Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

Ahhh, the Senate Intelligence committee decided to withhold Pentagon and White House matters until after the election.

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/david_sarasohn/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1089806167311330.xml

The Bush administratuion had already decided to go to war by midsummer of 2001. The purpose of intelligence as seen by the Administration was to provide plausible pretexts to cover the decisions already made. It doesn't matter what the CIA knew, or what it found out. All info from the CIA was going to be "reformatted" in such a way as to provide those pretexts.

Blech.

Let's review what we did know without the CIA:

Saddam was connected to a previous bombing attempt.

Saddam had attempted to assassinate a US president.

Saddam had obfuscated inspectors for 10 years.

He had that same 10 years to hide anything he wanted. And a large desert. And a dedicated internal security apparatus.

He refused to account for known stockpiles of chemical weapons.

Blix himself noted obfuscation all the way up to the invasion.

Not a single government opposed to the invasion brought any evidence to the UN floor, or even made the suggestion that he didn't have weapons.

At the end of the day, all intelligence is imperfect. I would be willing to bet that 99.999% of all intelligence analysis has dissent somewhere. It is the job of the intelligence community to take data, conceive a story, and explain why they believe what they believe. It is not their job to 'data dump' on the lap of the President.

Proving that weapons had all been destroyed in spite of a government acting to hide the truth is very difficult, and the only way you can find out anything is by going in. The only reason we can even have this discussion is that we now are highly certain that there are no stockpiles. The certainty we have now is an artifact of the invasion, not an argument against it.

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Saddam was connected to a previous bombing attempt.

Saddam had attempted to assassinate a US president.

Saddam had obfuscated inspectors for 10 years.
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The first two assertions are just futher examples of dubious speculation. Also, while few expected to find NO WMD AT ALL, many of us expected that whatever stockpiles did exist would be degraded, would have no effective delivery system vis-a-vis the US, and would only count as WMD's in the broadest sense of the word. Mustard gas and sarin stockpiles in Iraq do not scare me. There was ample evidence that the nuclear program had foundered, and that furthermore, there was no delivery sytem for any primitive (read: large) bomb that the regime could cobble together.

I'm not a particularly dovish person, but I must say that all this was fairly evident to someone who kept track of the news prior to the war. The rending of garments that's going on now about "had we known, etc" strikes me as either completely disingenuous or as proof that "inside the beltway" thinking is truly cut off from the real world.

boonie:

Dubious speculation by the Clinton administration in one case, if it is such. Both of these are fairly mainstream analyses.

Not to criticize, but this:

"I'm not a particularly dovish person, but I must say that all this was fairly evident to someone who kept track of the news prior to the war."

is very easy to say 1) after the fact and 2) when there is absolutely no danger of your speculations from the armchair becoming national policy.

The threat was never positioned as Iraq hitting us with an ICBM.

AQ investigating crop duster delivery systems + Saddam housing sarin = something bad in my book

"He refused to account for known stockpiles of chemical weapons."

Actually, Iraq made some efforts. He just couldn't do it. It's his own fault, but it's not a refusal.

"Blix himself noted obfuscation all the way up to the invasion."

And, yet, Blix didn't support invasion, perhaps because he had begun to doubt the scope of the "obfuscation." The Americans assured him that the stocks and laboratories were there, yet each specific inspection, each site to which he was directed by the Americans turned out to be empty or (such as a sub-basement of a hospital) not to exist at all. To paraphrase Blix, "How could the Americans be so certain that the Iraqis had weapons when the other intelligence that they believed as certainly was so wrong?"

"Not a single government opposed to the invasion brought any evidence to the UN floor, or even made the suggestion that he didn't have weapons."

Yes. That's why they sent Blix there. To determine so.

"Proving that weapons had all been destroyed in spite of a government acting to hide the truth is very difficult, and the only way you can find out anything is by going in."

And risk becoming landlord of an expensive, sandy hellhole. Sure. As the poster ably notes above, for what? To prevent Saddam from using chemical weapons on Americans? In the United States? When one gets right down to it, it's rather hard to figure out what Saddam ever did to the United States. Sure, he was a bastard, but he reserved his terror for his neighbors and his people. As the poster notes above, even his attempt on the life of George H.W. Bush has hallmarks of being drummed up by the Kurwaiti intelligence services and used by Clinton as pretense to "look tough on Iraq."

It was the war to keep Saddam Hussein from giving weapons he didn't have to terrorists he didn't know.

Jason, Brian C.B. has pretty much said what needed to be said, so i'll just add a couple of points.

