The neocons were well aware of this fact:

Officials inside government and advisers outside told ABCNEWS the administration emphasized the danger of Saddam's weapons to gain the legal justification for war from the United Nations and to stress the danger at home to Americans. "We were not lying," said one official. "But it was just a matter of emphasis."

Andrew Sullivan should have been aware of the "stark implications" of the neocons' cynicism for over a year, but better late than never.

I saw David Kay make the same point about our lack of credibility tonight on one of the cable news shows. He argued that we were badly positioned to put any pressure on Iran or North Korea because our claims regarding weapons programs are now suspect. He claimed that both countries knew we lacked credibility and were playing that card to world at large. I don't know if I quite buy this, but he also said that it would be a generation before our credibility was restored. (I should note that I caught only a couple of minutes of this, so I could be horribly, horribly misconstruing it).

Oh well. No more super-fun adventures for George and Dick, I guess.

THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!

Does the following sound familiar?

"... Israel does not fear Iran building a nuclear weapon, and using a missile to fire it at Israel. No, Israel has always made it clear that it would retaliate with far more nuclear weapons and destroy Iran. What Israel fears is an Iranian nuclear weapon being given to terrorists, who would then smuggle it into Israel and detonate the "anonymous" nuke. This would be difficult, as Israeli border and port controls are strict. But it is the kind of terrorist nightmare that Israel has to deal with, and a bombing raid against Iran seems the lesser of two evils."

The full column for this is at:
http://www.strategypage.com/fyeo/qndguide/default.asp?target=IRAN.HTM

We are not the only nation with the ability and willingness to make pre-emptive attacks on the WMD threats of terrorist states. We weren't the first to make a pre-emptive attack, nor the first to do so against one of the Axis of Evil.

And we won't be the last. The title of the above column is:

"IRAN: Why the Israeli Bombers are Coming"

Those who disagree with Bush's National Security Strategy, and in particular with the pre-emption part of it, do so based on invalid assumptions, of which the first two are that 9/11 never happened, and that we are the only actors here.

"The enemy has a vote."

"Failure to defeat terrorism means further attacks at home, so lack of resolve is not an issue."

http://www.strategypage.com/strategypolitics/articles/20021128.asp

The United States will make further pre-emptive attacks on terrorist states posing WMD threats. We just won't be the next country possessing nuclear weapons to do so.

This subject has come up before and will again and again and again. Here is an example from two months ago on this blog:

http://danieldrezner.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=1282

"... Kagan & Ferguson jump the gun a whole lot, ignore the real cause of the present unacceptable (and rapidly disintegrating without our help) Middle Eastern status quo, how bloody its collapse will be, and how that directly impinges on both the successor end state and its legitimacy.

Their focus on the end state in isolation from the process of getting there is like a pastor attending a dying parishioner, where both want to avoid the messy painful part of dying, and instead talk only about the glorious afterlife.

So Kagan and Ferguson assume that the status quo shattering part of the war on terror stopped with our conquest of Iraq. "Can we talk about legitimacy now, please?"

In their dreams.

First, America won't be done shattering the old status quo until it no longer threatens us. Right now Iran is developing nukes as fast as possible, while Pakistan has them and is far more unstable than Iran.

Iran is just our worst enemy in the whole world at the moment, i.e., there is no way whatever we'll let them develop nukes. Not that we'll be the first to do something about it - I expect Bush's October surprise to be an Israeli air attack on Iran, aka Osirak II, right through American controlled air space in Iraq, though that might happen a lot sooner. This will hopefully delay Iran's nuclear program long enough for Bush to win re-election and only then begin overt preparations for an American invasion of Iran.

"Guess what you hundreds of thousands of reservists (not to mention their millions of relatives), all of whom vote? Now that the election is over, you're all being called up for the duration."

Plus the little detail that Iran has launched a pre-emptive attack on us in Iraq, i.e., Sadr's aunt just happens to be married to the President of Iran, the Iranians have spent hundreds of millions of dollars helping him attack us, and sent their own uniformed forces (Basiji and Revolutionary Guards) across the border to help him shoot at our forces.

So the party has only just started, not ended ..."

IBC wouldn't be an issue if the US Military bothered to keep track of things and release those figures. Too bad, any info that doesn't serve the propoganda campaign isn't kept (or released). I find it impossible to believe they aren't internally keeping track -- at least as a way to gauge the effectiveness (and cost) of tactics/weapons.

But more importantly, I think the nail in the legitimizations for this war's coffin have finally been banged in. I'm sure the idiots at the Wingnut Standard will continue to publish pure bullshit on how Iraq is justified -- but this now makes 2 bipartisan commisions that found no *significant* Al-Queda/Iraq link. The WMD story is DEAD. The Democracy building theory crap is DEAD (cf neo-con mea-culpas, or the 20yr olds running Iraq).

So the only question is, how the hell does annyone plan on voting for this miserable failure? Using what metric do you consider Bush to be a good candidate at guiding US foreign policy? When Andrew Sullivan say's this is possibly the bigget foreign policy f-up in recent history, I think its safe to say, thats about as kind a verdict as one can have on the whole fiasco. I really look forward to the double speak that justifies voting for Bush that somehow completely foregoes accountability (only the poor should be held accountable right?) for the biggest fiasco in decades and ignores the fact that the president didnt even BOTHER to read the NIE before he sent the country to war.

I know, I'm asking for a lot, there are probably only 40 million other americans who are more qualified to be president -- those that read a newspaper on a regular basis. I'm pretty sure any one of them would have thought it wise to read up the NIE BEFORE sendign the country to war. But hey, seriously, if its another round of golf, or 90 pages of "blah blah blah", I guess we know which the current preznit will choose.

Whenever I read another poll, which confirms that ~40% of Americans think Bush is doing a good job or can be trusted with the national security, etc., I cannot help but wonder what relation to reality those people have, in their ordinary lives.

On some blog somewhere, I saw a guy write that he was sick of hearing from leftists, who "couldn't imagine" Saddam cooperating in terrorism with Al Qaeda.

Of course, I thought to myself, "I can imagine it, but that's not the issue, the issue is, did they cooperate? is their any evidence that they did cooperate?

And, then it struck me: Bush and his administration have been making policy based on imagination, speculative fantasy and counterfactuals, without any concern for reality, without any realization among themselves that concern for reality was important to success.

"It has made future pre-emption based on intelligence close to impossible." When the whole world thought Saddam had WMD, and Saddam violated the Gulf War cease fire and we couldn't do a thing. And he harbored terrorists, and we couldn't do a thing. That means as soon as terrorists get into Iraq and protected by Saddam, they can continue their plotting and scheming. There's nothing we could do until after the mushroom cloud exploded over Manhattan. The doctrine of preemption is dead whether we had reliable intelligence or not. By the end of WWII, we found out Hitler's WMD capability was minimal, and Japan's was far ahead of us. The Japanese actually planned to release biological weapon over our west coast. The weapons would be released from a submarine off the west coast.

Now would be a good time for you Dan, to chastise Glenn Reynolds and all he has influenced. It turns out that if you were anti-war, you were not objectively pro Saddam.

I don't think that the truth was that if you were pro-war you were objectively pro Bin Laden, but Glenn Reynolds the war fluffer comes very close to that definition.

You might also think again about an administration that worries about what month is the best month to introduce new products when taking the country to war and consider what that might imply about whether their mistatements were purposefully made.

Is America more safe now than before the war?

Is America better off now that our Allies and the world distrusts us?

Is America better now with our army stretched so thin?

Is America better now with a future generation of disabled, neglected vets?

Is America better now that we cannot take preventive actions as easily as we could have in the past?

Dan, Ph.D., professor, political scientist, nice Jewish boy.

You really fucked up on this whole war issue.

Are you planning a sabatical to ponder what it was about your education that led you so far astray?

Alot of us didn't fuck up like you did, and we didn't have nearly the credentials or resources that you have.

What kept you from hearing and understanding the truth that others pointed out? What kept you from understanding their arguments? Was it their fault, in your stars, or in you?

What does that say about the other arguments you have made professionally?

Has this humbled you at all?

“Posted 12:57 AM by David Adesnik
IRAQ BODY COUNT: Bob Herbert mentions in passing, without reference to his source, that 10,000 civilians have died in Iraq since the US invasion began. To the best of my knowledge, the US military still refuses to investigate the issues, thus opening up the field of play to much less reputable institutions.”

I think we can reasonably conclude that Iraq Body Count is a dishonest group of anti-Western haters. It is disgraceful, but not surprising, that the corrupt liberal media rely on their dubious figures. However, isn’t David Adesnic unwittingly being unfair with the US Military? There’s only so many hours in the day. Do our soldiers have the time to do accurate body counting? Should this really be a high priority? I don’t think so. And would it change the minds of the American haters? The answer is a likely no.

“And President Bush is ultimately responsible for this. Tenet has taken the fall, but it will take years and years before the U.S. regains the reputation for credibility that this president has destroyed.”

Andrew Sullivan is increasingly sounding like an immature and childish individual. Thankfully, Roger L. Simon and Glenn Reynolds, who agree with him on the gay rights stuff, are not so inclined to wallow in so much self destructive self pity and bitterness. Sullivan’s rage at the President is warping his ability to think clearly and follow a logical argument. Simon is especially more reliable and insightful even though his own son is gay.

Saddam Hussein violated his agreement with the UN and Iraq is the size of California. Thus, we were forced to invade Iraq to determine the truth of the matter. End of story. It is not logical to beat ourselves up if we never find any WMDs. This is the fault of the former Iraqi dictator and nobody else. President Bush merely acted on the intelligence available at the time---which was the consensus understanding of virtually every other world leader. Lastly, we may still find WMDs! We have only been in Iraq for a little over a year. There are still many areas of the country we have yet to search. Iraq was a totalitarian society and many mysteries remain unsolved.

