Republicans & Conservatives: Archives

Sebastian,

1) Who exactly are “those who think that Iraq wouldn’t engage in anti-US terrorism”? Everyone I know on the left acknowledges that Iraq, like a great many other nations, has had contacts with terrorists and has even hatched terror plots. But we don’t think any of these contact or plots (at least not in the past decade or so) were likely to have been serious enough to warrant an invasion.

2) Kevin Drum’s peice quotes the LA Times article saying that the common word on the street in Russian political circles, and then he proceeds to wonder why people on the street in Russia think this. Where’s the irrationality there? Is it really completely irrational to think that the dictator-in-training in Russia might not be totally honest? Matt Yglesias links to and comments on the same article. If you have a beef, it is with those folks who concern themselves with Russian politics, not with irrational liberal Americans.

3) You seem to suggest that people who didn’t support the war “don’t feel the need to deal with [Putin’s revelations] at all”. Looks to me that they are dealing with them very much by putting a lot of thought into them. What do you propose to do about Putin’s revelations? Take them at face value? That sounds more like someone doing nothing at all.

I don’t understand why you are so opposed to scrutiny and skepticism on this issue. Putin’s revelations are pretty darn surprising and inconsistent, given that he opposed the war before and still opposes it now.

Why didn’t he tell us this before? Obviously Putin’s job isn’t to evaluate threats to the US, but it’s telling that he didn’t think that Saddam’s threats were serious enough to warrant telling the US about them in 2002 or 2003. First, he didn’t (and still doesn’t) think them serious enough to justify a US invasion. Second, can you imagine the geopolitical firestorm that would have erupted if Saddam had attacked the USA and it was later revealed that Putin knew about it? Third, can you imagine how totally busted Saddam would have been if a terror attack had occurred any time after 9/11? Building a coalition against him would have been a breeze.

If, perhaps, he *did* tell us this before but the Bush Administration didn’t reveal it to the American people and the world until now, well, why? To protect his agents in the Saddam regime (which has been non-existent for a year now)? This doesn’t make sense either.

Indeed, Putin’s story is so chock full o’ holes that anything less than a profoundly deep skepticism would be “irrational”. Or partisan. Or something.

-Cf

“Russian President Vladimir V. Putin said Friday that his intelligence services had received several reports before the war last year that Iraq was planning terrorist attacks against U.S. targets.”

Hmm… sounds familiar…

“The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” - George W. Bush’s State of the Union Address

Ah, yes.

With Putin, there’s a certain skepticism because his people didn’t join with us in Iraq. They opposed us at the UN. If they had knowledge of terrorist threats grave enough to justify the war then the question, quite simply, is why they didn’t support us?

The question, in terms of starting this war, was whether or not Saddam was actively collaborating with Al Quaeda. That is the Security justification for the pre-emptive war right there. Otherwise, there was no reason to refight the Gulf war.

It seems to me that your people are so busy trying to prove that there was a terrorist connection in the first place, that you don’t address that issue of the active security threat you earlier claimed he posed.

Pre-emptive wars are not things lightly entered into, nor things to be done because people trouble us, or annoy us. They are to be the answer to direct, imminent threats that we have a reasonable assurance of actually existing. The trouble with pre-emptive wars is that they place the burden of proof in the international community on the person who has struck first.

In other words, us. Frankly, I don’t like to be in the position of having to explain my countries decision to attack. It should be obvious why we’re going in. We should have the evidence for our causus belli for all to see. Then we have freedom. Then people can support us with fewer worries. Look at it this way: you either get your diplomatic messes out of the way first, or you have to slog through worse ones later.

Just curious about the future tense of your headline Sebastian. Seems a bit misleading in light of present circumstances, and intended to heighten alarmist reaction where no basis for such now exists.

“The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” - George W. Bush’s State of the Union Address”

Ceejayoz, if you are attempting to imply that the British government was wrong, you might want to remember that Mr. Wilson (the main source for suggestions that they were wrong) now admits that according to Niger officials Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf, the Iraqi information minister, was seeking uranium. But perhaps you had some other point.

1) Who exactly are “those who think that Iraq wouldn’t engage in anti-US terrorism”? Everyone I know on the left acknowledges that Iraq, like a great many other nations, has had contacts with terrorists and has even hatched terror plots. But we don’t think any of these contact or plots (at least not in the past decade or so) were likely to have been serious enough to warrant an invasion.

I’m glad that we all finally agree that Iraq was willing to engage in terrorist acts against the US.

Sebastian, where did you hear that? I’d love to read more about it. He’d have to print some serious corrections in his book I’d imagine!

-Cf

Eric, what do you mean “finally”?

Maybe I’d understand your opinions better if you or Sebastian or anyone else would answer the question Who exactly are “those who think that Iraq wouldn’t engage in anti-US terrorism”? Because the only person I’ve ever heard say that is Saddam Hussein.