First, in the vast continuum between "Saddam has no wmds at all" and the kind of claims that the backbone administration made was a position that many of us who opposed the war took: that he probably has chemical and biological materials, perhaps in weaponized form, but most likely well past their sell-by date. YOu can find literally thousands of blog comments along these lines; you can find more informed individuals having made these claims. It is most assuredly NOT monday morning quarterbacking.

As for the "positioning" of the threat, i had reason yesterday, for other purposes, to refresh myself on the Bush Cincy, 10/02 speech, which included this remark: "Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles -- far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, and other nations -- in a region where more than 135,000 American civilians and service members live and work." I suspect, with some effort that i'm unwilling to make, there are other, similar remarks that could be found.

I acknowledge that it's not quite the same as saying that Saddam could send missiles to hit America, but saying that he could send missiles to hit Americans is close enough for government work....

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is very easy to say 1) after the fact and 2) when there is absolutely no danger of your speculations from the armchair becoming national policy.
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Yes Jason, I admit it is easier to say such things after the fact than it was before the fact when I was cursed and called names at the demonstrations I attended. You could, of course, refuse to take me at my word. However, Gary Hart and others were assessing the threat in almost exactly the same terms as myself, in print and on the record.

As for your second gibe: apparently your speculations (or something pretty close) ARE policy, whether you had a hand in it or not. I don't see that fact tempering your tendentious arguments.

Brian C.B.:

On Blix. There is a lot of supposition in there. Blix didn't support war for the same reason most of the EU didn't, he is ideologically opposed to the concept. In January '03, this was his report:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/01/27/sprj.irq.excerpts/

This is the same pattern Saddam had followed for the previous round of inspections, all the way up to the time he kicked them out. What purpose was there to the 15,000 pages of nothing Saddam gave the UN, if not to buy more time? Some folks are very glib about how much they knew in the face of all this.

Howard:

I absolutely agree that the administration took the approach making statements like 'we know he has X', and attempted to support these too-strong statements by throwing every piece of negative intelligence, unreviewed, in support of the argument. What I am trying to convey is that in the absence of certainty that the weapons didn't exist (or, to your point, were ineffective), the case that he is doing everything he can to hide something was very very strong. The idea was not to find weapons, but to bring Saddam into compliance with the terms of his surrender so that we could have certainty that we was not a threat to sell weapons to terrorists. The presence of weapons was an unknowable, while his ability and willingness to hide them was known.

Now we know, and all the wise blogging men with their intimate contacts in Iraqi weapons labs can pat themselves on the back for guessing right.

All of this is in the context, the anti-war crowd's demands for such notwithstanding, of there not being One Big Reason for the war. Blair wanted to emphasize the WMD threat, but to me the most significant reason to engage in the war was to engage a known enemy (we are disputing capability, not desire to harm, right?) and burn his house down. American military will was the joke of the middle east thanks to our complete failure to prosecute any ground fight to completion for a decade, despite repeated provocations. Yes, that is a digression, but I feel that the 'Gotcha!' of no found WMDs is completely overstated and simplistic. It is tantamount to saying, "I guessed right, and I only know that because you didn't do what I told you to do."

boonie:

Let me rephrase. I don't doubt that you were making similar arguments before the war. I am indicating that when you did, you had a confidence that was unjustified by available information. Hart didn't know, I didn't know, and you didn't know.

No, Jason, we didn't know for sure. No one did.

It just turns out that we were right, and you were wrong.

And others, rather than you and I, paid and are paying the price.

Sucks for them, huh?

Well, when you run your society through _manufacturing consensus_, you can hardly complain when the odd consensus ("Incestuous Amplification") is manufactured, can you?

Jason

Saddam didn't kick them out - Clinton withdrew them so he could bomb Iraq

Please repeat until it sinks in or your throat bleeds - whatever comes first

Jason Ligon wrote, "At the end of the day, all intelligence is imperfect. I would be willing to bet that 99.999% of all intelligence analysis has dissent somewhere. It is the job of the intelligence community to take data, conceive a story, and explain why they believe what they believe. It is not their job to 'data dump' on the lap of the President."

Of course.

That's why, for example:
(1) When you get single sourced intelligence from defectors, you treat it with extreme caution;
(2) When Department of Energy types claim that an aluminum tube isn't spec'ed for a centrifuge, and artillery types counter that it isn't spec'ed to be an artillery rocket tube, you listen to the former, because _a priori_ the specs on the former are far more specific;
(3) When you receive intelligence reports about documents purporting to show Saddam tried to buy uranium from Africa, you google on the documents and find within hours (from your own home PC, if need be) that they're forgeries.

