congress and the people of the US.

At the risk of interrupting a perfectly delightful session of navel-gazing, there are two events in the real world worth noting:

* The Iranian leader has proclaimed, in English, that Israel must be destroyed "and we will be able to accomplish this soon", along with the United States. In the last 24 hours his government dismissed a whole bunch of Iranian diplomats, presumably for not being enthusiastic enough about the program outlined. (He also opined that the recent swoon in the Iranian stock market could be fixed "if we just hanged some people", i.e. stock brokers).

* Moslem rioting in Paris just entered its sixth (6th) day. It appears that the Moslem minority is now big enough (10% or maybe more) to flex some muscles. What will result, I cannot guess, but other European countries including Spain, Austria, Netherlands and Sweden also have growing, and militant, Moslem populations. Is this what they can expect as well?

We need to know if Islam and representative government are compatible, because if they are not, then the fundamental notion of multiculturalism is not only wrong, it's dangerous. The ongoing experiment in Iraq will in time offer some useful data...

If the congressional resolution sought by the executive isn't a definitive source for justification, I don't know what is. This is silly.

"I think its highly doubtful that this war could have been sold to the American public and their elected representatives if it were sold on rape rooms, torture, mass graves etc."

You need to add the theory that democracies don't attack each other or export terrorism. Furthermore, so what? You prove the point. Does what can be sold=what's right?

The administration did not go into this war exclusively for WMDs, they emphasized WMDs in a failed effort to gain broader support internationally and from the opposition party.

And all of that has nothing to do with the post above.

well, the rape rooms aren't closed; they've been leased to the US Army. and the mass killings ended about a decade ago (oh, and the worst of the mass killings occurred while Saddam was an ally.)

more to the point, though, before we can discuss whether the war is worth the cost, i think we need some agreement on the intended benefit. So what is the victory condition?

If we leave next year and the country collapses into civil war immediately, is that a win? What about a Kurdish/Shia power sharing agreement that makes the Turks very unhappy, that institutes a severe iranian-style Sharia law in the south, and that has a persistent Sunni rebellion in the center? Is that a win?

On the cost side, I'd like some links to presidential speeches preparing americans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars and to stay for years, possibly decades, in a hostile environment.

Given all the WMDs that were found, why does everyone insist that none were found.

http://biglizards.net/blog/archives/2005/11/weapon_of_mass.html

Stan writes:

>>>"Charles Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, told Fox News on June 24 that "some" old sarin and mustard rounds have been discovered in scattered places, demonstrating "that the Iraqi declarations were wrong at least in . . . amount." But Duelfer cautioned he was not ready to make any judgment whether there were any "still concealed" military-capable stockpiles."

You're going to hang your hat on that one? If this was a significant find, somehow, justifying the staggering cost in blood and money, don't you think Karl Rove would have those scattered, shells mounted on the Fox News Anchor desk 24/7? The shells described here:

>>>"Yesterday's coalition release also said that two other 122-milimeter rounds, found by the Poles on June 16 with help from an Iraqi informer, tested positive for small quantities of sarin but were "so deteriorated" that they would have had "limited to no impact if used by insurgents against coalition forces."
HERE

2032 American servicemen and women died because America was threatened by this?

Where is the reconstituted nuclear weapons program Dick Cheney had no doubt about? What was supposed to cause the "mushroom clouds" Condi Rice was announcing from podiums?

The real deal is that the Pax Americana Neo-Con scheme that is the Iraq Conflict would've never been supported by the majority of the American people, so another narrative had to be presented.

OVER 2000 LOST

--Cobra

If the congressional resolution sought by the executive isn't a definitive source for justification, I don't know what is.

[Off-topic]: Did you receive my Red Cross donation receipt by e-mail? I sent a copy to you and to Jane, but never received any reply.

The president spoke often about how this would be a long struggle. To be honest a constitution created at the cost of 2,000 of my comrades lives is amazingly cheap, and unprecidented. There were more lost in a single morning at Antietam creek.

When mentioning WMDs as a "lie" we have to remember that at the time the only people in the world who said that there were no WMDs in Iraq is a section of the CIA that also said that Iran, Pakistan, Lybia, India and North Korea had no nuclear programs.