Very interesting:

A Senate report that documents the failed intelligence of the CIA and states unequivocally that the Bush Administration did not pressure the CIA to overstate the case is now being used to argue no longer that "BUSH LIED!" but that "BUSH IS AN INCOMPETENT MORON" because he should have known the truth (that no one knew).

The people who argued against the war in Iraq on pacifist grounds, while admitting the presence and threat of WMD, now claim they were right all along.

As for voting for Bush, to not vote for Bush would mean I would have to:

1. Not vote at all.
2. Vote for Kerry.
3. Vote for Nader or Kucinich or the Libertarian.

Given these alternatives, I, less than comfortably, choose Bush.

“Dan, Ph.D., professor, political scientist, nice Jewish boy.”

Are you trying to hint that the United States invaded Iraq to keep the Jews happy? I’m convinced that you are blurting out the consensus opinion of the radical left---who comprise a sizable number of John Kerry’s supporters. It’s amazing how the liberal media have effectively downplayed this harsh fact. They also virtually ignored Senator Ernest Hollings’ despicable comments a few months ago. What else is being conveniently overlooked?

I am going to ask a question -- and it is not rhetorical. How was Bush supposed to know that his Iraq intelligence was flawed? Consult a medium? Put on the flack jacket and parachute into Iraq?

I guess the answer could be "ask Hans Blix." But the problem with Blix is that he looked like he was engaging in his own free-lance diplomacy. He had made himself a hard man to believe.

The operating assumption of other intelligence services -- not just the CIA -- is that Saddam had these weapons. Yes,the conventional wisdom was wrong, but how could Bush figure that out? I know Clinton had, at one occasion in his book tour, made a remark that he had learned to discount the CIA. It does make one wonder -- why then did he not propose CIA reform?

Answers to these questions are solicited. I'm genuinely curious.

"When the whole world thought Saddam had WMD, and Saddam violated the Gulf War cease fire and we couldn't do a thing. And he harbored terrorists, and we couldn't do a thing. That means as soon as terrorists get into Iraq and protected by Saddam, they can continue their plotting and scheming. There's nothing we could do until after the mushroom cloud exploded over Manhattan. The doctrine of preemption is dead whether we had reliable intelligence or not. By the end of WWII, we found out Hitler's WMD capability was minimal, and Japan's was far ahead of us. The Japanese actually planned to release biological weapon over our west coast. The weapons would be released from a submarine off the west coast."

So, by your logic, you won't be surprised when North Korea hits LA with a nuke? Fantastic. Thank God it took 100k troops to make sure Sadaam was disarmed.

Look, I'm a small government, strong military, live-and-let-live fiscal conservative and I'm voting for Kerry. Not because Kerry is going to be this silver bullet that fixes every problem, but because I believe he's going to at the very least work his ass off to regain our standing as the world's #1 and most respected power.

Another mistake almost unmentioned, was that the international community under-estimated the amount of Iraqis killed and tortured under the Saddam regieme.

The number of Iraqis killed could be as high as 100,000 more than estimates before the war started according to a study taken months after the invasion. Iraqi papers have reported that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are still missing? Hundreds of thousands? I have not heard that mentioned once in a Western paper.

And while Iraq Body Count is busy interpreting every attack/injury/death as evidence of American attrocities, no serious attempt to quantify Saddam's institutionalized torture has been made. No estimate has been made on what percent of the population was tortured, how many women were raped, how many were chained to the ground and driven over by tanks, how many were tossed into a wood chipper, etc.

This information is not under scrutiny by IBC because as the editor of Al Hayat said, "an attrocity to the Arab Press is only an attrocity if it is committed by Americans". I think he got it right for more than the Arab press.

[sarcasm]Maybe Al Jazeera will pick up this crucial story that Iraq Body Count ignores [/sarcasm].

“I am going to ask a question -- and it is not rhetorical. How was Bush supposed to know that his Iraq intelligence was flawed? Consult a medium? Put on the flack jacket and parachute into Iraq?”

Many people embrace the subtle myth that a WMD facility needs to be humongous and difficult to hide. This is patently false. A chemical WMD program only needs the space of a slightly larger than average home. Iraq was a totalitarian society. Information therefore wa not easily accessible. Saddam Hussein carefully restricted state secrets on a need to know basis. You could literally have been one of his closest advisors, and still be utterly ignorant of many aspects of his regime. A system of checks and balance was entirely absent.

What would you do if someone ordered you to locate a chemical weapon WMD program within a twenty mile radius of your home? I bet you wouldn’t know where to start. Now take it one step further---and imagine that you must find this facility in an area the size of California. The very idea should blow your mind.

All this talk about Kerry getting the world to hold hands with us again...

Its better to be feared than loved folks. Interest reigns supreme. When France opposes us its not because Jacques Chirac feels jilted like a prom date gone wrong. Its because he feels France's interest are better served by the US either being muzzled on a UN leash or failing miserably in Iraq. Get that through your heads, its dangerous thinking. And the seeming fact that Kerry doesnt get that scares the bejesus out of me.

Jerry,

What on earth has Dr. Drezner's religion got to do with this conversation? Odd that you should think to mention it. I hope you were 'mispeaking', so to, er, speak.

There were many reasons to invade Iraq in addition to the WMD argument given by the Bush administration (some compelling, some not to my mind). I'm afraid both a combination of poor reporting, distaste for the adventure by the press and the complete verbal constipation and gracelessness of this administration have pushed those other arguments into the background. Supported the war (still do), dislike Kerry's populism and naivete and equally dislike Bush's social conservatism and orgy of spending. Gonna be a tough call this fall.

“Iraqi papers have reported that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are still missing? Hundreds of thousands? I have not heard that mentioned once in a Western paper.”

The major media primary tacit criteria for all news stories concerning Iraq is whether it can damage George W. Bush. This is their number one goal. President Bush would probably have a comfortable lead in the polls except for the Abu Ghraib photos. Why were they published? The media had always previously restrained themselves regarding the release of such pictures depicting similar acts of inhumanity. Would those photos been released if a Democrat was residing in the White House? I am such a comedian. We all damn well know that it wouldn't have occurred.

"Supported the war (still do), dislike Kerry's populism and naivete and equally dislike Bush's social conservatism and orgy of spending. Gonna be a tough call this fall."

I am going to make it real easy for you: John Kerry will spend even more money! Thus, you are left deciding whether the cultural war issues are truly that important to you. Roger L. Simon and Glenn Reynolds are among those who think not.

'I guess the answer could be "ask Hans Blix." But the problem with Blix is that he looked like he was engaging in his own free-lance diplomacy. He had made himself a hard man to believe.'

Although Blix has been portrayed as some sort of appeaser, the fact is that he was pretty hard on Saddam and in insisting (within the very real limitations of previous inspections regimes) that Saddam account for missing stores of chem/bio weapons and asking Saddam to destroy the Al Samoud missile.

What sort of free-lance diplomacy did Blix conduct ? He seems to have been the best representation of the dispassionate, bloodless neutral country bureaucrat and diplomat. The reason Cheney and Co. find him hard to believe is that he wouldn't rubber stamp their already arrived at conclusions. There is a whole sequence, heavily redacted, in the report about interaction between the CIA and the UN inspectors and whether they were given all the sites considered top priority.

And in the end -- shock -- Blix seems to have been more right than anything else. Perhaps giving him the 'weeks, not days, not months' that he had asked for to complete the inspection would have been worthwhile.

"Perhaps giving him the 'weeks, not days, not months' that he had asked for to complete the inspection would have been worthwhile. "

And if wishes were wings, pigs would fly. lets assume for the moment the WMD Blix demanded be accounted for were indeed destroyed by Hussein and not smuggled out of the country or hidden. Hussein had not accounted for them, nor is there any reason to believe he ever would (conventional wisdom says Hussein simply refused to believe the US would invade right up until the troops crossed the border). So, what would have changed in those weeks not months? You honestly believe that even 3 months later, Blix would suddenly say, 'hey, i gave it the old college try. Go ahead and invade'? That is simply absurd, it flies in the face of the entire history of how the UN and Blix in particular has handled Iraq since 91. After more than a decade, to think that suddenly the UN was going to get tough on Iraq is just an exercise in self-dellusion.

Jim: No offense, but Moby has pretty much made any attempt with statemtents like "I'm a lifelong Republican voting for Kerry" the least bit suspiscious. It's widely known that Moby is a political hack for the Democratic Party. No, he's not a liberal. He's a party shill, ala Paul Begala.

As for the semantics of IBC they sound an awful lot like those of economic debate. What is real economic "progress"? Sure the macroeconomic picture is healthy, but what about "average" Americans. Are they seeing this boom? Are they feeling this boom?

It's the "common good" redux. You can't define it because you'll never agree on what it is. Is there an eventual end to the "common good"? Do you know when you've arrived? But for the war examples I reach for the body count figures. They alone are not accepted by the anti-war, peace at any pricers, or pacifists. They insist on including the wounded, permanently disabled and other physically maimed, though surviving, humans as 'casualties of war'. By that count Max Cleland is a casualty as is Bob Dole, yet both returned from their wounds to become esteemed United States Senators. Another 'casualty of war'; Mr. Kerry.

Given what we now know about Iraq I think the war would not have been launched. But that doesn't discount that it should have been fought. The long term strategic interests of Iraq's neighbors were clearly in opposition to a nation led by second generation Saddamists Udai and Qusay. Were they willing to lose troops and money to 'liberate' Iraq? Yes, with consent, but obviously they loved nothing more than to see non-Arab and non-muslim powers do the dying for them. However, in their absence there is the lost opportunity to influence the kind of Iraq its neighbors would prefer to see. Enter Zarqawi and al-Sadr.