All those screwed up things are, of course, the result of incompetent intelligence analysts. None of them are possibly the result of pressure from the administration. And we were all born yesterday.

ed:

"Saddam didn't kick them out - Clinton withdrew them so he could bomb Iraq"

Yes, this is more accurate. Thanks for clarifying. I don't see what the difference is in context of my statement, though. The inspectors were not obstructed?

NOWar:

Brilliant analysis of the situation. We were both ignorant about the real state of affairs. You scknowledge that you made a guess based on insufficient information. You turned out to be right. You won the coin toss. Congratulations. Some people are paying the price of the military action, but some people are reaping benefits, too. At a minimum, we established that we will chase down a tyrant who hides in his own country if we deem him to be a even a cursory threat. That is good. That war has a price is hardly a revelation. My suggestion to you is that sitting on your butt has a price too. Chosing to do nothing does not liberate you from the consequences of your decision.

Liberal:

Yup. That is what I said in my 11:41 AM post. I don't think the administration looked twice at any piece of intelligence that suggested the presence of weapons before they blabbed it. This is an artifact of taking the unsupportable position that 'There are WMD in Iraq,' rather than the weaker, but accurate 'We can't confirm what he has done with them because he is obstructing and has had too long to hide them.' This is a bad mistake on the part of the administration, but I note it is the exact same mistake being made by folks who are now claiming that they knew all along that there were no weapons, and who selectively disregard the 10 year history of obfuscation, the thousands of unaccounted for munitions that Blix was seeking, the obstruction of inspectors all the way up to the invasion, the 15,000 pages of garbage Saddam provided to the UN, and so on, so as to bolster their claims of confidence in the past. The kicker for me is that we are now all pretending that there was no case for war unless we could have proven at the time that there were WMDs in Iraq. The problem was precisely that we couldn't prove anything without having unfettered access to the entire country, and Saddam had never grated that to anyone.

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...but to me the most significant reason to engage in the war was to engage a known enemy (we are disputing capability, not desire to harm, right?) and burn his house down...
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Jason:

When we argue the WMD's point so hard, it is because this (and the supposed links to OBL and AQ) were the STATED reasons for going to war. Had your point above been a stated reason for going to war, well, I don't think we would be in Iraq right now. That's because your argument has all the logic of the drunk looking for his keys under the streetlight -not because that's where he lost them, but because the light's better there.

Many anti-war types posited just such a theory as "the real reason" the Admin wanted to fight Iraq - so we could look tough and fight an enemy where our conventional forces had an overwhelming advantage. I'm reluctant to indulge in such psycoanalysis of the opposition myself, but when you just give it to us on a platter....

Jason, the thing about resorting to war when your grounds are uncertain is that it exposes you to two problems: a.) the Law of Unintended Consequences (among the examples, in this case, are the overstretch of the US military, the imposition of stop-loss orders as a result which are likely to have a deleterious impact on future military recruiting, the exceptional cost, Abu Ghraib, and a number of others); b.) the violation of the Hippocratic Oath (among the many fears that some of us had before the war is that, if saddam really did have chemical and/or biological weapons, which we doubted, but if he did, then the fog of war was a great time for them to disappear)....

In addition, the Iraq war violated cost-benefit analysis, unless you believed, as the backbone administration did, that there were no costs, only benefits. This was not, though, a unanimously held position here in this great land.

In short, the administration exaggerated the case because it knew that an "honest" case wouldn't win the support of the american public, even if the "honest" case itself would have been, in retrospect, overwrought.

All of these matters were mentioned by many of us prior to the war; that they have now all turned out to be, if anything, understated, gives me, for one, no pleasure at all.

It simply confirms that george bush is too shallow an individual for the high office he holds....

The position of the French and German governments in March 2003 (along with enough other countries to stall the UN resolution pushed by Tony & George) was "Not enough evidence to act, continue to search".

This position still holds today.

"Many anti-war types posited just such a theory as "the real reason" the Admin wanted to fight Iraq - so we could look tough and fight an enemy where our conventional forces had an overwhelming advantage. I'm reluctant to indulge in such psycoanalysis of the opposition myself, but when you just give it to us on a platter...."

I'm something of a libertarian hawk, so I certainly can't argue one way or the other why this administration went to war. I suspect you were almost correct in your assessment of ONE OF THE REASONS, though. It was not important to beat up someone because they were easy to beat up. Frankly, in a conventional conflict, very few wouldn't be easy for us to beat up. The point was to forcibly remove from power the middle eastern tyrant that was most obviously an enemy of the US, who happened to be the same one on record gassing his own people, who many outside the antiwar blogs suspect was involved in both an assassination attempt on GHW Bush in Kuwait and in the first WTC bomb plot, who never remotely attempted to comply with the terms of his surrender the first time, and so on.

