Category: Politics

The Sunday London Times reported today that the US/UK WMD report is being shelved. (Here’s the direct link, but it’s only useful if you live in the UK or want to pay some money.) 1,400 people spent four months scouring Iraq for evidence of WMD, but found nothing. So little did they find that they won’t even publish the report.

Now, at the beginning of August, David Kay was talking up his progress. At the time, it was pretty clear that he was setting up the argument that Saddam was maintaining the “capacity” for WMD, rather than having any actual weapons, despite what Bush said before the war.

Now it looks like he was even lying (or sorely mistaken) about that.

I can’t think why anyone on either side of the debate about Iraq wouldn’t want that report to be published. Or is this more of that information that’s too dangerous for ordinary citizens to know?

Informative reading for the day: David Niewart debunks the “Bush’s family supported the Nazis” meme. He also nails the reasons why it’s important to look into the reality of the connections between Nazi Germany and American industrialism. It’s a fairly lengthy article in four parts (1, 2, 3, 4) but well worth the time.

Turns out the Brits agreed with those dire warnings that the collapse of Iraq might result in the spread of chemical weapons:

“The JIC assessed that any collapse of the Iraqi regime would increase the risk of chemical and biological warfare technology or agents finding their way into the hands of terrorists, not necessarily al-Qaeda.”

Mind you, since it turned out Saddam didn’t have WMD after all, they were wrong. Still, you’ve got to wonder why Blair (and Bush) denied any such possibility pre-war.

I love my freedom so much that I am willing to accept certain risks to preserve it. I want, yes, my medical records to be inviolate. We are willing to send soldiers to die in Iraq if we think it will preserve our freedoms. I ask this: what sort of gutless people are willing to risk the lives of others to protect freedom, but are not willing to risk their own?

Freedom has costs. Brutal, cruel, harsh costs. Freedom is not comfort. Freedom is the most terrifying thing on the face of the earth, and it is damnably hard to truly believe in freedom. “Why, if the people could do whatever they wanted, there’d be anarchy! Chaos in the streets!” Deep down in our souls, we don’t even trust ourselves with freedom.

And so it is that at times like these all too many of us are willing to surrender that freedom. We’re willing to accept the Patriot Act, because after all we’re at war. We know, on an instinctive level, the truth: that freedom and safety are not entirely compatible concepts.

The question, as always, is this: which of the two is more important to you? There’s no wrong answer. But don’t lie about it.

Okay, sure.

“Two years ago, I told the Congress and the country that the war on terror would be a lengthy war, a different kind of war, fought on many fronts in many places. Iraq is now the central front.”
— George Bush

“Don’t you tell me not to worry about bin Laden
Have you forgotten?”
— Darryl Worley

For the record: no, I haven’t forgotten. I remember quite distinctly where I was and what I was feeling that day. I remember thinking that we needed to find the people responsible and do something about it. I still think that. I hope that, someday, we remember that Osama bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks. I hope that the White House will someday devote some time to reminding people who our enemy was and is.

We are fighting a war built on lies. Bush took 9/11 and turned it into an excuse for carrying out a plan he’d built well before that tragic day. As a result, our military is overextended and our world credibility is slipping. We are unable to reduce the North Korean threat; only this week we’ve learned that they’ve developed longer range missiles sufficient to reach the heartland of America.

We are not winning the war in Afghanistan. We’re certainly not losing, and the Taliban isn’t in power, but until the country is stable I don’t see how we can claim to have won. We have a smattering of troops in that country, because there aren’t any more available. Contrary to pre-war claims, Iraq really has consumed all of our available military strength.

I remember that we have provided Osama bin Laden with an opportunity to do something he could not do in the year after 9/11: namely, kill Americans. By putting our troops in Iraq, we have provided him with targets he could not have otherwise reached. Consider this. Between 9/11 and the occupation of Iraq, there were no American deaths at the hands of Al Qaeda. Since Bush declared combat operations over, we’re seeing terrorists killing Americans on a weekly basis.

