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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lurqer who wrote (12244)	1/28/2003 12:27:52 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Will we be safer if we invade? Iraq War: The First Question By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Columnist The New York Times January 28, 2003 A new book about Iraq by Con Coughlin describes Saddam's younger son, Qusay, giving a speech last year in an underground bunker before his father and top officials: "With a simple sign from you, we can make America's people sleepless and frightened to go out in the streets. I only ask you, sir, to give me a small sign [to] turn their night into day and their day into a living hell." The older son, Uday, told Iraqi journalists last week: "If [the Americans] come, what they wept for on Sept. 11 and what they view as a major event, it will appear as a picnic for them." That Baghdad bonhomie comes to mind now that the U.N. reports have been issued and the debate about invading Iraq moves to center stage. The starting point to justify an invasion, it seems to me, has to be an affirmative answer to the question: Will we be safer if we invade? The real answer is that we don't know. But it's quite plausible that an invasion will increase the danger to us, not lessen it. As a C.I.A. assessment said last October: "Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks [in the U.S.]. Should Saddam conclude that a U.S.-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions." It added that Saddam might order attacks with weapons of mass destruction as "his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him." Frankly, it seems a bad idea to sacrifice our troops' lives — along with billions of dollars — in a way that may add to our vulnerability. No doubt this seems craven, and I admit there are so many high-minded American hawks and doves that I'm embarrassed that on this issue I'm unprincipled. To me there is no principle involved here; it's just a matter of assessing costs and benefits. It would be nice to weigh only lofty principles. But the greatest failure in foreign relations in the last half-century has been blindness to practical, on-the-ground dangers, like those that mired us in Vietnam. And it's only sensible to weigh them before leaping into Iraq. There's no moral tenet that makes me oppose invasion. If we were confident that we could oust Saddam with minimal casualties and quickly establish a democratic Iraq, then that would be fine — and such a happy scenario is conceivable. But it's a mistake to invade countries based on best-case scenarios. A dismal scenario is just as plausible: We could see bloody street-to-street fighting, outraging the Muslim world, igniting anti-American riots and helping Al Qaeda recruit terrorists. The first regime change we see could be in Jordan and Pakistan, where pro-Western governments have a fragile hold on angry populations. If Pakistan topples, Al Qaeda might gain nuclear weapons. Moreover, President Bush has undermined the hawk position by the very success of his campaign against Iraq. To his credit, Mr. Bush has revived U.N. inspections, boxed Saddam into a corner and increased the chance that Saddam will be assassinated or overthrown. If Mr. Bush stops where he is now, he will have defanged Saddam at minimal cost. As the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace put it in a new report on Iraq, the U.S. goal of preventing any attack by Iraq has already been achieved. "Saddam Hussein is effectively incarcerated and under watch by a force that could respond immediately and devastatingly to any aggression," the report noted. "Inside Iraq, the inspection teams preclude any significant advance in [weapons of mass destruction] capabilities. The status quo is safe for the American people." Hawks can fairly complain that the status quo may not be sustainable. If we let this chance to invade slip by, will Saddam outfox us and emerge in a year's time with nukes? No, very unlikely. Inspections were maintained from 1991 to 1998, in which period the U.N. destroyed far more Iraqi weaponry than the U.S. had during the gulf war. Saddam will be forced to remain on his best behavior, and in any case he is 65 and an actuarial nightmare. If we just get intelligence on where he's going to spend one night, then my guess is that we'll respond to Iraqi antiaircraft fire by striking that particular building. Will an invasion make us safer? That's the central question, and while none of us know the answer, there is clearly a significant risk that it will do just the opposite. nytimes.com

To: lurqer who wrote (12244)	1/28/2003 4:16:49 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

