[OT] Another heated discussion about the Iraq siutation, war and politics.

[rextorres]

Actually they sent special forces into the oil fields to guard them before the bombing started - that's how they were able to disable the boobie traps.

A senior administration official admits that Iraq was important because of the oil. Bush and Cheney are oil men and most of their political contributions came from the energy industry which has a huge interest in getting Iraqi oil contract.

It's been admitted that WMD were just an excuse - they've caught most of the senior people that would know of the weapons plus all their underlings and despite huge monetary rewards they all say there were no weapons.

If it was for humanitarian reason their are plenty odf countries with EXTREMELY worse humanitarian records -than Iraq and Bush and Co. ignore it - so I don't buy that argument.

I suppose it goes against the vision of the world that some people want to have of the U.S. as the good guys, but historically wars for the most part have been fought for resources.

[ June 05, 2003, 20:45: Message edited by: rextorres ]

[kalthalior]

THE GUARDIAN now has a correction on its main page regarding the Wolfowitz oil story:

A report which was posted on our website on June 4 under the heading "Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil" misconstrued remarks made by the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, making it appear that he had said that oil was the main reason for going to war in Iraq. He did not say that. He said, according to the department of defence website, "The ... difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq." The sense was clearly that the US had no economic options by means of which to achieve its objectives, not that the economic value of the oil motivated the war. The report appeared only on the website and has now been removed.

Oh, I almost forgot this:
Another Guardian correction

EDIT: BTW, maybe Rex should read this:

Human Rights Report on Iraq

I'm not aware of many countries that can compare, but perhaps I'm blissfully ignorant.

[ June 05, 2003, 21:34: Message edited by: kalthalior ]

[Aloofi]

You got to be dreaming if you expect these corporate guys to do anything out of their kindness.
This war was for oil, and for Strategical considerartion, and to see if it could help the economy a little bit.
If there is some good that ChickenHawk Brigade can do while making a profit, like removing an evil dictator, they will do it, but if they have to go out of their way to do some good, I recomend you buy a Hybernation chamber for the waiting.
And of course, if they have to do some evil to make some profit, like cutting a sovereign country in half or recognizing a terrorist goverment that doesn't affect american interests, they will do it for sure.
Its all about the money, baby.

[geoschmo]

Oh yeah. They have a great one of Phil Hartman playing Reagan. He's in the oval office acting all grandpa like for some visiting Girl Scout troop, then as soon as they walk out the door it's like, OK let's get to work! And this panel slides down on the wall and and it's this world map and he's got a room full of lackey's and he's giving them all orders like Patton or something. I think it was during the Iran Contra stuff and he giving them all detailed instructions on how to get funds here and wepons there. And then he jumps on the phone and he's talking fluent German and Chinese and all this stuff. It's a riot. I see it occasionally on Comedy Central. One of my Favorites.

[Unknown_Enemy]

Unknown_Enemy's personal point : I never appreciate when a politician takes me for an idiot. Even if I am not US citizen and do not vote for him.

THE STRATFOR WEEKLY
5 June 2003

by Dr. George Friedman

WMD

Summary

The inability to discover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has created a political crisis in the United States and Britain. Within the two governments, there are recriminations and brutal political infighting over responsibility. Stratfor warned in February that the unwillingness of the U.S. government to articulate its real, strategic reasons for the war -- choosing instead to lean on WMD as the justification -- would lead to a deep crisis at some point. That moment seems to be here.

Analysis

"Weapons of mass destruction" is promising to live up to its name: The issue may well result in the mass destruction of senior British and American officials who used concerns about WMD in Iraq as the primary, public justification for going to war. The simple fact is that no one has found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and -- except for some vans which may have been used for biological weapons -- no evidence that Iraq was working to develop such weapons. Since finding WMD is a priority for U.S. military forces, which have occupied Iraq for more than a month, the failure to find weapons of mass destruction not only has become an embarrassment, it also has the potential to mushroom into a major political crisis in the United States and Britain. Not only is the political opposition exploiting the paucity of Iraqi WMD, but the various bureaucracies are using the issue to try to discredit each other. It's a mess.

