What I STILL wanna know is, where are the WMDs that threatened America?

I suspect that they were, or still are, where you said biological weapons might be in Biowarfare as a Science Project — in small labs that could be easily hidden or quickly destroyed. (And the CIA memo to which you linked in that story is official.) I don’t think that prospect is too far in the future to be concerned about; it is quite likely that more has been known for quite a while than could be publicly stated, and certainly Saddam was investigating it, given his record of using poison gas on his own people.

As far as that goes, though I’m sure you’re more knowledgeable about nuclear weapons than I, personally I don’t think it’s far-fetched to assume that one or more could be built by terrorists in secret — they wouldn’t need a whole bomb factory. (Years ago Tom Clancy wrote a novel in which this happened, just as he wrote a novel in which a commercial jetliner was purposely crashed into a building; he seems pretty accurate in imagining possibilities that the public wants to believe couldn’t exist outside of fiction.)

It all depends on how one defines “mass destruction,” I guess. To me, and to many people, killing off the population of just one major American city would be “mass destruction” — would we really want to wait around for enough destructive power to destroy our entire nation to be developed? Did our 20th-century fears of a confrontation with the Soviet Union desensitize us to the point where anything short of all-out nuclear warfare isn’t considered a threat?

An entire city is certainly not the standard. The death and destruction of September 11th was ITSELF an act of mass destruction. An airliner, in the wrong hands, is a weapon of mass destruction.

Sylvia, you noted in a recent comment that I said long ago that the rules of history are changing. I still remember that conversation, too, and what’s funny is that at the time I was using it as an excuse to ignore history as increasingly irrelevant. Silly, silly me. I now think that an understanding of history is as important as an understanding of science – but I am sure nowhere near as good a history student as science one, so don’t expect SciHistory anytime soon.

What disturbs me most is that the Bush Administration increasingly is using this very argument – the rules of histoy are changing – to justify actions that are farther and farther from what the American ideal is supposed to be. Somewhere there is a line, and no matter where we argue it is, we all acknowledge it is there. That line is the difference between potential and realized threats. Even in the Cold War the MAD doctrine allowed for the possibility of a first strike against America far more devastating than a hundred 9/11s and built such an enormous quantity of silos and subs and bombers that we would still be able to respond afterwards. MAD was not without (even very deep) flaws, not the least of which is that an American first strike was never ruled out as a matter of policy, it nearly bankrupted both sides (and DID bamkrupt one side) and it allowed for a horrific possible scenerio. However MAD WORKED and We Won The Cold War. This is a major, significant, historical fact. Now what if the Berlin Airlift or Korea or Gary Powers or the Cuban Missile Crisis or Vietnam or the Middle East had boiled over and gone nuclear? Even limited nuclear? The choices in violating MAD were zero or once. Zero was the proper choice. Respecting the difference between realized and potential threats, and killing people only upon the latter, was vital to our survival. Even Korea and Vietnam were wars that began over true aggressive acts.

Now we’ve got terrorists instead of the Soviet Bloc. It’s different – once I called it the Cool War. MAD’s not appropriate – but whatever the replacement for MAD is (and we haven’t devoted NEAR the thought to “it” that we did to MAD) there’s still possible downsides leading to the destruction of America by plunging headlong into “it”. Like we appear to be doing, in my opinion.

Case in point. 9/11, WTC and The Falling Man are true acts of aggression against America. In my opinion, we should do whatever it takes to go wherever in the world we need to and use sledgehammer levels of force to pound the perpetrators into red goo for their personal REALIZED ACTIONS of that day. Yet in only a little more than two years into the War Against Terror, the concept of Just Retribution Against The Realized Actions of America’s Enemies is NOT the guiding principle of our military and political actions.

Want proof? Holy Cow, even the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace is saying that not only is catching Osama not even our first priority anymore, it’s not even an necessary goal required to meet our national objectives.