What intrigues me is the blase attitude toward the argument that prior to the successful deposition of Saddam, the US had no credibile military threat to any middle eastern nation of any size. In brushing off the argument, you are either saying that the claim is untrue (i.e. we did have a credible military threat) or that it doesn't matter whether we have one or not.

The former position relies on blindness to what happened any time we were threatened or sought to defend someone who was threatened and Tomahawks were insufficient for the task. The short version is - we ran away or refused to engage every time. No one on earth had any reason to believe that we would be willing to put boots on the ground to finish a fight.

The latter position is a gross misapprehension of how international relationships work, especially when dealing with a single personality that rules his country by terror. There is no diplomacy without a credible threat of violence to that personality. They don't care about their people, they care about their money and their skin. When they are sitting on oil reserves, it is hard to stop them from getting money (see Oil for Food as administered by the wholesome folks at the UN). Fear for life is more compelling, anyway. Every tyrant in the region needs to believe that if we even think they might support anyone who attacks the US, we will hunt them down in their homeland, and they will very likely be dead after a trial or when a bomb falls on their head. This is the most important aspect of security - the reestablishment of the US military will to destroy utterly anyone we perceive to be a threat. Wars have been fought for far less worthy goals.

I can hear it now, "Why not the House of Saud? BushHitler is in bed with them, that's why!" No, Saddam is the best choice because he has decades of crimes, and the only reason he was still drawing breath when this started is cost/benefit favored leaving him alone. Add in the first successful attack on America at home and the very real possibility that he had weapons to sell, and target selection is easy.

"No, Saddam is the best choice because he has decades of crimes, and the only reason he was still drawing breath when this started is cost/benefit favored leaving him alone."

It still did in March 2003, more so than ever. But I like the implied reasoning of "In response to 9/11 we need to go after someone who looks remotely Arab and threatening, and Saddam is the most utilitarian choice." Very Rumsfeldian.

I also find the reversal of roles amusing, that pro-war hawks play the "liberal" "we have to help our fellow man in Iraq" card while anti-war doves come up with "conservative" utilitarian arguments to show that the cost/benefit analysis speaks against removing a known tyrant. I think the conflict will be resolved as soon as a new strongman takes control of Iraq and we will find out if the U.S. suddenly cares about the human rights record of an allied regime.

"...to me the most significant reason to engage in the war was to engage a known enemy (we are disputing capability, not desire to harm, right?) and burn his house down. American military will was the joke of the middle east thanks to our complete failure to prosecute any ground fight to completion for a decade, despite repeated provocations."

Well, yeah, but wouldn't Afghanistan and Usama bin Laden have been a more appropriate choice?

About the damn attempts to purchase uranium- this is really becoming a pet peeve of mine. MI6 still to this day stands by this claim. it was supported by numerous intelligence sources, however due to security issues and the wants of the foreign state intelligence agencies to remain anonymous, MI6 was only able to offer up one of the sources as evidence. this source was later to turn out false, the other sources however are still true and again, still fully supported by MI6.

[[[[Many anti-war types posited just such a theory as "the real reason" the Admin wanted to fight Iraq - so we could look tough and fight an enemy where our conventional forces had an overwhelming advantage.]]]

strategic forecasting (stratfor.com), a pretty reliable intelligence forecasting company, basically said as much. WMD's were one of the reasons for war, but the main reason was psychological, to change the nature and ways of thought in the middle east. not to much as to establish the primacy of the american military per se, but to show the paucity of rejectionist political organization in the middle east by toppling one of the key rejectors of western liberalism.

[[[Saddam didn't kick them out - Clinton withdrew them so he could bomb Iraq]]]

clinton didn't withdraw them simply so he could bomb iraq. by that time hussein was so bolstered by the complete crumbling of the sanctions regime that there was little point in keeping the inspectors there.

this incidentally was another powerful, yet unfortunately unstated, case for war. the fact that the sanctions regime post Gulf War I began unravelling within a few short years, and there was little assurance and every reason to believe that a renewed sanctions regime in 2003 would face a similar fate, especially given the numerous comments from France and Russia concerning their total and complete opposition to war regardless of any developments on the ground

Finally, why no mention of the Pentagon Office of Special Plans? Did I just miss it?

No, you didn't. From the Report:

In addition to the matters set forth in the joint release of the Chairman and Vice Chairman on June 20, 2003, the Committee agreed to examine additional issues in two phases. Issues annotated as phase one have been addressed in this report. Issues annotated as phase two are currently under review by the Committee. The additional issues are:

(snip)

— any intelligence activities relating to Iraq conducted by the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group (PCTEG) and the Office of Special Plans within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (phase I and II) . . .

