Thoughtful analysis of US interests in the Persian Gulf region going forward: http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20030701faessay15401/kenneth-m-pollack/securing-the-gulf.html Excerpt on the role of oil and other factors: The material on Iran as compared to Iraq is also succinct, for example:
So Iran is the hard case. There appear to be four basic options: 1. Do nothing, other than offer encouragment to the democracy movement and criticize the excesses of the regime, 2. Offer support to indigenous freedomfighters, including weapons, bases and limited air support, 3. Make limited military forays from Iraq to test the resolve of the regime and the receptiveness of the people to revolution, establish a government in exile, liberate portions of the country and take out its nuclear facilities, 4. Mount an Iraq-style invasion. Option 1 carries more risk than is immediately apparent. Iran cannot tolerate a free Iraq next door, and will do whatever it can to make our occupation costly and difficult. No doubt much of the violence directed at our troops is Iranian-inspired. In addition, we could find ourselves facing a nuclear-armed Iran at some point in the near future. Option2 is problematic because the state department has put the most capable Iranian exile groups on its terrorist list. Apparently there is no credible military threat to the regime. Option 3 may make organizational demands that will be difficult to reconcile with the current chaos in Iraq. Still it seems the most likely course of action. Option 4 is probably off the table for now, due to the reasons cited in KF's post. Unlike the slow motion buildup to Iraq, I would expect any Iranian action to commence without much in the way of discussion. No doubt some border incident or hot pursuit of terrorist infiltrators will be the basis for expanded action.
An unnecessary war -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: June 4, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com What was America's real motive for attacking Iraq? Was it oil? Empire? To make the Middle East safe for Sharon? That these questions are being asked, not only by America's critics, is the fault of the administration alone. For its crucial argument as to why it had no choice but to launch the first preventive war in American history is collapsing like a sand castle in a rising surf. Iraq, in retrospect, was no threat whatsoever to the United States. We fought an unnecessary war, and now we must rebuild a nation at a rising cost in blood and treasure. Before the war, many who opposed it argued that no matter the evil character of Saddam, Iraq had not attacked us, did not threaten us, did not want war with us, could not defeat us. Why then were we about to invade Iraq? Came the administration answer: Saddam has ties to al-Qaida. He has an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. He is a year or so away from being able to build a nuclear bomb, and he will use these weapons on us or our allies, or give them to terrorists who will use them in the United States. And these weapons will kill not just the 3,000 who perished on Sept. 11, but tens and even hundreds of thousands of innocent Americans. Do you want to risk that? Do you want to do nothing and risk a "mushroom cloud" in an American city? Or do you want to remove this mortal threat, now? So went the clinching argument for war. Opponents answered that the U.N. inspectors had found nothing, that Saddam had even invited in the CIA to have a look, that surely he could not launch a sneak attack on America or her allies with U.N. inspectors rummaging around his country. The War Party scoffed. Hans Blix, they said, was an incompetent and an appeaser who would deliberately not find weapons rather than be responsible for causing a war. So President Bush launched America's first pre-emptive war, and it was a triumph of American arms. But eight weeks have now elapsed, and we have not yet found a single weapon of mass destruction, though we were told, again and again, that Saddam had "30,000 munitions." This weekend, The Washington Post's Dana Milbank revisited the Bush administration's categorical claims in the run-up to war. On Aug. 26, 2002, Vice President Cheney told the Veterans of Foreign Wars: "Stated simply, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us." On Dec. 2, 2002, Ari Fleischer told the White House press corps, "You've heard the president say repeatedly that he has chemical and biological weapons." On Jan. 7, 2003, Fleischer added, "We know for a fact that there are weapons there." Also in January, Rumsfeld declared, "There's no doubt in my mind that they currently have chemical and biological weapons." In his Feb. 8 radio address, Bush declared, "We have sources that tell us that Saddam recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons â the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have." Cheney added in March, "We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." On March 17, on the eve of war, President Bush told the nation, "Intelligence ... leaves no doubt that the Iraqi regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." So persuaded, America united behind the president and went to war. Something is terribly wrong here. It is impossible to believe the president would deliberately lie to the nation when he knew the full truth would be discovered at war's end in a few weeks. Either he was misled, or he was deceived â and so, too, was Secretary of State Colin Powell. Who did it? Who was responsible for the intelligence failure, or the dishonest use of selected intelligence, or the conscious and deliberate deceit of a president and secretary of state? Where are the weapons? We have searched 300 sites and arms dumps and found not one shell. If Saddam had the weapons, why did he not use them? If he destroyed them before the war, as Rumsfeld now argues, he fulfilled the terms of Resolution 1441 and could have saved himself by showing U.N. inspectors where and how he did it. Why would Saddam let himself, his family and his regime perish protecting weapons he either no longer had or did not intend to use? Is it possible Iraq never had that vast arsenal of anthrax, VX, sarin and mustard gas we were led to believe? Did the intelligence agencies fail us, or did someone "cook the books" to meet the recipe for an imperial war? It is time Congress investigated the Office of Special Plans, set up in the Pentagon to sift and interpret all intelligence, and placed under neoconservative super-hawk Paul Wolfowitz.
