War Was A Good Thing...

[myfiles3000]

Originally posted by OlderThanDirt@4 June 2003 - 02:26

clocker wrote:

Does asking the question "Where are the WMD" automatically make one a "detractor"?

Nope. Didn't say that. Just saying that what we're witnessing now is a turnabout. The US was lambasted for not giving Blix more time ... and now is being lambasted by those unwilling to give us the same amount of time they were willing to give Blix.

apples and oranges. you suck.

[OlderThanDirt]

myfiles3000 wrote:

(OlderThanDirt @ 4 June 2003 - 02:26)

 
clocker wrote:

Does asking the question "Where are the WMD" automatically make one a "detractor"?

Nope. Didn't say that. Just saying that what we're witnessing now is a turnabout. The US was lambasted for not giving Blix more time ... and now is being lambasted by those unwilling to give us the same amount of time they were willing to give Blix.

apples and oranges.

Actually, your correct. Comparing the two inspection attempts is an apples-to-oranges comparison. Blix's people weren't being shot at while they searched.

you suck.

Ahhh, yes. It's great to come here for such intellectual foreplay.

[myfiles3000]

new york times
June 4, 2003
Because We Could
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN


he failure of the Bush team to produce any weapons of mass destruction (W.M.D.'s) in Iraq is becoming a big, big story. But is it the real story we should be concerned with? No. It was the wrong issue before the war, and it's the wrong issue now.

Why? Because there were actually four reasons for this war: the real reason, the right reason, the moral reason and the stated reason.

The "real reason" for this war, which was never stated, was that after 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world. Afghanistan wasn't enough because a terrorism bubble had built up over there — a bubble that posed a real threat to the open societies of the West and needed to be punctured. This terrorism bubble said that plowing airplanes into the World Trade Center was O.K., having Muslim preachers say it was O.K. was O.K., having state-run newspapers call people who did such things "martyrs" was O.K. and allowing Muslim charities to raise money for such "martyrs" was O.K. Not only was all this seen as O.K., there was a feeling among radical Muslims that suicide bombing would level the balance of power between the Arab world and the West, because we had gone soft and their activists were ready to die.

The only way to puncture that bubble was for American soldiers, men and women, to go into the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, house to house, and make clear that we are ready to kill, and to die, to prevent our open society from being undermined by this terrorism bubble. Smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because he deserved it and because he was right in the heart of that world. And don't believe the nonsense that this had no effect. Every neighboring government — and 98 percent of terrorism is about what governments let happen — got the message. If you talk to U.S. soldiers in Iraq they will tell you this is what the war was about.

The "right reason" for this war was the need to partner with Iraqis, post-Saddam, to build a progressive Arab regime. Because the real weapons of mass destruction that threaten us were never Saddam's missiles. The real weapons that threaten us are the growing number of angry, humiliated young Arabs and Muslims, who are produced by failed or failing Arab states — young people who hate America more than they love life. Helping to build a decent Iraq as a model for others — and solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — are the necessary steps for defusing the ideas of mass destruction, which are what really threaten us.

The "moral reason" for the war was that Saddam's regime was an engine of mass destruction and genocide that had killed thousands of his own people, and neighbors, and needed to be stopped.

But because the Bush team never dared to spell out the real reason for the war, and (wrongly) felt that it could never win public or world support for the right reasons and the moral reasons, it opted for the stated reason: the notion that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that posed an immediate threat to America. I argued before the war that Saddam posed no such threat to America, and had no links with Al Qaeda, and that we couldn't take the nation to war "on the wings of a lie." I argued that Mr. Bush should fight this war for the right reasons and the moral reasons. But he stuck with this W.M.D. argument for P.R. reasons.

Once the war was over and I saw the mass graves and the true extent of Saddam's genocidal evil, my view was that Mr. Bush did not need to find any W.M.D.'s to justify the war for me. I still feel that way. But I have to admit that I've always been fighting my own war in Iraq. Mr. Bush took the country into his war. And if it turns out that he fabricated the evidence for his war (which I wouldn't conclude yet), that would badly damage America and be a very serious matter.