I am so stunned by this asinine statement that I am totally unable to express my shock in words. If it’s not Osama that is our focus anymore, then who is deciding on whom the sledgehammer is falling and for what reason? It used to be the American People were deciding it should fall on Osama (and in a wider focus, the Saudis) because of actual hostility on 9/11. I had absolutely no problem with any of that, but that’s just not how it is anymore. Now it’s the Bush Administration deciding it should fall on Saddam because of (a) potential hostilities or (b) Oil. I propose that the hammer wielder, the target and most of all EITHER reason is wrong, wrong, wrong and represents a definitely un-American and an almost evil level of Mother of All Mission Creep.

Look, if we start saying it’s OK to invade, conquer and borgify any country in the world just because it may have a small mobile lab that can build something that can hit America, then (a) there is one LONG list of target countries out there (b) that we do not have the resources to take (c) even if we were morally justified to do so, which I contend we are not. This is just not a viable approach to embark America on for all time on so little thought and pretext. It will lead to an external Vietnam-like defeat at best and a Faust-like loss of our American souls at worst. Probably the latter.

And if we ARE going to go this route, we (a) need some national / Congressional debate on the subject, not just pronouncements of one man and his aides and (b) need to make the first invasion target Columbia, not Iraq. Columbia has terrorists and clandestine labs galore that are churning out a weapon of mass destruction that is hurting America very, very badly – at least as bad as Osama and definitely more that Saddam – called cocaine. My wife is a labor and delivery nurse a not a week goes by that she doesn’t deal with a mom-to-be addicted to crack cocaine that are delivering crack babies – and we in Alabama are definitely NOT in the urban front lines of THAT war. BTW, she has yet to see any terrorist medical damage….

I meant “former” instead of “latter”, of course, in the sentence before my mention of Korea and Vietnam…

First of all, as to catching Osama not being our first priority, what Pace said according to the linked article was that the force hunting al Qaeda and Taliban militants is not focusing on individuals. Osama is only one man, and I agree it’s not essential to catch him; it was his organization, al Queda, that was responsible for 9/11. If we merely killed Osama–who may already be dead, for all we know–al Queda would still exist, and would still be a threat to us. (In World War II was killing Hitler our top priority, or was our aim to defeat the Nazis?)

Al Queda will remain a threat as long as it can get support from any regime that hates Americans, which it could easily obtain if the rulers of such regimes were allowed to believe that there are no consequences to supporting terrorism. Bush said within a few days after 9/11 that we would go after any nation that chose to support international terrorist organizations; there is just no other way to deal with such organizations, since they have no geographic focus and cannot be dealt with in the way the Nazis were. And remember, the Nazis had not attacked us, though they had attacked our allies and were allied with Japan. We fought them because they were a threat to us and to the rest of the world, not to retaliate against anything they’d done to America.

This is not to say we should attack any country that might pose a future threat. There is a distinction between attacking a nation with a government chosen or at least accepted by its people, and overthrowing a regime such as that of Saddam, who ruled Iraq through violence and was feared and hated by the majority of its citizens. Furthermore, Saddam had shown plenty of aggression; we stopped him in the Gulf War and could have finished him off then, but instead the UN allowed him to remain–setting conditions which he repeatedly refused to abide by. It was hardly a matter of of there being no realized aggression, even without counting that against his own people. Even so, we wouldn’t have attacked him if there had not been evidence that he supported terrorists and had weapons, even if not in large quantities, that if possessed by terrorists would be a threat both to America and to the world.

But much of this evidence is, necessarily, classified. It amazes me the way the public seems to feel qualified to pass judgment on threats without having access to all the facts. Scientists don’t do this. A scientist would not presume to judge the validity of a theory before the evidence leading to it had been published. Yet despite its being common knowledge that the evidence against Saddam was shown in secret to other governments and to some members of Congress, but not to the media, many citizens act as if they were privy to all of it and in as good a position to judge the morality of the war as leaders who’ve actually seen it! I must confess, Ricky, that until I read your comments, I felt that the questioning of Bush’s motives was, in the apt words of an op-ed piece in our local paper, “not about Iraq, but about Florida.”