Suppose we had not fought this war. Suppose HUMINT continued to try and infiltrate Al Qaida and Iraq. The reality is that searching for terrorism connections to Iraq was like following a fuse to locate a bomb.

Jerry wrote "What kept you from hearing and understanding the truth that others pointed out? What kept you from understanding their arguments? Was it their fault, in your stars, or in you?"

What the hell?

A large minority of the guys who said everything was great back then, are still saying everything is great. "Iraq is heading for democratic elections and anyway we killed better than 1500 al Sadr supporters and crippled that militia, and all it will take is to get the iraqi army on the ground supported by US airstrikes to move into Fallujah and kill the insurgency there. What's to complain? It doesn't matter about nukes or terrorists, you can't argue that Saddam should have been left there to rape iraqi women. It was the right thing to do no matter what anybody says. And in iran they rape virgins before they kill them so they can't get into heaven. It's our duty to invade iran too regardless of nukes."

When somebody actually takes a principled stand and changes his mind, support him in that. Don't punish him for doing the right thing.

erg:

During the runup to various security council votes, Blix would make positive noises about Iraqi cooperation, even though the genuine content of his reports did not change that much, and suspect weapons were buried in appendices. The idea was to cause an impression of progress and keep war from happening.

His goal may have been laudable. But by doing that, he damaged his credibility and made himself dismissable. It's no good being right if you fix things so that nobody listens to you.

Speaking of mistakes -- I probably made one by mentioning Blix. the decision to go to war -- whether acknowledged by this administration or not -- was made in Summer 2002, when Bush started talking up WMDs. The question is -- at that time,who believed Saddam didn't have them? Is it Bush's fault the CIA screwed up? How was he supposed to know his information from experts was bad?

"Dan, Ph.D., professor, political scientist, nice Jewish boy."

Jerry,

You Jew-baiting bastards never have the balls to come out and say what you mean. Intead, you simply imply that its "the Jews" and then sneak back under your rock.

Guess what, being Jewish has nothing to do with being for or against the war. Of course, you little neo-Nazis are too stupid to understand that.

erg said And in the end -- shock -- Blix seems to have been more right than anything else. Perhaps giving him the 'weeks, not days, not months' that he had asked for to complete the inspection would have been worthwhile.

Blix himself admits in his book that further inspections would have done nothing but provide Saddam the means to refute the inspections, demand that sanctions be lifted so that he may have an easier time at pursuing weapons of mass destruction - sanction free, inspection free.

Brennan:

There are a couple of other blogs that are part of my daily routine, and I've noticed some trolls posing as the other side at those, as well. And as a member of a few other internet communities, nothing pisses me off more than misrepresentation. And I give you my word:

Born and raised Republican.
Moved to NYC for college, and ended up staying.
Changed registration to Democrat to vote in the only important local elections in the city--the Dem. primary
I'm almost always arguing from the right of my friends.

If you have any problems believing me (which would be completely understandable, given the anonymity of the internet), please feel free to e-mail me so we don't derail Dr. Drezner's thread any further.

Appalled Moderate: The question is -- at that time, who believed Saddam didn't have them? Is it Bush's fault the CIA screwed up? How was he supposed to know his information from experts was bad?

Well, he could have asked the right questions. It seems the questions he did ask were along the lines of:

"Is it possible that Saddam has some prohibited weapons hidden away somewhere, or that he would like to build some?" Answer: "Yes."

But this is a leading question with the intent to justify a war that he wanted to wage. It is also a question that could be answered in the affirmative (and with absolutely no doubt) for many other countries which we happened to not be interested in invading at this point.

Instead, he should have asked questions like:

"Show me evidence that Saddam is right now planning to attack us or our allies; show me evidence that he has the means to use weapons of mass destruction to attack us or our allies; show me evidence that he is talking to terrorist groups about sharing such weapons with them."

And then he should have asked:

"Where should we deploy our forces in the war against terror - in Afghanistan, to hunt down Osama bin Laden, or in Iraq to end Saddam's regime? Which is the more sensible use of our resources right now?"

Is there any evidence at all that these questions were asked?

It's not the answers, it's the questions that were wrong.

1. We have found no WMD of any serious consequence in Iraq since the deposing of Saddam.
2. Saddam repeatedly thumbed his nose at the international community (by way of the UN) when it demanded he account for his WMD.

We know #2 to be true and given that, so far, #1 is true, then not only was Saddam a sadistic murdering despot but he was also a hubristic, suicidal, moron.

'And if wishes were wings, pigs would fly. lets assume for the moment the WMD Blix demanded be accounted for were indeed destroyed by Hussein and not smuggled out of the country or hidden. '

Ah yes, that old desperate grasping for hope here. The weapons were actually hidden deep in the desert, or smuggled out. Apparently this happened without any significant paper trail, without any of Saddam's henchmen (almost all of whom we have in custody) being aware.

Spare me this, please. The Senate report says clearly that practically all of the intelligence we had on Iraq's WMD programs was mistaken. Thats a key point, and all this desperate flailing around reveals how weak your own position is.

"So, what would have changed in those weeks not months? You honestly believe that even 3 months later, Blix would suddenly say, 'hey, i gave it the old college try. Go ahead and invade'? That is simply absurd, it flies in the face of the entire history of how the UN and Blix in particular has handled Iraq since 91. After more than a decade, to think that suddenly the UN was going to get tough on Iraq is just an exercise in self-dellusion.'"

Again -- Blix was no appeaser despite the attempts of the wingnuts to make him appear to be one. If it had been impossible for him to operate in Iraq, he would have said so. Ditto if he had found the smoking gun we were lookig for.

But the main reason for allowing Blix to continue was simply the PR reason. Now we have a large chunk of the world (including people in friendly or neutral contries such as Ireland, Mexico and India) amnd many people at home thinking that the US never took the inspections seriously, the only intention was to provide an excuse. A few weeks might have given us what we wanted, it might not have, but at the least it was worth trying.

Now, we have
1) No WMDs except a few ancient shells of unclear lineage
2) No significant links to Al Qaeda
3) $250 billion plus price tag
4) 850-900 American soldiers dead.
5) Our reputation in tatters

Dan wrote: The thing that bothers me about that response is the failure to recognize that the decision-making process was a) not good; and b) relied on faulty intel. Sullivan thinks Bush bears at least some responsibility for the latter, and I certainly think he bears a great deal of responsibility for the former.

In fact, the "decision-making process" (who taught you English? -- you meant, "GWB made a poor decision") was excellent. Indeed, all of what we know about GWB is that he's quite good at making decisions and at staying the course (very unlike his immediate predecessor).

Are you claiming that GWB made the wrong decision for the wrong reasons -- or that he made the right decision, for the wrong reasons?

Either way -- you're way off the mark. GWB clearly articulated the "Bush Doctrine": Our enemies are those who would bring war to these United States. Those nations that harbor and support our enemies are our enemies. We will carry the fight to our enemies.

Now, you suppose that his reasons for invading Iraq were those he stated publicly. Dan, you are naive. The reasons we invaded Iraq were:

Saddam was a sponsor of terrorism.
Saddam did not demonstrate that he no longer had or was developing WMD.
We needed to get our troops out of Saudi-land.
We needed boots on the ground to thwart the two other immediate axis-of-evil members in the region, Iran and Syria.

If you recognize his goals -- the "decision-making process" was perfect.

He got the UN to agree to demand enforcement of its own resolutions.

He got Congress to authorize force.

He waited Saddam out.

Now, it turns out that our intelligence was actually very good insofar as we claimed Saddam was maintaining a WMD development capability (try reading Kay's report). Saddam continued to overtyly develop long range ballistic missiles (what do you think was their intended payload -- flowers?). He continued rapid deployment capabilities for chemical and biological weapons. He was still trying to reconstitute his atomic programs (he needed to by more Uranium from Niger or elsewhere becuase his ore was under seal).

I applaud GWB -- and history will too!

We have a President who fights!

You have a short memory -- I worked in the WTC for five years in the nineties -- I was there in '93. I lost many friends in 2001.

The only cure for the disease of militant Islam is death. When we kill enough of them, we will have cured the disease. If we don't, many of us will die.

Feeding the crocodile has never worked. You will be eaten.

David Thomson: Would those photos been released if a Democrat was residing in the White House? I am such a comedian. We all damn well know that it wouldn't have occurred.

Ok, first answer: no, those photos wouldn't have been released if a Democrat had been President, because the abuse wouldn't have happened and the photos would have never been taken. There wouldn't have been a torture memo, and there wouldn't have been a secret operation to obtain "evidence" from random Iraqis that were picked up on the street. Even better, there wouldn't have been a war in Iraq, there would have been five times as many troops in Afghanistan (although you and the Republican opposition would have claimed all the way through the 2002 mid-term election that 50,000 wasn't enough and that the Democrats should be punished for not cutting health care and welfare programs to send more troops to Afghanistan), and Osama bin Laden would have been caught in Afghanistan or Pakistan a while ago (by pure luck, as you and the Republican opposition would have been happy to assure us).

Second answer: your memory appears to be appallingly short. Or did you not pay any attention to the news during the Clinton years? All sorts of mud was thrown at Clinton until finally the Lewinsky affair stuck. Then the frenzy started, and the press was all over that and eager to publish any new allegation, as unsubstantiated as it may be.

In contrast to that, Bush received a free pass from the press until his Iraq adventure turned sour. Bush lies over and over again, yet the press makes up apologies for him, essentially declaring him too dim to lie (he just misremembers or doesn't understand the more complex issues), which actually makes him seem appealing to a large voter base (which in itself is quite appalling).

