re: "Iraqi Irony"

Prof. Victor Davis Hanson at Private Papers provided the longer perspective of the historian.

Money quote(s):

"Amid all the stories about the ongoing violence in Syria, the most disturbing is the possibility that President Bashar Assad could either deploy the arsenal of chemical and biological weapons that his government claims it has, or provide it to terrorists.

There are suggestions that at least some of Assad’s supposed stockpile may have come from Saddam Hussein’s frantic, eleventh-hour efforts in 2002 to hide his own arsenals of weapons of mass destruction in neighboring Syria. Various retired Iraqi military officers have alleged as much. Although the story was met with general neglect or scorn from the American media, the present US director of national intelligence, James Clapper, long ago asserted his belief in such a weapons transfer."

Weapons of mass destruction = WMD

That classification, borrowed from former Soviet terminology rather than having a Western provenance, can include what Europeans used to call ABC (atomic-biological-chemical), the U.S. used to call NBC (nuclear-biological-chemical), and which are now more commonly expanded to CBRN (chemical-biological-radiological-nuclear) weapons.

In other words, WMD was never just about nukes.

"The Bush administration fixated on WMD in justifying the invasion of Iraq while largely ignoring more than 20 other writs to remove Saddam, as authorized by Congress in October 2002. That obsession would come back to haunt George W. Bush when stockpiles of deployable WMD failed to turn up in postwar Iraq. By 2006, “Bush lied; thousands died,” was the serial charge of the antiwar Left. But before long, such depots may finally turn up in Syria."

There were 23 writs, but more than one of them had to do with WMD.

"Many Americans understandably questioned how civilian and military leaders allowed a brilliant three-week victory over Saddam to degenerate into a disastrous five-year war before the surge finally salvaged Iraq. That fighting and reconstruction anywhere in the Middle East are difficult under any circumstances was forgotten. The press preferred instead to charge that the singular incompetence or malfeasance of Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld led to the unnecessary costs in American blood and treasure."

CAA would have to be numbered among those "Many Americans." But no matter how good a plan we might have developed (which we didn't), in any events Iraq turned into at least three different wars, some of them over-lapping in time and space, with some former enemies morphing into allies.

"George W. Bush’s problems in conducting difficult wars in the Middle East were inherent in the vast differences between cultures"

True that. None of the countries in that region are going to look like post-reconstruction Germany or Japan no matter how long we stay there.

"For all the biases and incompetence of Nouri al-Maliki’s elected government in Iraq, the Middle East’s worst dictatorship now seems to have become the region’s most stable constitutional government. Given Iraq’s elections, the country was relatively untouched by the mass “Arab Spring” uprisings. And despite sometimes deadly Sunni-Shiite terrorist violence and the resurgence of al Qaeda, Iraq’s economy, compared with those of some of other nations in the Middle East, is stable and expanding."

&

"The moral of the story is that history cannot be written as it unfolds. In the case of Iraq, we still don’t know the full story of Saddam’s WMD, the grand strategic effects of the Iraq War, the ripples from the creation of the Iraqi republic, or the relative degree of incompetence of any American administration at war in the Middle East — and we won’t for many years to come."

8/1

re: "SQUIRREL!"

Mike at Cold Fury ("Harshing Your Mellow Since 9/01") might be one of thosepeople who actually know what WMD are.

Money quote(s):

"Hey, remember those Iraqi WMD stockpiles that didn’t exist, that Saddam never ever pursued getting and didn’t use on his own people and in the war with Iran, that Bush lied us into his phony war for oil over?"

These aren't the WMD you're looking for?

"(T)hey’re still not there, and the Brits are not going to be helping out with not destroying them. Because they don’t exist, and never did. So shut up, awright?"

Shut up, he explained.

7/31

re: "In Other News: Brits Now Helping to Dispose of Iraqi WMDs that Never Existed in the First Place"

Emperor Misha I at the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler ("HQ of the Rottweiler Empire. An Affiliate of the VRWC.") noted a change in the accepted wisdom that caused nary a ripple.

Money quote(s):

"On a related, but rarely explored (by the DNCMedia) note, we keep hearing concerns about Assad using WMDs against the rebels, concerns based on him threatening to do so himself, yet we somehow barely ever hear about anybody wondering where on Earth he got those WMDs from. It’s as if they just popped into existence caused by an Expert Level “Create WMD” spell or something.

Which reminds His Imperial Viciousness of something that a lot of us “fundamentally unserious” conservatives were harping on about years and years ago rather than just accepting the leftist memes like good “pragmatic conservatives” are supposed to do lest we be branded Visigoths or something, namely that satellite surveillance showed a strange and rather large number of convoys traveling from Iraq into Syria’s Bekaa Valley for no apparent reason during Bush’s 18 month “rush” to war against poor innocent brown people." (Emphasis in original post. - CAA.)

