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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (116761)	10/16/2003 11:22:17 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Lies about Iraq Rise to Level of the Absurd _______________________ by Jay Bookman Published on Thursday, October 16, 2003 by the Atlanta Journal Constitution Lies beget more lies; a policy built on deception will always require further deception to sustain itself. Case in point: The campaign by leading members of the Bush administration to rebuild faltering support for their invasion of Iraq. To hear them tell it, everything that has happened since last March has just proved how right they've been all along. To cite just one example, consider a recent speech by Vice President Dick Cheney to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington. Cheney is credited by many for having led President Bush, and by extension this country, into invading Iraq. So it's no surprise that he has been unflinching in defending that policy. As he explained the rationale: "We could not accept the grave danger of Saddam Hussein and his terrorist allies turning weapons of mass destruction against us or our friends and allies." Of course, no such grave danger existed. Having failed to find any WMD, we know that now. More importantly, we knew it in the fall of 2002, when this push for war began. Even back then, the CIA was using terms such as "unlikely" and "low probability" to describe the odds of Saddam handing WMD to terrorists. Somehow, "low probability" and "unlikely" were transformed into "grave danger." Claims about Saddam's nuclear program have followed a similar trajectory. In January 2002, the CIA reported that Iraq's nuclear weapons program consisted of no more than low-level theoretical work, an assessment that time has proved quite accurate. Yet eight months later, Cheney was somehow claiming that Iraq was close to completing The Bomb. In his Heritage speech, Cheney also described the prewar efforts to contain Saddam -- "12 years of diplomacy, more than a dozen Security Council resolutions, hundreds of U.N. weapons inspectors, thousands of flights to enforce the no-fly zones and even strikes against military targets in Iraq" -- and dismissed them as failures. That too denies reality. In fact, multilateral efforts to contain and disarm Saddam had succeeded to a degree that few had imagined possible. In 1991, Saddam had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, production facilities to produce still more, and a maturing nuclear weapons program. By 1998, and certainly by 2003, he had none of those things. Sanctions worked. Inspections worked. Then Cheney got to the core of his argument: "Another criticism we hear is that the United States, when its security is threatened, may not act without unanimous international consent. Under this view, even in the face of a specific agreed-upon danger, the mere objection of even one foreign government would be sufficient to prevent us from acting." With that statement, Cheney abandons deception and traipses merrily into the Land of the Completely Absurd. Nobody -- not the Democrats, not the United Nations, not even the French -- makes the argument that he describes. It would be insane to do so. Cheney invents that argument to support his larger point: After Sept. 11, the Bush administration at least did something, while its less-than-manly critics would have done nothing. And that is the ultimate falsehood. The true policy choice is between actions that make things better for the United States and actions that make things worse. If we were to assess the invasion of Iraq on those grounds, the outcome would be something like this: Saddam had no WMD, no nuclear program and no ties to al-Qaida. So invading Iraq did little or nothing to improve our security. It did, however, come at a cost that may take decades to fully tally. The invasion has strained our alliances and international standing, making it difficult to draw support against real threats in North Korea and Iran. Our military is overextended. The financial toll is $150 billion and counting; the toll in U.S. lives continues to mount as well. If the administration truly did expect all that, they are bigger fools than even their harshest critics have claimed. __________________________________________________ Jay Bookman is the deputy editorial page editor. © 2003 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution commondreams.org

To: JohnM who wrote (116761)	10/19/2003 2:51:33 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Remaking the World: Bush and the Neoconservatives foreignaffairs.org

To: JohnM who wrote (116761)	10/30/2003 9:04:07 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

The Stranded Giant ________________________________ By Jacques Julliard Le Nouvel Observateur Tuesday 28 October 2003 Surprising Dozy-Doe! Up until the end of the war in Iraq (May 1, according to George Bush), United States’ diplomacy was worthless, while its army demonstrated its effectiveness. Since then, the reverse obtains: the army piles up failures, while diplomacy scores points: a revenge of the State Department on the Pentagon, of Colin Powell on Donald Rumsfeld, and also of George Bush on Jacques Chirac. On the ground, the situation worsens daily. If water and electricity supply improve a little bit, insecurity grows. The number of attacks presently oscillates between 25 and 35 a day: it’s a real guerilla war. In the course of the two days, October 27 and 28 alone, seven major attacks took place in Baghdad, targeting Americans, Iraqi police stations, but also the Red Cross: in total, 43 dead and more than 300 wounded. Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon number 2, but the Number 1 hawk, barely missed becoming the most illustrious victim of “his” war. It is staggering all the same that a tyrant as odious as Saddam remains undetectable, and that his partisans, whose artisanal action is now relayed by the all Middle East’s finest Jihadists, continue to operate like fish in the water between the Tigris and the Euphrates, while the most powerful army in the world has become a target. This army’s inaptitude for all tasks related to maintaining order is flagrant. The Conservatives, always ready to find the inspiration for their neo-imperialism in the examples of antiquity, should persuade themselves that a Roman style Imperium demands more than military superiority: there needs to be understanding of situations, quality intelligence about and a minimum of sympathy for populations: all elements that they hugely lack. Bush’s ridiculous triumphalism is contradicted by the doubts expressed by Rumsfeld himself. So here is America, stranded in the desert sands of Iraq after having been stuck in the mud of Vietnamese rice paddies: as soon as public opinion revives in a country anesthetized by September 11 and media brainwashing, domestic political consequences will be felt. During this period, American diplomacy has carried off two successes which, although not stunning, interrupt the prior setbacks. On October 16, the U.S. got the U.N. Security Council to vote on Resolution 1511, which legitimizes the occupation of Iraq and the consignment of international reinforcements. France had exhausted its capacity for resistance with the battle of last winter and had in any case expected to let the American resolution pass, but Russia’s defection, which broke the ranks of the rejection front and favored direct negotiation with Washington, accelerated France’s adhesion. A Paris-Berlin-Moscow front is not about to happen any time soon. Nevertheless, the unanimity obtained was merely lip-service; France, Germany, Russia, and Pakistan will take good care not to send their soldiers to a war that is not theirs. One could say as much for the Charity Gala for Iraqi reconstruction that took place in Madrid at the end of last week: 33 billion dollars were promised, of which 20 from the United States and about 8 from the World Bank and the IMF: i.e. at the moment of the offering, the faithful parishioners satisfied themselves by giving their pants’ buttons. In effect, no one cares to enrich the Halliburton company (former CEO: Dick Cheney) which continues to monopolize contracts. Tangled up in its war, paralyzed in its ulterior plans, impotent in Israel and Palestine, the Bush administration has lost none of its cynicism nor its arrogance. George Bush reveals himself daily as a stubborn man, dead to the lessons of experience. At this rate, he won’t hesitate to squander all the credit and capital of sympathy his predecessors garnered for the United States. That’s why the necessity for an autonomous European policy is supported by the facts and will progressively come to be recognized by hearts and minds. By stating his adhesion to a structure of European Military Command outside NATO, alongside Gerhard Schroeder and Jacques Chirac, Tony Blair seems to have learned a lesson from the Iraqi misadventure: unconditional support for the United States doesn’t pay. The question of the relations between Europe and the United States within the Atlantic Alliance will no doubt dominate the next decade; in the immediate future and the year to come, the American voter has the final word. ----------------- Jacques Julliard is the Nouvel Observateur’s Editorial Director -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Translation: Truthout French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher truthout.org