Author: Bryant

Phil Carter reports on an important piece of news out of the Army War College. Essentially, to quote Phil, “America’s strategy of pre-emptive defense might lead to pre-emptive strikes by terrorists and rogue nations around the world, possibly with weapons of mass destruction. Asymmetric warfare — striking at U.S. weakpoints with unconventional tactics — will also become the norm by which our enemies fight us.”

I’m a little surprised that this is seen as surprising; we have already entered into that era. What else was 9/11? Still, if this raises awareness, I’m glad.

We should also remind ourselves of the lessons learned from General Van Riper’s war game. He managed to pull out something close to a victory for what was essentially the Iraqi side, and some of us were very quick to point at his results during the second week of Gulf War II. Our bad. We need to recognize that the potential for such tactics does not constitute the inevitability of such tactics.

On the other hand, we’d best be ready for ‘em. So, yeah, good exercise.

Tim Dunlop makes a totally unsubstantiated report on terrorist recruiting. (Via CalPundit.) I do not believe or disbelieve it, I just think it’s worth noting. The interesting bit is the increase in MI6 recruitment. One could take it as evidence that the terrorist threat is increasing, or one could take it as an indication that public fear drives hiring in certain government agencies. Both are rather distressing.

Speaking of which, the State Department’s Patterns of Global Terrorism 2002. Much trumpeted, since the number of terrorist attacks went from 355 in 2001 to 199 in 2002. Woo! However, if you look at the numbers, you’ll find that most of that drop is because of a sharp drop in Latin American terrorism.

The much maligned Western Europe is the area which is showing steady decline in incidents over the last four years, by the by. Africa’s doing pretty well too, which probably does reflect a drop in terrorism sourced from the Middle East. But man, Europe has its act together. Might be the IRA getting out of the terror business, dunno. Oh, and “France has provided outstanding military, judicial, and law-enforcement support to the war against terrorism.” Also, “Germany is an active and critically important participant in the global Coalition against terrorism. The country’s efforts have made a valuable contribution to fighting terrorists inside and outside of German territory.” Booyah.

Bush really nailed it in his tax relief speech yesterday:

“And in our society, when somebody demands a good or a service, somebody is going to produce that good or a service…”

Not bad. Now, apply that logic to abortions and drugs.

From a pre-war speech by Robin Cook:

Ironically, it is only because Iraq’s military forces are so weak that we can even contemplate its invasion. Some advocates of conflict claim that Saddam’s forces are so weak, so demoralised and so badly equipped that the war will be over in a few days.

We cannot base our military strategy on the assumption that Saddam is weak and at the same time justify pre-emptive action on the claim that he is a threat.

Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of the term – namely a credible device capable of being delivered against a strategic city target.

It probably still has biological toxins and battlefield chemical munitions, but it has had them since the 1980s when US companies sold Saddam anthrax agents and the then British Government approved chemical and munitions factories.

Why is it now so urgent that we should take military action to disarm a military capacity that has been there for 20 years, and which we helped to create?

Why is it necessary to resort to war this week, while Saddam’s ambition to complete his weapons programme is blocked by the presence of UN inspectors?

Boy, I thought his reasoning looked good then. It looks incredible now.

The US announced a new arms inspection team to replace the team which is now departing. Condoleeza Rice has explained that this was a planned rotation, which is why they’re only announcing it after we heard that the old team was leaving. She’s also asserted that we never expected to find the WMD easily, which continues to puzzle me, given that we were told that many Republican Guard units were issued chemical weapons.

For the detail oriented, the Center for Cooperative Research put together a chronology of Bush’s movements on 9/11. (Via the Dead Parrots.) I can’t get very upset about Bush going in and doing his photo op — I know that on that day it took a while for me to react. It was, after all, incredibly shocking. What does strike me as strange is the reaction of the Secret Service. As is pointed out in the timeline, evacuating Bush should have been as high a priority as evacuating Cheney.

Also, of course, the rewriting of history bears examination. But that’s a partisan issue; everyone rewrites history.

Iraq update:

I haven’t yet been willing to say that we should give up on finding WMD in Iraq, although I think it’s pretty damned unlikely. Might be about time to take that step. The 75th Exploitation Task Force, which is the group in charge of finding WMD in Iraq, is getting ready to head home. (Via CalPundit.)

Boy. Remember during the war when we were told that Saddam had issued chemical weapons to the Republican Guard? I guess when the Guard was giving up, they remained loyal enough to Saddam to destroy those weapons with methods so complete that we can’t find any traces of them. While they were slipping away into the countryside.

Also, Barbara Bodine has been relieved as US coordinator for central Iraq. That’s good news, since she was the one who made that little mistake about Kuwait and Iraq in the early 90s. Interestingly, the Washington Post reports that Jay Garner will be heading home too.