Bloodless Coup

Bro,
I finally see you've admitted at long last that Al Queda was operating out of Iraq before the war, and that there were in fact weapons of mass destruction there. As your linked story says, "In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide."

Oh you poor poor thing - you will note, right, that that section of Iraq wasn't under the control of Saddam Hussein - and of course thats 2.5 years before Zarqawi became the head of "al Qaeda in Iraq" (which really isn't al Qaeda as we knew it in 2001, it's more a set of bad-guy groupies - ad just b/c it was in Iraqi territory that doesn't mean it was supported by the Iraqi government).

Though of course if you think none of that matters and these were still bad people doing bad things even if they weren't being supported by the Iraqi government (and they weren't) - well fine, but why exactly did our leaders that you so often praise fail to attack them when they had inteligence that seemed to make that possible? After all these are bad guys who would go on to do bad things. So why didn't the US leadership act? Were they busy reading to kindergarten students in Florida?

Bro,
Let's see, there's a(n Al Queda) terrorist training camp in a foreign nation producing WMDs that isn't being dealt with by that nation. Where does that sound like? Hmmm. Afgh...something. Or is it called JUSTIFICATION? Who was it that fired a bunch of cruise missiles that (confirmed by your posted article from the day before) hit a bunch of nothing and emboldened the terrorists? Oh, that's right, it's not about learning from his mistakes, right?

Again - in your ire to make some supposedly smart discovery I'm left confused as to what your point is regarding the last 2 sentences.

"Justification?" Again I don't know what you are talking about - so we should have invaded Japan to stop that cult, or we should invade our great friend Pakistan ... of course I could go on - lots of countries don't deal with things that might be termed security threats given the rather ridiculously broad ways in which the debate about the war on terrah is often framed. Maybe we should only let the military run our own chemical plants.

But the point of that post of course is that we DIDN'T deal with it (in an area in which an argument could be made we had as much control as Saddam Hussein did - do does that make us the bad guys we have to invade?) precisely so that we'd have a trumped up "justification".

The fact remains that by most measures the Iraqi government wasn't much of a threat - and the government's lame obfuscations on points like this misled the American people.

armand, i think morris's point was that it's all clinton's fault. and how.

Bro,
You're making arguments based on premises which cannot coexist. Either Bush lied to get us into Iraq because it wasn't a threat in the first place, as a source of WMDs or as a terrorist training ground, both of which are supported by the article you cite; or, Bush lied because Iraq was a threat and he didn't deal with that threat in the timeliest manner; or, Bush is an idiot because everybody knows fighting terrorists is exactly what the terrorists want, because it inspires more terror by focusing on their rare acts of violence. Which is it? If Bush lied and Iraq was never a threat to begin with, then there was no need to deal with Zarqawi in 2002 because he was in Iraq and Iraq was not a threat. If Bush is at fault for not dealing with Zarqawi in a timely manner, then you can't argue that bringing our military strength to bear against the terrorists is the wrong approach, because that's exactly what you just faulted Bush for doing; and of course you can't argue that Iraq wasn't a threat because the only option available was an air strike which given Clinton's use of cruise missiles and more recent air strikes against UBL and Zarqawi have proven to be far from reliable, so the only option sans bringing in ground troops is an unreliable one for which you would fault Bush for using when it failed. And you can't argue that Bush is an idiot for pursuing a war on terror and at the same time say he wasn't quick enough in bringing the war on terror to Zarqawi's front porch. I mean, obviously, you can. But it's inconsistent.

And I hope we would have brought ground troops into Japan if they'd been the source of 9/11, as was Al Queda/Zarqawi. We did it after Pearl Harbor when a similar number of people died (really, of course, Pearl Harbor was the result of that corrupt liar Roosevelt who could have avoided a war but instead shut off Japan's American petroleum supply because he was bloodthirsty and wanted to exercise a grudge against Hitler and didn't care if the innocent Japanese stood in his way).

Is that last line of yours some sort of sick joke? I don't get it. And for what it's worth (though given your adherence to so many unsupported fantasies re: 9/11 I'm not sure why I'm bothering to mention it), uh, Zarqawi didn't attack us on 9/11. There's lots of awful stuff we can blame him for - so let's stick with blaming him for those things.

And no - it's not inconsistent - I'd like to introduce you to concepts that include "tactics" and "scale" and "bone-headed analogies". You seem to imply that b/c one or two airstrikes didn't meet all their targets, none ever work. Well then I guess we might as well get rid of the Air Force. And as to ground troops - what's the difference between sending in a special ops unit or two and sending in 150,000 soldiers? I mean if all we need is "ground troops". The notion that getting Zarqawi required a full-scale invasion of a sovereign nation by a multinational coalition supported by hundreds of billions of dollars is absurd. One of the great virtues of our having the best military in history is that we have a plethora of options in terms of how we might go about achieving particular ends. Particularly when said ends exist in the sort of location where Zarqawi was.