That'll teach me to type with a baby asleep on my arm... "Jamieb," c'est moi.

Anyway. Cobra, you make my point for me. It appears the only rationale for (this) war (I won't try to overgeneralize your view) acceptable to you is an imminent threat against the lives of Americans. Bush specifically denied the imminence of Iraq's threat to us, while simultaneously (and correctly, in my estimation) stating that we could not afford to wait for the threat Saddam posed to become imminent, at which point our ability to act against it would be both lessened and reactive rather than preventative. (Side note: for those who say Saddam would never have allied with al Qaeda because he was a secularist, well, what on earth was he ever doing allied with the United States back in the dim mists of time, then? He, like a good realpolitician or something, was apparently willing to keep whatever bedfellows he perceived did him the most good.)

This is exactly what I was talking about concerning Vietnam: the war in Vietnam was "sold" to the public (there's never been a war that hasn't been "sold" in some way to those who had to support and fight it, so I've been alternately amused and irritated by people in high dudgeon who declare, "This war was SOLD!!?!" as if every other war was thoughtfully debated in the public square prior to a plebiscite determining whether it'd be waged) as necessary to stop the advance of Communism in the Far East, which was seen as a threat to the American way of life but not imminently to American lives, to defend the rights and lives of non-Communist Vietnamese, and only in the considerably longer term to protect American lives at home. These reasons were sufficient for those who had adult or near-adult memories of WWII and the years in which the USSR developed and tested nukes, but not for those who were children when the war ended.

In the '90s we made war on Saddam Hussein for having the unbelievable stones to invade a neighboring country with the intent of permanent occupation and control - doesn't happen often any more, does it? He had, and used, chemical weapons. He had scientists working hard to develop bioweapons and their delivery systems. He was seeking nukes, with an apparent immediate intent of "deterring" Iran, but the argument of us "haves" against letting more of the "have-nots" acquire nukes is that they're rather like cellphones: you say you'll only use them in an emergency, but before you know it, running out of milk constitutes an "emergency" and checking in with your sister is suddenly a matter of life and death. And in the hands of someone with Saddam's track record? Just how far could we bring ourselves to let him go?

The only problem I have with our preemptive strategy in Iraq is that there will undoubtedly be some who will want to apply it across the board, and that's terribly hubristic. I have zero problem with preempting Saddam's ability to arm freely and openly. I certainly hope even the Michael Moore Left of Saddam's Kite-Flying Paradise doesn't actually believe that he wasn't a-gonna study war no more - or that his psychopath sons were going to be an improvement.

http://www.halturnershow.com/ChineseDefenseMinisterTalksWarAgainstUS.html

Should something like this have any bearing on the Iraq calculus? Some of the people I know who were anti-Iraq invasion say we should be keeping our powder dry for real threats to our national security. Not ones that in hindsight appear to be figments of our imagination.

War and Peace are methods, not goals. We must be prepared for both.

Fortunately, in our diverse society, we have specialists dedicated to both. But now is a time for warriors. If you are not one, all that is asked of you is respect. Be grateful that this is all that is asked.

Nobody was all right (remember the war critics who said we'd lose 10,000 troops taking Baghdad?). You've got some points there.

While we're looking back, I feel pretty good about most of my own pre-war arguments. Yes, I thought he was further along with his WMD programs than he has since been proven to be, but I still think Saddam himself was more to blame than anyone for that; he was bluffing us while failing to cooperate with the inspectors, and he lost.

For my own part, Al Qaeda tried to kill me on September 11, and Saddam's regime openly cheered the attempt. So forgive me if I don't bend over backward to give the benefit of the doubt to a regime that thought it was a good idea to have me murdered.

All that is asked is respect? I think you're taking a very limited view of the externalities of this war.

The low number of soldiers lost in this war is a direct result of the modern military. Modern meaning we spend more money than lives. This money must come from somewhere and that somewhere greatly affects everyone in the USA and to a lesser extent, the world.

Additionally, do you think that 'warriors' exist in a vacuum? Do you think they don't have significant others, relatives, or friends? Do you think that many of them had no jobs or lives that were greatly disrupted when they were called up? If all that was asked of non-warriors was respect then the only cost of the war to the USA would be the soldiers who have died or been injured. However, that is not the case and thus your assertion comes off as being extremely reductionist.