Skipping over the collection of quotations (which include a statement of Cheney's on "reconstituted nuclear weapons" that was widely taken out of context and misused) and the re-configuration and narrowing of the Administrations' offered justifications for war, I think we - both supporters and opponents - can concede that the Administration, from the President down, has a credibility or at least an appearances problem that it has yet to handle fully, and won't be able to handle until it is ready to produce a comprehensive report. The author of this article closes with a series of questions that rest on unjustified presumptions: The kind of weapons he is known to have possessed at earlier dates - known to have possessed because, among other things, they inflicted mass casualties on Iranians and Kurds, and because significant quantities of them were located and destroyed by prior inspections teams - are much more useful in battle against an army like Iran's was in the '80s, or as weapons of terror and genoicide, than against a highly mobile, well-equipped 21st Century force like America's. Their main effect, if he used them, would have been a collapse of his political strategy. Mainly for this reason, he would have had little reason to deploy or fully re-constitute his arsenal until world attention had moved elsewhere - as it had several times before. This statement appears at first to be an argument for the other side: If Saddam was "clean," why didn't he prove it? Compliance with inspections was the core of 1441: Saddam's previous record - both of use and possession of WMDs and of deception about his program - made the world justifiably suspicious of any proclamations of disarmament without proof. If the author has evidence that Saddam has perished, he should share it with the world. If Saddam had used whatever WMDs he possessed once the war was imminent or had started, it would only have hastened and finalized his defeat. Now the author's perspective begins to make a kind of sense, or at least shows internal consistency - while revealing that the author is either unaware of recent history, or so far out on the loony left that he can only believe something he reads on loony left web site. Not even Iraq claimed "never" to have had a "vast arsenal" of chemical and biological weapons - to do so would have been absurd. Leaving aside the use of chemical weapons against Iran and the Kurds, the existence during the '90s of 30,000 chemical weapons artillery shells or thousands of liters of bioweapons agents were confirmed by prior UN inspections teams - which also participated directly in the destruction of large stockpiles of banned weapons that Saddam had previously denied possessing. The issue was always more complex than the existence of any particular set of weapons: It was whether a capability existed or could be reconstituted, and whether Saddam could or should simply be taken at his word that he had given up on it. That was good enough for the peace movement and those with little sense or knowledge of history. It wasn't good enough for the US.
If you want a more credible and sophisticated attack on the Administration -and I know you do! - you might read this scathing cover story from THE NEW REPUBLIC: http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030630&s=ackermanjudis063003 The capsule summary: Much of the article's content might be rebuttable, but at the moment it at least serves as a caution to war supporters who have been expecting that the political "no-WMDs" offensive will go the same way as so many false charges and phony headline-grabbers. The article may be a skillful hatchet job: The authors are good at that kind of thing, rather like Seymour Hersh. If, however, its content is borne out in full, then, like the magazine's editors, I would still consider the war justified, as I've stated before, but I can recognize that deep and lasting harm to this or any administration's credibility may turn out to be a very high price to pay. Andrew Sullivan recently summed up what a lot of conservatives are thinking or hoping: "What will the political consequences be if a) Saddam is captured and b) we get real new intelligence and data on the Iraqi WMD program? I think that's when president Bush gets out his saw and cuts off that big, high branch his Democrat opponents are now sitting on." I've seen sentiments along these lines in many places - including from other observers whom I respect, and who claim information to the effect that certain WMD discoveries are already in hand but not yet reported, and that others depend on lips loosening upon the definitive capture or death of Saddam. Time will tell.