I don’t pretend I myself can evaluate the evidence of Saddam’s intentions. So why do I believe such evidence exists? Because Colin Powell said so. Powell’s integrity has never been questioned. Even if Bush is motivated by oil interests (which I doubt) this cannot be said of Powell–and Powell has the experience to judge military threats. He is a stronger proponent of negotiation than many in the administration, and has been at odds with them over it. It was Powell who stopped us from taking Baghdad in 1991. He has often said that he doesn’t believe in going to war except to achieve a specific, essential objective. Personally, I would rather have Colin Powell than Bush as president, and I think he could have won the election if he had agreed to run; the fact that he didn’t do so (and that he turned down an offer to be Secretary of State under Clinton) shows that he doesn’t care about his own power. There is no doubt in my mind that he would have resigned, rather than argue for war to the UN, if he had not believed the war was both justified and necessary.

Moreover, your suggestion that “so little thought” went into the decision is an insult to him and to all the leaders who agonized over it for many months; do you think the evidence appeared overnight and was acted upon immediately? Do you think any war ever was, or should have been, entered into on the basis of public debate carried on by people ignorant of the classified information about what the enemy was doing? In the past nobody would have made such a naive assumption; the presence of CNN on the front lines has had the unfortunate result of creating the illusion that TV viewers now are told all there is to know.

You raise another issue here that bothers me. You say the line between justified and unjustified war is between potential and realized threats, and that “Just Retribution Against The Realized Actions of America’s Enemies” should be the guiding principle. But to me, war is morally acceptable not for revenge, but only for defense. Yes, historically many wars–and for that matter, personal feuds–were conducted on the basis of revenge, which was once considered honorable motivation. But we’ve made progress since then; most of us don’t act on the basis of “an eye for an eye” anymore. It’s morally okay to catch individuals who’ve done harm and bring them to justice, but not to kill innocent bystanders in the process. The only justification I see for killing innocent bystanders is in defense against the threat of a greater number of innocent people being killed (or in self-defense or defense of loved ones). Thus I draw the line quite differently from the way you draw it.

Al Queda will remain a threat as long as it can get support from any regime that hates Americans, which it could easily obtain if the rulers of such regimes were allowed to believe that there are no consequences to supporting terrorism. Bush said within a few days after 9/11 that we would go after any nation that chose to support international terrorist organizations; there is just no other way to deal with such organizations…

Sylvia, I could not agree with you more. And look what has happened: In a CNN interview with bin Laden in 1997, he said the ongoing U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia is an “occupation of the land of the holy places.” He gets $20 million not from Iraqi govenment sources, but Yemeni religious ones. After the 9/11 attacks film is released with him celebrating not with Sadaam, but with Saudi cleric Sheikh al Ghamdi. Ream after ream of evidence shows Saudi, not Iraqi, involvement in this whole sordid mess. But in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 there was apparent official Bush protectionism towards Saudis most recently documented by Craig Unger. This is suspicious at best and treasonous at worst. And while we’re blasting Talaban (OK, they deserved it) and Baathist (OK, they’re evil) positions in the past two and a half years, name to me ONE SINGLE U.S. military strike against the Wahhabi mosques and schools in Yemen and Saudi Arabia that are the TRUE strength of Al-Qaeda? You CAN’T, because there haven’t been any. And that’s my whole point. I think Afghanistan was a great warm-up exercise for the War on Terror but then when we got The Gear lined up in Kuwait, it Got Lost and went West instead of South. Big, Big Mistake in my opinion. And most ominously, Not An Accidental Mistake.

Here’s the crux of the issue, as stated by the BBC just a few months after 9/11: The other issue that potentially divides the US and Saudi governments and which has been used as a rallying cry by radical Islamic opponents of the royal family is the presence of American troops on “sacred” Saudi soil. According to Mr Obaid, there is a tacit understanding between both governments that US troops should leave the kingdom. But there are reasons why both sides need to maintain the US troop presence in the short term. As long as the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, poses a threat to security in the region, Washington feels it has little alternative but to retain the 5,000 troops it has stationed at Prince Sultan air base.