If you are going to quote from the article, at least get it right:

Many times, we found huge drums of cyclosarin-based "pesticides" hidden in camouflaged ammunition bunkers... and many times we found empty chemical rockets and artillery shells, often at the same ammo dumps. But evidently, that doesn't constitute chemical weapons according to the ISG. But if Hussein's regime had actually poured the first into the second, then and only then would they be defined as chemical weapons.

Does this mean that a gun is not a gun if it's not loaded?

And:

In virtually every case - chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missiles - the United States has found the weapons and the programs that the Iraqi dictator successfully concealed for 12 years from U.N. weapons inspectors....

And:

At Karbala, U.S. troops stumbled upon 55-gallon drums of pesticides at what appeared to be a very large "agricultural supply" area, Hanson says. Some of the drums were stored in a "camouflaged bunker complex" that was shown to reporters - with unpleasant results. "More than a dozen soldiers, a Knight-Ridder reporter, a CNN cameraman, and two Iraqi POWs came down with symptoms consistent with exposure to a nerve agent," Hanson says. "But later ISG tests resulted in a proclamation of negative, end of story, nothing to see here, etc., and the earlier findings and injuries dissolved into nonexistence. Left unexplained is the small matter of the obvious pains taken to disguise the cache of ostensibly legitimate pesticides. One wonders about the advantage an agricultural-commodities business gains by securing drums of pesticide in camouflaged bunkers 6 feet underground. The 'agricultural site' was also colocated with a military ammunition dump - evidently nothing more than a coincidence in the eyes of the ISG."

That wasn't the only significant find by coalition troops of probable CW stockpiles, Hanson believes. Near the northern Iraqi town of Bai'ji, where Saddam had built a chemical-weapons plant known to the United States from nearly 12 years of inspections, elements of the 4th Infantry Division found 55-gallon drums containing a substance identified through mass spectrometry analysis as cyclosarin - a nerve agent. Nearby were surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, gas masks and a mobile laboratory that could have been used to mix chemicals at the site. "Of course, later tests by the experts revealed that these were only the ubiquitous pesticides that everybody was turning up," Hanson says. "It seems Iraqi soldiers were obsessed with keeping ammo dumps insect-free, according to the reading of the evidence now enshrined by the conventional wisdom that 'no WMD stockpiles have been discovered.'" [Emphasis added]

Coalition troops have found mortar shells filled with a mystery liquid that tested positive in the field for being a blister agent (mustard gas, used so horrifically in World War I, is a blister agent); subsequent testing (redefinition) by the ISG disputed that finding. But lost in the shuffle was the question that should have leapt out at everyone: what conceivable purpose is served by placing a liquid inside a mortar shell in the first place?

Putting any sloshing substance inside a ballistic object would obviously throw off the accuracy -- so there must be some advantage that offsets that problem. Can we put our heads together and think of some possibility, a reason why a man like Saddam Hussein would order some liquid to be poured into a rocket or a mortar round?

Even by the most tendentious definition of WMD, we have found some; so AP's overreach is just flatly wrong. But more important, the definition of WMD stockpile itself is wrong. When assessing threat, you dare not take the most benign view that all those drums of cyclosarin, "reference strains" of Anthrax and botulinum, and those empty chemical and biological munitions are unrelated and only coincidentally situated right next to each other in camouflaged bunkers and ammo dumps. You must use the most expansive defintion that takes into account the avowed intent of the Iraqi WMD programs to produce "dual use" chemical, biological, and even nuclear weapons. And by that definition -- which the ISG would have used in any other context than the CIA's attempt to thwart the Bush Administration's foreign policy -- we have indeed found "large stockpiles" of WMD.

Cobra -- massive supplies of 55 gallon drums full of chemical weapons agents located in camaflouged bunkers with weapon delivery systems.

Only a fool would believe that these were pesticides.

O'Scully,

Reductionist? Yes, that's true. Though I prefer to think of it as focused.

I'm still waiting for war critics to put forth a palatable, realistic, counterfactual history which didn't include the toppling of Iraq's Baathist regime.