The kind of weapons he is known to have possessed at earlier dates - known to have possessed because, among other things, they inflicted mass casualties on Iranians and Kurds, and because significant quantities of them were located and destroyed by prior inspections teams - are much more useful in battle against an army like Iran's in the '80s, or as weapons of terror and genocide, than against a highly mobile, well-equipped 21st Century force like America's. Their main effect, if he used them, would have been a collapse of his political strategy. Mainly for this reason, he would have had little reason to deploy or fully re-constitute his arsenal until world attention had moved elsewhere - as it had several times before. Are you saying they would not have been useful at all against the invasion forces of the US? How do you know? This statement appears at first to be an argument for the other side: If Saddam was "clean," why didn't he prove it? Compliance with inspections was the core of 1441: Saddam's previous record - both of use and possession of WMDs and of deception about his program - made the world justifiably suspicious of any proclamations of disarmament without proof. The proof of their non-existence is that they don't exist. You seem to indicate the burden of proof of their existence or non-existence is on his shoulders. It is a dangerous precedent to go to war without evidence, isn't it? Bush was certain of evidence, sufficient to go to war, to go against the U.N., to break ties politically with allies who were not supportive of those efforts, because he had proof. He did not argue we need to attack because Saddam "might" have weapons, he was sure of it. Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter had this perspective before the war: Does Iraq truly threaten the existence of our nation? If one takes at face value the rhetoric emanating from the Bush administration, it would seem so. According to President Bush and his advisers, Iraq is known to possess weapons of mass destruction and is actively seeking to reconstitute the weapons production capabilities that had been eliminated by UN weapons inspectors from 1991 to 1998, while at the same time barring the resumption of such inspections. I bear personal witness through seven years as a chief weapons inspector in Iraq for the United Nations to both the scope of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs and the effectiveness of the UN weapons inspectors in ultimately eliminating them. While we were never able to provide 100 percent certainty regarding the disposition of Iraq's proscribed weaponry, we did ascertain a 90-95 percent level of verified disarmament. This figure takes into account the destruction or dismantling of every major factory associated with prohibited weapons manufacture, all significant items of production equipment, and the majority of the weapons and agent produced by Iraq. With the exception of mustard agent, all chemical agent produced by Iraq prior to 1990 would have degraded within five years (the jury is still out regarding Iraq's VX nerve agent program - while inspectors have accounted for the laboratories, production equipment and most of the agent produced from 1990-91, major discrepancies in the Iraqi accounting preclude any final disposition at this time.) The same holds true for biological agent, which would have been neutralized through natural processes within three years of manufacture. Effective monitoring inspections, fully implemented from 1994-1998 without any significant obstruction from Iraq, never once detected any evidence of retained proscribed activity or effort by Iraq to reconstitute that capability which had been eliminated through inspections. Okay, no weapons found, no weapons labs found, no sign of destruction of weapons or weapons labs, no statements from Iraqis scientists regarding weapons or weapons labs now that the threat of Saddam is gone and they can speak freely......hmmm. Now the author's perspective begins to make a kind of sense, or at least shows internal consistency - while revealing that the author is either unaware of recent history, or so far out on the loony left that he can only believe something he reads on loony left web site. Is it possible for you to make arguments without labeling someone's position? How do you know the author is "so far out on the loony left that he can only believe something he reads on loony left web sites?" Why not attack his position, rather than trying to discredit it with your own brand of McCarthyism? This is the current tactic being used by Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Ingrahm, etc. Label all liberals as kooks, then conclude that anything that is not in alignment with their perspective is kooky? How much sense does this tactic really make? Why not just address issues point by point? Why the need to make these broad generalizations to destroy the credibility of the person? I will tell you why. It is because they cannot destroy the position on a particular issue any other way. It is weak, it shows a lack of ability to defend your own position, or to logically make a better case for your own position. Imagine an objective person just listening to two arguments. Why would the person need to know if one person was of one political party or not? Why couldn't they just listen to the arguments, and make up their own mind? Labeling people that you don't even know their political bent or party affiliation, just because of some arguments they make, is a sign of small thinking, and a very dangerous thinking. The author of the article is not a left wing liberal. You are now so far to an exteme political ideology, that you label anyone who challenges Bush left wing. Since when is Pat Buchanon considered a left wing liberal. Your brand of polarity is dangerous, as been shown by anyone with any sense of history. Patrick J. Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Partyâs candidate in 2000. He is also a founder and editor of the new magazine, The American Conservative. Now a commentator and columnist, he served three presidents in the White House, was a founding panelist of three national television shows, and is the author of seven books. See what else Pat Buchanan is doing these days.