So we have a war…against Iraq….over WMDs, no, a Saddam-Osama link, no, over a horrible evil regime, no, over oil, no….the real reason we had this war was acknowledged by its chief architect, Paul Wolfowitz, who in a moment of weakness he’s not repeated let it slip: “For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on,” Wolfowitz was quoted as saying. He said one reason for going to war against Iraq that was “almost unnoticed but huge” was the need to maintain American forces in Saudi Arabia as long as Saddam was in power. So we’ve traded 130,000 troops in Iraq for 5,000 in Saudi Arabia and we’re told this is a good thing? We spend $150 billion in emergency appropriations after a tax cut and say we’re safer when the only action being taken at the true heart of the problem are public service announcements in the middle of comedy television shows in Saudi Arabia? I don’t believe this hype and no thinking American should believe it either.

The only people the past two-plus years have been a good thing for is Osama and the Saudis. Osama has achieved total victory! He is uncaptured while dangerous American troops have moved totally out of his country and are diverted in a deepening quagmire elsewhere. His holy land furthermore is no longer threatened by Iraqi invasion and has its Wahhabi mosques and schools not only intact but still in the terrorist business with their strength undiminished while his enemies debase their own system of government with their responses!!! How is that not a total victory in only two years and one hell of a bargain for the price of nineteen brainwashed followers and nineteen jetliner tickets? At the risk of pulling a Bill Meher here, let me go on record as saying that in my opinion, 9/11 was no terrorist attack; it has turned out to be one of the most brilliantly fought military engagements in history, and until the American people start looking at it that way, we are destined to lose.

Talking about WMDs and Colin Powell and all the rest is both anticlimactic and undersirably distracting from the crucial points above , but here goes anyway. I agree that Colin Powell is an honorable statesman and I’d vote for him as President in a heartbeat RIGHT NOW over Bush, Gore or any of the current mush they call Democratic candidates – and I wish he were in charge as President right now, and had been for the last two years. But Colin Powell has, I’m afraid, been hijacked for his credibility by the current Administration FAR MORE than sought for his guidence and council. In his UN speech he put forth a lot of stuff that was just plain spin in the wrong direction. But if we’re going to name names, it’s not Powell but Paul Wolfowitz and his hastily-thought-up-after-9/11 undebated docrine of Operation Infinite War that is the key to understanding the mess we’re in. It’s bad enough we’re getting bogged down in Iraq – what’s worse is that we are now virtually powerless to militarily or politically affect what REALLY threatens America in Saudi Arabia or Yemen or North Korea or Iran. Or Columbia, for that matter – remember, Clancy did a novel about THAT, too. Going for the pushover target while leaving the true dangers to get stronger doesn’t strike me as wise to say the least.

Bottom line, I want to see one of following three things:

(1) pictures of U.S. servicemen guarding “between 100 and 500 tons of chemical-weapons agent, stacks of thousands of 122-mm chemical warheads, up to a few dozen prohibited Scud-type missiles, four tons of the nerve agent VX, 8,500 liters of the biological agent anthrax, four Iraqi F-1 Mirage spray tanks and small unmanned aircraft well suited for dispensing chemical and biological weapons, biological weapons factories on trucks and in train cars, and centrifuges used in an Iraqi nuclear weapons program”, or

(2) pictures of U.S. servicemen on the move to Syria, Iran or wherever else necessary to secure this stuff before it shows up in Times Square, or

(3) admissions including letters of resignation and new appointments from both intelligence and Executive Branch personnel saying the stuff in number 1 above was a sham that never existed…and no, playing point-the-finger-hot-potato-fuggetaboutit with Rice and Tenet doesn’t fit this bill.

