Indeed, if it was just a pret-text, then that alters things, although I'm not sure it makes the future any brighter unless those who did so are held accountable. Obviously I was unclear aboout this point...what I'm saying is that we would A) have to attack any other potential enemy once down that road because they might adopt the same attitude towards us, in which case they would become a real enemy. Think of what cops try and do when they have several suspects in on a crime together...they try and breed mutual distrust, and meak each feel that the other is about to betray them and take a deal, so they have to do it first. In a wolrd where the other nations know that we are willing to say screw you all, we can attack whoever we want because they might become an enemy, and moreoever where we can afterwards find out that our reasoning for same was baseless, byt still pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, the rest of the world has to see their relationship with us altered. They can no longer trust us to do what the world considers right, or even to base our attacks on other nations on definable evidence...all it takes for us to attack is for us to feel that we have cause, or might have cause in the future...As this is completely beyond their control, and ultimately divorced from any reality but our perception, how can they not see us as a threat? Let's take this war as an example...we say we're attacking for WMDs...we say no WMDs, no war. We attack. No WMDs. And how do we feel about it? Just fine, thank you. How is the rest of the wrod ever supposed to see that we will hold ourselves accountable to anything but our own justifications, and how are those justifications ever going to seem objective and fair when we so obviously are willing to forgive ourselves anything so long as we can find a way to say we're in the right, whatever anyone else feels. We have divorced oursleves from global morality...in so doing we have told anyone listening that we recongnize no authority over our actions on other nations but our own opinion. Even if that opinion turns out to be wrong, or based on manipulation, we will sooner forvige ourselves than admit error. And we have said that it is ok to attack anyone we feel might present a threat to us in the future. To you it might seem silly to suggest that Mexico would feel threatened, but nothing we have done in the lasy year or so supports the postion that we either are willing to listen to the arguments of others, even in it's the entire world, or are even, in large, going to back down when proven wrong. We will simply shift the argument to another one so that we can feel we were right all along. That is what we have shown. Attacking Mexico may seem silly...attacking Iraq may seem reasonable. To the rest of the world...the rest of the planet.. they both seem absurd. If we are doing things that everyone else feels is wrong, saying we an casue we want to, how are others supposed to assume that we will see gradients in our absurdity which will check our behaviour. It won't seem silly to them, because we can go from silly to realistic simply because we want to. Don't believe me? In the days immediately following 9-11, I said, on here, that I feared that we might use the anger engendered by 9-11 to justify attacks on nations such as Iraq, who weren't connected to 9-11. Do you know what by far the mst common response was? I was mocked for being riidiculous and silly...the idea that we'd drag up the old Iraq thing because of 9-11 was worthy of my being mocked by many of those who now see it as entirely reasonable. Don't believe me? Ask Manny or others who were around then. So I have personally seen people go from saying attacking someone is silly and ridiculous to thinking it is justifiable in a short term...and for reasons we now largely know to have been false. And why do they now feel it was reasonable? For reasons that already existed, tyranny, ect. when they first said it was silly How can the world trust us to not see them as a potential threat some time in the future, just because you may now think that it's silly? Can they trust our judgment?
That, basso is about as well constructed and substantive argument as I could expect. Thank you for addressing all the points with your usual style.
the proper thing Bush SHOULD HAVE said going to war: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. ... To those new States whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom, and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside. To those peoples in the huts and villages across the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required, not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich." -- Excerpted from JFK's inaugural speech ======================== What Dubya DID say: We're going to take out Saddam because we need to preempt terrorists from getting their hands on WMD. ======================== I think it is safe to say that Dubya made a mistake, and damaged our nation's moral legitimacy worldwide. Whether the war was right or not (i personally think it was ultimately the right thing to do), does not take away from the fact that Bush terribly misled the American people. It may not have been intentional, but someone has to take the blame. The American people has a right to know, to base our political decisions on informed opinions, and any leader who fails to provide this (or in the case of Bush, actively prevented this) is subject to strong moral rebuke. That's all MacBeth is doing here.
Virtually every nation in the world has some connection with terrorists, including ourselves. That said, this in no way addresses the question. If Bush said WMD= war, no WMD = no war, specifically about Iraq, how can anyone logically say that the war was not just about WMD? thy, I see you as logical...seriously, isn't this definitive linear logic? The man running the show said we were going in because of WMD, and that if there were no WMD we wouldn't be going in. How can anyone possibly argue that WMD weren't the only reason we were going in? Why on earth would we revolt when the much easier and more nationally self-assuring option of reframing the argument to be about Saddam being a bad guy is available? DO you realize that in the most recent poll a majority of Americans believed that we had found WMDs, that the war was supported by most of the planet, or that Saddam was behind 9-11? That almost a third of us beleived we had been attacked with WMDs during the war?!! THY..there is nothing in our immediate history to suggest we will be objective about this when the alternative is to admit we were wrong. That was what was assumed because we believed he had WMDS...the fact that we still haven't found them, that Saddam was saying he had disarmed, and yet reasonable people like yourself still conclude that he must have been lying goes to the popint I was making. As Sherlock Holmes was wont to say, when you remove the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable it seems, must be the truth. Saddam said he had disarmed. We didn't believe him. Since then we have found none...zero...nada..WMDs. Logically this would suggest that our prima facea assumtion was wrong? NO? That Saddam, as unlikely as it seems,. was telling the truth. BLix himself has come to this conclusion. And yet we persist in advocating the assumption of what is increasinly looking impossible rather than admit we were wrong. THE NIE report concluded that Saddam represented no threat tot he US, either directly or indirectly, and had refused to become connected with terrorist organizations against us for the simple reason that it was contrary to his interests. This was what the NIE report stated; this being the summary of all the intelligence community, and what they had told Bush et al. Bush et al said that they had been told the exact opposite. If you want a link, I'll find it, but that's what it said.