On Jan. 21, 2003, Stratfor published an analysis titled Smoke and Mirrors: The United States, Iraq and Deception, which made the following points:

1. The primary reason for the U.S. invasion of Iraq was strategic and not about weapons of mass destruction.

2. The United States was using the WMD argument primarily to justify the attack to its coalition partners.

3. The use of WMD rather than strategy as the justification for the war would ultimately create massive confusion as to the nature of the war the United States was fighting.

As we put it:

"To have allowed the WMD issue to supplant U.S. strategic interests as the justification for war has created a crisis in U.S. strategy. Deception campaigns are designed to protect strategies, not to trap them. Ultimately, the foundation of U.S. grand strategy, coalitions and the need for clarity in military strategy have collided. The discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq will not solve the problem, nor will a coup in Baghdad. In a war [against Islamic extremists] that will Last for years, maintaining one's conceptual footing is critical. If that footing cannot be maintained -- if the requirements of the war and the requirements of strategic clarity are incompatible -- there are more serious issues involved than the future of Iraq."

The failure to enunciate the strategic reasons for the invasion of Iraq--of cloaking it in an extraneous justification--has now come home to roost. Having used WMD as the justification, the inability to locate WMD in Iraq has undermined the credibility of the United States and is tearing the government apart in an orgy of finger-pointing.

To make sense of this impending chaos, it is important to start at the beginning -- with al Qaeda. After the Sept. 11 attacks, al Qaeda was regarded as an extraordinarily competent global organization. Sheer logic argued that the network would want to top the Sept. 11 strikes with something even more impressive. This led to a very reasonable fear that al Qaeda possessed or was in the process of obtaining WMD.

U.S. intelligence, shifting from its sub-sensitive to hyper-sensitive mode, began putting together bits of intelligence that tended to show that what appeared to be logical actually was happening. The U.S. intelligence apparatus now was operating in a worst-case scenario mode, as is reasonable when dealing with WMD. Lower-grade intelligence was regarded as significant. Two things resulted: The map of who was developing weapons of mass destruction expanded, as did the probabilities assigned to al Qaeda's ability to obtain WMD. The very public outcome -- along with a range of less public events -- was the "axis of evil" State of the Union speech, which identified three countries as having WMD and likely to give it to al Qaeda. Iraq was one of these countries.

If we regard chemical weapons as WMD, as has been U.S. policy, then it is well known that Iraq had WMD, since it used them in the past. It was a core assumption, therefore, that Iraq continued to possess WMD. Moreover, U.S. intelligence officials believed there was a parallel program in biological weapons, and also that Iraqi leaders had the ability and the intent to restart their nuclear program, if they had not already done so. Running on the worst-case basis that was now hard-wired by al Qaeda into U.S. intelligence, Iraq was identified as a country with WMD and likely to pass them on to al Qaeda.

Iraq, of course, was not the only country in this class. There are other sources of WMD in the world, even beyond the "axis of evil" countries. Simply invading Iraq would not solve the fundamental problem of the threat from al Qaeda. As Stratfor has always argued, the invasion of Iraq served a psychological and strategic purpose: Psychologically, it was designed to demonstrate to the Islamic world the enormous power and ferocity of the United States; strategically, it was designed to position the United States to coerce countries such as Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran into changing their policies toward suppressing al Qaeda operations in their countries. Both of these missions were achieved.

WMD was always a side issue in terms of strategic planning. It became, however, the publicly stated moral, legal and political justification for the war. It was understood that countries like France and Russia had no interest in collaborating with Washington in a policy that would make the United States the arbiter of the Middle East. Washington had to find a justification for the war that these allies would find irresistible.