Rush Limbaugh and other right-wingers went on the record in 2002 to celebrate the end of the "liberal media monopoly", see the quotes on http://surlyedition.com/print.php?sid=115.

"A few weeks might have given us what we wanted, it might not have, but at the least it was worth trying. "

You havent answered the question. What would have happened after those few weeks elapsed (after the few months Bush already allotted Blix at the UNs urging mind you). By what mechanism would we have been reasonably confident Hussein was not a threat, the intel warning the CIA, UK, and Russians notwithstanding. Would you consider Bush a responsible leader had he listened to Hans Blix instead of Tony Blair and Vladmir Putin who warned us in the strongest terms of their intel on Iraqi WMDs and ill intentions? At what point does Hussein become an intolerable threat?

'During the runup to various security council votes, Blix would make positive noises about Iraqi cooperation, even though the genuine content of his reports did not change that much, and suspect weapons were buried in appendices. The idea was to cause an impression of progress and keep war from happening.'

All the reports are on http://www.unmovic.org/

I don't think they support your claims at all. In his first report, Blix claimed that they were not getting much co-operation from the Iraqi side. From from burying things in appendices, his first report to the security council after resumption had separate sections on Chemical Weapons, bio weapons and missiles.

That seems to have prompted a frenzy of activity from the Iraqi side, and he said in his second report that there had been some progress. Shortly after that, he pressed Iraq to produce more documents and interviews. He also produced the cluster document. It was not an appendix -- it was a large document going into details of all open issues regarding UNMOVIC questions about Iraqi programs.

[And El Baradei said that the Iraqis were generally co-operating and that he thought they could be certified for the nuclear program aspect]

'His goal may have been laudable. But by doing that, he damaged his credibility and made himself dismissable. It's no good being right if you fix things so that nobody listens to you.'

That depends on your point of view. What Cheney and Co. seemed to want was a clear statement from Blix saying that Iraq had WMDs, and that the Security COuncil should vote for war. However, Blix didn't say yes to that and he couldn't have because it turns out that wasn't the case. He examined all the known leads from US intelligence (they turned out to be bogus), and clearly pressed Iraq to destroy the Al Samoud missiles, and give more information regarding the claimed destruction of old weapons. He did not give Cheney what he wanted, but that was his not job -- his job was to provide open, dispassionate analysis of Iraq's programs and he seems to have done that.

' the decision to go to war -- whether acknowledged by this administration or not -- was made in Summer 2002, when Bush started talking up WMDs. The question is -- at that time,who believed Saddam didn't have them? Is it Bush's fault the CIA screwed up? How was he supposed to know his information from experts was bad?'

A lot of people did indeed believe that Saddam had some WMDs. However, I believe (and the report is split on that along partisan lines) that the descision by the aadministration to go to war did have a major impact on the CIA anaylsis. In any company or large organization, if the CEO seems to want a certain result, then he will get data that supports that result. Everyone knows that.

What Bush should have done was to get 2-3 people with differing views (Wolfowitz, Armitage and one uniformed military person) to examine all aspects or Iraq carefully. Did Iraq have WMDs ? If so, were they likely to pose a threat to the US ? Ho w concerned were its neighbors about this threat ? Was there any example of co-operation between the Iraq and Al Qaeda ? Could Iraq be deterred by giving Saddam a clear warning about that [ Maybe not] ? What would post-war Iraq look like ? What impact would this have on angry Arab youth, given that Al Jazeera was likely to push it for all its worth ? How would this impact our search for Osama ? Could this further radicalize Pakistan ? Was the Palestinain problem really likely to be solved if Iraq was fixed ?

And so on .. Looking at all the pros and cons. If that had been done, we may have come to the same answer, we may have come to the same answer with a different set of tactics to get us there, we may have come to a different answer, but the impression I get is that that didn't happen, we had an attempt to find justification for a decision alreadyu takken.

"Show me evidence that Saddam is right now planning to attack us or our allies; show me evidence that he has the means to use weapons of mass destruction to attack us or our allies; show me evidence that he is talking to terrorist groups about sharing such weapons with them."

And what to do if the answer comes back:
"We can never expect to have definitive proof due to the nature of Hussein's police state, however all of our intelligence, the British, the Russians, and basically every intelligence agency on earth believes the threat to be a strong possibility. Moreover, due simply to Husseins history it would be madness to give the man the benefit of the doubt, it would in fact be totally out of character if Hussein was not doing these things."
What then is the solution?

"Where should we deploy our forces in the war against terror - in Afghanistan, to hunt down Osama bin Laden, or in Iraq to end Saddam's regime? Which is the more sensible use of our resources right now?"

But what if your military advisers replied that:
"Adding significantly more conventional troops to Afghanistan would be counterproductive, basically providing more targets and more incentive for native Afghanis to attack Americans, making supply lines more vulnerable, while doing nothing materially to aid the scouring of the forbidding Afghanistan countryside where lack of firepower has never been the determining factor. All of which anyone with the vaguest knowledge of the Russian experience in Afghanistan should know before voicing ill informed opinions. Oh, and Bin Ladin is almost certainly dead, hence confining the search to him would be a terrible waste of resources."

'You havent answered the question. What would have happened after those few weeks elapsed (after the few months Bush already allotted Blix at the UNs urging mind you).'

Inspections at full blast had really only been going on for 2 months in March. What would have happened ? If Saddam actually had all these WMD stockpiles we were told about, we would have found some indication (especially with interviews with scientists outside the country), or some smoking gun. That is what the purpose of the inspections was -- not to provide some sort of fig leaf for an invasion (which is what the world seems to think, probably correctly).

Inspections may not have given us a 100 % guarantee. However, as long as inspections were going on, any active WMD work by Iraq would have been all but impossible. We're not invading Iran, North Korea and Pakistan, which have far larger known WMds. We could have kept Saddam contained -- certainly a few inspectors are a far cheaper way to pacify a country than through 140K troops,

'Oh, and Bin Ladin is almost certainly dead, hence confining the search to him would be a terrible waste of resources'

Nonsense. Long before his re-emergence on tape in September 2002, US intelligence had very good reason to suspect that Bin Laden had indeed manaaged to escape at Tora Bora, and we knew for a fact that Al Qaeda was still operative -- they had carried out more terrorist attacks. No reasonable intelligence person could have made that statement.

gw:

From reading your post, I gather you believe there is no way Iraq should have been attacked unless Iraq met the threshhold of an iminent threat (as that concept's defined in International Law.) It's probably not fair to hold Bush to that threshhold, since he explicitly rejected it. So maybe something more like this would have been a proper inquiry:

OK -- we accept they have these weapons -- do they have the capability to attack us with them?

Are they developing that capability?

OK -- I'm kinda worried about Saddam and Osama gettin' together. Are they doing that now? And I'm not talkin' about some casual contacts, I mean operational coordination of some kind...?

OK. Let's think about this a bit. Is it a better use of resources to round up Osama, or go after Saddam? I mean, if we got Osama and his groupon the run, doesn't that make it difficult for him to get together with Saddam and plot?

You're telling me one doesn't affect the other. Why not?

What the hell are you people doing to get better information, TennyBoy? Huh?

I do not see evidence these questions -- or any others -- were asked.I think this goes more to the flawed decision making process that Dan talks about, rather than the flawed intellignece itself. (Basically, I find Sullivan's comments a bit unfair -- particularly since Sullivan himself was a true believer on WMDs for longer than most of the rest of us.)

erg:

I have to say that doing research is most unfair to us commenters who are looking to shoot off our "mouth" for a minute and get back to work. The impression I recall from the media in early 2003 was that the January report was rather stern, and later reports were kind of "well he's doing a little better and he's somewhat complying" and felt very spun. Maybe Mark B or somebody can do the research while I get back to work

Since you mentioned counterfactuals, Dan:

How much were the intelligence overestimates of the threat from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction influenced by the intelligence underestimates of the threat of a terrorist attack on American soil? Would there have been the public support for attacking Iraq if 9/11 hadn't happened?

How much were the intelligence overestimates of the threat from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction influenced by the intelligence underestimates of Iraqi WMD programs in the early 1990s? If CIA and its brother agencies hadn't gotten it so badly wrong 13 years ago would they have been more skeptical of the evidence in 2002-03?

Suppose President Bush really is trying to get people to look past his mistakes when he says Saddam Hussein "...had the capability of producing weapons of mass murder and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them." Is his statement wrong? We don't know the answer to that question. Historically Saddam suppressed Islam, and Islamists, in Iraq and does not seem to have had more than a kind of nonaggression pact with al Qaeda. However, he does seem to have become far more solicitous of Sunni Arab (though not Shiite) religious extremists after the first Gulf War, and he hated the Saudi and Gulf State Arab regimes (and us, and the British, and the Israelis) as much as bin Laden does. It is anything but far-fetched to suppose that at some point in the future Saddam might have found reasons to cooperate with al Qaeda, and there is no telling where that relationship might have led.

None of this vitiates Dan's point, it seems to me. You don't start a war based on faulty intelligence and later claim vindication of your wisdom and foresight because dangers you did not focus on at the time were averted. And serious intelligence errors are serious intelligence errors, no matter that the context in which they occurred made them more understandable.

Having said that, though, history is not like the law; there are no individual cases each of which can be decided, right or wrong, on their merits (I have some concern, given the composition of the Democratic ticket, that a future administration will not understand this).
Instead, everything is related to everything else. Triumphs that look clean, righteous and glorious can lead in short order to catastrphe -- we saw this in Iraq right after the first Gulf War -- and some good can be drawn even out of significant errors. What counts in the current situation is what we do next -- how we fix the problems that contributed to intelligence failures, how we make the best of the situation in Iraq and so forth. There is no reset button we can press to let us act as if the decision to remove the Baathist regime in Iraq had not been made, even if we wanted to.