And of course there are all kinds of other problems with your propositions (for example, Zarqawi doesn't equal Iraq and attacking terrorists can indeed both help them and hurt them), but I'll leave it there.

Bro,
It is a kind of sick joke, it's exactly the one the left and the media are playing on Bush. Roosevelt didn't provoke Japan because of what Japan was doing, he provoked Japan because of what Germany was doing. So all the innocent Japanese victims got caught in the middle of a "grudge" against Hitler, just as the innocent Saddam supporters got caught up in Bush's "grudge" against Saddam. I mean, what did Saddam do that was so bad except: try to assassinate a former President of the United States; murder more than a hundred thousand of his own citizens intent on nothing more than making their political voice heard, using some of the most gruesome tools around to kill thousands of them (let's not even begin to talk about his torture of Iraqis that makes Abu Gharaib look like Camp Snoopy); order the use of the worst germ weapons in his arsenal against the Saudis and the Jews if coalition forces made to overtake his government during Desert Storm; violate UN resolution after UN resolution, developing, producing, and aquiring prohibited weapon systems; regularly play target practice with American pilots over the no fly zone while his sons played target practice on the Iraqi soccer team. Yet the media and the left act as though we had no reason for this "grudge," as though it was something personal between Bush and Saddam rather than between America and Saddam, making light of all the evidence from the German, Chinese, and other intelligence agencies who believed Iraq to have WMDs. The idea that we needed to leave Zarqawi in Iraq or else we wouldn't have justification for war is patronizing.

And, yes, I left out the fact that Saddam was harboring and providing safe haven for terrorists like Abu Nidal and Zarqawi. My bad. Woops. It looks like I lied, I misled the American people, I must have a grudge against Saddam.

And are you actually suggesting that we should make a distinction between those people who were part of Al Queda during 9/11 and those who joined afterwards, and that we don't hold those who joined afterwards knowing full well the crimes committed by them to the same standard to which we hold UBL? Maybe in WWII we should only have attacked the Japanese navy's ships that took part in Pearl Harbor, because those built afterwards may not mean us any harm? Let them sail up beside our ships, is that what you're suggesting? Saddam's government was providing safe haven to Al Queda, knowing full well what they'd done to us. They were helping those who wanted to plan the next 9/11.

In a rush so I can't all this on right now - but your last point is simply a defense of a clearly factually inaccuraye statement - you wrote Al Qaeda/Zarqawi was behind 9/11 - I merely pointed out that that's wrong - which it is - and yet you oddly defend the statement while at the same time seeming to admit that it is factually inaccurate. Al Qaeda attacked that day - not Zarqawi - it seems rather important to me to assess blame for events on those who are actually responsible for them.

Which leads me back to your first point - are you actually arguing that FDR intentionally provoked the Japanese into launching a war against the United States? Because if you are there are apparently a whole mess of history books and government documents I know next to nothing about. Comparing our attack to Iraq in 2003 to 1941 is one of the most peculiar things you've ever written here.

And to your litany of Iraqi atrocities - that's hardly the point - they hadn't masterminded any major state-sponsored attacks against the US in a decade prior to our invasion. Had Saddam done bad things - absolutely. But were are veritably in bed with a number of states that provided vastly more significant support to Iraq. The president did knowingly mislead the American people as to the level of threat that Iraq posed. Whether his goal was to knock out the #1 state sponsor of terrorism or the #1 state supporter of al Qaeada - well sadly he chose to invade a country that very clearly wasn't either one of those, something that our own intelligence sources (and those of other political actors) were perfectly aware of BEFORE we lauched our invasion.

I've never written Saddam's not a bad guy who did awful things - but he was far from the #1 threat to the American people in March 2003 - and yes, the president did mislead his fellow Americans on that score.

Re Roosevelt:
In October 1937, President Roosevelt delivered a "Quarantine Speech," calling for "positive endeavors" to combat "international lawlessness in China." By July 1939, the U.S. abrogated its Treaty of Commerce and Navigation With Japan.
With further Japanese military adventures, the U.S. played its trump card in July 1941. It froze Japanese assets and embargoed the shipment of petroleum. The Cambridge History notes that Japan faced a conflict between modernizing through contact with the West and the desire to dominate an autarkic Asian zone; it remarks: "The petroleum embargo of July 1941 forced the Japanese to resolve the contradiction by military means."

Re 9/11 and Zarqawi:
Our war in Iraq wasn't about blame, it was about a threat we faced. Al Queda attacked us on 9/11. Knowing this, Zarqawi pledged his allegiance to Al Queda, and Iraq protected him as he did this. What concerns me is the next 9/11, something Zarqawi was interested in perpetrating or he wouldn't have allied himself with Al Queda. As Iraq supports those who want to attack us in this way, they become our enemy. They become an equal threat because they become part of the system supporting that threat, with full knowledge of what's likely to happen next. This isn't about playing the blame game, it's about protecting our people from thugs out to kill us.