That justification was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. From the standpoint of U.S. intelligence, this belief became a given. Everyone knew that Iraq once had chemical weapons, and no reasonable person believed that Saddam Hussein had unilaterally destroyed them. So it appeared to planners within the Bush administration that they were on safe ground. Moreover, it was assumed that other major powers would regard WMD in Hussein's hands as unacceptable and that therefore, everyone would accept the idea of a war in which the stated goal -- and the real outcome -- would be the destruction of Iraq's weapons.

This was the point on which Washington miscalculated. The public justification for the war did not compel France, Germany or Russia to endorse military action. They continued to resist because they fully understood the outcome -- intended or not -- would be U.S. domination of the Middle East, and they did not want to see that come about. Paris, Berlin and Moscow turned the WMD issue on its head, arguing that if that was the real issue, then inspections by the United Nations would be the way to solve the problem. Interestingly, they never denied that Iraq had WMD; what they did deny was that proof of WMD had been found. They also argued that over time, as proof accumulated, the inspection process would either force the Iraqis to destroy their WMD or justify an invasion at that point. What is important here is that French and Russian leaders shared with the United States the conviction that Iraq had WMD. Like the Americans, they thought weapons of mass destruction -- particularly if they were primarily chemical -- was a side issue; the core issue was U.S. power in the Middle East.

In short, all sides were working from the same set of assumptions. There was not much dispute that the Baathist regime probably had WMD. The issue between the United States and its allies was strategic. After the war, the United States would become the dominant power in the region, and it would use this power to force regional governments to strike at al Qaeda. Germany, France and Russia, fearing the growth of U.S. power, opposed the war. Rather than clarifying the chasm in the alliance, the Bush administration permitted the arguments over WMD to supplant a discussion of strategy and left the American public believing the administration's public statements -- smoke and mirrors -- rather than its private view.

The Bush administration -- and France, for that matter -- all assumed that this problem would disappear when the U.S. military got into Iraq. WMD would be discovered, the public justification would be vindicated, the secret goal would be achieved and no one would be the wiser. What they did not count on -- what is difficult to believe even now -- is that Hussein actually might not have WMD or, weirder still, that he hid them or destroyed them so efficiently that no one could find them. That was the kicker the Bush administration never counted on.

The matter of whether Hussein had WMD is still open. Answers could range to the extremes: He had no WMD or he still has WMD, being held in reserve for his guerrilla war. But the point here is that the WMD question was not the reason the United States went to war. The war was waged in order to obtain a strategic base from which to coerce countries such as Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia into using their resources to destroy al Qaeda within their borders. From that standpoint, the strategy seems to be working.

However, by using WMD as the justification for war, the United States walked into a trap. The question of the location of WMD is important. The question of whether it was the CIA or Defense Department that skewed its reports about the location of Iraq's WMD is also important. But these questions are ultimately trivial compared to the use of smoke and mirrors to justify a war in which Iraq was simply a single campaign. Ultimately, the problem is that it created a situation in which the American public had one perception of the reason for the war while the war's planners had another. In a democratic society engaged in a war that will Last for many years, this is a dangerous situation to have created.

[ June 06, 2003, 17:26: Message edited by: Unknown_Enemy ]

[General Woundwort]

Originally posted by Unknown_Enemy:
Unknown_Enemy's personal point : I never appreciate when a politician takes me for an idiot. Even if I am not US citizen and do not vote for him.

THE STRATFOR WEEKLY
WMD

I won't repeat the whole post - no need.

I begin to really doubt the integrity of Stratfor. I recall discussing this topic just as the war was beginning, comparing the relative merits of Stratfor (a paid Subscriber service) to Strategypage (a free or donation-supported site). Stratfor's read on how the battle of Baghdad would unfold was dead-on wrong, and StrategyPage hit it dead-on right. Now Stratfor is picking up the "where are the WMD's?" chant too.