Such critics never seem to be able to face up to the fact that the sanctions regime was not sustainable for a variety of reasons, not least of which was that two members of the Security Council were covertly subverting them. Such critics never seem to acknowledge that it was only the two armored divisions camped on Iraq's border which convinced the Baathists to allow useful inspections to begin again, and those armored divisions could not be kept there indefinitely.

More fundametally, I've yet to hear a war critic of any stripe, from Scowcroft to Moore, put forth a realistic vision of how the most fundamental aspect of the geo-political situation is to be addressed, that is how the future extraction of the world's most important natural resource, from the region in the world where there are the most proven reserves, is to be accomplished.

No critic is honest enough to simply come out and say, "Well, we'll just keep the model of the past eight decades, that of enslaving the native populations, via despotic proxies, and thus facilitate future petroleum extraction which is vital to the global economy."

They aren't honest enough to come out and say this openly because more than a few folks on the fence may then reasonably conclude that this decades-old model has just about run it's course, given events of the past 20 years. Well, folks, the oil is coming out, and would even if the U.S. became completely isolationist. Thus, the people of the Persian Gulf will either participate in it's extraction by being enslaved, or by being slaughtered, or by engaging in self-government and trading peaceably and profitably with the rest of the world. Them's the choices, and there ain't any fourth way. The third way may or not be accomplishable, but I would argue that it needs to be tried, since persisting in the first way will overwhelmingly likely result in the second way.

I wish the war critics would be honest enough to address this central condumdrum.

That's well said Will. No Appeasement for Oil?

Remember this constant drumbeat?

Cobra: strange name for a peacenik.

Anyway, thanks for posting links as links.

Stan, what are your sources for those cites? I'm interested.

Don

Will Allen writes:

No critic is honest enough to simply come out and say, "Well, we'll just keep the model of the past eight decades, that of enslaving the native populations, via despotic proxies, and thus facilitate future petroleum extraction which is vital to the global economy."

Very inciteful. But the other side of the coin is to ask how many war supporters will simply come out and state "Our policy for decades has been to keep the native population enslaved to facilitate petroleum extraction."

Well, one of my own arguments all along was that since the US had helped make the mess in Iraq through a history of despotism-by-proxy, it ought to be first in line to offer blood and treasure in order to try and clean things up.

Interestingly, whenever I tried positing this argument amidst strong anti-war types, US or elsewhere, they either disappeared or gave some patronizing "you just don't understand" send-off.

That'd be a fair argument to anyone who thought that starting a war in Iraq was at all likely to 'clean things up' in any desirable sense. To the rest of us strong anti-war types, not so much.

So the world finds the US a bit intimidating at present. I don't see the downside.

Our friends are still with us. Our trading partners are still trading. And those who are most intimidated were in desperate need of it.

The military is learning valuable lessons. You can do a lot with simulations, but you need a real war now and then to really fine tune.

Yes, I know the above really pisses off you anti-war types. For what its worth, you all can have the moral high ground. I'm a pragmatist. In some cases, an ounce of intimidation is worth a pound of preaching.

my problem with arguing with anti-war people is the same one i have arguing with leftists (funnily enough, they're often the same people), namely that they and their intellectual forefathers and fellow travellers have been party to he greatest crimes against humanity through prosecution, promotion, public relations, intellectual justification, denial, and fifth column activities for thsee crimes. Stalin's 20M+, Mao's 50M+++, Hitler (pre Barbarosa), Pol Pot, Uncle Ho, Iran, Slobodan Milosovic (ANSWER, Noam, Zinn, etc). Kellogg-Briand "outlawed" war, and disarmed decent countries. The Oxford Union voted to never go to war, emboldened Hitler, and crippled the UK. Church hearings destroyed an effective CIA.

The world is not run by rules but by power, especially in a unipolar world. When there is a balance of power, or among relative peers, rules for foreign affairs can be effective. But for conducting the affairs of an empire, barbarian tribes, and rebel states, no rules can or will suffice. Power is needed to enforce order, and pacifists will only succeed in what they always do: getting their fellow citizens killed by their actual or effective foreign allies.

Hopefully we will eventually deal with ANSWER et al in a manner unlike the mollycoddling given to the Soviet subversives of the antinuke and disarmament movement.

Michigander, Secretary Rice has made such statements, albeit not as bluntly as my presentation. That Scowcroft was her mentor adds much irony.

