Semi-Daily Journal

it's more than a chance - bush does believe what he says. He is an extraordinarily shallow, ill-informed individual - why wouldn't he believe whatever crap comes out of his own mouth?

Tony Blair said in a speech to the Chicago Economic Club in April 1999: "If we want a world ruled by law and by international co-operation then we have to support the UN as its central pillar." - from: http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?cp=4&kaid=128&subid=187&contentid=829

I think we can detect the growing clucking sound of chickens coming home.

UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, has warned the Security Council would be unlikely to support a new UN resolution to send more troops to Iraq unless the US shared responsibilities.

Unfortunately for all of us, the poor guy is in over his head. His minions are desparately trying to prop him up. The hits on Lexus Nexus for "Bush failure" is rapidly increasing.

Would anybody care to bet on the outcome of the war between American democracy and Islamist fascism? Bakho, would you be willing to put money behind your hatred of this country?

Bakho, would you be willing to put money behind your hatred of this country?
Oh for gods sake, Joe, grow up.

Professor deLong - your blog is surely bettoer off without this sort of trollery.

I love this country, and it tears me apart to see our near Future, yet that scenario energizes my commitment for change. I have seen the Future, and I don't want it.
This time next year, we will have lost 1,500 soldiers, the rate will be high, chaos will reign, and all Iraqiis will want us out. Al-Queda will have hit the Saudi oil terminals, and will be entrenched in Iraq. The Reserves will be depleted by no re-enlistments, and soldiers will find service to be hell. Military marriages will end, their children will be strangers. The deficit will be $600 billion, unemployment will be 8%, since the Reserves will want their jobs back. Interest rates will take the luster off housing, and the citizenry will be cash-strapped and fearfull. Yet bush will never accept this, any of it, and will persevere until we throw him out.
Remember how good it got when we one-termed poppy?

Joe, as someone already said, please grow up.

there's plenty of examples about how terrorism everywhere lasts for decades (Northern Ireland, Basque Country, etc) and is never finished using brute force. You, like too many americans, may have spent too much time watching TV, where the good ones SOMEHOW always end up defeating the bad ones.

Mr Bush is in this sense the champion of wishful thinking, and may have converted Iraq in a terrorist factory, compared to what it was one year ago. Doing surgery with a rusty scalpel is only going to make the problem last longer, regardless who wins in the end.

Joe, as someone already said, please grow up.

there's plenty of examples about how terrorism everywhere lasts for decades (Northern Ireland, Basque Country, etc) and is never finished using brute force. You, like too many americans, may have spent too much time watching TV, where the good ones SOMEHOW always end up defeating the bad ones.

Mr Bush is in this sense the champion of wishful thinking, and may have converted Iraq in a terrorist factory, compared to what it was one year ago. Doing surgery with a rusty scalpel is only going to make the problem last longer, regardless who wins in the end.

in northern ireland centuries rather.

That's not true about NI. Hatred has festered there for centuries, but the IRA campaign that started in the Sixties was something rather different from the old run of occasional riots and pogroms. Nor could it possibly continued as long as it did without backing from American sympathisers. The US attitude to the IRA was closer than is comfortable to the Saudi attitude towards Al-Qaeda: it's all fine and romantic so long as they don't shit on _our_ doorstep.

With all that said, the mess in Iraq is deeper and more horrible than NI by a very large margin.

Fatalities:

American soldiers 134
British soldiers 18
---
152 Since May 2

American 273
British 51
---
324 Since March 20

Note: Danish fatality listed with British
Spanish fatality listed with British

We fought an won a completely just war against the terrorists in Afghanistan, but we did not appear to understand that we needed to build a secure developing democratic state there. So, we are increasingly finding violence and despair in Afghanistan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/24/international/worldspecial/24BLAI.html?hp

The trail of evidence has reached [Prime Minister Tony] Blair himself. His chief of staff and close aide, Jonathan Powell, disclosed that he had warned on Sept. 17 that it would be wrong for Mr. Blair to claim that Iraq posed an "imminent threat" to the world. When Mr. Blair presented the case to Parliament a week later, however, he said that Iraq's program of weapons of mass destruction was "up and running," and the dossier spoke of a "current and serious threat." ...

Notice that the Fair and Balanced press repeatedly uses far lower fatality figures for soldiers in Iraq. Well, PBS and other press sources often use lower figures as though there is a significant dividing line between combat and non-combat fatalities. The war costs are terribly sad.

lise - we shouldn't forget the thousands of Iraqi civilian casualties. Web estimates put the number of Iraqi civilians killed as the result of the war at over 6,000 with 20,000 injured.

BBC reports on hospital casualties, show a sad steady toll of Iraqis day on day.

"Iraq is turning out to be a continuing battle in the war on terrorism."

It is surprising that anyone would consider such an obvious truth to be controversial.

>> It is surprising that anyone would consider such an obvious truth to be controversial.