Presumably the only way the committee could agree to go forward was to assiduously disaggregate the dots, rather than connect them. Look for phase II sometime well after the election.

Jason Ligon wrote, ..."who many outside the antiwar blogs suspect was involved in both an assassination attempt on GHW Bush in Kuwait and in the first WTC bomb plot,..."

There's some evidence for the first, but it's not solid. As for the second, it's an idea pushed by Laurie Mylroie, and is believed only by certified nutcases.

Jason Ligon wrote, ..."This is an artifact of taking the unsupportable position that 'There are WMD in Iraq,' rather than the weaker, but accurate 'We can't confirm what he has done with them because he is obstructing and has had too long to hide them.' This is a bad mistake on the part of the administration, but I note it is the exact same mistake being made by folks who are now claiming that they knew all along that there were no weapons, and who selectively disregard the 10 year history of obfuscation, the thousands of unaccounted for munitions that Blix was seeking, the obstruction of inspectors all the way up to the invasion, the 15,000 pages of garbage Saddam provided to the UN, and so on, so as to bolster their claims of confidence in the past. The kicker for me is that we are now all pretending that there was no case for war unless we could have proven at the time that there were WMDs in Iraq. The problem was precisely that we couldn't prove anything without having unfettered access to the entire country, and Saddam had never grated that to anyone."

Ridiculous strawman. Reasonable opponents of the war never said that there were *no* nasty weapons in Iraq, but rather that (a) the balance of the evidence was that he had far less in exotic weaponry than those advocating war claimed, and (b) in general, he (unlike a stateless enemy like Al Qaeda) could be contained by deterrence.

Jason Ligon wrote, "I can hear it now, 'Why not the House of Saud? BushHitler is in bed with them, that's why!' No, Saddam is the best choice because he has decades of crimes, and the only reason he was still drawing breath when this started is cost/benefit favored leaving him alone. Add in the first successful attack on America at home and the very real possibility that he had weapons to sell, and target selection is easy."

LOL!

(1) He certainly has decades of crimes, but most of them were either against his own people or against Iran, and the US's relationship with him in that era make the picture somewhat, shall we say, complicated.

(2) House of Saud? While Michael Moore might like to fixate on them, clearly a greater danger is Pakistan.

(3) "...the first successful attack on America at home...": which Saddam had nothing do to with.

(4) "...the very real possibility that he had weapons to sell...": again, this criterion would point towards Pakistan.

Jason

The reason it is more than senantics is that "kicking them out" is materially different than "withdrawing them". The inspectors were largely spies. Saddam was concerned that they were mainly collecting intelligence on his ability to resist and invasion. That is why he obstructed them.

As it turns out he was right but he still lost the battle. The war is still in the balance but it hard to see how it is winnable as defined by the president.

liberal:

If you can't see the rather obvious reasons for preferring Iraq as a target to Pakistan, I can't help you. You perfectly well see them, but choose to be a pain in the arse to make a tired point.

I might also note that to a large extent the current Pakistani administration has been coopted. Are we more or less threatened by Pakistan now than before we went into Afghanistan?

Further, are you really suggesting we should have invaded Pakistan? I love when doves make target selection arguments, as though they would actually be following through with them. It is out of habit that we get the same tired, "Why not invade the whole world!?" as though such an argument has any relevance to the Iraq hawk position whatsoever.

"(b) in general, he (unlike a stateless enemy like Al Qaeda) could be contained by deterrence."

Don't you have to be afraid of something to be deterred? Deterrence based on what? He was getting all the money he needed, he was flouting UN resolutions for a decade, he violated the terms of his surrender in almost every way except, oh yeah, he didn't invade Kuwait again. He fired continuously on US aircraft patrolling the no fly zone. Was he scared that the UN would say 'tsk, tsk,' yet again?

Boonie, thanks for the streetlight metaphor, I really like that.

"Invading Iraq is like a drunk looking for his keys under a streetlight because he knows he'll never find them in the mountains on the border between Afganistan and Pakistan where he lost them."

Too long for a bumpersticker, though.

Jason, with respect to "a," the point isn't that we should have invaded Pakistan (although when a nuclear terrorist shows up, his insruction manual will have been produced there); it's that no rational threat assessment would have placed iraq at the top of the charts.

with respect to "b," generally speaking, when there are multiple opinions in advance of an event, the people who got it right are the ones whose reasoning we should re-examine to understand how they got it right. The point that many of us made about saddam was that he was clearly considerably weaker than he had been in 1991; this has since been verified. While possibly random chance, this suggests the more likely explanation is that we actually got it right and that this was possible in advance.

