Peggy Noonan: Sins of omission and the 9/11 commission

Not that it has much bearing on Kerry and Bush issues, but to turn to the "Clinton did nothing on terror" allegations for a second..

Rather than just focusing on what active coutner terror strategies that Clinton did or didn't implement, one of the things that is left out by critics and boosters are Clinton's efforts (which were substantial) to broker an Palestinian-Israeli solution.

There appears to be a fairly broad based consensus among most Middle-East scholars & experts that the Palestinian question lies at the base of Islamic rage against the US & the West and some sort of acceptable resolution thereof is pretty much a pre-requisite to defusing the situation. Not so much in stopping specific terrorists and terrorists groups but by making Arabs in general less sympathetic to their causes and hence affecting their economic and political lifelines.

Clinton's efforts in that regard, though ultimately unsuccessful, were more expansive than any of his predecessors, with the possible exception of Carter, before or since.

 

But it is a perfect time to evaluate the actions that Bush took to get the support of the American people. Massaging "intelligence" and cherry picking data contained in intelligence reports is not the right way to go about drumming up support for a war. Support for war should be based on honest, reliable intelligence that has been corroborated by more than just the people who have a vested interest in the war.

According to Bush and Co., the ends justify the means, but to many of us, the means were dishonest and lacked any measure of the "integrity" that Bush claimed he would bring to the White House. No ends are important enough to justify THESE means.

 

I'm glad that Clinton can do nothing foil the LAX plot, capture the people who attacked WTC in '93, prosecute them and see them locked away, and include anti-terror measures in crime bills as well as increase spending to fight terrorism, start a panel that came up with a plan to send special forces on the ground into Afghanistan to go after Al Qaeda, etc.

As for Bush doing what's necessary, It seems obvious at this point that Iraq was far from necessary.

 

I thought the first four paragraphs were interesting. I mean that.

And then we get the same old tired partisan Clinton as antichrist routine. (yawn).

But thanks for those four grafs.

 

YES, OF COURSE!

If we lie and distort intelligence to invade another soverign nation, then we are no better than Saddam was when he invaded Kuwait.

 

we are no better than Saddam

Sure, we are better. We won and will get to write the history.

 

I know where you're trying to get with this, but ....... geez!

Did Saddam have any reason whatsoever to invade Kuwait other than his personal gain? Did we have any justifiable reasons to topple Saddam?

Saddam intended to keep Kuwait. Are you saying that the US intends to keep Iraq?

 

We're building 14 permanent military bases there and that's just a start.

What do you think?

 

Since you have so much sympathy for the suffering of the Iraqi people, why don't you start some threads demanding that we invade other countries where tyrants similar to Saddam are doing the same thing to their people?


You can keep mentioning that and act like the only motivation for going into Iraq was to help people, but you can't change the recorded history that was filled with talk of WMD's. Facts are facts and we were told that Iraq was a threat to the safety of the United States. Turns out that wasn't true and all the advice given to the Administration was counter to all the talk of impending danger that came from them. Now comes the part where you spin all of what I just talked about.

 

Actually David Kaye and others have given explanations as to how the WMD were gotten rid of.

1. Some destruction in GW 1.

2. Much eliminated with the inspectors prior to their removal in '98

3. Some destroyed with Clinton's attacks in '98

 

the fact WMD have not been found is irksome,

GWB has dreams of WMDs dancing through his head. That has to count for something!

 

Wake up and smell the spin.

GW Bush's willingness to do the unpopular thing to protect the American people or any other principled stand is questionable.

The invasion of Afghanistan, a political no brainer, there would've been rioting in the streets if that hadn't happened.

The invasion of Iraq though in spite of what we read on these forums up til this fall did have the support of most Americans. While it was a divisive issue the Admin knew that they could count on a core of about 40% that would support them no matter what and then by playing on fears about 9/11, mushroom clouds and etc. they could easily garner enough support to get a solid majority.

We also have to look at the timing of the Iraq situation. Everyone knew since 1991 that Saddam was a very bad man and nearly everyone thought he still had WMD. Prior to the 2002 State of the Union Address the GW Bush Admin had not made a big deal out of Saddam publicly and even after that the Admin didn't get serious about a possible invasion until the fall of 2002. If Saddam was such a threat why wait until then? We could've pressed the overthrow of Saddam in the springof 2002 or even attacked him in the winter of 2001-2002. Or why not wait to attack him later and give the Admin more time to work on refuseniks like France, Germany and Russia?

What we did see though was right at the start of the traditional campaign season, Labor Day, a sudden push for a Congressional vote, pressure on the UN and a buildup of forces in the theatre. We also saw a Senate narrowly controlled by Dems. a House narrowly controlled by Repubs and Congressional elections that could swing either way. The vote for the Iraq resolution was called for close to the election, unlike the '91 war when the first Bush and Congress decided it was of such importance that it should be cast after the 90 Congressional elections. Repubs then use the issue to relentlessly hammer away at Dems calling those who voted against it traitors and the Dem party as a whole putting Americans lives at risk.