Perhaps the controversy will make itself even more obvious if you think of it in terms of the man who kills his parents and pleads clemency because he's an orphan.

So the terrorism is President Bush's fault? More plausibly, it is the fault of President Clinton, who by his inadequate response to the attacks on US citizens in the 90's gave the impression that the US was too cowardly and decadent to defend itself. The statements of Mr. Bin Laden and some of his colleagues bear out that interpretation.

The murder of the UN people in Baghdad should make it clear that the terrorists are not at war with the U.S. only, but with the entire civilized world. They are cetainly at war with the people of Iraq, and they show it by attacking their water and electricity supplies and killing aid workers.

For the US to surrender to the barbaric forces we are fighting would be catastrophic in its consequences.

So the terrorism is President Bush's fault? More plausibly, it is the fault of President Clinton, who by his inadequate response to the attacks on US citizens in the 90's gave the impression that the US was too cowardly and decadent to defend itself. The statements of Mr. Bin Laden and some of his colleagues bear out that interpretation.

The murder of the UN people in Baghdad should make it clear that the terrorists are not at war with the U.S. only, but with the entire civilized world. They are cetainly at war with the people of Iraq, and they show it by attacking their water and electricity supplies and killing aid workers.

For the US to surrender to the barbaric forces we are fighting would be catastrophic in its consequences.

So the terrorism is President Bush's fault? More plausibly, it is the fault of President Clinton, who by his inadequate response to the attacks on US citizens in the 90's gave the impression that the US was too cowardly and decadent to defend itself. The statements of Mr. Bin Laden and some of his colleagues bear out that interpretation.

The murder of the UN people in Baghdad should make it clear that the terrorists are not at war with the U.S. only, but with the entire civilized world. They are cetainly at war with the people of Iraq, and they show it by attacking their water and electricity supplies and killing aid workers.

For the US to surrender to the barbaric forces we are fighting would be catastrophic in its consequences.

Sorry about the triple post. It was not intended.

"[Blair's chief of staff] Jonathan Powell, disclosed that he had warned on Sept. 17 that it would be wrong for Mr. Blair to claim that Iraq posed an 'imminent threat' to the world."

That's not half of it. What has emerged is that senior officials in the UK intelligence community here were concerned about the claims made in this dossier published by the government on the 24 Septmber last year: http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Politics/documents/2002/09/24/dossier.pdf

Readers can confirm that in 50 something pages, the text claims in different phrasing no less than four times that Iraq can deploy WMD within 45 minutes of a command being given - on the first instance in a forward signed by Tony Blair himself. He also made much rhetorical effect of this same claim again in a speech to Parliament in March, to seek authority for the war, when British troops were already stationed on Iraq's borders poised for invasion before the summer heat in Iraq began.

A banner header in The Independent of 12 August reads: "As probably the most senior and experienced intelligence official working on WMD, I was concerned about the manner in which intelligence assessments for which I had some responsibility were being presented in the dossier of 24 September 2002" - from letter sent to Intelligence Chief, disclosed at the Hutton Inquiry now in progress.

It has also come out that: "A senior intelligence officer who wanted to inform Parliament of his concerns about the Government's Iraq dossier was told by his superior at the Ministry of Defence not to take the matter further, Hutton inquiry documents show. . . " - from (subscription): http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=434777

From a British perspective, the larger story seems to trace back to this news report about a "secret plan for Iraq war" in a British Sunday broadsheet of 2 December 2001 (sic): http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,610461,00.html

What has come out recently about the September dossier and a later dossier in February - described by Colin Powell as an "exquisite document" in his February speech at the UN but latterly dismissed by Jack Straw, Britain's foreign secretary, as "a complete Horlicks" - makes it look as though the British government was desperately scraping around trying to find a justification to legitimise the war. Blair's credibility is seriously damaged.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/21/opinion/21HERB.html?8bl

A Price Too High
By BOB HERBERT

How long is it going to take for us to recognize that the war we so foolishly started in Iraq is a fiasco — tragic, deeply dehumanizing and ultimately unwinnable? How much time and how much money and how many wasted lives is it going to take?

At the United Nations yesterday, grieving diplomats spoke bitterly, but not for attribution, about the U.S.-led invasion and occupation. They said it has not only resulted in the violent deaths of close and highly respected colleagues, but has also galvanized the most radical elements of Islam.

"This is a dream for the jihad," said one high-ranking U.N. official. "The resistance will only grow. The American occupation is now the focal point, drawing people from all over Islam into an eye-to-eye confrontation with the hated Americans.

"It is very propitious for the terrorists," he said. "The U.S. is now on the soil of an Arab country, a Muslim country, where the terrorists have all the advantages. They are fighting in a terrain which they know and the U.S. does not know, with cultural images the U.S. does not understand, and with a language the American soldiers do not speak. The troops can't even read the street signs."

The American people still do not have a clear understanding of why we are in Iraq. And the troops don't have a clear understanding of their mission. We're fighting a guerrilla war, which the bright lights at the Pentagon never saw coming, with conventional forces....

