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Has Bush Been Dodging?

Bush seems to be trying his best to save face in the very embarassing situation that has developed around the alledged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD).  This is not a justification for lying, but I do not believe the administration is guilty of anything quite that sinister.  It seems more like a hefty dose of incompetence.

Dale Lature writes in “Bush dodges the REAL question:”

Interesting how Bush gives his defense to STILL NO WMDs.  He keeps coming back to the “Saddam is BAD” defense.  Well, we all know that.  He then uses the pre-emptive strike defense, which will not fly with most people except the most hard-core military.  He completely refuses to answer how the JUSTIFICATIONS he gave are totally bankrupt. He lied.  They used deception to rush us into something, riding the coat tails of 9-11.

And still, the religious right holds up Bush as a “moral example.”  It sickens me.

As Jonah Goldberg says in his editorial, “Straightforwardness would defuse WMD issue:”

As I’ve tried to demonstrate in this space before, the idea that the president lied to the American people hinges on—at least—one almost impossible fact: that George W. Bush knew for a certainty that the intelligence agencies of America, Britain, France, Germany, Israel, Australia, as well as the United Nations and countless independent experts were all wrong.

It seems more likely to have played out as the Minneapolis Star Tribune describes in “WMD/Bad intelligence, but more:”

…The Clinton administration was getting the same intelligence, yet it, reasonably, did not head off to the United Nations to warn that Iraq needed to be invaded yesterday.  It wanted to take out Osama bin Laden; Saddam was a secondary concern.

That suggests someone in the Bush administration made an early decision to put the most dangerous possible spin on what Iraq intelligence was available.  Information that was tentative became certain; equipment that might have numerous uses became certified WMD material; rumors became fact.

There has been quite a bit of misleading going on, but it is not at all clear that the Bush administration knew that there wern’t any WMDs and told the public otherwise.  There are more reasonable theories that some CIA informants lied, and the Bush administration (and many other governments) wrongly believed the bad reports.

Also interesting is the Al Bawaba report, “Iraqi party insists intelligence on WMD was accurate.”

Army Thinktank Criticizes US Terrorism Policy

Dr. Jeffrey Record, a Visiting Research Professor of the US Army’s Strategic Studies Institute, has published a paper, Bounding the Global War on Terrorism, critical of the Bush Administration’s Global War on Terrorism (GWOT).

Record asserts that, “The global war on terrorism as currently defined and waged is dangerously indiscriminate and ambitious, and accordingly that its parameters should be readjusted to conform to concrete U.S. security interests and the limits of American power.”  The paper proposes six changes the administration should make to its foreign policy.  I have abbreviated these conclusions:

1. Deconflate the threat.  This means, in both thought and policy, treating rogue states separately from terrorist organizations, and separating terrorist organizations at war with the United States from those that are not.
2. Substitute credible deterrence for preventive war as the primary policy for dealing with rogue states seeking to acquire WMD.  This means shifting the focus of U.S. policy from rogue state acquisition of WMD to rogue state use of WMD.  There is no evidence that rogue state use of WMD is undeterrable via credible threats of unacceptable retaliation or that rogue states seek WMD solely for purposes of blackmail and aggression.  There is evidence, however, of failed deterrence of rogue state acquisition of WMD; indeed, there is evidence that a declared policy of preventive war encourages acquisition.
3. Refocus the GWOT first and foremost on al-Qaeda, its allies, and homeland security.  This may be difficult, given the current preoccupation with Iraq.  But it was, after all, al-Qaeda, not a rogue state, that conducted the 9/11 attacks, and it is al-Qaeda, not a rogue state, that continues to conduct terrorist attacks against U.S.
4. Seek rogue-state regime change via measures short of war.  Forcible regime change of the kind undertaken in Iraq is an enterprise fraught with unexpected costs and unintended consequences.  Even if destroying the old regime entails little military risk, as was the case in Iraq, the task of creating a new regime can be costly, protracted, and strategically exhausting.
5. Be prepared to settle for stability rather than democracy in Iraq, and international rather than U.S. responsibility for Iraq.  The United States may be compelled to lower its political expectations in Iraq and by extension the Middle East.  Establishing democracy in Iraq is clearly a desirable objective, and the United States should do whatever it can to accomplish that goal.  But if the road to democracy proves chaotic and violent or if it is seen to presage the establishment of a theocracy via “one man, one vote, one time,” the United States might have to settle for stability in the form of a friendly autocracy of the kind with which it enjoys working relationships in Cairo, Riyadh, and Islamabad.
6. Reassess U.S. force levels, especially ground force levels.  Operation IRAQI FREEDOM and its aftermath argue strongly for an across-the-board reassessment of U.S. force levels.  Though defense transformation stresses (among other things) substitution of technology for manpower, postwar tasks of pacifi cation and nationbuilding are inherently manpower-intensive.  Indeed, defense transformation may be counterproductive to the tasks that face the United States in Iraq and potentially in other states the United States may choose to subdue and attempt to recreate.

Additionally, there is an interesting quote on pages 18–19:

Strategically, Operation IRAQI FREEDOM was not part of the GWOT; rather, it was a war-of-choice distraction from the war of necessity against al-Qaeda.  Indeed, it will be much more than a distraction if the United States fails to establish order and competent governance in post-Saddam Iraq.  Terrorism expert Jessica Stern in August 2003 warned that the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad was “the latest evidence that America has taken a country that was not a terrorist threat and turned it into one.”  How ironic it would be that a war initiated in the name of the GWOT ended up creating “precisely the situation the administration has described as a breeding ground for terrorists: a state unable to control its borders or provide for its citizens’ rudimentary needs.”  Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director of counterterrorism operations and analysis, Vincent Cannistraro, agrees: “There was no substantive intelligence information linking Saddam to international terrorism before the war.  Now we’ve created the conditions that have made Iraq the place to come to attack Americans.”

December Spam Report

Spam reporting seems to be effective in reducing quantities of spams recieved.  270 spams were recieved during December.  That’s down from 356 in November for an average reduction of 6.25 spams per week.

I have been filing reports for every spam recieved with SpamCop, the FTC and the Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC).  It will be interesting to see if these results will continue or whether spam will rebound in the wake of the ineffective anti-spam laws that Congress has enacted.

English‐language spams declined by 49% (210 in November; 108 in December) while Russian spams increased by 85% (129 in November; 140 in December).

Saddam Action Figure

Mr. Ace in the hole himself is now available as an action figure at Hero Builders.

Comments Closed

All comments are closed until further notice.  Some script kiddie got his jollies by exploiting a bug in Movable Type and repeatedly posting the same junk until my webhost pulled the plug.  I’ll be making some changes to how things work, and then I’ll enable comments again.