MacBeth, did you ever find the full text NIE report? You cite it repeatedly, but I have yet to see it. I have only seen summarized versions. We need to see the real deal before we can even consider giving it credibility.
Oh, I'm sorry. Which points raised in here about Iraq have I sidestepped or failed to address? Seriously, I find it annoying when people do that...say fail to answer how if Bush said WMD= war, no WMD = no war could possibly be interpreted any other way but WMD=war because there is no answer that fits with their construct, so merely move on as if it didn't exist. If I have doen that kind of thing, I'd appreicate the opportunity to redress it.
How about this. The sum of reasons was enough that Bush felt war was necessary when WMD was included in the sum but not so when WMD was not included. To illustrate: Let us say that being a murderous dictator = 10 pts, maintaing his WMD = 5pts, and ties to terrorists organizations (eg payments to the families of suicide bombers in Israel) = 7 pts. If the threshhold for war = 20 pts, then only by having all three elements would the war proceed. Since Saddam cannot undo his past actions as a murderous dictator and supporter of terrorism, his only recourse to avoid war would be to prove that he was not maintaining his WMD. Since he was constantly impeding the weapons inspectors, we felt that he did not satisfy us that his WMD were gone. As a result, we go to war. If it turns out that there were no WMD, that does not eliminate the other valid reasons for going to war, it just means that given that information beforehand, we may not have chosen to do so. All of this is just about Bush's reasons for going to war. I support going to war just for humanitarian reasons. I think that we should not stop with Iraq, but Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, N. Korea, Rwanda, etc should also be on our list. That means that, to me, humanitarian concerns are a reason for war. That, in addition to the above, is why you cannot simply say WMD = only reason for war.
It's 90 pages. T_J. If you really want to read it, I can get a link. The summaries were not taken out of context, they were included in the report itself, thus are accurate.
i find the logic of preemption valid, fundamentally. if a nation had mobilised a million troops on your border and shows every intention of waging war, hitting them first is not only justified, but the right and smart thing to do. however, this logic is USUALLY used to justify far more dubious acts of aggression and to perpetuate vicious cycles of violence stemming from long-standing political feuds. Pearl Harbor is case in point. Japan used their precarious economic condition resulting from the US trade embargo as the excuse for preemptive war. But their being in this quandry to begin with stems from having violated China, America's ally. Israel's attack in the Six Day War was to preempt mobilised arab armies all along its borders. But their being in this quandary stems from having occupied Palestinian Arab lands. While Bush's cause was more just (preempting the real and imminent threat of terror), he failed to prove two critical issues: 1) Whether Iraq had substantive connections with Al Qaeda 2) Whehter Iraq had WMDs Without proof, the "preemption" logic is pure bunk. What we have here is not preemption based on facts, real proven imminent threats, but rather preemption based on assumptions and "possibilities". If we subscribe to to this latter, far more sinister form of preemptive logic (which is what MacBeth is discussing here), the result is indeed what MacBeth predicts. I think when the other guys on this board talks preemption, they're talking about the first definition. Nuances which make for intractable arguments.
Disarming his WMD (and providing evidence that he did so) was a key component of the 1991 UN resolution that ended the first Gulf War. Considering the climate in the US at the time the second war began, this was extremly imporatant and somethign that was never resolved by prior presidents. Nothing is black and white, the other keys noted are workable over the long term. The fact was that there were, and still are, terrorist organizations all around the world looking to get their hands on WMD. If Saddam were to show proof that he destroyed the WMD or turn over active WMD, you eliminte the need for a war.