We are in deep trouble. Joe Willingham doesn't get it: the UN attack was to clear the field - keep others off the filling field. This is about killing agents of "The Great Satan." (That's us.)
The infrastructure attacks is likened both to France's WWII Resistance, and the classic geurrilla methodology of sustaining chaos and misery = unrest. Unrest is their shield.

>> So the terrorism is President Bush's fault?

The vacuum in which the current wave of terrorism flourishes is at least something to do with the US occupying force, don't you think? At least, I don't think you can blame this one on Saddam.

Anyone, including our generals, who suggested that the aftermath of a war in Iraq would be very difficult was quieted. As we were misled about the immediate threat of WMDs in Iraq, we were misled about the human and material costs of a war. Britain too was misled. This should not be in democracies. We had a serious situation in Afghanistan that we did not resolve before the war in Iraq and have not yet resolved. Now, we have a serious situation in Iraq that could long be a sad drain on our material resources and soldiers.

Bob Briant

Thanks for the reminder and fine post.

Lise

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/21/opinion/21HERB.html

Bob Herbert

"Now we're lodged in Iraq, in the midst of the most volatile region of the world, and the illusion of a quick victory followed by grateful Iraqis' welcoming us with open arms has vanished. Instead of democracy blossoming in the desert, we have the reality of continuing bloodshed and heightened terror — the payoff of a policy spun from fantasies and lies."

Does all this mean the fabled Shock and Awe (aka Blitzkreig) strategy is absolutely superb for conquering territory, especially territory with low population density, but rather hopeless at containing the aftermath of asymmetric conflicts in urban situations?

But didn't we know this already from an extrapolation of previous experience?

There is no evidence that Iraq is a breeding ground for terrorism. Instead it is a *magnet* for the terrorist gangs who attacked us in the 80's and 90's, and on September 11, 2001. The terrorists are afraid that Iraq will become a peaceful and democratic country, and they are desperate to keep that from happening. Should we let them?

The trouble with most of the comments in this forum is that take current situation in Iraq out of historical context. This is not a new war. It is a new battle in a war that has been going on for a long time.

The terrorists are succeeding in one thing: they are intimidating American liberals and causing a false impression of what is going on in Iraq. Contrary to liberal belief, most Muslims are not in favor of the terrorists. They are afraid of them, and that is quite understandable since the overwhelming majority of their victims have been Muslims.

I don't believe our troubles are going to be from "terrorism." We will be fighting Iraqis. Sure, there are terrorists drawn (magnet/flypaper) to Iraq for the turkey shoot. They will be able to blend with an Irate Iraq populace. I suspect that we will be removed from Iraq, and all contracts trashed. Halliburton will lose every piece of hardware they can't run with. Then ask bush for a payback. I mean, ask taxpayers for a handout.
This is what Osama wants. We've already withdrawn from Saudia Arabia; per his demand. The desire to travel to Iraq must burn hot in the hearts of the Jihadii.

Nobody can say in advance whether the Islamic extremists and their allies will succeed in destroying civilization, but I know which side I'm rooting for. This much I do know, that appeasement doesn't work when the enemy is as evil as this one. It never has and it never will.

>> This much I do know, that appeasement doesn't work when the enemy is as evil as this one. It never has and it never will.

Polarise the argument much, Joe? I didn't know that the opposite of a under-planned, under-resourced, arrogantly-led occupation was 'appeasement'. I've learnt something today.

Leaving Saddam in power out of fear of terrorism would have been appeasement.

Look where the passivity of our past Middle Eastern policy has gotten us. September 11, 2001 is what it got us.

Our policy in Iraq has increased, not decreased the power of terrorism in the Middle East. It is also illogical to say that the options were "do nothing" and "do exactly as we did" - it's called the fallacy of the excluded middle.

I wish the Clinton haters would at least learn a modicum of rational discourse.

I'm not a Clinton hater. I think that by and large he did a good job as president, despite my Monday morning quarterbacking of his response to terrorism.

On economic policy he was, with the help of Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan, Larry Sommers, Brad deLong, and a Republican Congress, an excellent leader.

According to a member of the Cato Institute Clinton was much better than Bush on trade and on restraint in spending. As Clinton said of himself, he was an Eisenhower Republican in economic policy.

On the environment there is no comparison. Clinton was green and Bush is brown. (Hey, no wise cracks from you leftists about brownshirts!)

Clinton was the man for his time, and Bush is the man for now. As Conor Cruise O'Brien has pointed out, liberals cannot deal with terrorism.

>> Look where the passivity of our past Middle Eastern policy has gotten us. September 11, 2001 is what it got us.

Well, that's a matter of opinion in so many respects. Or at least, it's such a broad and abstract statement to be essentially meaningless.

>> Bush is the man for now.

In which case, God help us all. Unless you regard 'now' as The Age Of Incompetence In The Service Of Ideology, in which case he's perfect.