And if the current American leadership is unable to provide me with one of those three items, then I look forward to voting for a new one that can. Except that there’s no decent candidates to elect for this job or decent media to cover them doing it…but that’s another rant for another day. As is a few others to address your points I haven’t gotten to yet, on just rationales for warfare…

…apparent official Bush protectionism towards Saudis …

And I really, really wonder if White House documents surrounding the 124+ Saudi-Get-Out-Of-Camp-X-Ray-Free jet passes that were given out immediately after 9/11 has something to do with this…

Unfortunately, I don’t have time to go into this as much as I’d like to–there are a number of things with deadlines on my desk right now. But here are a few points I want to make briefly.

In the first place, nobody knows where Osama is, but he’s undoubtedly not in the same country where he was when last seen — so catching him is not just a matter of deciding to give it priority. As to what is being done about al Qaeda, do you really expect to see US strategy announced on CNN or posted on the Web where the members of al Qaeda can read it as easily as you and I can? The same goes for plans concerning other threats about which you assume nothing is being done. Such plans are necessarily secret prior to their execution (and, in the case of covert operations, sometimes even later).

In the second place, the Web is indeed full of opinions about world affairs and about the alleged motives of our leaders, usually leaders the writers disapprove of (and, since next year is an election year, negative opinions are proliferating; this would be true no matter who was in the White House). But opinions, and the nonclassified — i.e. partial — information cited to support them, can’t be relied on as if they were science news! Psychologically, people tend to view the government’s statements as less factual than those of commentators, but actually the latter are no more reliable than the former. Why should we take the word of self-appointed critics over the word of someone like Colin Powell?

Furthermore, when there are loud protests about someone in public office being a villain or a liar, it’s well to check and see whether the person condemned was misquoted or quoted out of context–which all too often is the case. For example, I suggest reading
“What Wolfowitz Really Said” before taking his alleged statements at face value. Wolfowitz has favored strong action against Iraq for years, as he was deeply worried about the ongoing threat posed by Saddam before most others took it seriously; I read this long before he got his present position, and I see no reason to suspect any ulterior motive on his part. Many people, including many Republicans, have disagreed with him; but honest people do disagree about what’s the best way to keep America safe.

As for your desire to see US servicemen guarding captured WMDs, that may never be fulfilled, and to assume this means Saddam had no such weapons is a non sequitur. Anybody who doesn’t see why should read
“No WMD? Let’s be realistic, folks.”

Columbia is an entirely different issue, about which I could write at length, but won’t!

This may seem petty, Sylvia, but I’m saying this with a smile on my face and I hope you’ll take this in the humorous way I mean it instead of a cutting way I don’t. Sorry, but a “no WMDs, no problem” missive that offers an Ann Coulter action figure doll at the bottom of the article cannot possibly be any less politically one-sided than any link I posted, and in my opinion is likely to be even more so. Don’t even get me started on what I think of Ann Coulter, or by extention, what I think of people that would sell dolls of her. William Kristol is equally right wing, but at least his article does present Wolfowitz’s actual words, which I agree do not specifically say “the main reason we attacked Iraq was because of a deal with the Saudis”.

Nonetheless, I find your post title amusing. I THINK you meant it to say the links you offer here are less politically one-sided than the links I offered. In reality they are equallly politically one sided; there are just fewer (two) of them. (Unintended?) double entendre…

I acknowledge that there’s ALWAYS all kinds of secret efforts and classified knowledge that make Internet speculation by armchair generals like me an exercise in futility. No matter WHAT I say, I can ALWAYS be discounted with a wave of the hand: rickyjames is not an insider that knows the way things really are. True, true, true. And I CERTAINLY agree internet opinions and unclassified media (and even classified reports!) are definitely not in the same ballpark with scientific facts.

But Sylvia, you can go a long, long way in this hall of mirrors using verified facts and logic. Regarding WMDs: logically there either is or is not the huge, specifically enumerated pile of stuff that Colin Powell laid out to the UN. Those are the only logical possibilities, period.