-Cf

It is in his book.

CF-

Maybe I’d understand your opinions better if you or Sebastian or anyone else would answer the question Who exactly are “those who think that Iraq wouldn’t engage in anti-US terrorism”? Because the only person I’ve ever heard say that is Saddam Hussein.

Besides every major newspaper and media oulet? I thought your position was that Saddam wasn’t a threat to us like Al Qaeda was.

Here’s a taste of what I mean. Tell me what this BBC headline is saying about whether there was any links between Al Qaeda and Iraq.

President George W Bush has disputed findings by a commission investigating the 9/11 attacks that there was no link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. -news.bbc.co.uk

But in the next paragraph it says:

Mr Bush said his administration never claimed Iraq helped co-ordinate the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US, only that it had had contacts with al-Qaeda.

The attempt to deceive is plain and it isn’t the administration.

But President Bush remained adamant on Thursday that there had been “numerous contacts” between Iraq and al-Qaeda.

“The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al-Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda,” he told reporters.

“This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al-Qaeda. We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.”

For the Bush administration, this has been one of the most politically damaging conclusions reached by the commission so far, says the BBC’s Rob Watson in Washington.

It prompted Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry to accuse Mr Bush of misleading the American people.

It’s like a semantic game liberals are desparate to continue because they can’t admit they were wrong.

You’re the one playing a semantic game here, Eric, not us. While some headlines might say “no link”, the substance of the articles always says “links existed but they were entirely insubstantial”.

Semantically and pedantically, of course, any kind of “link” is a “link”. Osama bin Laden could have crank called Saddam and it would count as a “link” of course. But in the real world a “link” has to be something very substantial, especially if it is being used as a grounds for an invasion (now, absurdly, the primary grounds, it seems).

The evidence of an Iraqi “link” to Al Qaeda is no better than the evidence of a Czech or British “link” to Al Qaeda.

However, the evidence of an Iraqi “link” to Al Qaeda is a thousand times flimsier than the well-known and extremely substantial Pakistani and Saudi “links” to Al Qaeda. If you want links, well, those are links!

You can play all the semantic games you want (and accuse those of us who speak common sense english of misleading), but the fact of the matter is that contacts existed and they were trivial and hardly rose to the level where the Administration can recklessly call it a “link”. Any fool knows that the word “link” when spoken by the President means “they were deeply in cahoots”. That’s what he meant us to believe.

Cheney, when asked about why so many Americans still believe the Iraq-9/11 link, outrageously answers “I can understand how people can come to that conclusion”. This is tantamount to saying that such an opinion is valid. His negligence is totally intentional and totally intended to perpetuate the Iraq-9/11 impression. Semantically, he has not lied, but in the real world such statements are dripping with deceit.

And we thought Willie was slick!

-Cf

Ceejayoz, if you are attempting to imply that the British government was wrong, you might want to remember that Mr. Wilson (the main source for suggestions that they were wrong) now admits that according to Niger officials Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf, the Iraqi information minister, was seeking uranium. But perhaps you had some other point.

From The Washington Post:

Tenet’s statement noted that Wilson had reported back to the CIA that a former Niger official told him that “in June 1999 a businessman approached him and insisted that the former official meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss ‘expanding commercial relations’ between Iraq and Niger. The former official interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales.”

In his book, Wilson recounts his encounter with the unnamed Niger official in 2002, saying, he “hesitated and looked up to the sky as if plumbing the depths of his memory, then offered that perhaps the Iraqi might have wanted to talk about uranium.” Wilson did not get the Iraqi’s name in 2002, but he writes that he talked to his source again four months ago, and that the former official said he saw Sahhaf on television before the start of the war and recognized him as the person he talked to in 1999.

From the Washington Post:

You know, this is what got you in trouble in the first place: leaving out the qualifiers. The maybes, the mights, and all that other crap that dilutes the impact of what you want people to believe. While I wouldn’t put it past Saddam to try and attain Uranium, the source here is only saying that there was an implied or vague attempt to discuss Uranium. And we are relying on the memory of one official years after the fact for this.

As for the letter, that bit of british intelligence, I see nothing here that would imply or baldly state that Wilson was contradicting his earlier opinion about that letter. What that leaves is a connection that’s pretty fricking thin. It gets thinner when you realize that what the letter was supposed to address.

Now this is much more solid, and indicates much better what the substance of that letter is suppose to be. From the New Yorker:

In late February, the C.I.A. persuaded retired Ambassador Joseph Wilson to fly to Niger to discreetly check out the story of the uranium sale. Wilson, who is now a business consultant, had excellent credentials: he had been deputy chief of mission in Baghdad, had served as a diplomat in Africa, and had worked in the White House for the National Security Council. He was known as an independent diplomat who had put himself in harm’s way to help American citizens abroad.