>> As Conor Cruise O'Brien has pointed out, liberals cannot deal with terrorism.

Well, given that such a statement shows a profound ignorance of his own country, particularly the last decade, it can be dismissed with lip-smacking alacrity.

Quote:

Something terrible happened here. Something murderous. Something evil.

The proof lies in a cargo container nearby. Its metal door hangs open
and inside are pages and pages of files. Each sheaf of notes contains
a picture of a man or woman. Each and every one has been shot in the head.
Their wounds are mangled and gaping. Many of them barely looked human
any more as the anonymous photographer chronicled their dead faces. It
is a horror almost beyond words.

[and]

There are signs of torture too. Outside the warehouse stands a wall. It
is dotted in the centre with a spray of bullet holes. Nearly all of them
are at head height. There is a ditch behind it. If anyone was shot against
the wall, their blood would have drained cleanly away. In another warehouse
a dozen tiny concrete cells have been built of breeze blocks inside the
hangar. In some of them portraits of Saddam Hussein stare from the grey
walls. In several an iron pole has been hung from the roof. Dangling from
it are rusting metal hooks. They are ideal torture chambers.

end-quote.
(from http://www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,930683,00.html)

There are many stories like this to be found if one cares to look.

It's a good thing the United States is attempting to do in Iraq
and every month the soldiers stay gives the people of Iraq more of
a chance at a better future.

Many embedded reporters wrote, this message appeared over and over
again, that Iraqis would ask, "Are you planning to stay? Because
if you don't stay better that you never came."

Nick, Conor Cruise O'Brien is an Irish Catholic and a former leftist radical. He has seen the evil of terrorism close-up, and his desire to show its practitioners no quarter is well earned.

If Bush were serious about terrorism he would have vetoed the 2003 tax cuts, abolished the 2001 tax cuts and then raised taxes. Then he would take our money and put it where his mouth is. Instead we're doing everything from domestic security to the Iraqi occupation on the cheap. Duct tape anyone?

"Fatalities: American soldiers 134 ... Since May 2."

For perspective, also since May 2:

American fatalities 12,600, injured 850,000+, in domestic auto accidents.

Each one of them was a tragedy, no doubt -- but not one of them contributed to ending the filling of mass graves one after another, nor to stopping the routine use of murder and torture to oppress millions of people.

So if it is pointless American fatalities that one is really concerned about, the place to look may be closer to home.

Jim Glass is right, as he usually is. Freedom comes at a great price: the willingness to die, and to kill.

Darwin is the man, and Hobbes, and Machiavelli. As the old Blues song says, "It's a mean old world to try to live in".

The battle between good and evil, between freedom and slavery is never ending. Which side are you on boys, which side are you on?

Reports of latest polls on the Iraq war in the US: http://www.msnbc.com/news/956458.asp and the UK: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/08/24/npoll24.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/08/24/ixnewstop.html

Thanks to www.antiwar.com

My goodness.

Since Joe seems to think it's okay to say someone hates America with no evidence, I think it's okay for me to ask this.

Joe do you believe the crap you spew because you are a moron, or are you just brainwashed?

Since there is no credible evidence that Iraq was behind 9/11 and since there is credible evidence that Hussein kept a firm clamp on Islamic terrorists and terrorism in his country (with the exception of support to Palestinian terrorists who have never attacked America) it is not possible to say that Iraq is a new battle in the warror on Terror.

And yet the 'pub speaking points and propaganda spew on, to the point where most Americans think that Iraq was behind 9/11 and therefore think that the war was justified.

Flawed understanding of a situation tends to produce a flawed result.

Not that the Bushistas have a flawed understanding of this particular question - they knew very well that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and wasn't a hotbed for terrorism.

But why let inconvenient facts get in the way of finding a justification for doing something you've always wanted to do - like attack a sovereign country without causus belli, kill thousands of innocent civilians, get bogged down with over half your deployable forces, remove needed resources from hunting the real enemy (Al-Qaeda, remember?) and get a nice spike in your approval ratings?

Ian, do you want Saddam Hussein back in power? Do you really hate the Iraqi people that much?

What do you believe in, besides hatred of America, its people and its ideals? Islamic fascism? Nihilism? Postmodernism or some other dumbass pseudo-intellectual fad?

Joe is not worth answering - he is clearly incapable of reason. Thinking Bush is a murderously dangerous fool does not make me pro-Saddam or anti-American (FWIW I think Jacques Chirac is devious and corrupt, but that doesn't make me anti-French).

But I really want to point out to people here that Mark Amerman's apparently strong post was based on another official lie, though I'm willing to believe Mark didn't know it was. Mark's link doesn't work, but I found the article he referred to; its here. It was written in early April, and soon after turned out to be another piece of wartime official disinformation. The bodies in the coffins were Iranian casualties of the Iran-Iraq war, awaiting repatriation home under an agreement signed in 2001 between Saddam and the Iranians (that's why they were mutilated skeletons in coffins). There has been no confirmation since of the rest of the story - which given the desperate need of such evidence by the coalition leads me to think that it was disinformation too.

