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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (11820)	10/11/2003 11:48:56 AM
From: Rascal	Respond to of 793916

I took note of this at the time President Clinton made the comment. "So I thought it was prudent for the president to go to the U.N. and for the U.N. to say you got to let these inspectors in, and this time if you don't cooperate the penalty could be regime change, not just continued sanctions." Key here is the linear presentation of-- Get UN support,let inspectors in, let them inspect, threaten penalties for no compliance. This is the direction I (And Wesley Clark) thought we were going. Absent was a timeline saying Troops must invade before Summer. Only Bush and the Neocons had this deliverable. As the TIme-Line-Told, inspections were aborted midstream. Many wanted them to continue. THe inspections were supplanted by an INVASION and OCCUPATION. THis is the main objection to the Bush/Neocon Policy. What if: Inspections would have continued? What would the downside be? Many liked the idea of coercive inspections. Imagine if (AS I suggested in posts many moons ago.) we had installed troops to support the inspectors, brought in Starbucks and a Wallmart PX, hospital and educational supplies. I hazard to say our objectives for transformation in the Middle East would be much different and our esteem in the world be raised to a new levels of loftiness. But then, I don't know about the needs Carlyle and Halliburton had for new Military contracts. How were their annual plans shaking out? You can't sell new armaments if the ones on the shelf have not been used. As an old product manager I was cued in when Andy Card told us "You don't introduce a new product in August." This was their annual plan and the executed it on their timetable. The biggest risk they had was not deploying the forces before the Iraqi SUmmer. Imagine if they had waited until the Fall of 2003. No 150 Billion, no cost-plus no-bid contracts, no dead soldiers, no decimated troops no i/2 TRillion deficit. Imagine.... The Republicans are the scorpion on the frog. THey can't help themselves and , unfortunately, they are not too smart. They have never seen a dirty trick they didn't like. And please, in all future discourse add in the element of "TIME". The choice was not to invade Iraq in March or become a Mushroom Cloud. (And the choice to INVADE was made by Harkin BOy's mandarins in 2002 when they began to deploy troops.) The choice was continue inspections or discontinue inspections. Rascal @TImingIsEverything&TimeTold.com

To: LindyBill who wrote (11820)	10/11/2003 12:33:47 PM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 793916

by Robert Kagan & William Kristol Lots of beating fists on the table for emphasis; more than usual amount of moralistic stuff for Kagan, perhaps that's Kristol. They fail to take account of the several serious responses to all this and instead do the usual dichotomous stuff of either doing what they say or doing nothing. The Cheney ploy as well. Pollack and several others, including several members of the Clinton administration argued (a) the necessity to make it multilateral, and (b) the necessity of letting the inspectors do their work. So the distinction between these sets of actors--the neocons and those members of the Clinton administration who wished to end SH's regime--was unilateral versus multilateral and careful preparation versus hasty invasion. But, frankly, all this seems beside the point to me. The real issue is how well the Bush folk handle the post invasion stuff, the occupation stuff. The answer right now is, not well at all. But the future is unknown.