Consider these two logical possibilities in turn. If the WMD Powell enumerated to the UN DOES exist, we do not currently have control of it (fact), gaining control of it was why we started the war (fact), and failure to gain control of it will mean the war’s initial objectives were not met (fact). To me, this is the definiton of losing a war (opinion) and focusing after the fact on other worthy achievements like saving people from a brutal regeime (fact) are political spin control (opinion) that does not protect America from unsecured Iraqi WMDs (fact). Conclusion: IF we turn sovereignty back over to the Iraqi people and withdraw American troops from Iraq without securing the WMDs Powell enumerated to the UN, THEN the Iraqi people win and America remains in danger. Unacceptable outcome.

Now condiser the other logical possibility. If the WMD Powell enumerated to the UN DOES NOT exist, there has been some sort of massive failure of intelligence or political leadership or both (fact). Failure of this magnitude and at this level is a threat to America in and of itself (fact). Such failure has not been publically acknowledged (fact) or internally addressed (opinion). Conclusion: A major intellegence and / or political leadership threat to America still exists at this time. Unacceptable outcome.

So to me, it’s not so much an opinion that something stinks here; it’s a fairly logical conclusion based on facts. Here’s what I would like to see: Bush puts his money (political capital) on the line and says “I said we were in this for the long haul and I meant it. No Iraqi sovereignty and no American troop reductions until you guys hand over the WMDs I personally know you’ve got. If it means occupation for twenty years, so be it.” If our leader went on TV tonight and made this pronouncement I would be overjoyed. Saying mission accomplished in May and calling Bremer back for a huddle in November and suddenly announcing this accelerated soverignty turnover just looks too much like political cutting and running to me, not to mention total abandonment of the original mission.

We’ver spent hundreds of American lives and tens of billions of dollars so far to get control of Iraqi WMDs threatening America. Now we should all expect to see either WMDs or an admission they weren’t there. “We may never find them” is TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE. If there was a significant possibility we would never find them, WE NEVER SHOULD HAVE STARTED A WAR TO GO AFTER THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE.

As for the Saudis, I think I’ll just stand by what I said earlier. While terrorism there continues (fact), American troops have left that country (fact) which is what Osama wanted(fact). Unacceptable outcome.

I realized right after I posted it that my title was ambiguous — what I meant was
that my links represented the other side from yours, so that the links in the discussion as a whole would be less one-sided than when only those critical of US policy were offered. I agree that these commentators are right-wing — but most of the stuff on the Web dealing with these issues comes from the left wing, and if we look at one extreme we should also examine the other. After all, many people feel that the right wing is correct in its view of defense issues.

I have no objection to arguments that government officials are mistaken or even stupid. I do object when they are accused of dishonesty or ulterior motives, or are made targets of the kind of hatred too frequently found on the Web and in the letters published in newspapers. Yes, every president is subject to this — people who objected to the Civil War said terrible things about Abraham Lincoln! But there is no justification for claims that the administration, despite probable incompetence in many instances, does not act in what it believes to be the best interests of keeping the American people safe. I did not think that even about Clinton, whose dishonesty in regard to his personal life had been proven!

How can you say we should never have gone to war to get rid of WMDs if there was a possibility that they would be destroyed rather than found? Would we be better off if they were still there? (Yes, we would be politically better off, but in terms of our physical safety, I say we would not.) In any case, it’s simply not reasonable to assume that if they aren’t there now, they weren’t there in the past.

William Safire’s syndicated column today commented on the discovery of links between Saddam and al Qaeda, saying that, “with so much connective tissue exposed … the burden of proof has shifted to those still grimly in denial.” This column, titled “Missing Links,”
can be found in the NY Times for Nov. 24 (you have to register to read it online, but that’s free).

Safire refers to the article “Case Closed: The U.S. government’s secret memo detailing cooperation between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.” and you should also read the rebuttal to the Defense Department’s “official backpedaling” in response to that article, “The Saddam-Osama Memo (cont.)”

Safire concludes, ” Intrepid journalists will ultimately bring the full story of the Saddam-bin Laden connection to light. In the meantime, the F.B.I. should stop treating 9/11 as a cold case.”