----- Original Message ----- From: "Alex Gogan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, November 06, 2005 9:28 AM Subject: Re: Bitter Fruit
> On Sat, 5 Nov 2005 17:56:49 -0600 > "Dan Minette" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "Alex Gogan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[email protected]> > > Sent: Saturday, November 05, 2005 10:38 AM > > Subject: Bitter Fruit > > > > > > > > >I must admit this is a very moving and thought provoking. It makes you > > wonder what truly goes through >the minds of the leaders knowing that over > > 2,000 of their own have been killed and countless thousands >of other have > > been killed. With hundreds of thousands if not millions of other people > > been directly effect >and traumatised by their senseless death. > > > I would be interested in a real discussion that allows folks with different > > views to express them in discussable terms....not terms that presupposes a > > moral lack in folks with different viewpoints. In particular, I'm > > interested in the unspoken presuppositions of folks with different > > viewpoints. > > > > Dan M. > > > Dan > > That too is one discussion I would very much like to see. One thing I can't tolerate is intolerance (excuse the pun) of others view points and opinions been forced upon people. But if people could be open and truly candid then we could actually really get the thoughts of people. > > I can't believe that the American people are as bipolar as they seem, but to the outside world it looks like the greater masses of the American people are little more than cattle been led wherever your leaders tell you to go or to believe. > > The way I see it in a very simplified version (IRAQ) is this: > > 1. Yes, something had to be done about Iraq and the way they were treating their people. > Sanctions were causing more harm then good so something else had to be done. >Lying to the world was not the answer. Open minded people across the world knew that there was no >weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Let me focus on that point for one post. It is fair to make that statement now, with all the evidence that we have after the war. That statement was not true before the war. It can be seen in two parts. First, it was clear that Hussein had and used weapons of mass destruction before the first Gulf war. He used them against the Kurds and against the Iranians. Second, after the first Gulf war, inspectors found evidence of a range of WMD programs. IIRC, this included evidence of a nuclear program that took them several years to find. Hussein was playing a game of cat and mouse with the inspectors, basically, throught the interwar period. Inspectors were effectively stopped from doing their work in '98...so Clinton bombed suspicious facilities. It is/was hard to fathom why a leader who had nothing to hide would accept bombings instead of simply showing that he had nothing to hide. Inspectors came back in before Gulf War II. They didn't find anything of substance, but they were involved in a game of cat and mouse with Hussein...just as they were after Gulf War I. It seemed reasonable to assume that Hussein would not risk a war that he was sure to lose by not following the South Africa model of full and complete disclosure. It was agreed by all that he was acting in a manner that was inconsistant with a willingness cooperate fully. So, given that, the highest probability was that he, indeed, had WMD. So, a reasonable person, at the time, would agree with Bush that Hussein had WMD. Indeed, before the war, at a meeting of European countries, Blair asked from the podium if anyone thought that Hussein did not have WMD. Everyone there had their own intelligence service, and IIRC, they were available at the time because it was a security meeting. No one would state that they didn't think so....as Blair knew. From intelligence sharing, the consensus was that Hussein did have WMD. Indeed, Bush's famous false statement based on forged documents....was that the British knew about attempts to get uranium. How did the British "know". It's simple: French intelligence informed them. Thus, one of the leading countries arguing against the war was the source of the most infamous mistatement by Bush. I'd submit that Bush didn't lie in the sense that he knew X was true, but said Y. He stated the truth, as he saw it. There was a belief, in the administration, that the CIA had a tremendous bias towards equivicating on data. They missed the fall of the Berlin wall. They missed India's and Pakistan's atomic bombs. From the administration's point of view, there were a lot of "nervous Nellies" in the CIA, unwilling to draw reasonable conclusions. We know that this isn't true. At the time, I faulted Bush for going from "have significant evidence for" to "knowing." I faulted him for overstating the immediacy of the problem. It's a difficulty I've seen in management at companies that I've worked for...they organize the data around what they already "know." One of the reasons I am focusing on this is that our best hope for staying out of this type of trap, whatever our viewpoints are, is to use as much rigor as we can to determine the facts....and then apply models to those facts. >This was more a politically expedient war to bolster the US economy (more people employed and more >wealth created and maintained in the US through defence contracts than any other country on the planet). The general consensus among ecconomists that I've seen is that, given the deficits, the war was a net drag on the ecconomy. Clearly, spending the same money on infrastructure would pay far better dividends than buying things that get blown up. I'll go ahead and discuss your second point later. But, I wanted to do this based on a set of understandings. If you have data to counter my arguements, I'd be interested in seeing it....for the reasons I've listed above. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