Wilson told me he was informed at the time that the mission had come about because the Vice-President’s office was interested in the Italian intelligence report. Before his departure, he was summoned to a meeting at the C.I.A. with a group of government experts on Iraq, Niger, and uranium. He was shown no documents but was told, he said, that the C.I.A. “was responding to a report that was recently received of a purported memorandum of agreement”—between Iraq and Niger—“that our boys had gotten.” He added, “It was never clear to me, or to the people who were briefing me, whether our guys had actually seen the agreement, or the purported text of an agreement.” Wilson’s trip to Niger, which lasted eight days, produced nothing. He learned that any memorandum of understanding to sell yellowcake would have required the signatures of Niger’s Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, and Minister of Mines. “I saw everybody out there,” Wilson said, and no one had signed such a document. “If a document purporting to be about the sale contained those signatures, it would not be authentic.” Wilson also learned that there was no uranium available to sell: it had all been pre-sold to Niger’s Japanese and European consortium partners.

So, first of all, we aren’t even dealing with an interest, or a desire here, we are dealing with a letter that purports to tell us that they have already reached an understanding for Niger to sell Iraq Uranium. This is what would constitute a danger, were it true. Possession of Uranium is obviously more imminent of a danger than the wish for it.

Second of all the document didn’t have the signatures that Niger’s government would need to permit the sale of Uranium.

Third, there was no Uranium available for sale. It was all going to Japanese and European Consortiums, presold.

So, your revelation, thin to begin with, is of little consequence, if you know what it was that the letter claimed, and just how hard Wilson’s fact-finding mission shot that letter down. Your people were implying a much more hazardous situation than your defense here would cover. Again, you are willing to conflate the wish to be a threat, with the actuality of being one.

You know, you actually had me there for a moment. I actually thought I’d have to defend against something of substance. Instead, it seems, I only have to go back to the facts to know how weak your defenses really are. And you wonder why people like me hold your administration in such low regard.

Middle East terror bagan with a 1983 CIA car bomb attack in Bierut, which killed 80 innocent churchgoers while missing the intended target, a Moslem cleric. Saddam Hussien was brought to power by a US CIA sponsored coup. We also sabotaged a moderate democratic regime in Iran in favor of the Shah. As the world’s largest stockpiler and trader of WMDs, we knew and know that Hussien had WMDs, because we sold them to him and encouraged their use against Iran. Then Reagan (actually #41) traded arms for hostages while Carter’s should have been in charge of our country. There is high level documentation that Cheney used 9-11 to carry out oil spoils plan to attack Iraq. A substantial US majority bought “evil threat” malarky because our press and opposition parties are weak and they have faith in the good intentions of Republocrates. The honest agenda is hidden and what we get is nonsense that plays well on radio and television. There is no better example of this than pretending that the Hussien regime, was a threat to our national security. The truth is revealed in his inability to resist our invasions, twice.

Bayviking,

You left out the trilateral commission and the illuminatti.

Eric:

More importantly, I forgot to mention that the CIA trained and equipped Osama binLaden. This is not conspiracy theory, it is schizophrenic government, bought and paid for by you know who.

Bayviking, the number of outright factual errors in your last two posts has to be some kind of record.

Middle-east related terrorism was started by the CIA in 1983? Total nonsense. In your zeal to take the side of the Islamicists against America, you’ve totally forgotten about the assasination of Anwar Sadat by Islamic militants in 1981, the Munich Olympic massacre in 72, and in fact the entire political history of the middle east during the twentieth century (and earlier).

Also, we never gave WMD to Iraq. That is an utter lie which is not only not proven but completely disproven(constant repetition of the lie on leftwing websites notwithstanding).

It’s also a lie that the CIA ever had anything to do with Osama bin Laden. The CIA’s contacts with the mujahadeen never included the group that bin Laden was affiliated with, and that’s a matter of public record.

But hey, if you uncritically accept lies like these, I bet you’ll love the upcoming Michael Moore movie. Enjoy!

Martin:

The facts (which you dispute) are revealed by the freedom of information act, which Bush is hell bent on rescinding. Only foreign newspapers (British..) report the 1983 CIA car bomb attack in Bierut or April Glaspie’s (US Ambassador to Iraq) gaff, which may have inadvertently started the first gulf war. Our sales of weapons to Hussien was managed by Rumsfeld during the Reagan Presidency. That is why Rummy posed for a picture shaking Hussien’s hand. We were worried about the rise of Iranian power in the Middle East.

The cold war and international politics makes for strange bedfellows. Our schizophrenic policies can often be traced to partisan differences, but both parties have made mistakes. For me reading all the Bush bashing books has made me realize how difficult many of these decisions really are. One wrong move and we could all be dead.