Most of the discussion above is irrelevant.

The baic debate should be whether the Iraq invasion advanced or retarded the WoT.

In my opinion we are now losing the WoT because
of poor judgement and decision by this administration.

Why isn't Brad posting the Krugman article in yesterdays NYT to see what kind of reaction we get to that.

It reflects my view almost completely.

Jason:

If Saddam was the undeterrable threat you suppose him to be, you would at least expect his neighbors to be a little more supportive of his ouster, especially since he would pose a much greater threat to the region than to the US. The fact that the apparently didn't see this threat should tell you something.

Saddam was a master of brinksmanship, I'll give you that, but he chose to protect his own hide every time when push came to shove. Based on this premise, and his Stalinesque paranoia, it seems highly unlikely that he would be handing out Anthrax to the first group of trick-or-treating Islamofascist who knocked on his door. Think about it: if we were attacked by crop-dusting bio-terrorists, who would we look at first ? Saddam knew this as well as the next cagey dictator. Of course, we're arguing imponderables here, but if we want to set the threshold for invading countries this low, we'll be busy for a long, long time.

Absent the "threat" argument, we're left with the geopolitical one. That, to understate, doesn't seem to have panned out very well, unless you count the intensified hatred of millions of ordinary muslims (i.e. future stateless terrorists) as a good thing.

I don't think liberal above was necessarily advocating an invasion of Pakistan: he was just noting that Pakistan (along with Iran) was a far greater threat using the criteria that you yourself laid out. Whether Pakistan (or Iran) are lesser threats than before 9/11 or not, I would contend that the invasion of Iraq has precious little to do with that. Pakistan, to the extent that it was "co-opted" (and not just hoodwinking us), was co-opted PRIOR to the invasion of Iraq. Iran's influence in the region may actually have been strengthened by Saddam's ouster, so where does that leave us ?

That you seem to rule out the invasion of any country that posed an actual, rather than notional, threat only underscores the ineffectuality of war as a tool in this case.

I find it hard to reconcile hiding WMD programs in the dessert with them being fully functional and operationally capable of being an imminent threat to the US, particularly with inspectors on the ground and satellite surveillance.

re: Pakistan

They are a bigger threat. Alas, they have a fully developed nuclear program with ballistic missile delivery systems. They would nuke India on a whim, and if we plan to persue AQ in Afghanistan, we need to prevent them from falling under the nuclear umbrella. A message sent to Saddam resonates througout the region, and it is much cheaper in every way. Waiting until Saddam was in the same boat is probably a bad idea.

War is a poor tool compared to what? Police actions require complicity of local governments, and AQ has the ability to hide behind the much ballyhooed sovereignity of any tyrant willing to put up with them. Khobar Towers was a fine example of a cooperative police venture. The 'pretty please with sugar on top' theory of fighting terrorists seems not altogether effective either.

At any rate, I'm glad I agitated in these parts. At least I get to hear some nuanced arguments, as opposed to the standard Blood for Oil, American Empire, and Staying Home is Always Better fare I get from the left corner of the web.

I am actually sympathetic to the case that, in net, the costs of the conflict may exceed the benefits. It is a discussion that reasonable people can have. It is difficult to get there in the face of so much BushHitlerism and rabid denials of very basic concerns about Saddam's situation.

Jason Ligon wrote, "liberal: If you can't see the rather obvious reasons for preferring Iraq as a target to Pakistan, I can't help you. You perfectly well see them, but choose to be a pain in the arse to make a tired point. ...Further, are you really suggesting we should have invaded Pakistan?"

No. howard, boonie, and Ted have already answered for me.

OT: BTW, Jason, are you a real libertarian, or one of the fraudulent, feudalist kind? (See
http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/tma68/geo-faq.htm
to see what I'm talking about.)

Jason Ligon wrote, "Was he scared that the UN would say 'tsk, tsk,' yet again?"

Actually, the evidence is that in the 1990s the Iraqis destroyed most of their banned weapons, precisely because they were afraid they'd be found by UN inspectors.

"A message sent to Saddam resonates througout the region, and it is much cheaper in every way. Waiting until Saddam was in the same boat is probably a bad idea."

What message was sent by effectively letting bin Laden go at Tora Bora as a result of not putting enough American troops in (relying on proxies instead)? There's some evidence that that was done because Bush et al. wanted resources shifted towards their impending nutty invasion of Iraq.

