----- Original Message ----- From: "Gary Denton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, December 11, 2005 5:21 AM Subject: Re: Bitter Fruit
> > http://www.weeklystandard.com/content/public/articles/000/000/003/236jmcbd.asp?pg=1 >Although you say you disagreed with the war you seem to say you agree >with this reasoning. Which I should say is a reasonable position.... >except I just think Kristol's argument here and particularly the rest >I of the article I didn't quote was the same mess of half-truths that >Bush and Cheney used. I look at it slightly differently. The history that he listed is not inconsitent with what I remember from the time. I recall the demand that all US members of the inspection team be removed. I still seem to recall the inspectors being restrained at gun point on TV. I definately remember the vast complexes that were labelled off limits. Given that, I understand the arguements by Kagen and Kristal. I thought, before the war, they had some validity. Since Hussein's actions made no sense unless he had something to hide, it made a lot of sense to me to assume that he was hiding WMD. (BTW, that article explains the first descripiton of the inspectors leaving because Clinton was about to bomb suspected sites and the reports that Hussein expelled them. Even though they had withdrawn physically, they had the right to go back in until that right was eliminated by them being "expelled" by Hussein.) After 1998, we got very little useful data on Hussein's weapons program. The value of the snippets we received were questionable. My understanding is that Kagen, Bush, etc. saw in these snippets confirmation of what they already "knew" was true. >From all of that, I get back to the point that if I could see the threat was overstated >other people should have been able to see it too, At the time, I was of the opinion that the evaluation of the limited data which we had was the three sigma upper limit. As it turns out, the actual WMD was less than my 3 sigma lower limit. My opposition to the war, on strategic grounds, was that a bungled American rebuilding of Iraq would pose a greater risk to the US than Hussein's weapons program. I thought that we could threaten war, but "reluctantly" accept a strict inspection program and sanctions that would be harder to turn into a "oil for weapons" program. If I had thought, as most neocons did, that the Iraq rebuilding would be a clear shining success by now, then I probably would have leaned towards instead of against the war. Even if I would pay a personal price in the form of less business, the world would be far better off with a government like, say, Turkey, running Iraq. The distribution of income would be far better than in a one-man rule, and the income should be fairly good. The Iraqis would be far better off, and the long term implications of this would be good for the US. Given the information that was available at the time, I felt that people who thought the plusses outweighed the minuses (such as Gautam) were reasonable, knowledgeable people who analyzed the same incomplete information and came to a different conclusion. After Kay, I believed, established that there were not significant WMD in Iraq, I was still puzzled by the actions of Hussein. As I stated earlier in this post, he certainly acted as if he had something very important to hide. Recently I read an analysis that made sense. He was not hiding the fact that he _did_ have extensive WMD...he was hiding the fact that he _didn't_. He had concluded that the use of WMD saved Iraq from defeat in the Iran-Iraq war (not unreasonable), and was the single most important factor in the US stopping at the border of Iraq instead of invading Baghdad. From his perspective, the lack of an invasion was a sign of fear on the part of the US, not one of restraint. You or me, given the fact that we did not have WMD, would think that the logical response to the demand for full inspections would be the counter: "I'll throw the doors wide open...you can look where-ever you want. But, if you find no more than a few shells that were missed when we destroyed our WMD, then you must accept that Iraq is a reasonable state, entitled to an end of sanctions and further inspections. I want the fly-overs stopped, and I want to be able to sell our oil like any other country. I'd guess that such a response would find willing takers. He would have forced Bush et. al. into a corner. But, that corner is apparent to someone who understands the US as we do; it was not apparent to him. The final point is the revalation about Libya that occurred in 2003. They came "in out of the cold", by revealing and ending their WMD program. This program was within a year of a working A-bomb. I would be very impressed if anyone argued, in 2002, that it was Libya, not Iraq that was about to develop an A-bomb, and that we should worry a great deal about their potential to pose a significant risk to vital US interests. I would guess, however, that the people who downplayed the risk posed by Iraq (below the level described by Clinton, say) also thought that Clinton's view of the risk posed by Libya was also vastly overstated. Instead, Clinton and Bush underestimated the risk posed by Libya, and overestimated the risk posed by Iraq (Bush overestimated Iraq much more than Clinton). One of the reasons that I'm making such an effort to argue that the Bush administration are/were arrogant incompetents instead of traitors (which is what someone who starts a war that hurts his own country so that a few friends could make some money), is that the lessons are different for one case than for another. I think liberals as well as conservatives can learn from Bush's mistakes. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
