Robert J. Chassell wrote:
>John, rather admirably, says that the lack of search was because the
>Administration judged it more important in the latter part of April
>and May to protect Iraqis from looters and such than to protect
>Americans in Washington, DC, where he lives, or in Kalamazoo, MI.
>Perhaps John is right, but I find that argument hard to believe.
"John D. Giorgis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> responded
Alternatively, I also suggest that it is impossible to believe at
this point that an immediate search of those sites by all
available men would have reduced the number of weapons able to be
smuggled by the Baathists by a statisticly significant amount.
If that is the case, why didn't the Administration say so? Why did
the Pentagon say at the end of May that it was still intending to
investigate 700 sites? Why, throughout May, did the US government say
it was increasing the size of its inspection force?
We now know that the Coalition was pretty much standed by the
rapid collapse of the formal Iraqi Resisitance.
Do you mean to suggest that there was no `Plan B' to deal with the
possibility of great success, but that the Bush Administration was
counting on a long formal military resistance?
This claim is very damaging to Bush Administration, since the
Secretary of Defense and others argued that great success was going to
occur. (People in the Army said that there might be difficulties,
although no one, as far as I know, suggested publically that the
Saddam Hussein administration might resort to asymmetrical warfare as
they have.)
You may be right. The delay in admitting and getting a handle on the
guerillas certainly makes it appear that there was no `Plan B', but
that the US occupation forces had to learn and adapt.
As for your point that
... it is impossible to believe at this point that an immediate
search of those sites by all available men would have reduced the
number of weapons ...
How can we know this? The search was not undertaken. Only
interrogations would tell, and perhaps people who know have not been
captured, or, if captured, not yet turned.
(Based on Afganistani reports, contemporary US military interrogation
techniques, which are based on Chinese Communist methods, work well
but take 4 to 8 months. From what I have heard, US interrogators are
contemptuous of old fashioned torture since almost everyone who knows
anything will die first. In their view, torture is primarily a means
to obtain low level information from low level people or to
intimidate, a kind of terrorism.
(The French claimed otherwise, but their torture during the Algerian
war was intended primarily to obtain low level, short term
information. And it did not matter to the French military if a
someone being tortured gave false names before dying. The falsely
accused people were killed, too.)
It makes sense that if one of those sites did have some anthrax or
other weapon and enemies guerilla soldiers got hold of it, that they
would keep their possession of it secret, until in their military
judgement the use of such a weapon would be most effective (which is
to say, politically effective, since obviously, this not a
conventional military conflict).
--
Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises
http://www.rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
http://www.teak.cc [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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