As for waiting until Saddam was in the same boat, the evidence (after the invasion) is clearly that we could have waited a long, long time; Iraq's infrastructure and its ability to develop/purchase and field military hardware was greatly denuded, and the regime itself was rotting away. Again, there's evidence that what weapons programs Iraq had were often entirely corrupt because the regime didn't have the wherewithal to monitor them anymore.

spencer wrote, "The baic debate should be whether the Iraq invasion advanced or retarded the WoT."

I agree, with an addition: *at what cost*? Suppose someone argued that the Iraq invasion was benign in this regard. It still cost, and will continue to cost, boatloads of money (not to mention dead and wounded American soldiers).

My impression is that, of course, it's retarded the WoT. Yes, the Krugman column was a good one.

I doubt that anyone's still reading this thread, but...

Jason, I don't think "a message sent to Saddam" does "resonate throughout the region", for reasons you yourself have touched on. The region is not monlithic, much as we may see it from here. Pakistan (for one) will probably not draw any lessons from this conflict because:

a) They have a better-trained conventional army
b) They have, as you mention, the nuclear option
c) The biggest threat we can present to them is
to ally more closely with India

I think there is a spectrum of options between the Khobar-Towers-investigation approach and the invade-a-convenient-country approach. "Vigorous police (and intelligence) action backed by tough diplomacy and threat of economic or military reprisal" might be the best way to sum up the various elements that would make up a robust foreign-policy approach.

liberal:

I am not a member of the Cult of the Land Tax, though I have had encounters with them. They make many unsupported claims about how much value is tied up in land divorced from personal investment. There are a lot of things they say that strike me as just untrue, come to think of it.

I am solidly minarchist. I believe that markets are superior to governments in allocating resources. I don't believe in any notion of positive freedom (freedom to a good job, freedom from want, freedom to quality healthcare, etc.) I hedge on education as a necessary public good, at least to some extent, but I don't conflate the state providing for the purchase of an education with the goverment providing Public Schools (tm). Governments exist to maximize liberty, period. Equality of outcomes is, for me, not even desirable, much less a value to be placed over liberty. And so on.

Richard Clarke the 9/11 commission report was typical Washington fare:

"To get unanimity they didn't talk about a number of things, like what effect is the war in Iraq having on our battle against terrorism. Did the president pay any attention to terrorism during the first nine months of his administration? The controversial things, the controversial criticisms of the Clinton administration as well as the Bush administration just aren't there. What they didn't do is say that the country is actually not safer now than it was then because of the rise in terrorism after our invasion in Iraq."

Quintessential Richard Clarke - super smart cut right to chase guy and way more credible on this subject matter than probably anyone on the planet

This is by far the most well researched, composed, and damning evidence against the Bush admin I have read in a public document. It's unfortunate that the US media is not picking up on it.

The Pakistan connection
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1266317,00.html

There is evidence of foreign intelligence backing for the 9/11 hijackers. Why is the US government so keen to cover it up?

Jason Ligon wrote, "I am solidly minarchist."

OK, given that you don't approve of land taxation, that makes you a feudalist. Check.

"I believe that markets are superior to governments in allocating resources."

Usually true---which is why land taxation is more efficient than the status quo (whereby government-granted monopolies on land lead to inefficiencies, like hoarding in anticipation of capital gains).

"I don't believe in any notion of positive freedom (freedom to a good job, freedom from want, freedom to quality healthcare, etc.)"

So government-granted monopolies on land are not a positive freedom?

"They make many unsupported claims about how much value is tied up in land divorced from personal investment."

Huh. I guess Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Nobel Laureates like Milton Friedman, Paul Samuelson, Vickery, etc, are all wrong.

liberal:

We are going far afield here, but the short version is that land fluctuates in value due to demand and supply, just like any other limited resource.

There are only x number of shares of company stock. They fluctuate in value and a 'government granted monopoly' on my ownership of the some shares allows me to capture the increase in value in those shares. I get taxed when I sell them if I realize a capital gain. I don't get taxed if I don't sell them, because I haven't realized a profit of any kind yet. I don't see why land is in any way different. Regardless of what the case was during the industrial revolution and prior, I suspect the value of undeveloped land does not constitute a significant portion of national wealth when compared to securities and plant and equipment for example. There is nothing special about land. I'm not aware that Friedman, for example, ever said otherwise. Do you have a reference for me?

Land is a resource that must be allocated in some way, either by willingness to pay or by fiat. It is not better to allow the government to determine directly who owns what (yes, I know there is eminent domain but I speak here of the presumption of government title to all land) than to allow willingness to pay to allocate the same resource.

I just don't see why you folks get all upset about some land being worth more than other land. Who cares?

Jason:

"...but the short version is that land fluctuates in value due to demand and supply..."

So what? That doesn't mean that there's no Ricardian (scarcity) rent, or that it can't be computed for taxation purposes.