There are times I think John Kerry must understand this, but these are mostly the times I am imagining what I would think in his place. Every time I hear him speak it seems that he is really thinking, "just let me get past this election, and then I will work things out somehow." Call this what you want to, but don't call it an improvement on what we've got now.

"That is what the purpose of the inspections was -- not to provide some sort of fig leaf for an invasion "

You are standing your own argument on its head. Blix was critical of Iraq precisely because they had not accounted for weapons they were known to have. That was the crux of his argument. Inspections could _never_ have proved that negative, only Hussein could. At the end of the day, could any reasonable person have relied on the flawed and often corrupt inspections regime almost everyone was skeptical of (remember how badly its failures were in the 90s when the defectors showed up?) Or would we have simply and inevitably been in precisely the same situation weeks and months later but with our military degraded by the stand down and the Iraqi military further dug in? Do you honestly think our presiden and Tony Blair would have taken Hans Blix's word over the combined intel of every nation in the world and Hussein history? That scenario is a fantasy, under no circumstance would a pragmatic leader have been able to assume Hussein was disarmed whatever conclusions Blix came back with. That would be reckless in the extreme.

erg said We're not invading Iran, North Korea and Pakistan, which have far larger known WMds.

How many times does this canarad have to be discredited?

Neither Iran, nor North Korea, nor Pakistan has United Nations Security Council sanctions placed on it in effect limiting its trade and specifically it's arms imports and exports.

Neither Iran, nor North Korea, nor Pakistan has a consistent pattern over the last few decades of thumbing their nose at BINDING UNSC resolutions.

If you want to defend the United Nations' role in international affairs, specifically those related to the most deadly weapons in man's possession, you might want to start by presenting an equally comparable example.

But don't let me stand in your way of making the case to invade Iran, North Korea or Pakistan. The floor is yours.

"Nonsense. Long before his re-emergence on tape in September 2002, US intelligence had very good reason to suspect that Bin Laden had indeed manaaged to escape at Tora Bora"

Explain to me why the guy who spent the last decade producing a video tape every other month hasnt managed to find a camcorder and read a current copy of the Afghani Times. Think of the morale blow such a simple thing would produce. The guy is the Arab Elvis. It is simply politically impossible to even speculate on OBLs death without a body, but I have no doubt every reasonable intelligence and foriegn policy wonk has at the least a deep suspision the man is buried somewhere.

"You don't start a war based on faulty intelligence and later claim vindication of your wisdom and foresight because dangers you did not focus on at the time were averted. "

Why not? Didnt Bush 41 take credit for bitch slapping Saddam the first time when it turned out he was only a year or so from an atomic bomb?

AM:

I think for some of us, the point is that we don't think the answer to whether Saddam had WMD was very important to the war. I, for example, care only about nukes. To the best of my knowledge, chem weapons and bio weapons have, to date, proven to be terrible weapons for terrorists: 5 dead from sarin, 7 dead from anthrax, etc.

There were lots of reasons to think Saddam was contained/containable. This is off the top of my head, but (1) he had been effectively contained to date - he hadn't attacked the US through terrorrism, (2) nuclear programs are hard to hide, (3) Israel had a better reason to worry about Saddam then we did, and the will to attack if deemed necessary - we should have let them police the area and take the heat, (4) Saddam was evil, but also pragmatic - he had to know after 9/11 that if he helped a terrorist in a large attack on the US, we'd find out and we'd take Iraq of the map.

A lot of this I blame on sloppy language, e.g.,"weapons of mass destruction," when the differences between chem/bio and nukes seem massively important, and "war on terrorism" which is just senseless. And yes, I blame sloppy language on Bush's inarticulateness (and what I take to be his inability to think clearly).

"There were lots of reasons to think Saddam was contained/containable. "

All those arguments could easilly refer to the containment of Germany in the pre-WW2 period.

"There were lots of reasons to think Saddam was contained/containable. "

All of them centering around maintaining sanctions and the "food for oil" program that clearly was not working very well, plus the troop presence in Saudi Arabia. Pressure was building to lift sanctions on Iraq. Had Blix in 2003 reported that Saddam had complied with inspections and had a clean bill, it's a safe bet to assume no war in Iraq, that sanctions would've almost certainly been lifted this year (if not last), with the argument not being over whether Iraq had WMD, but whether Iraqi sanctions should go because Iraq had complied. If Iraqi violations were not enough to justify the termination of the cease fire, they should not have been enough to justify the maintenance of sanctions that were in place to contain him in the first place.

To the best of my knowledge, chem weapons and bio weapons have, to date, proven to be terrible weapons for terrorists: 5 dead from sarin, 7 dead from anthrax, etc.

A baseball stat head would remark about the small sample size before jumping to conclusions.

I asked because I am Jewish. A proud, bleeding heart liberal Jew. And basically I am confounded by Dan. He's certainly intelligent. He usually argues well. But it's clear he on Darth's side way too often.

Will he fall into the dark side hackery of Glenn Reynolds, or see the light? Did he become a rethuglican to oppose his father? Dropped on his head? Didn't spend enough time in California or New York? What did his haftorah say and why did Dan ignore it?

He annoys the hell out of me in a way that fellow Jews Roger Simon and Pejman never well because they are idiots. Roger is an old fart, and Pejman is an idiot, and I understand that, but what is Dan's excuse? It just bugs the shit out of me.

Sigh... every jew should be required to spend a few months in Israel across a thin fence between people sworn to murder you and every man, woman, child, and baby jew. Its just astounding that a race so very liberal (in the best sense of the term), so compassionate, so caring, and so badly wronged by history can at the same time be so bullheaded about who their true ideological allies are geopolitically. No-one has given more of a free hand to Israel than George Bush. No-one has done more to dry up the funding of Hamas, Jihad, and Hezbollah. No-one has removed more regimes from the planet sworn to Israeli genocide. But to jerry, they are thugs and fools. How very sad. I recommend asking the Israeli boys and girls guarding the green-line how _they_ feel about GWB.

jerry:
I must say that I admire your open-mindedness, especially your willingness to give give the benefit of the doubt to those who disagree with you. Such phrases as

Will he fall into the dark side hackery of Glenn Reynolds, or see the light? Did he become a rethuglican to oppose his father?

Didn't spend enough time in California or New York?

Yes the above is indeed, very bitter and angry sarcasm.

These "if you knew then what you know now" hypotheticals are always surreal exercises but ...

I guess most of this focuses on the October 2002 Senate vote. I'm not hearing many re-thinking Desert Fox or the 1998-2002 period of no sanctions and no inspections.

I think if you asked me, "If you had a perfect snapshot of Iraq's WMD capability on October 2002," something we still don't have or are likely to have for some years, "how would the future have been different?"

I guess I would answer that the Senate would not have voted for the Use of Force act, inspections would not have resumed and sanctions would have collapsed.

The $10 million missile deal between North Korea and Iraq would have been completed. The North Korea-Pakistan-Lybia-etc. nuclear/missile black market would still be in business. Iraq would have continued its downward spiral and eventually something really ugly and nasty would have happened that would have resulted in Saddam being militarily deposed by the US under different circumstances.

What would have been that really ugly and nasty something? Where would it have happened?

Don't know. Would it have been deemed less of a foreign affairs/PR catastrophe because we waited instead? Maybe. Do I lose sleep over it? Nope.

Remember, as the evidence shows, Saddam's own military was convinced that he had WMDs, with almost every Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard commander telling us that they thought that the next troops over had them to use. Secondly, he clearly was bent on obtaining the weapons, as the subsequent evidence has shown, and as has been backed up.

The good news, such as it is, is that he was significantly behind functionality on his weapons programs than we or any other intelligence service believed. (I'm convinced that at least partially this is because it was to Saddam's interest to have others believe that he possessed such weapons, or at least to create the strategic ambiguity and fear in surrounding countries.)

It's bad news at the same time because our intelligence services, like everyone else's, overestimated his capability. We certainly didn't overestimate his desire to obtain them, though. (Consider the North Korea deal, Libya's program, and elsewhere.)

As for me, it makes no difference in my judgement, and I argued at the time that it was a real possiblity that he didn't have WMD, but even so he was clearly trying to obtain them, was a declared enemy, and had repeatedly violated our peace terms. I am disappointed in the Democratic members of the Senate, if that is there view.

Call me crazy, but I think it makes a lot more sense to invade before someone completes his weapons. After all, we certainly aren't going to invade a country with functional nuclear weapons, are we? We don't invade the DPRK because thousands, tens of thousands, possibly millions of civilians would die, mostly from a country who opposes invading. That's a good reason right there, isn't it? We have plenty of reasons for not invading Iran, including and especially our trying to evaluate any prospects for peaceful reform there.

Can one of these hairsplitters tell me exactly when we could invade a country? Clearly, judging from Iraq, merely having the beginning of weapons programs, some sarin shells and mustard gas, and attempting to get materials for a nuclear program isn't enough for these people, if we can happen to thwart them otherwise. At the same time, clearly waiting until a country has functional weapons programs is also suicide. So exactly what is the permissible window of a half-completed nuclear weapon that's allowed?

Dan, don't you think the faulty decision making process led them to use faulty inteligence? Holding position (a) logically leads to (b). Either way, just remeber the Preznit was out on the ranch instead of reading the NIE. This si teh guy you are "on the fence" about. HE DIDNT EVEN READ TEH F'n NIE.

How much are we confusing where the onus was?