Lizardbreath, the point stands. Please put forth a realistic, palatable, counterfactual history in which the populations of the Persian Gulf achieve self-government, and thus are able to trade peacefully and profitably with the rest of the world. Keep in mind that the despots of the region, as long as they control the oil reserves, will never lack for mountains hard currency, and thus are largely immune to outside economic pressure, and will also consistntly use outside powers as the convienient target of hostility for the oppressed population.

Will,

Why does anyone need to put forth a counterhistory by which the populations of the Gulf achieve self government? The Iraq war isn't doing that, with the possible exception on Iraq itself, and even that looks somewhat dubious. Why does a war opponent have to come up with a proposal to provide self governance for the entire Gulf region when the pro War side doesn't?

Read what I wrote, Black bean. I asked that a conterfactual history be put forth by which the oil will be extracted. Iraq is a beginning, albeit not a huge one. The fact of the matter is that the population of Iraq, with the second largest oil reserves in the region, is much closer to controlling their oil reserves than would have been the case for several decades (at least) under continued Baathist rule.

Please state your preference, and indulge in no fantasies regarding global independence form Persian Gulf oil: do you prefer the continued enslavement of that population, in order to facilitate oil extraction, do you prefer the slaughter of that population, or do you favor self government and peaceful trade? If you prefer the third, what do you propose to act as the catalyst in order to effect that revolutionary change?

Don,

My first comment on this thread had the cite. It is http://biglizards.net/blog/archives/2005/11/weapon_of_mass.html

stan

Will, if you have a pointer to Rice's comments, I'd like to read them.

I think you have a realistic basis from which to start. Many of the war supporters seem to start from a different point of view. For instance, I've heard many a time about the horrific crime of Saddam gassing the Kurds. It was horrific, make no mistake. But administration at the time held their nose and pretty much ignored it.

Hindsight is 20-20 and there were reasons for it. But there is no excuse for those who deny history.

For the record, I thought this was the right war for the wrong reasons. The initial invasion was successful but the follow-up has been bungled.

"...indulge in no fantasies regarding global independence form Persian Gulf oil:

I will indulge in fantasies regarding global reduction in demand for Persian Gulf oil.

First, we set aside any hydrogen nonsense.

Next, all costs for the Central Command are paid for with taxes on transportation fuel.

We build new nuclear power plants. For every two megawatts of new nuclear production, we retire one megawatt of coal-fired electric power plants

Via tax incentives, we encourage the development of plug-in hydrids, shifting some of the transportation energy budget from oil to nuclear. The tax incentives last for 8 years, 4 years at initial level, declining by 20% in the fifth year and continuing until they are reduced by 80% in their eighth and final year.

We cease this ethanol nonsense. We probably consume more oil in the production of the ethanol than is replaced by the ethanol.

Michigander,

The idea that the follow-up was "bungled" seems to be the general wisdom. But I think it lacks perspective. We sent in a military force sufficient to take out Saddam's military and it did that handily. I think the idea was that the Iraqis would recognize an opportunity for a better life and start working towards it. What happened is that several groups attempted to take advantage of the power vacuum. Perhaps if we had put an extra half million people on the ground then we could have controlled the situation better. But I think it would have required at least half a million more and probably closer to a million. The cost alone made such a solution infeasible. And the truth is, that the responsibility for what happens to Iraq with Saddam removed has always been up to the Iraqis. So, did we bungle it? I think not. I think the Iraqi people did. The end result will be the same. It will just take longer. The cost in Iraqi lives has been tragic. But they are learning from it.

I think the follow-up has been pretty much as I expected it to be. The center of gravity in this strategic situation has always rested with enough of the Iraqi population recognizing their enlightened self-interest, and it was never clear to me that another half million American troops would have had a positive effect in this regard.

Yes, many things could be done to reduce dependence on Persian Gulf oil. Unfortunately, it is very doubtful than any combination of them would have a pronounced effect on the strategic situation. The population of the Persian Gulf has the bad fortune of being politically, economically, and technologically weak, while sitting atop a natural resource that far more powerful polities have a great demand for, and that demand can only be alleviated very slowly.