"I don't see why land is in any way different."

Economists as far back as Ricardo have distinguished between capital and land (and labor, of course). Just because two things, X and Y, are both in limited supply doesn't mean that they don't have other properties that distinguish them. The chief ones here being that (a) land is a *natural* resource (i.e., land itself is naturally endowed, created by no one), whereas capital is not, and (b) land is scarce (more so than capital, which is reproducible).

"I suspect the value of undeveloped land does not constitute a significant portion of national wealth when compared to securities and plant and equipment for example."

You're wrong, because you don't understand economics. Because land is limited, a large fraction of income will go to that factor (as opposed to capital or labor). (Ricardo put it something like "the price of land is high because the price of corn is high, rather than vice versa.") Pretty reasonable estimates put the annual value of Ricardian rent in the US at 14% of GDP.

"I'm not aware that Friedman, for example, ever said otherwise. Do you have a reference for me?" Yes: He said, "In my opinion the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved value of land, the Henry George argument of many, many years ago."

"It is not better to allow the government to determine directly who owns what (yes, I know there is eminent domain but I speak here of the presumption of government title to all land) than to allow willingness to pay to allocate the same resource." Again, you're ignorant of the facts about land value taxation. The government does *not*, under LVT, determine who gets to own or use land; the market does. Rather, the government would just recoup the annual Ricardian rent generated by any parcel. (Similarly, if the government auctions off pieces of the electromagnetic spectrum for limited periods of time, the market determines who wins the auction.) This is no more the government determining who gets to own land than the status quo (wherein land titles are still granted by government and do not arise de novo from the ether).

"I just don't see why you folks get all upset about some land being worth more than other land. Who cares?" The point is that if parcel X is worth a lot---as determined by the market, of course---then that means many people would like to have access to X. (Ricardian rent is the fee that needs to be paid for the access.) Why should some private individual be allowed to collect the fee, rather than the government, acting for everyone?

It's important to note that when the government grants title to X to individual Y, the government is simultaneously denying access to X to everyone else (unless they satisfy whatever conditions X sets). That is, there's hardly anything "libertarian" about land ownership under the status quo.

"I'm not aware that Friedman, for example, ever said otherwise. Do you have a reference for me?" Yes: He said, "In my opinion the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved value of land, the Henry George argument of many, many years ago."

Ahh, as long as we are arguing least bad. You are fine with getting rid of other forms of taxation?

liberal:

I am digging up old links, and I now recall that many land taxers are 'single taxers' who would indeed like to eliminate other forms of taxation.

As I mentioned, I have had discussions before with Georgists. I think you would find quite a bit of disagreement outside of the converted on a figure of 14% of GDP.

I remember at least this piece that helped me understand the different types of land taxers with whom I was discussing the issue. It is also an argument that the proclaimed non externality character of the single tax will not materialize.

http://www.paulbirch.net/CritiqueOfGeorgism.html

I'm not a georgist but if I were a full-on libertarian the geolibertarian landtax idea is the only thing that IMV would save the system from becoming a banana republic, since in the libertarian utopia the rich get richer and the poor get poorer in a basically **open-loop** wealth transfer system.

Oh, and:

http://www.disequilibria.com/critique1.htm

for a critique of the above critique.

I find the LVT a wonderfully self-consistent economic philosophy, but whether or not it would work in the real world (even though apparently both Hong Kong and Philadelphia, PA have some experience with it) is an open question.

I appluad liberal for skewering our libertarian interlocutor with a true litmus test of humanity and commitment to honest libertarianism -- the geolibertarian position. I generally have no truck with right-libertarians, but the geolibertarians earn my grudging respect. They might have thought up a system that could work better, if we can establish working local government (big if in my experience).

Back to the topic, I find myself thinking about the philosophy that we have to smash some third world country every now and then just so the world will know we're willing to....

A few questions:

1. How long do you think the USA will be the world's only military superpower?

2. How long do you think the USA will be a superpower?

3. Is it worthwhile to do anything to help us reach a soft landing?

apparently countries complying with un resolutions is very important to the right wing. we invaded iraq because saddam was in violation of un resolutions. funny thing is, israel has been in violation of un resolutions for the last 30 plus years (occupying palestine for 60 now and counting) but the slightest suggestion that they are out of line is attacked as anti-semitic.

israel has developed nuclear weapons, the bush administration is pushing development of "new," "usable" nuclear weapons for the american military (not to mention all the work being done by the US on its own chemical weapons). how does this reduce proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons worldwide? it does not!

when there is no valid defense to a position, the only response the republicans can come up with is personal attack and diatribe.

very sad world this has become.