This is something that has bothered CAA for years. WMDs (which chemical weapons most certainly are) don't just conjure themselves into being.

And to see the swift metamorpheses of Assad from axis-of-evil to reliable-partner and back to WMD-equipped-despot evokes echoes of Saddam's similar transmogrifications. WTF?

7/31

re: "We all know Saddam had no WMDs"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") understands that the major media (and much of your government) has been in major denial for years.

Money quote(s):

"The author got this info from the Duelfer Report and notes that most people only read the exec summary. There was plenty of nastiness, and while he wasn't linked to the 9/11 attacks he played with plenty of terrorists. The left loves to whine about WMD lies, false reports and no ties to terror. Yeah well that is just BS. He was a menace, murderous tyrant and a known user of chemical weapons. We were and truly justified in taking him out and the world ought to be thanking us."

If you have the opportunity to chat with anyone in, for instance, the EOD community who served in Iraq, you can get an earful about all the "no WMD in Iraq" they disabled.

9/15

re: "Saddam, WMD’s, and Terror"

Jim Lacey at The Corner ("a web-leading source of real-time conservative opinion") explained what's actually in the Duelfer Commission Report.

Money quote(s):

"The Left said this document proved there were no WMDs — of course, they only read the executive summary. The commission was put together to look into what went wrong with prewar intelligence, and that is what they reported out on. However, in the two volumes no one bothered to read, the commission members detail all of the stuff that was actually present. You have to read almost to the end of volume three to learn about the real bio-warfare labs.

As for Saddam’s links to terror, here is a short version of a report I co-wrote. All of the information in volume one of the report comes from captured Iraqi documents"

This is the sort of thing that explains why I begin to get so exercised whenever the party line about "no WMDs in Iraq" gets trotted out.

9/15

re: "Fred Fleitz: Leftist Legacy of Bad Intel Estimate on Iran"

Secure Freedom Radio at Big Peace hosted an interesting guest.

Money quote(s):

"(F)ormer CIA Intelligence Officer Fred Fleitz shares his concerns with the U.S. Intelligence community’s scandalous refusal to “make an honest call” on the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Fleitz explains the biased nature of U.S. Intelligence’s 2007 assessment that concluded Iran halted its program in 2003, even as experts have widely concluded the existence of an active program."

From the outside, it's hard to conclude anything but that this NIE's conclusion was politically-motivated.

re: "The Rocket's Red Glare of the Occasional Sortie...."

Deebow at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") is following U.S. war news in the foreign press (which means he receives information, not cheer-leading).

Money quote(s):

" "KABLUEY!" in a bad way would be the way I would describe how the current president is experiencing his military successes, particularly in Libya, where the rocket's red glare and the bombs bursting in air are currently giving way to Qaddafi's flag still being there."

Way back when Gulf War I was being televised on CNN, there was talk of how it all looked like a video game: grainy and detached, bloodless and antiseptic.

This also fostered an illusion of military omnipotence.

Sure. Our guys, and their gizmos, are good. But they're not all-powerful. And sometimes the biggest bang, even if properly applied, isn't going to result in the outcome you want.

Back when dinosaurs (and Soviets) roamed the Earth, your humble scribe learned a bit of wisdom working with nuclear weapons systems: There is a proper tool for every task.

Maybe NATO airstrikes aren't the perfect tool for this task. Oh, and what exactly are this task's objectives?

"(W)ith more word games from the State Department, and diplomats don't run combat operations for a very good reason, the bombs bursting in air is likely to continue" (Bold typefaced added for emphasis. - CAA.)

No offense taken, at least not by me, and I'm a lot closer by temprament and training to actually being able to run combat operations than most of my diplomatic peers. After all, it's not what diplomats are either trained or selected/promoted to do. Nor should they be.

"(T)here is no such thing as a "passive" exchange of fire, if you don't believe me, look it up in your PIO reference guide or your protocol handbook, but since you might not have time because you are tying yourself in knots trying to explain this, I will clear it up for you; anytime you are dropping bombs on someone, you are "actively" exchanging fire. Just because they don't shoot back, it doesn't change the nature of the transaction..."

Good point. Valid point, simply put. (Perhaps this isn't something covered in law school.)

"This is what happens when you lead from the rear, and if our mission continues to be murky and gets continually redefined between noninformative press conferences, then all of the two bit, tin pot dictators in the world will know that they are safe for at least the next 16 months, because we can't seem to kill the one in Libya, if that is our mission.