In the not-all-that-distant past this has been a near-certain recipe for outright slaughter and direct enslavement, no matter who the potential slaughterer or slaugterees have been. Humans have gotten a little more sophisticated in the past century or two, which is how enslavement by despotic proxies became the favored model. That model has now reached a point where those being enslaved come to wage war on the consumers of the natural resource, often with the implicit, if not explicit, encouragement of the despotic proxies. If the weak population does not achieve self-government, and thus the ability to trade productively, the older model, of outright slaughter, will likely be the logical response of a far stronger polity having war waged upon it by a far weaker one.

This is a fairly cold-blooded view of human affairs (although, for better or for worse, one that I think fairly accurate) which is why few politicians seeking popular support openly speak of it. In the age of Oprah, a dose of Hobbes isn't perceived as being very palatable.

As to Rice's comments, a Google search of the words, "Rice speech security stability" will likely lead you to some pertinent comments by Secretary Rice.

lending tree auto

I had the misfortune last night to flip past Bill O'Reilly (speaking of your demagogues, which we weren't, but anyway) when he was talking to - who was it, Newt Gingrich? O'Reilly, who of course supported the war for strong anti-terror reasons, kept on talking about how the American people "have to see some improvement in the situation" in Iraq, and suchlike, if the tide of public opinion is ever going to turn back toward support of our effort there. I don't get it. What more does he want? We, and the people of Iraq, have been setting and meeting goals at a breakneck pace since 2003. People are still being killed - no surprise. Ask Israel. But my gosh, they just had a freakin' constitutional referendum, two and a half years after the fall of Saddam, in which 61% of eligible voters participated, including many Sunnis who, back before the January election, were bent on boycotting all efforts in the political realm. I suppose it would've been more impressive if the lion had lain down with the lamb and a little child had led them...

I found this article - http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/344727D0-6B03-4A15-9342-D7D60F8CB15C.htm - in - well, you can see the source; it's amazingly positive. I have no idea what the article in the original language said. (Learning Arabic: on my list.)

Anyway. I continue to be skeptical about how the "more troops" solution would have played out. We clearly didn't need them to effect the downfall of the Hussein regime, and if we'd brought them in afterward, we would have been (1) fighting the "See? You are imperialist occupiers, bent on taking over our/that helpless nation!" thing and (2) putting more American lives in harm's way, when a primary public argument on the no-war-withdraw-now side has been that the stakes are not high enough to justify the sad, but historically low, toll we've already paid. (Whereas the Iraqis who were and are dying in place of the American soldiers who did not come into theater have one of the best of all justifications for their lives and deaths: their nation's future. Is it fair that they had no choice about where this battlefield would be? Probably not - but where else could it have been? We didn't choose to fight in the streets; the "insurgents" did.)

Good idea but you can also try Generic cialis from http://www.generic-compare.com

Hurricane Dubya

It is important to note that there is more afoot here than "just" (an abominable description) Two Thousand dead US servicemen and women. There are THOUSANDS of wounded, maimed, and otherwise ill servicepeople who have been evacuated from Iraq and are no longer part of Operation Iraqi Freedom (originally named, "Operation Iraqi Liberation", ironically.)

>>>"MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Okay, the human toll: The U.S. military dead in Iraq, including suicides, 2,035; U.S. military amputeed, wounded, injured, mentally ill, 48,100; Iraqi civilians dead, 117,700."
McGlaughlin Transcript

Those are staggering numbers, considering these key ISSUES:

1. We have a VOLUNTEER military.

From the CATO Institute:

>>>"Three decades ago the United States inaugurated the All-Volunteer
Force. The AVF produced the world’s finest military, capable of deterring
superpower competitors and coercing regional powers with relative ease.
Today, however, the U.S. military is under enormous strain. Although
it is the finest fighting force on the planet, it lacks sufficient strength to
satisfy the demands of an imperial foreign policy. The ongoing military
occupation of Iraq necessitated a massive troop rotation to relieve U.S.
forces deployed in that country, but that rotation did nothing to reduce
pressure on American service personnel....
551"
Publicly, many officials and analysts argue that there is no morale
problem. Yet the Stars and Stripes interview found that one-third of
soldiers said their own morale was low and half said their units’ morale
was low. Half said they would not reup once their tours end and the
DOD’s ‘‘stop-loss’’ order, which bars retirements, is lifted. Moreover, the
Stars and Stripes reported that it was hearing ‘‘edgier complaints about
inequality among the forces and lack of confidence in their leaders’’—
complaints stronger than the sort of griping common among enlisted
personnel.
Also critical is the attitude of service families. Worried Fox News
Channel commentator Robert Maginnis, ‘‘Either we find a fix to rotate
those troops out and to keep the families content . . . or we’re going to
suffer what I anticipate is a downturn in retention.’’ Army recruiters are
finding increasing resistance from parents, especially when they seek to
recruit 17-year-olds, who need parental approval to join."
CATO LINK

Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense has this to say about how long this insurgency could last:

>>>"
But on Sunday US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave the first indication Sunday that some members of the Bush administration recognize that the insurgency may not be in its "last throes," as Vice President Dick Cheney said recently. Mr. Rumsfeld told Fox News Sunday: "Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years."

"Coalition forces, foreign forces, are not going to repress that insurgency. We're going to create an environment that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi security forces can win against that insurgency."
Mr. Rumsfeld warned that violence could escalate ahead of new elections for a permanent government, due in December.

When asked to comment on Rumsfeld's remarks, Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said it was impossible to predict how long it would take to defeat the insurgents. "Politics is not mathematics," Reuters reports he told a conference in London.
The admission came two days after General John Abizaid, commander of US forces in the Persian Gulf, told a Congressional hearing that the insurgents in Iraq are just as strong today as they were six months ago, and that more foreign fighters are coming into the country than in past months. "

Rumsfeld Quote

2. We're using an extremely high number of Reservists and National Guard members.

>>>"The burden falls heaviest on reservists. Nearly 40 percent of the Iraq
garrison is made up of members of the Reserve and National Guard. The
average annual call-up during the 1990s was about 10,000. Lt. Gen. H.
Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, admits that the ‘‘weekend
warrior is dead.’’...

..."Which leaves the Reserves and National Guard. But those troops are
intended to supplement the active force in an emergency. Unfortunately,
write Philip Gold and Erin Solaro of the Aretea Institute, Washington is
using reservists ‘‘not just as reinforcements for the regulars but as substitutes.’’
The Army Reserve has been mobilized more in the last 12 years
(10 times) than in the previous 75 years (9 times). Today Guard and
Reserve units handle everything from civil affairs to personnel services.
Extended deployments place a greater burden on reservists than on
active duty forces because the former, who consciously chose not to join
the active force, must leave not only family, friends, and community but
jobs as well. The burden has been compounded by discrimination against
reservists, who often serve longer deployments than active duty soldiers
but are last on the list to receive the best equipment, such as Kevlar vests.
Nevertheless, the military has been pressuring reservists to waive the
statutory requirement of 12 months home between overseas deployments."

CATO LINK

Not to mention the morbid fact that many of these reservists are GRANDFATHERS.

GI GERIATRIC

3. The plan of standing up Iraqi troops so US troops can stand down is apparently not working:

>>>"Three car bombs detonated nearly simultaneously just north of Baghdad, killing at least 60 people yesterday as an American commander told members of Congress in Washington that only one Iraqi battalion was able to operate independently of U.S. forces.

The report by Army Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, surprised the Senate Armed Services Committee, since Casey had told Congress in June that three battalions were combat ready.

Republican and Democratic senators alike questioned whether U.S. plans could succeed to draw down forces as Iraqi troops are trained.

"It is ... discouraging to hear today that there is only one Iraqi battalion that is fully capable," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. "It doesn't feel like progress."

A battalion is composed of about 300 troops."

Iraq Battalions

Let's do some math here...

300 soldiers is approximately 1/533rd of our total US deployment in Iraq as of now, and we're now entering our 32nd month of this war. If this current rate of Iraqi "stand alone" troop development continues, theoretically there wouldn't be anyone currently alive today who would live to see HALF of our deployment replaced.

A hint as to WHY it's going so slow?

>>>"

The reconstruction of Iraq's security forces is the prerequisite for an American withdrawal from Iraq. But as the Bush administration extols the continuing progress of the new Iraqi army, the project in Baiji, a desolate oil town at a strategic crossroads in northern Iraq, demonstrates the immense challenges of building an army from scratch in the middle of a bloody insurgency.