On Saddam to prevent the war by being transparent and/or on Bush to go to war knowing what we'd find.

Of course, Saddam's been pulled from a spider-hole, humiliated and being put on trial.

I think there is some animus that Bush, having been wrong with soooo much heat generated, hasn't suffered some of the same fate.

"Saddam Hussein violated his agreement with the UN and Iraq is the size of California. Thus, we were forced to invade Iraq to determine the truth of the matter. End of story."

This is not true at all. Iraq could have been bombed into compliance at any time, just as Kosovo was. There was never any need for ground troops, and no need for the loss of life of any soldiers. Bombing would have been much cheaper as well.

The bombing could have continued until they gave the inspectors complete access.

This was all about picking the solution that suited the neocons, of invasion.

"1. We have found no WMD of any serious consequence in Iraq since the deposing of Saddam.
2. Saddam repeatedly thumbed his nose at the international community (by way of the UN) when it demanded he account for his WMD.

We know #2 to be true and given that, so far, #1 is true, then not only was Saddam a sadistic murdering despot but he was also a hubristic, suicidal, moron."

Since when did Saddam thumb his nose about the WMD's? He didn't have them, he told everyone he didn't have them, he was telling the truth.

Blix didn't say anything like that. He always said the issue was whether Saddam had destroyed the WMD's after the Gulf War like he said he did. Saddam claimed he got rid of them and didn't bother to keep exact records because at the time there was no reason to believe they were necessary. The issue was always if this was true or not, and whether any surviving stocks would still be working.

That's why an invasion was unnecessary. If Saddam had been bombed into allowing full access to inspectors then this could have been resolved by them. One major sticking point was Saddam was refusing to allow access to presidential palaces but these have been shown to have no underground storage for WMD's anyway.

Another was Saddam was accusing the inspectors of being infiltrated by the CIA which was true.

Your (1) is an exageration. Saddam didn't full-heartedly cooperate, but according to Scott Writter, he cooperated enough. You have to remeber we had active spies working ont he inspection team. Saddamn wasn't making htat part up -- and that had a lot to do with his uncooperation.

Although unrelated, this fact is so unbelievably absurd, I think I'm just going to add it to every post on Iraq for a while. BUSH COULDN't BE BOTHERED TO READ TEH NIE BEFORE HE SENT THE COUNTRY TO WAR.

Iraq could have been bombed into compliance at any time, just as Kosovo was.

You mean the bombing of Serbia, right?

I'm afraid you've fallen for the air power myth.

But even so, it begs the question why Desert Fox didn't accomplish what you suggest or wasn't pursued to accomplish what you suggest.

dispassionate, now you're starting to sound like a Saddam apologist and, I'm very sorry to say, either a liar or willfully ignorant.

I'm convinced Saddam had WMD in 1991, when we were exposed to chemical weapons at Khamisiyah and elsewhere during cleanup ops.

I think he still had them in 1995, when Kamel defected providing proof of Iraq's deception and continued efforts in it's WMD programs. To be fair, Kamel said Iraq did not possess WMD in 1995. He also said it really was a baby milk factory we bombed in 1991 (and again in 1998) and there was no military significance to the air defense shelter we bombed.39, 40 But the documents on his chicken farm and the discovery by Dr.Diane Seaman on 25 September 199741, 42 throw into question Kamel's denials of weapons. Remarks by Khidhir Hamza contradicted Kamel's claims, and in return Kamel attacked Hamza's credibility in the UN transcript. More troubling, more than a dozen 155 mm artillery shells were discovered in 1996-97 at the former Muthanna State Establishment containing approximately 49 litres of mustard gas agent that was still of high quality — 97 per cent purity. It seems reasonable that Iraq was either incapable of provably disarming or at least appeared "not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament that was demanded of it." and had not made a fundamental decision to disarm or fully cooperate.

"Evidence" of WMD was found when inspections resumed (starting on page 21). I think the phrasing at the time was "no smoking gun". In other words, all the new, undeclared items UNMOVIC found that violated sanctions and the cease fire (ordance, munitions, aluminum tubes, precursors, ...) did not constitute a significant breach - deemed, IIRC, to be newly manufactured munitions, stocks or weaponized agents.

I think a narrative bias took over in the mid-90s that not only included WMD in Iraq, but also:

- WMD collaboration between Iraq and bin Laden at al Shifa,

- terrorists might get WMD from Iraq,

Think how many can be killed by just a tiny bit of anthrax, and think about how it's not just that Saddam Hussein might put it on a Scud missile, an anthrax head, and send it on to some city he wants to destroy. Think about all the other terrorists and other bad actors who could just parade through Baghdad and pick up their stores if we don't take action.

The new indictment, which supersedes the June action, accused bin Laden of leading a vast terrorist conspiracy from 1989 to the present, in which he was said to be working in concert with governments, including those of Sudan, Iraq and Iran, and terrorist groups, to build weapons and attack American military installations.

- that Iraq offered safe harbor to bin Laden when he "disappeared" from Afghanistan in 1999,

- that Iraq might have assisted bin Laden in the USS Cole bombing

The SSIC Report documents much of this and is worth the read.

"You mean the bombing of Serbia, right?

I'm afraid you've fallen for the air power myth.

But even so, it begs the question why Desert Fox didn't accomplish what you suggest or wasn't pursued to accomplish what you suggest."

I don't see any air power myth, the Serbian Kosovo war was completely solved by bombing. Also Desert Fox was not designed to bomb Saddam to let back in the inspectors. The inspectors were withdrawn by the US because Saddam refused to let them into certain sites. Then Iraq was bombed to get all those suspected sites, which as it turned out were empty anyway.

So bombing Saddam into submitting to full inspections was never tried.

"I think he still had them in 1995, when Kamel defected providing proof of Iraq's deception and continued efforts in it's WMD programs. To be fair, Kamel said Iraq did not possess WMD in 1995. "

The point that demolishes the whole argument is that no invasion was ever necessary under any scenario. Bombing Iraq to give the inspectors full access would have worked quite well at a fraction of the cost in blood and treasure.

If it had not worked then an invasion could have been done. So even in the unlikely event the bombing did not work an invasion could have been done. In other words the whole strategy was a waste of dollars and lives.

Your whole argument is a red herring trying to avoid the simple fact that an invasion was simply the wrong strategy. The planes patrolling the no fly zones at the time could have probably bombed enough targets to force the inspectors back in and solve the whole thing.

I don't see any air power myth, the Serbian Kosovo war was completely solved by bombing.

Well, no. But, I won't try to debate it with you anymore.

Then Iraq was bombed to get all those suspected sites, which as it turned out were empty anyway.

So bombing Saddam into submitting to full inspections was never tried.

I think you just restated my question above, why not?

But just so we're clear on what the CinC knew at the time, President Clinton summarized the extent of his knowledge of Iraq's WMD capabilities when he left office this way:

Let me tell you what I know. When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War, we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn't know. So I thought it was prudent for the president to go to the U.N. and for the U.N. to say you got to let these inspectors in, and this time if you don't cooperate the penalty could be regime change, not just continued sanctions.

When Clinton was here recently he told me he was absolutely convinced, given his years in the White House and the access to privileged information which he had, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction until the end of the Saddam regime.

It seems that the argument always falls into two camps. One camp (mine)decided after 11-September that the status quo and stability were no longer in our best interest. The destruction made it painfully clear that we could not afford to respond to attacks we had to preempt them. Iraq was done first because there was a reasonable expectation that they had WMD, they had "flipped the bird" to the international community for years, and having Iraq would give the US a badly needed foothold in the mideast. Being in Iraq would allow us to lean on Syria, Iran, and Libya much more effectively.

The other side argues, (basically) that we should just respond to attacks not preempt. That the only group that matters is the one that attacked last. This is why we should only concentrate on Afghanistan and not initiate any other action. That is until there is another terrorist attack and then we could respond to that group but no other.

"Why not? Didnt Bush 41 take credit for bitch slapping Saddam the first time when it turned out he was only a year or so from an atomic bomb?"

Poppy Bush supplied Saddam with all these weapons, and even allowed Iraqi nuclear scientists to learn nuclear technology in the US. If he had done none of these things then Saddam would probably not have had WMD's at all. Granted though he may have gotten some from other countries.

The whole Iraq saga is so full of US (particularly Republican) screwups it's hard to say what intentions Saddam ever had. Until the first Gulf War Saddam was a partner of the US, who appeared to be prepared to turn a blind eye to an annexation of small parts of Kuwait.

After that Saddam apparently destroyed all the remaining WMD's and didn't try much if at all to make any more. The sanctions probably just killed a lot of innocent people for no gain.

What they should have done was offer Saddam a clear deal from the early 1990's. To promise lifting of sanctions in exchange for full compliance with inspectors in perpetuity and bombing whenever he didn't comply.

"It seems that the argument always falls into two camps. One camp (mine)decided after 11-September that the status quo and stability were no longer in our best interest. The destruction made it painfully clear that we could not afford to respond to attacks we had to preempt them. Iraq was done first because there was a reasonable expectation that they had WMD, they had "flipped the bird" to the international community for years, and having Iraq would give the US a badly needed foothold in the mideast. Being in Iraq would allow us to lean on Syria, Iran, and Libya much more effectively.

The other side argues, (basically) that we should just respond to attacks not preempt. That the only group that matters is the one that attacked last. This is why we should only concentrate on Afghanistan and not initiate any other action. That is until there is another terrorist attack and then we could respond to that group but no other."

There was a third way, because it's not a black and white argument. These are two extremist views but a centrist would have combined the two. Iraq could have been made to comply with inspectors without an invasion so that would have been cleaned up. Afghanistan could have been more thoroughly cleaned out to get Osama properly.

