----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Pensinger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2003 2:42 AM Subject: Re: The Hazards of Watching Fox News
> > > Bryon Daly wrote: > > > > > Yes. I believe that there are misperceptions *regarding the Iraq War > > and surrounding events* that are propagated (or at least not debunked) > > by the media, in the same way that Fox News is blamed for the pro-war > > misconceptions. Or do you think that the anti-war side has a 100% > > clear-eyed lock on all the facts, so there could be no misperceptions > > there? From the pdf, apparently that's what the sruveyors think: > > They have a bar chart listing a low support percentage for the war > > among those with "no misperceptions". Really, none at all? The > > implication being, of course, that very few people who have their > > facts straight supported the war, and those that did support it are > > hapless dupes, misled by the White House and the evilly complicit Fox > > News. > > > What anti war misconceptions are we talking about? I'm sure that there > must be some, but I can't say that I've heard of any in the news or > otherwise. 1) There war would result in an increase in the misery in Iraq. I've seen on anti-war.com quotes of >100,000 casualties. I've seen arguments from many anti-war folks that the battle for Baghdad must, of necessity, either be bloody street fighting with massive civilian casualties or a long siege that would result in horrendous numbers of death from disease. 2) The US would take the wealth of Iraq, the war was for oil. Its clear that the war itself was relatively cheap; but that the work of nation building is going to cost the US hundreds of billions. There was an interesting article in the NY Times a bit back on the reasons for going to war in Iraq. There were three listed (although a nuance argument broadens the points): 1) Improving the conditions the people of Iraq live under This argument, as the article states, has been fully supported after the war. The wholesale killing and torture by Hussein and his supporters have been well documented. It is probably fair to say that, if anything, things were worse than they were thought to be. 2) Hussein's development of WMD required immediate action This is has not been born out by observations after the war. There was no argument, even with the French, that Hussein had programs for WMD, including nuclear weapons. The inspectors found these during the '90s, including a nuclear program. The worry about these programs was bipartisan; Clinton made a strong case in '98. The problem with what Bush said to build support for the war in Iraq is fairly subtle. Everyone with ties to various Western intelligence thought that the WMD programs of Hussein were ongoing. Indeed, the most likely source for the "the British know" statement by Bush in the State of the Union address was French intelligence, who gave this piece of information a very strong rating. Bush jumped from a nuance argument for a strong case to a statement of near certainty. Given the inherent uncertainties in the intelligence, the US intelligence community was not happy with Bush's statements of certainty. Bush was sure that, after the war, the massive amounts of evidence that could be shown to the world would have validated his certainty. Instead, the evidence was below the lower limit of most people's expectations, even those who were opposed to the war. As a result, people are questioning him. It is clear that he did not have good but sensitive intelligence that provided him with the certainty. The third reason was to transform the nature of the Middle East. We do not need a full fledged representative democracy to do this. I think that Gautam was right that, if the result was a country rather like Jordan, with a rule of law and some representation of the interests of the people, it would have the potential for being the catalyst for tremendous change. The jury is still out on this. I think it is fair to say that this is a much harder problem than the administration thought. But, I do think that the examples of the problems the US had in Germany after 6 months do lend weight to the argument that it is too soon to consider this a failure. As a side note, its interesting to see which countries are actively working to ensure that the efforts of the US in post war Iraq is a failure. I'm pointing this out because those folks who are interested in lessons learned more than finger pointing should be interested in how what happened differed from their expectations, and what we can learn together from this difference. I know I was surprised by the lack of MWD, as were most people. Those that weren't, also tended to think that there would be zillions of casualties in the war, which didn't pan out...so few were totally right or near totally right in their predictions. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