Charlie Company disintegrated once after its commander was killed by a car bomb in December. And members of the unit were threatening to quit en masse this week over complaints that ranged from dismal living conditions to insurgent threats. Across a vast cultural divide, language is just one impediment. Young Iraqi soldiers, ill-equipped and drawn from a disenchanted Sunni Arab minority, say they are not even sure what they are fighting for. They complain bitterly that their American mentors don't respect them.

In fact, the Americans don't: Frustrated U.S. soldiers question the Iraqis' courage, discipline and dedication and wonder whether they will ever be able to fight on their own, much less reach the U.S. military's goal of operating independently by the fall.

"I know the party line. You know, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Army, five-star generals, four-star generals, President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld: The Iraqis will be ready in whatever time period," said 1st Lt. Kenrick Cato, 34, of Long Island, N.Y., the executive officer of McGovern's company, who sold his share in a database firm to join the military full time after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "But from the ground, I can say with certainty they won't be ready before I leave. And I know I'll be back in Iraq, probably in three or four years. And I don't think they'll be ready then."

Mission Improbable

These are the realities of this conflict that some of my more hawkish friends on this blog don't wish to acknowlege or discuss. It's almost as though the more bleak the actual details seem, the more SUPPORTIVE they seem to be for an ELECTIVE war...one that was chosen, against a sovereign nation that never attacked us.

Some responses to other statements here:

Rex writes:

>>>"Hell, it takes us about one year to train a grunt in the military before he is ready for combat, and we have a force structure already in place! It takes several years to train a junior NCO (Corporal) and six or seven years to train an SNCO (staff sergeant). Junior officers can be minimally ready in one year (2d Lts) while more seasoned officers take more time for the seasoning. The time it is taking to train the Iraqi forces is not unreasonable by any real-world standard, and the plan is working."

300 soldiers in 32 months is NOT a reasonable plan, IMHO.

Jamie writes:

>>>" Bush specifically denied the imminence of Iraq's threat to us, while simultaneously (and correctly, in my estimation) stating that we could not afford to wait for the threat Saddam posed to become imminent, at which point our ability to act against it would be both lessened and reactive rather than preventative."

Not to overgeneralize, or simplify your point Jamie, but this would lend credence to the argument that the Bush Administration will only respond with force to a "potentially threatening" country that can't adequately defend itself. After all, Iraq had no Navy and virtually no air force (planes were buried, hidden, etc.), and absolutely NO capacity to conduct a conventional military strike against any part of the United States including Alaska and Hawaii. The word "bully" comes to mind with this analysis.

Stan writes:

>>>"Cobra -- massive supplies of 55 gallon drums full of chemical weapons agents located in camaflouged bunkers with weapon delivery systems.

Only a fool would believe that these were pesticides."

First, Iraq has NEVER had a weapons delivery system capable of reaching any part of the United States.

Second:

Sarin is similar in structure and biological activity to some commonly used insecticides, such as Malathion, and is similar in biological activity to carbamates used as insecticides such as Sevin, and medicines such as Mestinon, Neostigmine, and Antilirium."

Sarin Definition

Third, what's your fixation on IRAQ regarding Sarin?

>>>"Only Russia and the United States have officially declared that they have stockpiles of sarin. The United States began developing sarin as part of its chemical weapons program in the 1950s; it now has more than 5,000 tons of sarin stored across the country. Russia has about 11,700 tons of sarin.

Other countries may also have sarin stockpiles. India and South Korea have chemical warfare agents, but we don’t know whether they have sarin. In May 2002, the Bush administration accused Syria of having a sarin stockpile. Experts also suspect Egypt, Iran, Libya, and North Korea of having sarin."

Sarin

Stan, it looks like you may be proposing a whole lot of pre-emptive invasions based upon your thesis.

What is evident in the sum of this thread is a sense of entitlement: that somehow, manifest destiny has been reborn in the 21st Century, and providence has dained that America is free to invade any country it sees fit, abscond its wealth and natural resources , and force its way of life on others at the point of a gun.

Exactly what would be the argument against ANOTHER country following the same course of action? It's discomforting to hear the "might makes right--Pax Americana" battle hymns in 2005, while those who suffer the most from this war are not heard from at all.

--Cobra

Comments are Closed.