Mark says there are many such reports if you look. But for all the rumours of mass graves, where are the reports of their forensic investigation? I am not scoring points here, simply noting that if they exist then the press is really being derelict in not reporting them. Unless, of course, these rumours have no more credibility than the report Mark linked to.

Can you point me to more of these 'many' reports, Mark, just to ease my sceptical mind?

Another thing one wonders if Bush really believes is that everything was created in six days.

""Fatalities: American soldiers 134 ... Since May 2."

For perspective, also since May 2:

American fatalities 12,600, injured 850,000+, in domestic auto accidents.

Each one of them was a tragedy, no doubt -- but not one of them contributed to ending the filling of mass graves one after another, nor to stopping the routine use of murder and torture to oppress millions of people.

So if it is pointless American fatalities that one is really concerned about, the place to look may be closer to home."

With all due respect, Mr. Glass...FUCK YOU. To compare the killing of American soliders in a foreign land to deaths from auto accidents in the U.S. is so disgusting and comtemptible that there aren't even any words to accurately describe it.

Since you are obviously too stupid and/or evil to understand that, let me make one attempt to explain it. The overwhelming majority of those people who died in auto accidents were going to die not matter who was President or what decisions he made. The dead American soliders in Iraq are dead for one reason...George Bush. If Bush doesn't order them into Iraq, 99 percent of them are still alive.

Tell me Mr. Glass, you sub-human creature, have you spoken to a military family that's lost someone in Iraq and told them they shouldn't be so upset because, after all, another family down the street lost someone to a drunk driving accident?

Mike

Wow. I didn't think we cared whether Saddam was in power, really. I thought it was all about "weapons of mass destruction" and the threat to the United States. Saddam has been just as bad a man since he took power, and we were just fine with his evil. Certainly George W. Bush was fine with his evil when Bush was running for President. If he weren't then don't you think his campaign slogan should have been, "A Vote For Me is a Vote to Send 150,000 Troops and $1 Billion a Week to Baghdad!"? Sounds like a winner, to me.

Really, the way to treat trolls like Joe here is to ask for the new arguments against Saddam. We didn't use the old ones as casus belli, because they were a long shot to work, at best, and wouldn't work anytime soon. Neither Congress nor the international community would have signed on, pointing out that the Congo would have much more bang for the buck in terms of a venue for saving lives. So Bush lied. Blair lied. There were no weapons. There was no connection to terrorist groups. Both hoped something would show up that would fig-leaf them. So far, a couple of trailers that were (according to the CIA assessment) at part of a system for the production of biological agents--and no other part has been found, a fact suggesting they were artillery battery balloon launch trailers. Also, some prototype gas centrifuge parts that look considerably less impressive when one considers that they represent the whole of the Iraqi nuclear program, and were buried in scientist Obeidi's garden since 1991. No connections with al-Qaida.

Over time, one looks for the truth to out, and every day passes to reveal more and more nothing beneath the official reasons for this war. Which is why Joe tries to create other ones postwar: as a distraction. Don't buy into it.

McCain's now begging Bush and his advisors to be honest, but I'm not holding my breath. Honesty, at this point, will have severe consequences for Bush.

The Bush crowd still doesn't get. Contrary to all the hot air about how you had to be a wimp to not support going to war with Iraq, the real reason most didn't like the idea was that it was bad strategy. The fear we had, I think best articulated by AL Gore, was that occupying Iraq would soak up too many resources that would better be spent going after Al Queda.

The other reason we had our doubts was that we suspected that Saddam was not the imminent threat he was portrayed as and that the more prudent course of action would be to maintain the sanctions to contain him. Sadly, it seems all but undeniable at this point that the sanctions were extremely effective, nearly effective as the White House coordinated program of lies that tried to convince us otherwise.

The fact that Iraq is now (mostly) freed from the tyranny of Saddam is a good thing, but in the cold world of national priorities, the U.S. military should serve our interests, not the Iraquis.

The sad truth is, like it or not, we've got Iraq and we have to now throw everything and the kitchen sink into it to keep it from becoming a disaster. But imagine for a second, if even a quarter of all we've expended on Iraq was devoted instead to Afghanistan and going after Al Queda.

The other thing Joe and Jim G et al are ignoring is Saudi Arabia, the freaking dictatorial, oppressive, home of 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers elephant in the room.

As long as this administration continues playing footsie with the Saudi's, the Bushie "democracy" "fighting the terrorists" "pay and price" "liberals are wussies" blah blah blah nonsense is going to be correctly perceived as completely hollow rhetoric.