It is a judgment based on study and the opinions of military strategists. "Useful at all" is a vague formulation: Might Iraqi forces have conceivably inflicted casualties using chemical weapons? Certainly it's possible. They would have been very unlikely, however, to slow the coalition's progress significantly, and would have done so only at tremendous political cost. The strategy that they appeared to use - the common battle tactic of deception and introduction of uncertainty - was probably at least as effective as the actual use of "old-fashioned" chemical weapons. Biological weapons would tend to be even less effective in halting a military advance, for a variety of reasons - at least in theory: Partly because they are deemed ineffective, no one has ever, to my knowledge, tried using modern bio-weapons in this way (in the long history of warfare there are probably some peculiar exceptions - catapulting a diseased cow into an enemy encampment or something - but the larger point stands). That is precisely the point: The burden of proof was completely on Saddam's shoulders, as a result of his past history of deception and aggression, and according to the ceasefire agreements that ended Gulf War I and to 17 UNSC resolutions. That the burden of proof was on his shoulders was the entire premise of having UN inspections in the first place. The comparison I've made to you before is of a convicted criminal and repeat offender on probation or parole. If he violates the terms of his probation or release, he's presumed to have bad intentions, regardless of whether or not you've determined that he's actually committed another crime. In the case of Saddam, the US and the world community had every reason not to start from a blank slate and see whether or not he repeated his past behaviors. The dangerous precedent was allowing Saddam to violate those agreements and defy UN resolutions for 12 years: Like the fiasco in Somalia and the pathetic response to the embassy bombings, it indicated weakness and lack of resolve, and encouraged him and others (including Al Qaeda) to believe that the US could eventually be pushed out of the region. The salutary precedent that has been established, or is being established, is that if you're an enemy of the US and think you can "get away with it" or just bide your time until the opportunity and correlation of forces is to your liking, you may be sadly mistaken. On Scott Ritter: Ritter's ties to the Iraqi government and his lack of objectivity and trustworthiness have been gone into at great length elsewhere. These factors are worth considering wherever his statements represent his judgments and opinions. Ritter's opening statements in your quotation offers an absurd straw man argument: No one, anywhere, ever, to my knowledge, suggested that Iraq "truly threaten[-ed] the existence of our nation." Since the time of the founding of the republic, the Soviet Union and the Confederacy were probably the only enemies that actually threatened the existence of the United States. The vital interests of the United States have been and must be defined differently. I could review yet again the justifications for acting against Iraq, but as past efforts in this regard have made no impression on you, I'll pass up the opportunity. The rest of Ritter's statements all refer to his beliefs regarding the state of the Iraqi WMD program at the time that Ritter and his colleagues ceased actively inspecting it. Even he does not claim complete certainty. Nothing he says contradicts the presumption - based on past history and behavior and contemporaneous defiance - that Saddam maintained the capacity and the ambition to re-constitute the WMD program. Incidentally, Ritter also confirms that the idea advanced in that WorldNet article, that Saddam "never" possessed WMDs, was, indeed, pretty loony. As I stated, and as I maintain, the author made a ludicrous statement that betrayed either ignorance or lunacy. I never labeled "all liberals" as "kooks," I isolated a statement that your author made that was kooky. Furthermore, I have in the past conceded, I conceded in the post you addressed, and I further conceded in the subsequent post with the link to the TNR article that the WMD issue remains open. What I strenuously object to is re-writing history and re-configuring the arguments in order to make something out of it that it isn't and cannot be.