And what does this say about our word in the world? Qadaffi did what he is supposed to by coming forward and admitting his WMD programs and cooperating with the US during the last administration, and for that he was rewarded by having bombs dropped on him once per day, maybe. Kind of like teaching your dog to sit and then when he does it, you beat him for it. Any of you egghead diplo-dummies over at State want to explain to me how this perverted form of carrot/stick theory works?" (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

CAA apparently lacks sufficient egg-headedness to tackle the writer's request. From my obviously under-informed and inexperienced perspective, this last seems like precisely the reverse of the message we should be sending to governments thinking about a little (or a lot) bit of nuclear proliferation, like, for instance, Iran.

The phrases "counter-intuitive" and "designed to fail" come to mind.

Of course, not being a Middle East-specialist, I can make assertions like "we're doing it exactly wrong" (and not be taken seriously).

"The debate over whether the WPA applies or doesn't apply or whether it passes constitutional muster is something that will continue to go on, but as I have talked about before, consistency is a habit of the successful and makes your leadership believable. If the president says he needs Congress to buy off on attacking Iran, then he better say the same damn thing about attacking anywhere else as well."

This is true only if consistency is valued by leaders. Consistency will be valued by leaders only if they are rewarded for it. If they are rewarded despite inconsistency, then the opposite outcome will result.

re: "Historical Revisionism [Part 3]"

Bill at Castle Argghhh! finishes off the Big Lie about Iraq's WMD.

Money quote(s):

"Right after we captured Baghdad, there were a *lot* of PAO-type pix appearing in SIPRNET mail to various units (all combat arms outfits, as far as I could tell), showing US and Iraqi equipment, battlefield shots of blown-up tanks and people, etc., and some stuff highlighting the technology we used. Our S-2 knew I'd think that was real neat, so he called me in to show me. Among the goodies were two AWACS radar screenshots labeled "Iraqi truck convoys converging on Syria" -- lines of little glowing dots on the highways heading north, then turning northwest. They gave a timeline, but all I remember was it happened the night before we jumped.

Next day, there was a recall of the mail with the pix, citing OPSEC violations on the AWACS pix because they showed US positions -- bear in mind that the pix were a full week old, and that US units had already reached Baghdad by the time they were released. Our S-2, being a good S-2, promptly deleted the stuff without a thought. So did everybody else, as far as I can determine, including the military intel types OCONUS with SIPRNET access. Later, I heard the oblique AWACS screenshots were compared with satellite overhead photos and were matched to a gnat's eyelash.

Some time later, the Dems in Congress began screaming that Bush was a war criminal because we hadn't found Saddam's WMD -- we had found a lot of WMD and WMD-related stuff, but the Dems kept screaming "That's not the WMD Bush said they had."

Which morphed into the pre-election Talking/Screaming Point “We went to war in Iraq for a lie, because there were no WMD!” that continues to this day.

Now, let’s recap.

Did we find chemical weapons that Saddam had hidden from the UN inspectors? Yup.

Did we find biological warfare labs and delivery systems? Yup.

Two out of three, so far, and either one standing alone exposes “There were no WMD” as a lie."

It helps if you have no real understanding of the meaning of WMD in the first place. Then it's easier to be that stupid. (Ignorance is like that.)

That being said, I never saw any of that sort of "take." But then I didn't see much else in that line of intelligence collection: as intelligence collectors, we were just too far down in the weeds ourselves.

"Did we find a nuclear weapons program? Well, yes and no.

Yes, we found the evidence, but was it an ongoing program? Saddam himself lied about stopping and starting so often, that, if it wasn’t ongoing during the weeks before the invasion – and Saddam *knew* it was on the way -- chances are very good that he would have cranked it up again had we *not* jumped in.

Was the program stolen from under our noses while we were in the process of restoring some semblance of normalcy to Iraq?

Or was it just on hiatus until Saddam – or his designated heir – could open up for business in a new location? *Something* was on the convoys going into Syria, which the Iraqis, sources in at least two of Iraq’s neighbors, and the CIA's ace advisor have confirmed."

Bill then goes on to explain some basic facts about the party politics of Saddam's Iraq and Assad's Syria (which remains true today).

He concludes:

"Dick Cheney had the pix, he had the background info, he had the ear of the President, and he had enough personal authority to release them to shut the Dems up.

Those of us who knew about the pix kept expecting a dog-and-pony show from the White House which would stop this particular Big Lie in its tracks and reveal the Dems for what they were.

Any day, now... any day.