Well, first off, the "panic" in the US government, at least, does not yet appear to be anywhere but in the minds of those who want to see this made into an embarassment to it.

Secondly, there are any number of plausible reasons why WMD's have not yet appeared in the quantity that some critics are demanding. A) They are still hidden in various places in Iraq awaiting recovery. It's not like Saddam didn't have advance warning we were coming, after all... B) They have been spirited away to other countries (my personal suspiction, and Syria is my prime suspect) and/or terrorist Groups (stock up on your duct tape...) C) The WMD's *were* destroyed before the war, but for reasons of personal/national pride, Saddam would not cooperate. (A rather fanciful theory I heard was that the WMD's were destroyed after Gulf War I, but Sadddam's cronies pretended to him that they were not to save their own skins. Like I said, rather fanciful, but given the level of dysfunctionality in these tyrranical regines, who knows?) D) Some combination of the above three. (My second choice)

Major point - if by this time next year no appreciable WMD stockpiles have been accounted for, there indeed would be cause for concern politically. But, like everything else about this crazy conflict, the MTV Generation's time frame for expected results has struck again. For something that purports to be a serious outlet for strategic studes, Stratfor should know better. All the more reason I stick with StrategyPage.

[General Woundwort]

Just in case anyone is interested, here is what StrategyPage has to say on the WMD issue...

Does Accounting For Saddam's WMD Matter?
by Austin Bay
April 30, 2003

Yes, it matters -- and it matters a great deal.

Accounting for Saddam's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs is absolutely essential if America intends to achieve victory in the War on Terror.

Commentators who think otherwise miss the crucial strategic challenge. The formula for Hell in the 21st century, the wicked linkage of terrorists, rogue states and weapons of mass destruction, remains the fundamental issue vexing those on this planet who work for stability, prosperity and genuine peace.

Several pundits now write that the evident evils of Saddam's regime, revealed in piles of stacked skulls, provide sufficient reason for "waging the war."

As someone who has for two decades publicly deplored Saddam's relentless butchery, I agree that liberating the Iraqi people is a virtue and a blessed success.

However, we are engaged in a much larger and longer war, with Iraq being one phase. The object lesson U.S. and British military forces dealt Saddam's regime puts other dictators (a score of petty Saddams) on notice. Their states, the gutters where terrorists connect with money and weapons, are no longer Free Parking, a playpen for vile shenanigans safe behind the false sovereignty imposed by tyrannical oppression. America can crack rogues and crack them quickly.

But breaking the Hell formula and achieving victory in the long war means we must be able to accurately locate and then eliminate the dictators' chemical, biological and nuclear arms Caches. This challenge includes destroying the ways and means of acquiring and manufacturing such weapons.

Finding chem, bio and nuclear weapons evidence in Iraq is literally a test of our intelligence. Intelligence information gathering and assessment are the first line of defense and offense in the War on Terror. In February, Tony Blair said every nation with an intelligence service knows Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. Is this a massive intelligence failure? I doubt it -- but if there is, it must be addressed quickly and thoroughly.

Saddam has had chemical weapons and he's used them. Ask victimized Kurds and Iranians. Given U.S. pressure and the build-up of U.S. forces on his borders, it's conceivable that in late 2002 Saddam concluded he would destroy his weapons but retain "seed crystals" for recreating weapons programs as soon as U.N. sanctions ended. "Dual-use" technologies would be part of this program (for example, chemical precursors that could be used for both insecticide or nerve gas). If this is the case, documenting Iraqi gimmicks will improve counter-proliferation intelligence collection and analysis.

"He shipped the gas to Syria" is another alternative. Saddam reportedly bought British left-wing "peace" MP George Galloway's support -- renting nerve agent storage sites in Syria is simply business as usual among tyrants. If that's the case, Syria must suffer stiff consequences for that bargain.

