Hi frankw1900; Re: "The "lunatics" as you call them, included all the governments which had any sort of intelligence capability in the ME."
This isn't true. The most that anyone would (truthfully) say was that they didn't know if Iraq had WMDs or not, as of late 2002 or early 2003.
Re: "And, if I remember correctly, you thought Hussein had em too. And you agreed with me beforehand that Hussein would chisle on the Inspections - which he did."
This isn't true, but it is a good indication of how good your memory is. For example:
Bilow, September 16, 2002
Since Saddam is allowing inspections, I'd say that it's highly likely that Ritter was right, and that Iraq doesn't have any WMDs. #reply-17998530
Re: "A couple of quotes from his book: ..."
Those quotes are from his book, which was published before the neocon war party began beating the drums in late 2002. And he was right, back then, about what war would be like. But when Bush began planning for war on the cheap, did Pollack raise his voice and announce that this wasn't a good idea? No, for him any war was a good war.
Re: "He expected the Iraqi reaction to US invasion to be ambivalent. He was right.
Again, your memory is defective:
November 8, 2002
[Pollack] expected the Americans to get the Iraqis' support and help, since they hate Saddam, especially the Kurds in the north and the Shiah in the south, indicating that the Shiah who are a majority in Iraq, will benefit if democracy is established in Iraq. #reply-18214810
Here are some explicit Pollack quotes from AFTER the obsolete book you quote, go ahead and find me a quote from Pollack, dated to 2003, saying that we were going into Iraq without enough troops. To the contrary, I provide a quote where he states that 100 to 200,000 troops was enough to occupy the place:
Kenneth Pollack and Joe Siegle, December 31, 2002
The third and hardest option, in the short term, would be to establish a viable democratic government under international auspices. That would require an occupying ground force of 100,000 to 200,000 troops, substantial numbers of which would have to remain for eight to 10 years, if not more. Even so, this is the only prospect for a stable Iraq at peace with its neighbors.
...
No one needs to be reminded that these are significant challenges. But it is also important to remember that Iraq has a number of critical assets. Its tremendous oil wealth is sufficient to fund a rapid rehabilitation — an advantage no previous nation-building effort has enjoyed. The Iraqi population is among the best educated in the Arab world. Although impoverished during the past decade, Iraq still possesses a large, capable (and mostly secular) middle class. Radical Islam is not a major draw in the country. Removing Saddam is likely to unleash a more positive dynamic: the Iraqi people’s native entrepreneurism. #reply-18388068
May 2, 2003
I still think it is very premature to suggest that Saddam either did or did not have the weapons. Now it's not just that the fat lady hasn't sung yet, it's that in some senses the orchestra is just starting to tune up. We are only at the very beginning of what will have to be a very extensive weapons search throughout Iraq.
...
For 2003, I think Resolution 1441 was fine; I thought it was actually a very good resolution. But I would not have handled it necessarily the way that the administration did. I would have done one of two things. Either, I would have had the troops all in place and ready to go, and then when the December Iraqi [weapons] declaration came in, which was an absolute farce, I would have then used that as the casus belli to launch the war, because in fact that was the clearest instance of outright Iraqi noncompliance that we got and were ever likely to get.
[You would have gone to war in January or so?]
Exactly. ... #reply-18916897
June 20, 2003
Where are Iraq's weapons of mass destruction? It's a good question, and unfortunately we don't yet have a good answer. There is hope that the capture of Abid Hamid Mahmoud al-Tikriti, Saddam Hussein's closest aide, will provide the first solid clues. In any event, the mystery will be solved in good time; the search for Iraq's nonconvential weapons program has only just begun.
...
The one potentially important discovery made so far by American troops — two tractor-trailers found in April and May that fit the descriptions of mobile germ-warfare labs given by Iraqi defectors over the years — might well point to a likely explanation for at least part of the mystery: Iraq may have decided to keep only a chemical and biological warfare production capability rather than large stockpiles of the munitions themselves.
... #reply-19049714
-- Carl |