But my ultimate point is this: Finding Iraq's W.M.D.'s is necessary to preserve the credibility of the Bush team, the neocons, Tony Blair and the C.I.A. But rebuilding Iraq is necessary to win the war. I won't feel one whit more secure if we find Saddam's W.M.D.'s, because I never felt he would use them on us. But I will feel terribly insecure if we fail to put Iraq onto a progressive path. Because if that doesn't happen, the terrorism bubble will reinflate and bad things will follow. Mr. Bush's credibility rides on finding W.M.D.'s, but America's future, and the future of the Mideast, rides on our building a different Iraq. We must not forget that.

[myfiles3000]

NYT
June 4, 2003
Bomb and Switch
By MAUREEN DOWD


WASHINGTON

Before 9/11, the administration had too little intelligence on Al Qaeda, badly coordinated by clashing officials.

Before the Iraq invasion, the administration had too much intelligence on Saddam, torqued up by conspiring officials.

As Secretary of State Colin Powell prepared to make his case for invading Iraq to the U.N. on Feb. 5, a friend of his told me, he had to throw out a couple of hours' worth of sketchy intelligence other Bush officials were trying to stuff into his speech.

U.S. News & World Report reveals this week that when Mr. Powell was rehearsing the case with two dozen officials, he became so frustrated by the dubious intelligence about Saddam that he tossed several pages in the air and declared: "I'm not reading this. This is $%&*#."

First America has no intelligence. Then it has $%&*# intelligence.

So this is progress?

For the first time in history, America is searching for the reason we went to war after the war is over.

As The Times's James Risen reports, a bedrock of the administration's weapons case — the National Intelligence Estimate that concluded that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and was seeking nukes — is itself being reassessed. The document is at the center of a broad prewar-intelligence review, being conducted by the C.I.A. to see whether the weapons evidence was cooked.

Conservatives are busily offering a bouquet of new justifications for a pre-emptive attack on Iraq that was sold as self-defense against Saddam's poised and thrumming weapons of mass destruction.

Pressed by reporters about whether Tony Blair and President Bush were guilty of hyperbole — Mr. Blair's foreign secretary claimed Saddam could deploy chemical and biological weapons in 45 minutes — Senator John McCain replied, "The American people support what the president did, whether we find those weapons or not, and they did so the day they saw 9- and 10-year-old boys coming out of a prison in Baghdad."

Senator Pete Domenici noted that experts thought that Saddam's overthrow might pave the way for the Middle East road map to work. "For those kind of experts to say that has changed the dynamics in the Middle East, sufficient that we might get peace, seems to me to outweigh all the questions about did we have every bit of evidence that we say we had or not," he said.

In a Vanity Fair interview, Paul Wolfowitz said another "almost unnoticed but huge" reason for war was to promote Middle East peace by allowing the U.S. to take its troops out of Saudi Arabia — Osama's bête noir. But it was after the U.S. announced it would pull its troops from Saudi Arabia that a resurgent Qaeda struck a Western compound, killing eight Americans.

And it was after the U.S. tried to intimidate other foes by stomping on Saddam that Iran and North Korea ratcheted up their nukes. Iran and North Korea actually do have scary nuclear programs, but if we express our alarm to the world now, will we be accused of crying Wolfowitz?

A new Pew survey of 21 nations shows a deepening skepticism toward the U.S. "The war had widened the rift between Americans and Western Europeans, further inflamed the Muslim world, softened support for the war on terrorism, and significantly weakened global public support for the pillars of the post-World War II era — the U.N. and the North Atlantic alliance," said Pew's director, Andrew Kohut.

Brits may be more upset with Mr. Blair than Americans are with Mr. Bush because they have the quaint idea that even if you think war was a good idea, you should level with the public about your objectives.

The Bush crowd practiced bait and switch, leaving many Americans with the impression that Saddam was involved in 9/11.

When James Woolsey, the former C.I.A. director and current Pentagon adviser, appeared on "Nightline" five days after 9/11 and suggested that America had to strike Iraq for sponsoring terrorism, Ted Koppel rebutted: "Nobody right now is suggesting that Iraq had anything to do with this. In fact, quite the contrary."

Mr. Woolsey replied: "I don't think it matters. I don't think it matters." The Republicans will have to follow the maxim of Robert Moses, the autocratic New York builder who never let public opinion get in the way of his bulldozing: "If the ends don't justify the means, what does?"