The Libyans had already offered to give up their WMD's years ago but this was refused until the Lockerbie issue was settled. So Bush's claims of success there are nonsense.

The Saudis needed to be sorted out over 9/11 but never were. Bush clearly was ignoring the terrorist threat and if he isn't partially to blame for 9/11 then he should have been doing a lot more.

Chances are pretty good that delaying action in Iraq would have just resulted in more death and destruction later on. For example look at Rwanda, Yugoslavia, and the ongoing festivities in the Sudan. Yes, Sudan where the vaunted "international community" shows that with respect to genocide never again means, we really can't be bothered with the aggravation. The international community can't break away from the cocktail circuit for genocide in the Sudan yet amazingly there are still people who argue sincerely and with a straight face that the "international community" could have effectively dealt with the situation in Iraq.

Dispassionate,

You said

"Iraq could have been made to comply with inspectors without an invasion so that would have been cleaned up"

Iraq had never complyed with the inspections, Saddam was using the sanctions to starve thousands of civilians, the oil for food program was leaking like a sieve, and the only reason Blix got into Iraq was because of all of the troops massed on Iraq's border getting ready for invasion.

Dispassionate,

I agree, the Saudi's are at the center of the whole rotten mess and need to be dealt with.

But they are the 800 pound gorilla in the world oil markets and we can't deal with them until the world oil supply is stabilized. Invading Iraq, getting rid of Saddam and having US military bases in Iraq does much to stabilize the world oil markets.

Don't forget that the presence of Mecca and Medina within Saudi Arabia enormously complicates how they must be dealt with.

"Chances are pretty good that delaying action in Iraq would have just resulted in more death and destruction later on. For example look at Rwanda, Yugoslavia, and the ongoing festivities in the Sudan. Yes, Sudan where the vaunted "international community" shows that with respect to genocide never again means, we really can't be bothered with the aggravation. The international community can't break away from the cocktail circuit for genocide in the Sudan yet amazingly there are still people who argue sincerely and with a straight face that the "international community" could have effectively dealt with the situation in Iraq. "

Delaying action is one thing, the issue though is what action is appropriate. Bombing Iraq into complying fully with inspectors would have solved the problem completely in my view. Of course we now know there was no threat anyway. You could probably bomb Sudan into compliance as well.

"Well, no. But, I won't try to debate it with you anymore."

Well I had some friends who were Bosnian refugees and they were quite happy with the result. The question is whether invading and occupying Kosovo like Iraq would have been better.

"I think you just restated my question above, why not?"

And you are restaing my question. If there was enough bombs available then why not try to force full compliance that way? if it worked then it rendered the invasion unnecessary. If it didn't work then invade later, it would only make Iraq easier to invade.

I think the Iraq problem was mostly caused by Clinton. He should have kept bombing to force the insepctors back in. I believe he didn't because the prevailing view was Iraq was no real threat.

When people started to doubt this then they should have just bombed again to allow the inspectors to make sure. Bush used troops massing at the border to compel Saddam to let the inspectors back in, so we know he was responsive to threats. We also know before this that for many years Iraq was not dead set against the inspectors returning, their complaint was there was no effort to reward complaince with lifting sanctions.

"Iraq had never complyed with the inspections, Saddam was using the sanctions to starve thousands of civilians, the oil for food program was leaking like a sieve, and the only reason Blix got into Iraq was because of all of the troops massed on Iraq's border getting ready for invasion."

Blix got into Iraq because Saddam was threatened. He would have been just as threatened if the US had started bombing and targeting him, or close to him. Saddam did comply with the sanctions but they weren't lifted. He had no WMD's he destroyed them after the first Gulf War so he had none to give up. He didn't keep enough records of this to satisfy Blix and so he had no way to prove he was telling the truth.

The real issue is whether Saddam was a threat after the first Gulf War or not. There was a suspicion that he was, and chemical and biological weapons were not considered then to be much of a threat anyway.

Powell and Rice said themselves that Saddam was contained and was no longer a threat. This was generally accepted pre 9/11.

Saddam wasn't a nice guy. If the Republicans want to set out an agenda of saving people from cruel dictators, hunger, disease, etc I would happily support that. If they had bombed Iraq, got the inspectors back in, and then spent money on solving other problems then there would be a lot more value for the blood and treasure spent.

Dispassionate,

The problem is even if inspections took place as long as Saddam ruled Iraq he could eventually reconstitute the WMD program. Furthermore, all that bombing would likely kill more civilians than the war did and Saddam would still be in power.

Your friend in Bosnia may have been happy with the results but how many thousands of innocent people died to get the result??? Many of the deaths would have been prevented if something had been done earlier (like in Bush 1 administration). A relatively minor action then would have saved many lives and may have prevented the region from blowing up the way it did.

Blix got into Iraq because Saddam was threatened.

Saddam was threatened after the Senate approved the Use of Force Act in October 2002 and the UNSCR 1441 passed 15-0. Even then, he was convinced that the US would back down if he rope-a-dope the inspections long enough.

He would have been just as threatened if the US had started bombing and targeting him, or close to him.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. That the inspectors should have been pulled out in March 2003, as they were, and bombing should have begun, as it was, but ground forces should not have gone in so that the inspectors could go back in?

Saddam did comply with the sanctions but they weren't lifted.

That's not true. Saddam violated the sanctions consistently. That's not even worth debating.

He had no WMD's he destroyed them after the first Gulf War so he had none to give up.

Well, except that we found weaponized WMD up to 1997 and that UNSCOM stated more WMD agents, munitions, programs, precursors and dual use equipment was discovered and destroyed between 1995 and 1998 than between 1991 and 1994.

He didn't keep enough records of this to satisfy Blix and so he had no way to prove he was telling the truth.

No, he lied in numerous "final full disclosures" about his nuclear, biological and chemical programs, including weaponized agents, and claimed to have secretly and unilaterally disposed of items to cover up the lies.

He obstructed efforts to clear up unresolved issues. It wasn't a paperwork error.

We know from hindsight that Saddam wasn't trying to reconstitute any WMD program. My point though is that from the point of view of national security a bombing campaign should have been able to solve any possible threats from Saddam.

I have no problem with the concept of an invasion if it was cheap and easy, but at no time did it look that way.

My friend's job in the Bosnian army was to film mass graves created by the Serbs. They did want help a lot sooner from the US, but as James Baker said at the time "We don't have a dog in that fight". What they needed was an end to the arms embargo against them. The Serbs had all the weapons from the Yugoslavian Army and had taken all arms out of Bosnia.

So the Bosnians had nothing to fight with and were prevented from getting weapons because of the embargo, and because of this they got slaughtered.

It was never a preemption issue, it was keeping back weapons from the Bosnians perhaps to let the Serbs wipe out a group of Muslims in Europe. At least that's what the Bosnians thought was the real reason.

I have no problem with the concept of an invasion if it was cheap and easy, but at no time did it look that way.

Well, I think that's really at the heart of the debate. I don't think anyone would have cared about intel, WMD, or even $$ cost if this had wrapped up in the summer, fall latest, of last year.

Historically, this has been cheap and easy, but there are generational contexts that come into play and politically are important.

Cheap and easy is an important social and cultural expectation, if not demand, today and Bush's Iraq polls are reflecting that.

"Even then, he was convinced that the US would back down if he rope-a-dope the inspections long enough."

Back down over what? He didn't have any WMD's which is what the resolution was about. I'm arguing bombing was better than an invasion, nothing else.

"I'm not sure what you're saying here. That the inspectors should have been pulled out in March 2003, as they were, and bombing should have begun, as it was, but ground forces should not have gone in so that the inspectors could go back in?"

The idea was that an invasion force intimidated Saddam into letting in the inspectors. Why? Because an invasion would threaten him. A bombing campaign would have threatened him just as much because it would weaken his hold on the government and he could be hit by bombs himself. So bombing would have been just as personally threatening to him as an invasion.

"That's not true. Saddam violated the sanctions consistently. That's not even worth debating."

What with? He didn't have WMD's which is what the sanctions were for. He may have appeared to not cooperate enough at some points but Blix said the level of cooperation overall was very high. Powell and Rice agreed themselves Iraq was contained.

He may have imported more than he was allowed to but there's no evidence of importing to make WMD's. If he imported more food and medicine, so what?

"Well, except that we found weaponized WMD up to 1997 and that UNSCOM stated more WMD agents, munitions, programs, precursors and dual use equipment was discovered and destroyed between 1995 and 1998 than between 1991 and 1994.

David Kay said there was no evidence Iraq tried to make WMD's after the Gulf War. The point though is what was necessary to prevent Iraq being a threat. I'm saying the US believed that Iraq was well contained by the inspectors and for several years after Desert Fox.

At no time was there any real evidence that Iraq was dangerous enough to make an invasion necessary. Granted doing nothing allowed some small chance that something was being built to create a threat. So I believe bombing Iraq into allowing the inspectors back in would have solved the problem making an invasion unnecessary.

Doing nothing at all would have been risky, as it was indeed possible Saddam had hidden something.

"No, he lied in numerous "final full disclosures" about his nuclear, biological and chemical programs, including weaponized agents, and claimed to have secretly and unilaterally disposed of items to cover up the lies.

He obstructed efforts to clear up unresolved issues. It wasn't a paperwork error."

He said he didn't have WMD's and he didn't so that's not lying.

This is a red herring though. My point is simply that a bombing campaign would have cost less than an invasion and done the same job. I don't accept the reason was humanitarian because the Bushies show no interest in being humanitarian anywhere else.