Don't know if you've seen this or not... http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/w...node=&contentId=A8830-2003Oct23¬Found=true News > Nation > National Security > Intelligence News > Nation > National Security > Intelligence Intelligence Report for Iraq War Was 'Hastily Done' By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, October 24, 2003; Page A18 At the center of the political debate over the intelligence preceding the war in Iraq is the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) -- the 100-page, top secret document that hurriedly pulled together judgments from across the U.S. intelligence community about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and the potential dangers involved in an invasion. Such estimates are usually requested by the White House and take months to prepare, with the CIA and other elements of the U.S. intelligence community weighing their own information and working out disagreements after review and debate. But this one was rushed into production only after requests from Democratic senators who were being asked to give President Bush authorization to go to war. "The NIE was hastily done in three weeks," one senior intelligence expert said. "It was a cut-and-paste job, with agencies and officials given only one day to review the draft final product when they usually take months. . . . Today they still disagree on the meaning of what came out." As the Bush administration built its case for war against Iraq in the fall of 2002, a thorough NIE would seem to have been crucial: Hussein's reported chemical, biological or nuclear weapons were central to the pro-war argument. Equally important were questions about how likely Hussein was to use such weapons against U.S. troops or worse, the U.S. homeland. Yet as late as September 2002, Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), wrote to the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, "I am deeply concerned that the intelligence community has not prepared a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) assessing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities." Durbin's letter also referred to what some senior analysts inside the intelligence community see as the reason no NIE had been sought by the White House: a reluctance to submit individual intelligence findings to challenge from competing analysts. "Without an NIE," Durbin said, "agencies may never have an opportunity to examine each others' data, and any differences or similarities between the reports could provide important information to policymakers." On Sept. 11, Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), then the Senate committee chairman, sent a classified letter to CIA Director George J. Tenet requesting what one congressional source described as an "end-to-end NIE on Iraq." That meant, the source said, that it would include not only an assessment of Hussein's weapons but also judgments on "what the war would be like and how the postwar would play out." Tenet quickly approved the request once the president was informed, according to a senior intelligence official. At the same time, a decision was made to produce a declassified version that senators could use during public debate. Asked in an interview last summer why administration policymakers had not sought an NIE before making their decisions on Iraq, Tenet said, "We had covered parts of all those programs over 10 years through NIEs and other reports, and we had a ton of community product on all these issues." The CIA had been producing twice-yearly reports on weapons of mass destruction, including sections on Iraq, since the Clinton administration; other studies had been done by agencies within the Pentagon and State Department. As soon as the NIE was ordered, a group of government and academic intelligence specialists called the National Intelligence Council began gathering these reports and assembled a draft NIE. This document was sent on Sept. 23 to six key agencies: the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), the Department of Energy's intelligence branch, the National Image and Mapping Agency, and the National Security Agency. A rough draft of key judgments was sent the next day. On Sept. 24, Tenet briefed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction program. He discussed one issue that would become controversial -- whether Iraq had acquired a type of aluminum tubes that could be used for centrifuges to produce weapons-grade uranium. He left two-thirds of the way through the questioning, so he did not hear a question raised on another issue of future contention: a report that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Niger. Robert Walpole, the CIA weapons expert, told the senators the CIA had questioned inclusion of that item because of the fragmentary evidence. On Sept. 25, mid- to senior-level people from all the agencies met all day and into the evening. The next day, the CIA put together a coordinated version of the NIE incorporating alternative views. On Oct. 1, the National Foreign Intelligence Board -- chaired by Tenet and with the heads of the six agencies attending -- worked out the final version. Every agency had its say and dissents were included, carried either boxed in key judgments or in blue when contained in the body of the 90-page report. INR's disagreement with the key judgment -- that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program -- was noted in a parenthetical phrase at the end of the first paragraph. INR produced an 11-page annex outlining its other objections in detail. On Oct. 2, three weeks after the process began, the CIA briefed the Senate intelligence panel in closed session on the highly classified NIE. The declassified version was released two days later.
I have no interest in debating who sunk the Maine. My point was that the majority of historians belive that the US was behind it. I stand by that point, do some research on the internet or read some books on the subject, there are a lot of convincing reasons. I dont know all of them, I just know that it is documented that this is a valid belief. If you are looking for a motive, how about that the US came out of that war for the first time looking like a world power.
Your argument fails on many levels. First and foremost, I would think that most who say we went to Iraq for humanitarian reasons are not saying we went for humanitarian vengeance, thus we went to protect those currently in place. As that would be as productive a measure to rectify were that our cause it stands to reason that we would not then offer to nullify invasion for correction of one while leaving the other in place. We could just as easily have said he had to correct humanitarian qualifiers...if that had been, as you attest, a reason for invasion. We did not. We could have, and didn't. Case, as T_J would say, closed.
thwhy...I've read it. You do realize the point it's making, right? Why it was rushed? Who had the agenda that we needed to hurry up, supercede the UN, order out the inspectors, etc. because of the impending threat of....Saddam being a tyrant.
Yes, please provide a link of the full text version. We will judge for ourselves the accuracy and integrity of the document.
Actually at the end there he was saying that Saddam could avoid the war by stepping down (along with the rest of his government), not just by disarming.
It seems as if it was rushed by both sides MAcB...I mean it just gives more sway to the argument that maybe we didn't have the best intelligence before going over there...which I'll agree with you on...but I don't think we can neccesarily say that what was done was spiteful or decieveing, I'll give you incompetent, but it was on both sides... However, I've seen no solutions from the other side and the humanitarian good we do there is an added bonus if we are looking for bright spots. Other than that, the pro-choice stances of the liberals is enough for me to continue to support Bush...