Do you believe that Ollie North ran crack cocaine into East LA in return for weapons to fight the Sandanistas? Do you believe that Kissinger ordered the assassination of Democratically elected Chilean President Allende? Did you know that when the US Ambassador to Chile objected to the assassination plot Kissinger flew him back to the White House for a dressing down by Nixon? Did you know this crime was carried out at the request of Pepsico, worried about their supply of cola beans?

binLaden played a key role in the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The CIA provided weapons, intelligence, technology and leadership in that war. There was no group named al Qaeda, until the US built Air Force bases in Saudi Arabia. I really doesn’t matter whether Osama was a member of the Mujahaden or not, they fought on the same side with US weapons and training.

Our terrorist activities actually began with the revolutionary war, when we refused to “fight fair” against the British. Terrorism is how the weak fight the strong, in Ireland and throughout the world.

We cannot tolerate or negotiate with binLaden, but we must redirect Moslem hatred of the West back where it belongs, on their own corrupt governments. This cannot be accomplished with the military.

The broader point is that to stop terrorism we need to claim the moral high ground by keeping our own act clean, while fighting and condemning the terrorists. We must not use torture as a way to gather intelligence, but may have to do so secretely to prevent another 9-11. That is why the CIA walked away from Abu Ghrab. Condemning the Israeli US helicopter attack of a wheelchair bound Palestinian leader with the same vigor we condemn Palestinian suicide bombers would be a good start.

Ah, that’s it. Rumsfeld once shook Hussein’s hand and therefore the United States gave WMD to Iraq. Puh-lease. I guess Clinton must be a suicide bomber because I saw a picture of him shaking hands with Arafat.

If you actually researched the history behind Rumsfeld’s contacts with Iraq instead of just swallowing what leftist propogandists insinuate about that photograph on their websites, you’ll learn that relations were very sour between the US and Iraq just then because WE HAD JUST CONDEMNED THEIR USE OF WMD against Iran (the technology for which was supplied primarily by Germany).

Again, no matter what the truth of the 1983 story, it’s just ridiculous to say that terrorism started in the middle east as a result of it. I won’t even bother with the rest of those conspiracy theories you’re carpet bombing with (Allende, Ollie North, crack cocaine and the rest of it) because they’re just an attempted distraction from your earlier arguments having been proved uttelry false. And anyway, they’re just a lot of bunk from left wing websites and have nothing to do with Iraq. Watch out, Bayviking! The black helicopters are coming for you!

Those alleged “conspiracy theories” have been documented in excrutiating detail by Noam Chomsky and Gary Webb, among others. When investigative reporting by Gary Pallast or Seymore Hersch reveal these ugly truths, they know they must fully document their claims, putting everyone to sleep in the process. For some reason (national bias) Bush, Cheney, Limbaugh, Hannity, & O’Reilly are spared equal standards of proof.

It is pure laziness that led me into your logic trap, for which I apologize. Yes, Germany provided MOST of this technology. However, our CIA always works through proxies, whether killing Allende or supporting Iraq and then later Iran.

By attacking me this way, you avoid answering the more important points. Even Bush recognized early on the importance information and truth would play in the war on terror. Otherwise the hate will reproduce faster than we can afford to make bullets.

Martin, if you know your history, you’d know that about the time that video was taken, we were recieving reports about the use of Chemical Weapons by the Iraqis.

Our response, the response of the Republican administration, within which many of the Neocons worked?

Full diplomatic relations were restored in 1984.

As for Ollie North and all that, the facts are there: We sold arms to Iran. They released hostages, some of our people overcharged the Iranians and used the money to support the Contras. As for Allende, it is well known what we did to bolster Pinochet. If you want conspiracy theories, your people’s theory’s on Iraq and terrorism qualify much better.

Again, I don’t see what Ollie North, the Contras, Allende, etc. have to do with the price of tea in China. I’m not sure what point is being made by these random free-associations about scandals of twenty plus years ago and beyond. My points were specific. The US did not supply WMD to Iraq. Terrorism in the Middle East was not an invention of the CIA. Neither of those points is the least bit in question.

If you want to dig up some other diversion—I don’t know, one of the Wall Street scandals from the Grant administration, or the accusation that FDR allowed Pearl Harbor to be bombed—to prove that anything bad anybody says about a president must be true, then go ahead. That doesn’t change the fact that on these two issues, the case against Bush is a thin tissue of lies.

I guess the sum of it is that some of our more indiscriminate and careless actions are coming back to haunt us. That carries an admonition for what we do today in the war against terrorism: Be careful not to create a future threat in dealing with this one. There are limits, of course to our foresight, but we should at least be trying to make sure that today’s policy does not become tommorrow’s headache and heartache.