OK, I repeat, are you saying that FDR repeatedly provoked the Japanese, intentionally hoping they would launch a war against the United States? That certainly seems to be what you were saying earlier. But the events you cite in your last comment don't lead up to that implication.

In a sense I don't care about your response b/c it's wildly off-topic - but it's such an odd accusation for you to throw out there ...

"Prior to the Pearl Harbor attack, popular sentiment against American involvement in the European and Asian wars was so strong that Roosevelt resorted to deceit and outright lies in his campaign from mid-1939 to December 1941 to bring the US into war."
Roosevelt lied.
Roosevelt played on our fears.
"Throughout 1941, Japan negotiated with the United States, seeking restoration of trade in those supplies, particularly petroleum products. When the negotiations failed to produce agreement, Japanese military leaders began to plan an attack on the United States. According to one school of thought, this was exactly what Roosevelt wanted, for, by backing Japan into a corner and forcing it to make war on the United States, the president could then enter the European war in defense of Britain—the so-called 'back door to war' theory."
And he did the right thing, because he didn't wait until the roots of facism were any stronger than they already were. If you just want to take out UBL, then your only attacking the weed, and another grows back in its place. If we want to keep the weed from coming back, we have to attack the system supporting it too.

Uh - yeah - I know there are historians out there who have made that argument - but it's my understanding that that reading of the history is quite a bit less than firm - quite a bit - and I don't find Husband Kimmel's apologists to be particularly reliable sources as they often seem to be grasping at straws - the great bulk of historians who've done exhaustive work on Roosevelt (who has, understandably, been studied at great length) have found no such thing.

And if you still think attacking Saddam Hussein was getting at the root causes of UBL you are deluded and might as well stop commenting on this blog re: that topic. We, and the 9/11 Commission, think you are basically nutters. Saddam and UBL had little if anything to do with each other. UBL was much more closely tied to some of our Gulf state "allies".

That's patently false. The Republican co-chair of the 9/11 commission absolutely did not agree with that assertion.
And, of course, my point is about attacking the roots of al queda, which Zarqawi joined, which was protected in Iraq. Saddam protects Zarqawi who supports al queda which brought about 9/11 and hopes to bring about another 9/11. Ergo, Saddam supports another 9/11. It's not complicated. If we want to attack the network protecting Zarqawi, we want to bring down Saddam (as we did). And the guy who wrote the article I cited didn't agree with Kimmel, either, but he is just as certain about Roosevelt lying as he is about Bush lying.

The FDR/Bush WWII/Iraq comparison is just so ridiculous I'm not going to continue with it.

What's patently false - you have loony toons beliefs about deep al Qaeda/Iraq ties (been hanging out with Rep. Weldon lately?) - this has been studied at length - the evidence is clear - Iraq was not a major supporter of al Qaeda - whereas many of its most important supporters come from states that Bush loves, praises and coddles. You can keep repeating that black is white or that Courtney Cox is a great American actress - but just because you say something many times, that doesn't make it true.

And (b/c this is getting repetitive and boring) all of this line of comments goes back to a basic point I brought up which you continue to talk around and basically defend rather than retract - you used phrasing which said Zarqawi was behind 9/11. It's simple - he was not. Whether or not he was pro-9/11 wasn't something I challenged - nor is it even the vaguest tiniest thread of an excuse for launching a full-scale invasion of Iraq. Saddam was protecting Zarqawi as actively as Mubarak, Abdullah and Musharaf are protecting terrorists who want to destroy American who live inside their borders - are you advocating we overthrow all of those regimes too? And if we do - do you really think that will help us wipe out anti-US terrorism, or be worthwhile to our country in terms of the blood and money we'd have to expend (and the time, resources and attention we'd have to divert from other threats)?

Yes. As long as the only power they are capable of achieving is in another world, they will destroy this one and experience no feeling of loss. Only when they learn that they are capable of transforming this world into something sacred, something worth saving, only then will they begin to save it. If everyone around them sees only anger and hatred for this world, that is what they will see as well. When they see Americans dying so that they can be free, they will have the chance to witness how what they have learned to be certain may in fact be a lie.

i'd just like to point out that the atlantic profile of zarqawi that published in its most recent issue, which must have gone to press just before his death, was fascinating in its fact-based vindication of the argument that we invent and cultivate stand-ins for whatever cliche serves our foreign policy and then wait for our creations to come to life. we made zarqawi from a thug into a full-blown cult leader. and thus the question: whom will we invent and bring to life in his absence?

meanwhile, the real villain, the reason 9/11 will remain a thorn in america's pride until he is brought to justice (whatever that can mean), roams the moutains of pakistan as free as a bird.