I don't care whether they did it for the oil or for Israel or whatever. It is also beside the point whether Saddam was lying about WMD's or not. If he was retaining some WMD's then a bombing to let in inspectors would have solved that. If he wasn't then a bombing was a cheap way to make sure.

Saddam was definitely a problem, but an invasion was not the solution.

"Well, I think that's really at the heart of the debate. I don't think anyone would have cared about intel, WMD, or even $$ cost if this had wrapped up in the summer, fall latest, of last year."

I think it was quite obvious this would be a very expensive process, that was anticipated to cost a lot of soldier's lives as well.

It may all boil down to the fact that the Bushies were over optimistic. It reminds me though of the old saying, "It was worse than a crime, it was a mistake".

He said he didn't have WMD's and he didn't so that's not lying.

Look, up to 1998, he kept saying he didn't have any WMD and we kept finding weaponized WMD, WMD precursors, previously undisclosed WMD programs, ...

He lied his ass off for years.

So, when you say he was not lying about not having WMD, you are basically talking about some point in time after inspectors left in 1998 based on what we now know in 2004.

Kay did say that Iraq abandoned its large-scale WMD production capability after the first Gulf War. Kay also said that Iraq did not have large stocks after the mid-90s sometime.

It's obvious that you've locked onto this, "we should have bombed instead of invading" strategem. I don't think you've really thought it through with a timeline of events, but I do think I'd be talking past you to discuss it any further.

"It may all boil down to the fact that the Bushies were over optimistic."

No doubt. It's a fact of life that your critics overly pessimistic predictions are never remembered, but your overly optimistic predictions are. Of course, it's only the unreasonable optimists that lead.

Daniel,

I wrote an article on Israeli's coming preemption of Iranian nukes over on Winds of Change back in April.

Below is the URL and selected quotes:

http://windsofchange.net/archives/004885.php

Iran's Spoiling Attack
by Trent Telenko at April 20, 2004 03:23 AM

The Mullahs' Goal

Iran's Mullahocracy has been America's enemy since 1979. They have learned that America alternates between weak/malleable and strong/bold executive leadership, having faced both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. The former President it held hostage for over a year while the latter President traded arms for hostages, then turned around and broke the Mullah's will to fight against Iraq with a "secret" naval war, the downing of an Iranian Airbus by an Aegis cruiser and intelligence assistance for Saddam's reconquest of the Iranian Al Faw peninsula with chemical weapons.

The one thing the Mullahs have leaned in all of this is that American Presidential Administrations have an extremely difficult time doing new foreign policy or national security policy an election year or during the first six months of a new Administration. They are now taking advantage of this to strike, and hopefully cripple, the Bush Administration's reelection chances or failing that make America abandon its plan to democratize Iraq and destabilize their theocracy.
(snip)

The Stakes

More than Iraq is at stake here there are other players, notably Israel.

Iran's mullahs are developing nuclear weapons, which they view as a magic shield against America and a sword to destroy the Jewish state. They have made overt threats to nuke Israel as soon as they have nuclear weapons, and said they believe Iran would survive any exchange of nukes with Israel. The mullahs do not at all understand that their inflammatory rhetoric intended for domestic political effect has a whole new meaning for other countries when backed up with nuclear weapons.

This brings up the following question:

Does anyone doubt for a moment that Israel will, absolutely, positively WILL preemptively destroy Iranian nuclear facilities, with nukes if necessary, to prevent another holocaust?

Since Iran has taken steps to see that an Israeli conventional air attack, such as that against Osirak, Iraq http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/facility/osiraq.htm can't work, Israel must use nuclear ground bursts, producing highly radioactive short term fallout, against Iran's hardened nuclear facilities.

But it won't be just against those. The remorseless logic of nuclear conflict with an irrational opponent will force Israel to eliminate Iran as a strategic threat for the long term. That entails hitting more targets than just those currently known to be working on Iranian nuclear weapons.

A Democratic President would create this worst of all possible worlds, where pre-emptive nuclear attack is used as a tool of state policy. It is not a world we want to live in.

Iranian casualties (@10 - 20% will be dead) would range from several hundred thousand to several million, depending on the target set, weapons selection and local weather patterns. In short, welcome to the world of Wretchard's "Three Conjectures." The EMP from this attack (high altitude bursts to disrupt Iranian C3I) will affect American forces in the area, including in Iraq, and devastate Persian Gulf oil production.

It is therefore unlikely that the USA will let this happen by doing nothing. A friend I spoke to thinks that Iran will have domestic nuclear weapon production capability by spring 2006. I agree. He is also in print that nuclear weapons will be used in anger by 1 Jan 2006 unless we invade Iran first. The only way I can see to prevent this future from coming to pass is with the near term conquest of Iran.

Bush will do this in time, if reelected. Kerry won't. Even Thomas Friedman of the New York Times recognizes the willingness of Bush foreign policy to destroy unacceptable status quos.

In the time since I wrote that piece I have come around to Tom Holsinger's position that a major conventional Israeli air strike on Iramian nuclear facilities was in the offing.

However, if you go back to the link and read the article, you will see I talk alot about "unit boundaries" as the key place spoiling attacks take place.

Politically, America's major "unit boundary" is between Presidential Administrations of different political parties.

If Israel is facing the threat of a nuclear Armed Iran and an incoming Kerry Administration, I'd rate the odds as better than 50-50 that the Jewish state would nuke Iran to perminently remove it as a strategic threat.

"It's obvious that you've locked onto this, "we should have bombed instead of invading" strategem. I don't think you've really thought it through with a timeline of events, but I do think I'd be talking past you to discuss it any further."

No I think you'd have to come up with some kind of reason why it wouldn't have worked. Since you apparently can't then that concludes my point. What tiny evidence of WMD's you might dredge up to put a fig leaf to this debacle is irrelevant to that concept.

It must be hard to have to defend such a ridiculous policy as the invasion though.

dispassionate,

Please don't misunderstand me. It makes no sense to bomb in the timeline. There's no "slot" for it. We could have continued inspections, I understand that argument, but this "let's bomb instead of ground forces" is a choice of military tactic disconnected from the reality of 2002 and 2003.

"No I think you'd have to come up with some kind of reason why it wouldn't have worked. Since you apparently can't then that concludes my point. What tiny evidence of WMD's you might dredge up to put a fig leaf to this debacle is irrelevant to that concept."

1. Bombing would not have worked because inspections had resumed without bombing or invasion.

2. If the goal was to continue inspections, both bombing and invasion are counter-productive once they've begun.

3. If the goal was regime change, bombing would not have deposed Saddam's regime, did not depose his regime in the past, did not depose Milosevich's regime or "win" the war in Kosovo.

Now, I've provided links to studies on the limitation of air power earlier. You can read them, or not.

What you should not do is mischaracterize MY position or pretend that my unwillingness to overcome your obtuseness "concludes" your point.

Trent, that's a fascinating scenario.

Imagine that israel surprise-attacked iran with nuclear weapons, resulting in hundreds of thousands to millions of iranian casualties. I think it would definitely disrupt the status quo.

What would the EU do? Would they declare an economic boycott of israel? No imports or exports, no trades with companies who trade with israel? Why not? No ships dock at european ports that have docked in israel, no planes land at european airports from israel?

Israel would be the defining case of a rogue nuclear state. A surprise nuclear attack on a nation that has never ever attacked them.... Presumably the USA would join in the condemnations. Presumably the USA would veto the inevitable UN resolutions. From there what would happen? Allawi would have to tell us to withdraw from iraq or lose all credibility among his people. Would Kuwait do similarly? Turkey? Belgium? Germany? It would be an interesting time to be alive.

Trent,

These people have no idea how the political situation will change once Israel makes any kind of pre-emptive attack on Iran, because they don't think anyone exists but us. The rest of the world is for them just a backdrop for domestic politics.

Which means they will be mugged by reality over and over. But never learn a thing.

Trent,

Perhaps we should start a 100-day countdown to the Israel pre-emptive attack on Iran.

October Surprise!

For our friend Jor:

Kerry Didn't Read Iraq Report Before Vote -- Aides

J Thomas,

Please show me how the EU would be able to agree with itself on anything, let alone an embargo on Israel?

Especially since in *that scenario* Israel had demonstrated the political will to pre-emptively nuke its enemies and has ballistic missiles capable of reaching every EU capitol -- none of which have ballistic missile defenses.

The most likely post strike result of the craven and self interested EU diplomacy would be a new trade deal with Jewish state.

>These people have no idea how the
>political situation will change once
>Israel makes any kind of pre-emptive
>attack on Iran, because they don't
>think anyone exists but us. The rest
>of the world is for them just a
>backdrop for domestic politics.

One of the first rules of war:

_"The enemy gets a vote"_

Of course, the people you are talking about listen to CDs by Jadakiss about 'Why did Bush bring down the towers' so I shouldn't be surprised the outside world isn't real to them.

"1. Bombing would not have worked because inspections had resumed without bombing or invasion.

2. If the goal was to continue inspections, both bombing and invasion are counter-productive once they've begun.

3. If the goal was regime change, bombing would not have deposed Saddam's regime, did not depose his regime in the past, did not depose Milosevich's regime or "win" the war in Kosovo.

Now, I've provided links to studies on the limitation of air power earlier. You can read them, or not.

What you should not do is mischaracterize MY position or pretend that my unwillingness to overcome your obtuseness "concludes" your point."

My point was that bombing threats could have substituted invasion threats to get the inspectors back in. It would have been much cheaper as well. Once the inspectors were in the threat of bombing instead of invasion should insure they stayed there to find out the truth of the matter.

The goal was simply to address the threat of WMD's that was being hyped. Enough bombs would have been available to flatten every desired target in iraq if the inspectors were inspectors. Bombing was better, faster, and cheaper in blood and treasure.