When he was asked (in 2010) why he didn't at least advise GWB to go public with the pix and their probable significance, Cheney just blew the question off, and said "we had other concerns at the time."

Swell. Thanks so much for being midwife to this particular Big Lie, Dick -- you gave us Barack Obama in 2008 and the resulting cascade of Big Lies we've been bombarded with ever since."

This is the most original reason for disliking Dick Cheney I've ever read. It bears thinking upon.

re: "Historical Revisionism [Part 2]"

Bill at Castle Argghhh! revisits a personal pet peevasaurus (in other words, a Jurassic peeve of brobdingnagian proportions) of mine.

Money quote(s):

"(W)hat were some of the WMDs we found?

Well, for starters, we found 550 long tons of unrefined yellowcake (for the metrically-impaired, that’s 1,212,541 pounds of the stuff Joe Wilson *said* Saddam had no interest in acquiring). The Dems squeaked that it didn’t count, because Saddam had no centrifuges to use in enriching it to weapons grade – and then when we found the centrifuges, they squawked that the centrifuges (the exact same model Siemens centrifuge Iran used at Natanz to enrich its uranium, by the way) were for pharmaceutical purposes – even though they were found buried in the compound of the chief of Saddam’s nuke program.

By the way, the 606 US tons of yellowcake remained stockpiled in Iraq for anyone curious enough to want to look at it until 2008, when it was quietly shipped to Canada for refining." (Bold type added for emphasis. - CAA)

This is part of the "moving the goal posts" strategy of the previous administration's enemies.

Check out some of what the ISG found. Scary stuff.

"(T)hen the Dems changed “Where are the WMDs?” to “Those aren’t the WMDs we’re looking for!”Well, all righty, then, folks, just what *are* the WMDs you’re looking for?They wouldn’t say – they just kept repeating that, whatever we found, it wasn’t what they were looking for, and their Greek chorus in the MSM dutifully echoed them without even pausing for breath."

One-word snip.

"Now, exactly what were the WMDs that the Dems were looking for? Nobody’s saying, but the answer may lie in what happened during the countdown to the invasion. "

Stay tuned for the next installment.

re: "Historical Revisionism [Part 1]"

Bill at Castle Argghhh! takes on a Big Lie.

Money quote(s):

"(O)ne of the most effective techniques the losers use in their all-consuming scramble to displace the current winners (or to retain their power as current winners -- but regardless of whether they're the Outs or the Ins, they're still losers) is the Big Lie."

Be sure to read the part where he explains where Cloward and Piven sourced this technique.

"There’s been one particular Big Lie going around that’s now so entrenched that even people who know better are accepting it as truth, and I got so tired of correcting individuals who spouted it that I promised myself I’d go full auto the next time I heard it.

Yesterday, I heard it – “We went to war in Iraq for a lie, because there were no WMD.”

Now, let’s start with the basics. WMD is an acronym for the old Soviet term for nukes (“Weapons of Mass Destruction”), which they distinguished from chem and bio agents (“Weapons of Mass Casualties”), while we lumped everything together, first under the acronym CBR (“Chemical, Biological, Radiological”) and later under NBC (“Nuclear, Biological, Chemical”). Somehow, probably because the boffins in the Five-Sided Puzzle Palace thought it was cool to use Sov terms for everything, WMD replaced NBC in MilSpeak, and the civilians in 1600 Pennsy thought it was cool to sprinkle their public pronouncements with MilSpeak terms (thus accruing Warrior Status Points without the onus of actually having to do, like, Warrior Stuff), WMD morphed into meaning *all* classes of unconventional weaponry, not merely nukes. The Russians are still pretty amused at that, by the way.

So, because Saddam had chemical weaponry and had a history of using them on his enemies, and because he let it be known that his bug guys were working on weaponizing germs of varying nastiness, and because he had a known on-again, off-again nuclear program, politicians who wanted to be in with the cool kids began referring to “Saddam’s WMD.” And they referred to them a lot – all through the ‘90s (and as late as 2003), every Democrat who got face time with a microphone talked about Saddam’s WMD and how unacceptable the situation was.

After the novelty of having waxed a modern army (albeit one with a thoroughly incompetent C-in-C) in a few days wore off, the Dems suddenly realized that George W. Bush had attained rock star status in the eyes of the voters. They panicked, and seized on the fact that Saddam hadn’t hit us with anything unconventional as the genesis of a new talking point for the 2004 election campaign.

“Where are the WMDs?”

They demanded that the troops stop whatever they happened to be doing and scour Iraq until they found Saddam’s stash."

To be fair, although WMD were connected with some of the Iraq War Resolution's 23 writs, they were the ones you heard the most about during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. And not just the media, actual Administration spokesmen and high officials kept beating this drum.