If no weapons or traces of weapons are found, the Bush Administration will legitimately face charges of lying or exaggerating. The credibility of the U.S. president and secretary of state are on the line, and their credibility is extremely important in continuing to effectively wage the War on Terror. (I bolded this - just to show that they're not ideologues. - G.W.)

So how long could it take to shakedown Iraq for Saddam's weapons of mass destruction?

One former military planner provided this best guess on April 15: a full-scale inspection effort would take 90 to 120 days. The estimate posited a focused effort of 200 mobile teams and "quick response" laboratory support for quality testing and evaluation. This field effort would be backed by a dedicated intelligence-gathering and analysis group. One of the intelligence group's primary concerns would be the rapid and thorough debrief of captured regime officials and key subordinates active in weapons of mass destruction research, development and deployment. This estimate used 1,000 potential weapon sites as a baseline.

Operations of this size aren't wired in an afternoon; the number of field teams currently deployed hasn't been publicized. In late April, Gen. Tommy Franks said that several thousand sites would be surveyed. Syria remains a question mark. However, four months still strikes me as a reasonable time frame.

That means early September is a fair date for drawing conclusions about Saddam's weapons. That should be adequate time to find and document the telltale toxic spill, the concealed bacterial culture, the buried lab or -- heaven forbid -- the hidden bomb.

To find out more about Austin Bay and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2001 - 2003 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

[Unknown_Enemy]

Saddam reportedly bought British left-wing "peace" MP George Galloway's support

I stopped reading this article after that passage. Reporting without sources/citations accusation of high treason from a UK MP seems a bit....mad. The fact that they wrote "reportedly" change nothing to it. They did report on allegations of high treason without a single element of proof. I was not impressed the first time you cited StrategyPage, in fact I found doubtful the reasonning, but this is laughtable.

Let me make the following paraphrase : "it is reported all americans are KluKlux Klan supporters" Then me asking "but General Woundwort, why do you burn black people ?".

Such a STUPID statement and grave accusation based on nothing is as stupid as the statement on the UK minister. Hell, from what I know, you could be of african origin.

But anyway, thanks for the article. It helped me to remind that you sometime need to pay to get quality news or analysis.

[ June 08, 2003, 10:10: Message edited by: Unknown_Enemy ]

[General Woundwort]

Originally posted by Unknown_Enemy:

quote:

---

Saddam reportedly bought British left-wing "peace" MP George Galloway's support

I stopped reading this article after that passage. Reporting without sources/citations accusation of high treason from a UK MP seems a bit....mad. The fact that they wrote "reportedly" change nothing to it. They did report on allegations of high treason without a single element of proof. I was not impressed the first time you cited StrategyPage, in fact I found doubtful the reasonning, but this is laughtable.

Let me make the following paraphrase : "it is reported all americans are KluKlux Klan supporters" Then me asking "but General Woundwort, why do you burn nigers ?".

Such a STUPID statement and grave accusation based on nothing is as stupid as the statement on the UK minister. Hell, from what I know, you could be of african origin.

But anyway, thanks for the article. It helped me to remind that you sometime need to pay to get quality news or analysis.

---

A pity. Well, suit yourself. If you had finished the article, you would have noted that they put the time frame as to when we will know if Iraq still had WMD even sooner than I did - about September. Well, the truth will out sooner or later, to somebody's grief - Bush's or his enemies. In the meantime, I'll go back to my Highliner Mod and let this thread pass - the tone of discussion here is a bit ugly, and the possibilites for constructive dialogue seemingly nil.

[oleg]

I just watched on BBC the interview with former weapon inspector (sorry, forgot his name). When asked about "missing stockpile of VI gas and anthrax", he said it was based on 1991 data. He also said Iraqi' VI gas and anthrax spores are completly inactive after three years. Thus, they possed no danger in 1994.. It is 2003 and Bush/Blair still scare us with those mythical weapons. And please don't tell me they did not know the facts. Well, may be Bush dos't, but Blair !! It really sucks