[clocker]

I love it Myfiles, just love it.
Really.

Now, should things go as they normally do, I fully expect the posts to follow will include statements such as: " Maureen Dowd has a leftist agenda!" and "Freidman works for the NY Times and you can't trust them!".

Tar the messenger and ignore the message.

[j2k4]

Originally posted by clocker@4 June 2003 - 09:13
I love it Myfiles, just love it.
Really.

Now, should things go as they normally do, I fully expect the posts to follow will include statements such as: " Maureen Dowd has a leftist agenda!" and "Freidman works for the NY Times and you can't trust them!".

Tar the messenger and ignore the message.

Some would say of the N.Y. Times "That's not ink, it's tar!"

They are occasionally correct. The Times built it's reputation on factual accuracy, not the cant or quality of it's SPIN.

[OlderThanDirt]

Thank you for posting those articles, myfiles3000. I especially liked the article by Thomas L. Friedman since I'm a fan of his. His "Longitudes And Attitudes" is an excellent book. As I told clocker earlier, I was glad we went into Iraq ... but sad we went in for the reason we did. As Friedman so eloquently put it, we should have used the "moral" reason. Had we first gone to the UN to demand they enforce Resolution 688 ... and if the UN chose instead to sit on their laurels ... we could have gone in with our heads held high as liberators. And, we may have even had French soldiers in the field with us considering what their own human rights organizations reported about Iraq (click here). As Friedman said, "Once the war was over and I saw the mass graves and the true extent of Saddam's genocidal evil, my view was that Mr. Bush did not need to find any W.M.D.'s to justify the war for me. I still feel that way."

However, Mr. Friedman has not yet concluded that no W.M.D.'s can be found in Iraq -- only saying that, to him, it wouldn't make him feel more secure if we did find them. But, he and I are on an identical wavelength about one thing ... that someone, sometime is going to be eating crow (Bush, et al, if they aren't found -- his critics, if they are found).

BTW, somewhere in my VCD archives (I archive news and documentary programs), I have a program where Friedman is in the Middle-East, asking people for their perceptions of America ... but also asking people for their perceptions of their own countries. In one part of this program, he's talking with 3 or 4 college students. One of them complains about US interference in the region. But Friedman defends US presence and says, quote, "If there isn't a war within cultures, there will be a war between cultures," suggesting that people living in the Middle East have to take the ultimate responsibility for their own leaders and their policies ... and that if they don't, US "interference" shouldn't come as a surprise to them.

Anyhoo, thanks again for posting the article. Reading Friedman is such a joy.

(now engaging tongue-in-cheek mode)

I work graveyard shift. Last night on my first break, I went out to my car and turned on the radio -- to hear the "Coast To Coast" show with George Noory (Art Bell's woo-woo successor). And on that show, I heard the most bizarre reason I've ever heard for our intervention in Iraq. Noory was talking about a previous guest on his show who'd said that neither oil nor WMD was the real reason we went into Iraq. The real reason? Because our intelligence people discovered that Saddam Hussein may have been in possession of a (ahem) "Stargate" ... and we wanted it.

Here are the particulars on this bizarre theory.

[clocker]

Originally posted by j2k4@4 June 2003 - 08:21

Some would say of the N.Y. Times "That's not ink, it's tar!"

They are occasionally correct. The Times built it's reputation on factual accuracy, not the cant or quality of it's SPIN.

Ah,j2, this is exactly what I was talking about.
The column is obviously a "opinion" piece and questioning the spin of the publisher doesn't really address the validity of the opinion expressed, does it?

[OlderThanDirt]

j2k4 wrote:

They are occasionally correct. The Times built it's reputation on factual accuracy, not the cant or quality of it's SPIN.

Sorry, but in this case I have to side with myfiles3000 and clocker. Thomas L. Friedman is a Middle East scholar whose reputation and insight (just my opinion) are beyond question. However, I do understand where you're coming from. The reputation of the Times will take some time to heal after the Jayson Blair debacle. But in the end, I think the Times will prevail and be far tougher on their journalists about adhering to the straight and narrow.

[clocker]

I still don't see what the spin/cant/believability of the Times has to do with an "opinion" published therein.

You certainly don't have to agree/believe with the paper to respond to a op-ed piece.