The top priorities of this administration are tax cuts for their campaign contributors and federal money for their business cronies--national security and fighting terrorism is going to be overruled by the priorities of the Carylye Group everytime those two come into conflict.

derrida derrider,

Let me get this straight. You think that Iranian prisoners-of-war,
some of whom have been clearly tortured, all of whom have been
shot through the head with photographs of their faces right
after they've been shot, you think this is an "official lie"
and "not credible" because the witnesses who first reported
on this didn't know the remains were Iranian?

You know all this but think it's nothing to get bothered about
because they were Iranian prisoners-of-war, although I notice
you call them "Iranian casualties"?

For your information, in the event you are not a native english
speaker, this is not the way most people would refer to such,
as "casualties."

If I understand you, you believe that a "dozen tiny concrete cells
have been built of breeze blocks inside the hangar. In some of
them portraits of Saddam Hussein stare from the grey walls. In
several an iron pole has been hung from the roof. Dangling from
it are rusting metal hooks" yet you think this has no relevance
to the circumstances of people living in iraq.

I'm curious about the origin of your clearly strong faith
that tools and techniques like this were not applied to the internal
enemies of the Ba'athist party.

Would you explain.

John McKinzey,

From your comment I take it that you feel that
fighting the Al Quaeda is a worthwhile goal. Quote,
"But imagine for a second, if even a quarter of all
we've expended on Iraq was devoted instead to
Afghanistan and going after Al Queda."

It's my understanding that the Al Quaeda is or was
largely an arab movement. The Taliban on the other
hand is mostly a pakistani movement. Although Al Quaeda
was once very influential in afghanistan, this is no
longer the case. It's my understanding that american
forces in afghanistan are fighting, or believe they
are fighting, fundamentalist pakistanis infiltrating
into afghanistan, ie. the Taliban. Given the low level
of american casualties in afghanistan, it's plainly
a low level conflict.

It's being reported that irregular forces are moving
into Iraq from Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia, some
of these are probably accurately described as
Al Quaeda. If the goal is to fight the Al Quaeda,
then I do believe we have succeeded.

Joe, I am well aware of who Conor Cruise O'Brien is. I am also well aware of his transformation into a frothing reactionary. Unfortunately though, if you're quoting him accurately, he seems to be unaware of exactly what happened about 80 miles north of his home over the last eight years. Let's just say that the 'liberal' policy towards Ulster has saved a fair few lives, and leave it at that. Conor Cruise O'Brien's policy, on the other hand, would have sustained the 'Basra experience' for British troops on the streets of Ulster, even to this day, while the 'great' man relaxed in his seafront home outside Dublin.

Also, re: 'Do you want Saddam back?' If you keep issuing such polarising dicta, you may find yourself in the company of penguins. Do you really hate Iraqis that much? Do you really believe what you're saying? Do you toss a coin before deciding what you believe?

Khalid Kishtainy (living in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Iraq)
writes this:

"Several statistical reports by independent research
institutes were published recently. They show that
80% of the Iraqis support the coalition forces'
remaining in their country for two years, and that
more than half support the U.N. taking the running
of their country into its hands."

"[If this be the case] by what right [does] a Palestinian
journalist living in London, who turned his back on
life in his land and in the Arab world so as to enjoy
life under the protection of Queen Elizabeth, or [by
what right does a commentator on] television in Qatar
or Lebanon encourage the terrorists, thieves, and
murderers in Iraq to continue their actions, and by
what right does he ennoble them with the aura of
national resistance? Who gave these people...the right
to challenge the desire of three-quarters of the Iraqi
people, their interests, their right to live in
security, their determination to rebuild their land
in the shadow of the only power capable of imposing
security and peace [i.e. the U.S.], preserving the
unity of the country and the integrity of its borders,
and protecting it from social disintegration and
civil war?"

(entire essay at http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD54503)

Since there are already some requests posted here for a certain party to "grow up," perhaps I would not be out of line in hoping for the same from other parties who say things like "why wouldn't he believe whatever crap comes out of his own mouth?" with impunity? Or even from the original poster, Mr. de Long, who buys into the shameless smearing of Bush's rhetorical ability. The phrase selected for ridicule here is only poor if you're looking for something to mock President Bush about. In fact, I don't see a thing wrong with it grammatically. Not that I haven't seen the more famous "bushisms," but honestly, it's possible to undermine almost any politician in this childish way.

Whether the war on Iraq is justified or ever was justified is a more reasonable point of discussion that I would hope could be approached somewhat more civilly. Perhaps not here?

let me know.

-Amos

Guess what ladies and gentlemen. This country is fighting World War III. President Bush needs to level with the American people are cut the crap about tax cuts.

The people we are fighting are vicious beyond comprhension. In order to defeat them, we will have to become a mobilized society. It may take fifty years before the last Islamist fascist has an American bullet put through his brain, but we will win.

Mark -
So you DID know the aftermath to that report - you just chose not to disclose it, or the fact that it was issued very soon after the outbreak of the war. A bit dishonest, wasn't it?