In other words rather than being a conscientious decision to make an unpopular decision for the safety of Americans the Iraq issues becomes a wedge issue for Repub candidates. The result the Repubs recapture the Senate and shore up their House Majority.

The buildup continues and once troops are engaged support for the war rises taking GW Bush's approval ratings to an all time high. In the meantime GW Bush collects good photo ops on May 1st, 2003 while also vowing not to repeat the mistakes of his father by both not letting the issue of Iraq slip the public mind and developing a domestic agenda.

Flash forward to January 2004. Things in Iraq are not going well. US soldiers are still dying long after the regime has falllen, civillians and other Iraqis are being killed and leading Shiite clerics are opposing the US installed authority and GW Bush's approval ratings are dropping in the face of withering Dem attacks. In a sudden surprise move the Admin says that sovereignity will be handed over to the Iraqis on June 30th 2004 after long refusing to name a timetable for handover. The swiftness of the date is important because previously the Admin had been preaching patience regarding Iraq and had been saying that a handover might be years away and would require stability. So the Admin announces this rapid plan even though everyone acknowledges Iraq is still a long way from being stable and secure. Further many even in the Admin acknowledge that an unstable unsecure Iraq will be very detrimental to US interests.

Looking at this politically this will allow the Admin to say that they accomplished their mission of liberating the Iraqi people well ahead of the 2004 election. That way throughout the fall of 2004 they can still say Mission Accomplished on Iraq while distancing themselves from any possible fallout of problems that may occur after handover since that will be the responsibilities of the Iraqis. What is unknown is what could happen in Iraq after a handover occurs. There is the real potential of an Iraqi civil war and in ensuing chaos Al Qaeda taking could take advantage of that like they did in Afghanistan. That is a very frightening one to the US but the Admin is pressing ahead with the handover anyway.

So if you look at the timeline of events it seems not only possible that partisan political advantage was sought from the Iraq issue. With the speed and the timing of the handover there is also a very real possibility that the GW Bush Admin is gambling with US security in order to rid themselves of a major headache well before the 2004 elections.

 

The biggest difference is that Saddam did not have to lie in order to drum up support for his war as he already had complete control of his country.

GWB and his crew misled the American people to drum up their support for this action since it was clear that the "humanitarian" reasons were not enough for Americans to want to topple Hussein.

For which they were being sanctioned already. In addition, the UN was doing their part to see that the resolutions were upheld including performing the weapons inspections. If there was a cause for war based on the UN resolutions, the UN would have supported this action and we would not have had to kick the weapons inspectors out to invade.

We are the ones that broke the cease-fire agreement, not Saddam. He had allowed the inspectors back in and had also offered to allow 2000 CIA and FBI agents to comb his country (all of it) for WMDs. It was up to the UN to find Saddam in breach of the resolution, not us.

With WMDs that the United States sold him. BTW, all of this happened while we still supported Saddam in the '80s. This did not qualify for a reason to invade his country because if it did, we should have invaded BEFORE GWI.

I think it has to be more than 2 invasions to warrant the discription of "serially invading." Even so, we supported the war against Iran and sold weapons to Saddam so that he could pursue that war. There was a good reason to take action after he took over Kuwait, but GHWB built a large coalition of partners willing to devote troops and cash to the effort and we kicked him out of Kuwait.

Again, no good reasons to invade.

Give me a break. Saddam quashed all of the Islamic fundamentalism there was in his country, making it very difficult for terrorists there. Even if he knew that there were terrorists living in Iraq (which I am not convinced that he did), it does not rise to the level of invasion. Are you really saying we should have invaded because there were 3 suspected terrorists living in Iraq?

If that is the case, we should have invaded Saudi Arabia instead. Bin Laden's entire family lives there and I would suspect that so do more than a few terrorists.

sovereign - adj - 1 - Self-governing; independent: a sovereign state.

dictionary.com, dude. That is the definition of sovereign and by that definition, Iraq was a sovereign state until we invaded.

 

A threat that the CIA rated as nearly nonexistant because Saddam did not want the US to invade again. This point was disproven before the war even.

A question that could have been answered just as eisily by taking Saddam up on his offer to have 2000 CIA and FBI agents comb his country. WMDs were THE ONLY case for war as far as I was concerned, given that I didn't support the invasion of Iraq until Cheney went on Meet the Press and started talking about mushroom clouds. WMDs were the only case for war for a lot of people, seeing as how the public's support for the war didn't materialize until administration officials started making the rounds crowing about WMDs every chance they got.

If I remember correctly, the NIE report (David Kay's report) specifically said that the chemicals detailed would have expired at least 5 years before the invasion. We knew that before we invaded, the UN inspectors were aware of it, but the administration just kept on talking about the "massive stockpile" of weapons that we were aware had expired. In order for there to have been active weapons, there would have had to be an active program to keep the stocks fresh. That obviously was not the case.

IOW, we invaded because Saddam's regime neglected to fill out the proper paperwork.

They existed and expired, per the NIE report.

Look at the facts for once instead of listening to the talking heads, Lord Ostrich in Charge.