But has Bush forgotten all this? Apparently so.

Clayton Cramer has more comments on Amazon; in fact, he posted my email to him (which is fine by me). I emailed him back, and since I don’t know if he’ll post it, I’ll summarize here.

I think it’s ludicrous to claim that nobody takes Mein Kampf and The Protocols of Zion seriously. (Let alone The Turner Diaries.) It’s not too complicated. Buford Furrow. Michael Ryan. Eric Rudolph.

Cramer has a bit of a persecution complex, which is no surprise to anyone who remembers his Usenet days.

Heads up to all the neocons going on about how Australia’s proven to be a true friend, who will be with us always and us always with them, here’s to the new Anglo-American ruling faction, etc. Australia ain’t sending peacekeepers to Iraq. Hope this doesn’t make anyone’s head spin with the complexities. Helpful hint to said neocons: you can’t always decide what the next ten years of foreign policy are gonna be based on the last six months.

We have a new candidate for the most chilling statement on WMD. They’ve actually been dancing around this one for a while, but John Bolton just got around to saying it. Here’s the AP lede:

The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was justified in part because Saddam Hussein retained scientists capable of building nuclear weapons, Washington’s top arms control official said Thursday.

In other words, it was justified because Saddam didn’t get rid of the scientists. And here I thought we were unhappy with Saddam’s tendency to kill inconvenient people.

But, OK, let’s be fair. That’s not a direct quote, and it’s completely possible that the Associated Press reporter is being a tad misleading. In fact, if you read the direct quotes from the article, you’ll notice that Bolton is saying that Saddam was keeping the scientists around in order to rebuild WMD programs. It wasn’t just that Saddam let them live, it’s that Saddam kept them around for that specific purpose.

Except that even if you’re that fair, it’s still ludicrous, because now you’re justifying the invasion based on what we think Saddam might have been planning — even though every captured Iraqi scientist and minister has said “Nope, wasn’t anything going on.”

And even if you accept that bit of ludicrousness, it still contradicts the stated justification before the war. In fact, let’s look at Bolton’s November 1, 2002 speech to the Husdon Institute:

“Iraq’s procurement agents are actively working to obtain both weapons-specific and dual-use materials and technologies critical to their rebuilding and expansion efforts, using front companies and whatever illicit means are at hand… It has rebuilt its civilian chemical infrastructure and renewed production of chemical warfare agents, probably including mustard, sarin and VX. It actively maintains all key aspects of its offensive BW [biological weapons] program.”

One more time!

“Whether he possessed them today or four years ago isn’t really the issue,” versus “It has rebuilt its civilian chemical infrastructure and renewed production of chemical warfare agents…”

It’s possible to argue that the invasion was justified for humanitarian reasons. However, the issue is not simply whether or not the invasion was justified. The issue is also whether or not John Bolton lied to us one year ago.

As per expectations, initial reaction to the first attempt to get more international aid in Iraq was not good. Germany is being negative, and Russia is making it clear that they need UN involvement. From one angle, it looks like Russia is making concessions, but note that Russia is implacable about UN approval. They’re letting us know that we can get what we want… if we do it their way. Chirac, unsurprisingly, is on board with Germany and Russia.

On the other hand, Thailand just sent 21 soldiers. So that’s something. And it’s just the initial deployment — they’ll be up to a full 443 soldiers at some point.

OK, so that’s not really so great. The UK may add 5,000 troops to their deployment, which is far more significant. On the other hand, the Congressional Budget Office says we can’t maintain the current 180,000 troops in Iraq past March of next year. We’ll have to drop the numbers to 64,000 men maximum at that point.

Gonna be a bit of a shortfall.

The US is working on a new UN resolution intended to encourage foreign assistance in Iraq. Five bucks says the first version circulated turns out to be unacceptable to the Security Council.

Unfortunately for Bush, he’s negotiating from a position of weakness. After having said he doesn’t need the UN and calling the Security Council irrelevant, he’s now finding that he has to go back and ask them for help. There aren’t many weaker negotiating stances than that.