You claim they were Iraqi POWs - where's your evidence? They were skeletons, which suggests they weren't exactly fresh. And they were not hidden away in the interior of Iraq, where you'd expect POWs to be kept to limit their chances of escape - they were in the nearest city to the major battlefields of the war.

Don't misunderstand me - I'm sure Saddam (like most ME rulers) had his torture chambers and I hope he's soon dead. But given the lies we were told about WMDs and al-Quaeda links, I'm simply not willing to take the war party's word for it that Saddam was so uniquely awful that we had to flout international law and launch an unprovoked attack, at the cost of thousands of Iraqi lives, to get rid of him.

All I'm asking for is hard evidence of this unique awfulness. You say there are "many" such reports - I repeat, please point us to them so we can judge for ourselves.

derrida derrider,

I don't understand your reasoning. As best I can put
together you're imagining that the iraqis had
men following along behind their soldiers
photographing the faces of the enemy they killed and
that for some bizarre reason they took the photographs
and the corpses of the enemy soldiers -- but only the
enemy soldiers that had been shot in the face -- and
put them in a detention/torture facility that
coincidently had rooms that looked like people had been
shot in the face with troughs in the floor to catch
the blood.

As I say I don't understand. And since it seems so
implausible my real question is why you want to
believe such a thing?

Now you say "I'm sure Saddam (like most ME rulers)
had his torture chambers" but if you really do
believe that then why do you feel compelled
to discredit reports such as above. If you really
accept that the Ba'athist regime was vile why, in
my eyes, go to such bizarre lengths to dispute it?

There's always a place for scepticism. Just because
a report seems reasonable doesn't mean it is true.
But frankly your words don't read like that of a
sceptic they read like that of a true believer.

You ask if I have other such reports. Yes in fact
I do. I kept a kind of loose account, by no means
exhaustive, of things that caught my eye as the
war unfolded. In particular I was interested in
iraqi attitudes towards american troops and seeing
what evidence of the nature of the regime turned up.
So I have a number of items and I really should put
it all together. No promise that I actually will.

My point in posting the above was that it
demonstrated the nature of the regime and by
implication that whatever else was going on the
iraqi people truely have been, in a sense, rescued.

It does change things slightly if the photos are
that of Iranian POWs, but not that much. Not, I
believe, if you really think about it.

The Saddam is a horrible person argument has been used to death, and doesn't really stand as a legitimate reason to invade another country. If it was a legitimate reason, we'd be attacking several dozen other countries trying to depose their version of Saddam now. Mark can repeating it all he wants, but it doesn't change the reality. It's just a waste of time responding to a defunct argument, and that might very well be his intention. Ditto for Joe's blind assertions that the War in Iraq actually have something to do with weakening terrorism.

Is that so Dfinc? Well, I guess I missed something
because I thought that was the reason we went to war
with Serbia at the bidding of France, Germany,
Britain and a number of other western european
states and a considerable portion of the public
opinion in the United States.

One of the odd things about all this is that
I never seem to see stories about the ugly side
of Saddam Hussein's regime in the media outside
the anglosphere. One would think it would be of
interest simply because of the sensational,
newspaper-selling nature, let alone some obligation
on the part of newspaper to inform readers of what
is happening.

Of course I'm not sure of this statement. I've
read only a tiny fraction of all the stories
published, but in my semi-random repeated
explorations of certain media in Japan, India,
Pakistan, Norway, Germany, Turkey, and a few
others, I just never seem to run across these
sort of stories. Even when I know a new piece
of information has just come out, I never in the
following days see any mention in these papers
I've been tracking. Even when the whole focus
of the world was focused on Iraq these stories
didn't appear in the papers I surveyed.

So you say the horror of a particular government
is never a reason to attack it, and I wonder,
"Well that's odd. If that's the case why are
these stories censored?"

You say, "If it was a legitimate reason, we'd be
attacking several dozen other countries trying
to depose their version of Saddam now."

And I've heard others make that argument, but
I don't find it reasonable. In my opinion there
are worse governments in the world than the
former Ba'athist regime, that doesn't mean I'm
advocating that the U.S. invade and depose
them. If there's a problem somewhere I don't
believe we are obligated to spend our lives
and our wealth trying to cure it.

On the other hand even if we are not obligated
to, if we should find ourselves doing such, then
the nature of a regime can be sufficient justification
all by itself.

Dfinc wrote, "Th[at] Saddam is a horrible person argument has been used to death, and doesn't really stand as a legitimate reason to invade another country."

Mark Amerman wrote, "Is that so Dfinc? Well, I guess I missed something because I thought that was the reason we went to war with Serbia at the bidding of France, Germany, Britain and a number of other western european states and a considerable portion of the public opinion in the United States."

There are (or should be) two separate, distinct propositions here.
(1) Atrocities committed by a regime constitute a legitimate reason to terminate that regime by invasion, and
(2) Nations that cite (1) above when invading another country do so sincerely and with consistency.

IMHO, (1) is fine; I don't have any problem with deposing regimes by force (all other things, like stability, being equal, which of course they're not).