GLOBAL JIHAD ~20 terror commandos unleashed on Europe~~Al-Qaida plans attacks before U.S. invades Iraq worldnetdaily.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: January 28, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com At least 20 "terror commandos" have been unleashed by Osama bin Laden to attack Britain and other European countries in the run-up to war with Iraq, a leading German newspaper claims in a story that confirms earlier WorldNetDaily reports. Germany's popular daily Bild Zeitung reported that the Federal Intelligence Agency has issued a warning that a group of Afghan extremists, traveling on false Pakistani passports, are on their way to Europe. The newspaper cites intelligence sources as saying that at least 20 of al-Qaida's "terror commandos" had set out for the continent via Bahrain as part of an all-out effort to attack targets in the UK, Germany, Britain, France and the Czech Republic. The terrorists are reportedly followers of Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. WorldNetDaily reported in December that U.S. military and intelligence sources expect Iran to launch major terrorist attacks against Western targets in anticipation of or in response to a U.S.-led attack on Iraq. All Iranian-sponsored terrorist groups, including Hezbollah, which is increasingly seen as more potent and more dangerous than Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network by many U.S. analysts, will be unleashed simultaneously on U.S. and allied targets around the world, according to WorldNetDaily intelligence sources. Complicating the detection and prevention of such attacks, those sources say, is a breakdown in the National Security Agency's ability to collect information on activities in Iran. While some officials in Washington have downplayed Shiite Iran's interest in "defending" Sunni Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the motivation for Tehran goes beyond the theological or an interest in preserving the current Baghdad regime, say the intelligence sources. For more than a decade, Iran and Iraq have backed many of the same anti-U.S. terror groups, including al-Qaida, because of their mutual interest in keeping U.S. military forces out of the Persian Gulf. Tehran is also wary U.S. forces might seek to destabilize its government, which is increasingly losing popular support. As WND reports today, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer has confirmed that terrorist detainees from Afghanistan have implicated Iraq in providing training and support to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. Meanwhile, the Scotsman reports steps to expose the network of terrorist cells that are believed to be spread throughout Europe have brought about dramatic and disturbing results lately. Spanish anti-terror forces arrested 16 suspected extremists last week, claiming the men had links to al-Qaida and were allegedly preparing to launch chemical attacks. Yesterday, a Spanish judge jailed the 16 suspects, arrested on Friday in Barcelona and other cities in northeast Spain, pending further investigation and a possible extradition request from French authorities. The 15 Algerians and a Moroccan deny any links to al-Qaida, and none of them has been formally charged. France has 40 days to request their extradition. Italian police descended on the homes of three Muslims in the northern city of Rovigo, southwest of Venice, after discovering explosives and maps marking the route to a NATO installation and a detailed plan of central London in a separate raid earlier in the week. Five Moroccans were detained after a kilogram of explosives was found in the building where the men were staying. The heightened level of activity follows numerous raids in Britain after the discovery of the chemical ricin in a house in north London. As WorldNetDaily has reported earlier, Saddam Hussein's defense against an imminent attack by the U.S. will be a strong offense – including terrorist operations coordinated with Yasser Arafat and Osama bin Laden. That's what top terrorism expert Yossef Bodansky, author of "The High Cost of Peace," says in his new book. He writes about joint preparations by Hussein, Arafat and al-Qaida for a new wave of anti-U.S. terror. The model for the terrorism campaign is Arafat's Black September Organization of the 1970s. The initiative for the alliance came from Palestinian Islamists based in Lebanon and Syria, according to Bodansky, the U.S. Congress' top terrorism adviser. The response from al-Qaida came April 2, says Bodansky. The anti-U.S. coalition also includes Hamas and Islamic Jihad. A communique issued on April 2 from the Unified Leadership of the Intifadah – an umbrella organization representing Arafat's Fatah groups, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other members of the Palestine Liberation Organization – called for attacks on U.S. interests. Unit 999 of Iraqi intelligence has helped train both Arafat's shock troops and bin Laden's Islamists for suicide operations utilizing weapons of mass destruction. According to Bodansky's book, some of these terrorists have already "succeeded in infiltrating several Arab countries. They are provided with instructions, secret codes and advanced weapons." According to Israeli sources, the Iraqis permitted the terrorist trainees to test chemical weapons in southern Kurdistan.

To: lurqer who wrote (12244)	1/28/2003 5:35:28 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 89467

With barely a debate, the Bush doctrine has set out a radically new -- and dangerous -- role for the United States. America's Age of Empire: The Bush Doctrine By Todd Gitlin Columnist MotherJones January/February 2003 Issue On September 20, the Bush administration published a national security manifesto overturning the established order. Not because it commits the United States to global intervention: We've been there before. Not because it targets terrorism and rogue states: Nothing new there either. No, what's new in this document is that it makes a long-building imperial tendency explicit and permanent. The policy paper, titled "The National Security Strategy of the United States of America" -- call it the Bush doctrine -- is a romantic justification for easy recourse to war whenever and wherever an American president chooses. This document truly deserves the overused term "revolutionary," but its release was eclipsed by the Iraq debate. Recall the moment. Bush, having just backed away from unilateralism long enough to deliver a speech to the United Nations, was now telling Congress to give him the power to go to war with Iraq whenever and however he liked. Congress, with selective reluctance, was skating sideways toward a qualified endorsement. The administration had fended off doubts from the likes of George Bush Sr.'s national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, and retreated from its maximal designs (at least on Tuesdays and Thursdays), giving doubters, and politicians preoccupied with their reelection, reasons to overcome their doubts and sign on. The Bush White House chose this moment to put down in black and white its grand strategy -- to doctrinize, as it were, its impulse to act alone with the instruments of war. Hitching a ride on Al Qaeda's indisputable threat, the doctrine generalizes. It is limitless in time and space. It not only commits the United States to dominating the world from now into the distant future, but also advocates what it calls the preemptive use of force: "America will act against emerging threats before they are fully formed." The United States has many times sent armed forces to take over foreign countries for weeks, years, even decades. But the Bush doctrine is the first to elevate such wars of offense to the status of official policy, and to call "preemptive" (referring to imminent peril) what is actually preventive (referring to longer-term, hypothetical, avoidable peril). This semantic shift is crucial. When prevention of a remote possibility is called preemption, anything goes. CIA caution can be overridden, Al Qaeda connections fabricated, dangers exaggerated -- and the United States will have a doctrine to substitute for international law. The Bush manifesto displays bluster, romance, and illogic in equal measure. Premise: America is fundamentally righteous. "In keeping with our heritage and principles, we do not use our strength to press for unilateral advantage." This will be news to much of the world, but never mind. An imperial strategy is justified because there is in the world but "a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise" -- a model that, surprise, the United States embodies. (As for success without freedom or democracy or free enterprise, what about China? As for free enterprise and democracy of a sort without success, what about Argentina?) Conclusion: Whatever America does will be right -- pursuing terrorists, preemptive war, free trade, whatever. Nuance be damned. For all the boilerplate about national differences, the doctrine's key concern is clear: If all the world speaks American values (though sometimes in funny local accents), why shouldn't everyone dance to our tune? [The complete version of America's Age of Empire: The Bush Doctrine can be read in the January/February, 2003 issue of Mother Jones magazine.] ______________________________________________ A professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University, Todd Gitlin is a contributing writer for the magazine and a columnist for MotherJones.com. motherjones.com

To: lurqer who wrote (12244)	1/28/2003 9:52:29 AM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

a strategy known as "Shock and Awe", Also known as who gives a %&$# about collateral damage. Bush, or someone who looks like him, once said that helping the Iraqi people was a goal of the coming war. TP