I never labeled "all liberals" as "kooks," I isolated a statement that your author made that was kooky. Furthermore, I have in the past conceded, I conceded in the post you addressed, and I further conceded in the subsequent post with the link to the TNR article that the WMD issue remains open. What I strenuously object to is re-writing history and re-configuring the arguments in order to make something out of it that it isn't and cannot be. This is what you wrote: Now the author's perspective begins to make a kind of sense, or at least shows internal consistency - while revealing that the author is either unaware of recent history, or so far out on the loony left that he can only believe something he reads on loony left web site. "While revealing that the author.....is so far out on the loony left that he can only believe something he reads on loony web sites." You comments are a generalization about the author's position politically, and rather than address the point he makes, or the issue he makes with some argument....you simply label his as on the "loony" left, or that he reads "loony" left websites. This tactic is used when one cannot properly address the argument put forth by the author. Please tell us why it is necessary to label the left as loony? Loony from from which perspective? The "RIGHT" perspective, rather than the "WRONG" perspective? Loony is their perspective, not loony is your perspective? If the facts and arguments are so obvious as to be loony, why the need to label it as such? When people dogmatically state opinion as fact, they lose their credibility, don't you agree? You are participating in a war of ideology, rather than a search for the truth. How could you possibly have any credibility as such? A solid argument stands on the basis of its fact and reason, not on the basis of its being given by someone with a particular ideology. The real problem is that eventually is all breaks down to name calling. You call them the "loony" left. They call you the "loony" right. Very mature, very adult, very informative. If you really want to advance the cause, speak to the center with fact. Make arguments supported by fact and reason. Those of us who are in the center often find both extremes closed minded and not to be trusted when they give opinions. It is when you conclude someone is biased, that you begin to distrust their use of facts. That is why we need unbiased media and unbiased journalism on the whole. If not, all we have is propaganda machines from isolated points of view. You continue to appear to me to be a propaganda machine for one particular party position, as bad as MSFE/Wild, although blessed with a greater ability to put it in your own words your bias than perhaps MSFE/Wild does. However, it does not display dispassionate or objective thinking. It indicates conclude first on the basis of set ideology, spin second politics.
Now you're being obstinate, as well as hypocritical. First you yourself quote my statement, but then you introduce an ellipsis and subtract the "either" construction. It's hard to imagine how your determination to distort my words could be more clear. In addition, the use of the term "loony left" already implies the existence of a non-loony left. The proposition that the author offered - in the form of a rhetorical question - rested on presumptions that were either extremely ignorant or loony (or perhaps both, I guess). I addressed it, directly. You remain unable or unwilling to defend it. You are the one who persists in pushing generalizations and personal accusations based on unjustified political assumptions and false characterizations. When individuals wonder whether Saddam ever possessed WMDs, or, to give another example, whether there's really any proof that his regime was brutally oppressive and dangerous, they begin to seem loony. Such statements imply either extreme ignorance or a position so far out of the mainstream that they refuse to believe overwhelming evidence presented by major mass media, respected international organizations, etc. You are continually twisting statements of mine or ignoring others in order to suit your pre-conceived notions. Indeed. If you think that, then why don't you stick to the facts instead of twisting statements and ignoring others while attacking me on the basis of your perception of my ideological affinities? Very transparent, very annoying, very useless. If you really want to have a discussion, address statements with some minimal precision and stop engaging in the very practices that you decry. You continue to appear to me to be on a personal vendetta against me. I guess I'm 777's preferred target this week. Pretending to be in favor of "dispassionate or objective thinking" is not the same thing as arguing dispassionately or objectively. The practices of continually distorting or ignoring another individual's statements, then occasionally pausing to offer insults or charges based on pre-conceived notions and guilt by association, suggest that you are an obstinate individual who may have difficulty thinking clearly, possibly due to mental defect or lack of emotional self-control. You leave me in the position of wondering whether any further dialogue with you could be useful for any purpose.