The sticking point is (2), not (1). There are all sorts of atrocities on record where the US either stood by because (a) it had no "national interest" at stake, or (b) the perceived national interests put the US on the side of those committing the atrocities.

Case in point: Indonesia's forcible annexation of East Timor in the mid-1970s. Estimates are that roughly 200,000 people died, all told, about a 1/3 of the population. Documentary evidence is now in the public record that Kissinger gave Indonesia a "green light" for the invasion.

From this as well as many other examples, it's difficult to maintain that nations conduct foreign policy in general, or wage war in particular, based on human rights considerations. Which means that the "consistency" I put in (2) above isn't supported by the evidence. Which leads me to disbelieve arguments for the "sincerity" in (2).

Well, I skimmed over all comments. So many different opinions, interesting pionts. these are mine. for one i am a military brat. i had to endure the fear of my father never returning also growing up we knew a few morw things than civilians did. and when my father retired he shared a few things with us. my point most of my life has been about protecting this countryetc.. so when i say what i do i am going to say i am not some anti-american. 1.there is no such thing as a winnable war 2.how do you really know that the media is telling the whole story or even the truth 3. i am of iranian desent. along with other races but i focus on the iranian side because i know my history. did bush take history? did any of you? the middle east has been at war forever! they have very strong beliefs and have no problem dying for their belifs. i do not agree with terroism, it teerfies me. because the more bush pisses "whoever actually involved" off its putting out fire with gasoline. and is this about terrorism or oil? we dont want terrorism. we are so shocked that the great usa got attacked. what makes us special? americans live in teir blinded cozy lves not thinking about the hell going on in other countries. my best friend is a bosnian refugee. so i got inside stories. her comment"america needs to take care of their own kitchen" i agree. i understand the u.s. situation. but i feel it is time for bush to sit back clear his head and find other options. it will never end. they need to get outta iraq and brainstorm what will terrorists hit next. protect us here and stop the carnage of our poor soilders. to all of you who have written you all have valid and interesting opinions. keep talking, arguing, whatever it is the only way we can vent and maybe one of us will come up with what to do. peace and God be with you all...denise

Well, I skimmed over all comments. So many different opinions, interesting pionts. these are mine. for one i am a military brat. i had to endure the fear of my father never returning also growing up we knew a few morw things than civilians did. and when my father retired he shared a few things with us. my point most of my life has been about protecting this countryetc.. so when i say what i do i am going to say i am not some anti-american. 1.there is no such thing as a winnable war 2.how do you really know that the media is telling the whole story or even the truth 3. i am of iranian desent. along with other races but i focus on the iranian side because i know my history. did bush take history? did any of you? the middle east has been at war forever! they have very strong beliefs and have no problem dying for their belifs. i do not agree with terroism, it teerfies me. because the more bush pisses "whoever actually involved" off its putting out fire with gasoline. and is this about terrorism or oil? we dont want terrorism. we are so shocked that the great usa got attacked. what makes us special? americans live in teir blinded cozy lves not thinking about the hell going on in other countries. my best friend is a bosnian refugee. so i got inside stories. her comment"america needs to take care of their own kitchen" i agree. i understand the u.s. situation. but i feel it is time for bush to sit back clear his head and find other options. it will never end. they need to get outta iraq and brainstorm what will terrorists hit next. protect us here and stop the carnage of our poor soilders. to all of you who have written you all have valid and interesting opinions. keep talking, arguing, whatever it is the only way we can vent and maybe one of us will come up with what to do. peace and God be with you all...denise

Well, I skimmed over all comments. So many different opinions, interesting pionts. these are mine. for one i am a military brat. i had to endure the fear of my father never returning also growing up we knew a few morw things than civilians did. and when my father retired he shared a few things with us. my point most of my life has been about protecting this countryetc.. so when i say what i do i am going to say i am not some anti-american. 1.there is no such thing as a winnable war 2.how do you really know that the media is telling the whole story or even the truth 3. i am of iranian desent. along with other races but i focus on the iranian side because i know my history. did bush take history? did any of you? the middle east has been at war forever! they have very strong beliefs and have no problem dying for their belifs. i do not agree with terroism, it teerfies me. because the more bush pisses "whoever actually involved" off its putting out fire with gasoline. and is this about terrorism or oil? we dont want terrorism. we are so shocked that the great usa got attacked. what makes us special? americans live in teir blinded cozy lves not thinking about the hell going on in other countries. my best friend is a bosnian refugee. so i got inside stories. her comment"america needs to take care of their own kitchen" i agree. i understand the u.s. situation. but i feel it is time for bush to sit back clear his head and find other options. it will never end. they need to get outta iraq and brainstorm what will terrorists hit next. protect us here and stop the carnage of our poor soilders. to all of you who have written you all have valid and interesting opinions. keep talking, arguing, whatever it is the only way we can vent and maybe one of us will come up with what to do. peace and God be with you all...denise