"To be continued…]"

JO - Clarity, Corruption and Censure

From my archive of press clippings:

Jamaica Observer

Clarity, Corruption and Censure

James Moss-Solomon


Sunday, March 07, 2010


"OH, what a tangled web we weave!" The Daily Observer of Wednesday, March 3 in its headline claims "PM Stares Down US", and the Gleaner headline of the same day says "Dudus defence". The situation has started to get out of hand and several innuendos have been made, although no one has directly pointed any fingers. The usual lawyers, both locally and overseas, have weighed in on the matter on the talk shows, and as predicted they have not been precise in their comments. On one hand they say 'this', and on the other hand they say 'that'. That has been my concern with lawyers in government; they argue like hell, but fail to take decisive positions or actions.

Read the whole column here.

Snippet(s):

"The element of corruption in Government as stated by the supreme spin doctors, the United States, would also have been resisted. As it is now, any defence under the rights of citizens within the extradition treaty has been reduced to a discussion of the levels of corruption within the Government by their dealings with a single individual. The entire ruling party has now been placed under a cloak of suspicion, which will again cause the rumour mills to churn. Already it is being said that the visas of prominent Jamaicans are being cancelled as an act of "revenge" by the government of the United States.

I have no doubt that in other circumstances the USA has taken action based on rumours, but we are such small fish that we should not attribute it to revenge. Let's face it, we are no bin Laden, neither do we possess any "weapons of mass destruction". We can hardly manage our own criminals, let alone a war. So in the final analysis, our lack of clarity has led to the accusations of vast corruption in the Government."

&

"The events have opened us up to the realities of censure by the United States Government. The annual reports to Congress are a requirement which I believe started in earnest following the attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. Under their concept of "sovereignty" they are able to take a wide range of punitive actions on what they believe to be non-compliant with their policies. These measures range from a slap on the wrist, prohibition of airlines accessing their airspace or ships sailing in their territorial waters, trade sanctions, breaking of diplomatic relations, to perhaps even a declaration of war."

re: "A Warning"

The Curmudgeon Emeritus at Eternity Road discusses the utility, and likely necessity, of disproportionate response in the war on Islamicist terrorism.

Money quote(s):

"By implication, any escalation of our current conflict, most particularly further attacks on American civilians with or without weapons of mass destruction, will evoke a comparable response from us.

This is a great pity. It would mean that additional thousands of Americans had already died at Muslim hands."

"The proper time to strike with maximum force was when the video clips of Muslims celebrating the 9/11 atrocities in the streets of their hellholes, handing out candy and firing AK-47s into the air, reached the United States. When nattily dressed Muslims in Iraq and Iran jeered at our naivity and vulnerability, and wished our suffering had been even worse. When mullahs and imams in Cairo and Riyadh decreed that the Great Satan had finally gotten some of what was coming to him.

We would have put the other Muslim-majority nations on notice that American blood is to be treated as sacred -- that we will not allow anyone to spill it without suffering in Biblical disproportion. That's what world-record military superiority is for. Not "humanitarian aid" or "disaster relief." "

After 9/11, Pres. Bush decided against a strategy of massive retaliation, de-linking in his public statements and actions the religion of Islam and and individual muslims in general from responsibility for the attacks.

I suspect strongly that had he been inclined to take the other approach, he would have found considerable domestic political support. People (and I include members of Congress in that set) were scared, and were looking for someone to act.

"Our failure to act on it has already cost thousands of civilian lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. Our restraint in responding to the blows dealt us will ultimately cost us at least as much more; Islamic militants and the states that sponsor and shelter them have already made it clear that they consider it evidence of weakness and lack of confidence.

They will strike us again."

&

"One way or another, they will strike us again. More Americans will die, and fear will blanket the land once again. Many will cry out for answers: Why did our "leaders" not act to prevent a villainy so easily foreseen? Why was it necessary that the innocent die en masse before the evil could be identified and punished? Hadn't we already had warnings enough?"

Pres. Bush made the decision, deliberate or or conditioned, to de-escalate (relatively speaking) rather than massively relatiate. He gave the moslem world a chance not just at survival but at freedom, democracy, &tc;. Considering the long odds against success, his approach (with fits and starts) has been surprisingly successful, mainly due to the efforts of the “troops,” military and otherwise.

The survival of the islamic world, and indeed ourselves, depends upon him having been right. The American people will not tolerate a second bite at the 9/11 apple.

_____

Hat tip to KG at Crusader Rabbit ("Islam has two allies here in the West - the Left and political correctness. The fight is with all three.").