I'd seen it (actually a while back. I suppose that was reporting of the contents of the memo, and no the memo itself had been released.) The plan to trick Hussein into firing onto a phony UN plane is just astonishing.
Given that Bush was simultaneously claiming publicly to still be hoping to avoid war, can we call him a liar now? Or is there anyone out there who still disagrees?
That whole article made me FEEL LIKE I'M TAKING CRAZY PILLS, as they say. "Maybe we should paint a plane in UN colors!" Seriously, I'm surprised they didn't consider photoshopping a picture of Saddam carrying a six-pack of anthrax.
What's that TNH line? Something like "The thing I resent most about this administration is the way they make me feel like a crazy conspiracy theorist." I believe she sells tote bags.
Speaking of, there is a connection between Saddam and bin Laden.
Sadly, I can't find any of those Weekly World News pics of the two of them enjoying cuddle time.
Bin Laden looks disturbingly like my friend's ex-boyfriend, the one I saw naked sans vaginal interaction, in that picture.
can we call him a liar now?
I've been doing that since 1999. He specializes in TheBigLie™.
is there anyone out there who still disagrees?
There are many. But they should be forced to eat with sporks to protect their foreheads.
What always get's me is the people saying now, "Well, if we knew then what we know now, we'd never have bought the Bush/Blair war" when it was totally obvious to anyone with an IQ above that of a sea-cucumber that the whole thing was bullshit from day one.
Where I *am* still confused is with what Blair got out of it.
To defend all the marine invertabrates out there, it's hard to look at someone with access to all the secret information in the world, and be confident that you have enough information to be sure that they're lying. Before the war, I was sure that Iraq didn't have a significant nuclear program because of the tubes and the yellowcake -- if that was the information we were releasing, and it was clearly bullshit, then it didn't make sense to believe that we had better stuff that we were keeping secret. In terms of chemical and biological weapons, though, while I was still pretty sure there was nothing much, I was wincing every time I said it, because I wasn't sure. I was rather surprised that my beliefs in that regard turned out to be as accurate as they were.
I've mostly stopped thinking about this stuff, but yesterday I read a piece of GFR's in the AP--print only, just the way she likes it--called The Democracy Lab. In it I learned:
"Since about 1980, women have voted Democratic in larger numbers than men, but a mix of cultural worries, world events, and GOP strategy has shrunk the gender gap since 1994. By 2004, actual mothers voted against the so-called "mommy party" and for Republicans, for values and security reasons. White, married women voted 61 to 38 percent for Bush, and white, married women with children voted for him 65 to 34 percent, according to a national election poll conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitosky International."
and
"Women may be particularly vulnerable to this message because...they are much more likely than men to believe that Saddam Hussein was connected to 9-11. Forty percent of the population was under this misimpression in 2004, with 51 percent of women believing so, compared to 29 percent of men."
Almost two to one! I did not know that; did you? Sure changes the "face" of the Republican majority for me.
I weep for the gullibility of my sex.
In terms of chemical and biological weapons, though, while I was still pretty sure there was nothing much, I was wincing every time I said it, because I wasn't sure.
Except that it didn't matter. The only thing that ever mattered was whether Iraq represented a threat or near-future threat to the U.S. or its most important interests. That was clearly untrue. It would have remained largely untrue if Saddam had a working nuke (though I might have approved of a massive attack under cover of something else in that case). I assumed that Saddam had chem and bio weapons, and I was against the war. Scary weapons don't make Saddam a threat to the U.S.; we've more scary weapons that everyone else combined.
Just recently, there was an article or squib indicating that there is evidence that the U.S. is now in a position to "win" a nuclear war against either the Russians or China. At the moment, there are no real military threats to our country. That'll change sooner or later, and given the way we've been pissing away the sunshine instead of making hay, it'll be sooner rather than later.
Gawd, I hate this moment.
I weep for the gullibility of my sex.
Don't. They're the ones breaking back our way, IIRC. Weep that, if they are white, they almost certainly married a Republican, and that they were willing to spawn his children; hope that they'll raise the kids right, anyway.
9: I believed the weapons inspectors who were actually in the country, inspecting the alleged weapons sites, and reporting that there wasn't anything there. Honestly, what information would Bush have that those folks didn't, yknow? When he announced that he was going to invade and the inspectors had to withdraw immediately, in spite of still finding nothing, that's when I thought, "There isn't jackshit in that country and he thinks he has to get them out of there before they prove it definitively and ruin his chance to act on his massive Oedipal complex."
Sure 'nuff.
If I read those numbers right, "they" believe those things more than "he" does.
if they are white, they almost certainly married a Republican,
I converted Buck (well, from didn't think about politics but voted for Republicans sometimes, to still registered as an Independent but reliably votes for the farthest left option.)
Actual conversation from our first year of dating:
"Talk dirty to me."
"I voted for Giuliani."
LB, doing Gawd's own work. (I don't even think voting Republican is bad; but voting for Bush requires some deep justification.)
So why didn't they just "discover" a barrel or fifty of mustard gas?
Too many eyes, not enough control of the situation? They couldn't 'discover' anything where the inspectors knew it wasn't, if you see what I mean, so you'd need a fortuitious discovery by some Army unit. Once you've got that, you've got a bunch of witnesses with no particular reason to lie -- it'd be hard to do it cleanly.
Also, they already got what they wanted. Why bother?
I would have been happier if they'd tried the phony UN plane. It would have suggested some degree of competence, to go along with the villainy. Likewise, I'm disappointed they didn't carry along a stash of chemical weapons they could have "found". I mean, every dirty cop on tv carries a Saturday Night Special duct-taped to his ankle, in case he has to shoot a bad guy and establish justifiable use of force. We're operating at some level of thuggery lower than the average Dick Wolf heavy. "Yeah, I shot him. Because I felt like it. What are yez going to do about it, see?"
I see myself slightly preempted, on preview. Preemption is the order of the day.
Well, now that former Iraqi general (who Jon Stewart calls a "sweet old man") is making the rounds saying that Saddam did in fact have chem/bio weapons, but hid them in Syria. I'm not sure I buy it, but I wonder if the red blogosphere is screaming about it?
Of course, as SCMT says, Iraqi chem/bio weapons never really made sense as enough of a threat to US security to justify an invasion, but I think that's enough of a subtlety to be lost on most of the American public.
I have to say I'm still baffled that they didn't plant some stuff in Iraq for the Army to find. The only observers who might not go along with the lie is the Arab press, and how much play does that get in the US anyway?
You guys read this interview with Eric Haney? Nothing too new in there but expressed with terseness and angry strength.
19 gets it exactly right (am I allowed to say that, as a noob?). I was just thinking: they could've taken a page from the LAPD.
I'm not sure I buy it, but I wonder if the red blogosphere is screaming about it?
Of course they are. Now, I don't anything about this Iraqi general, so I can't evaluate his credibility (but let's just note how much stock we have traditionally given high-ranking Ba'athists trying to avoid prosecution). However, if Saddam knew he was facing a major invasion, what is the logic that leads to: "I should take these useable weapons and ship them out of the country to a rival government just before the invasion."
Does that make sense to ANYBODY?
Why didn't they Photoshop some evidence? As far as wagging the dog goes, it would take a vastly larger conspiracy to put a UN plane in the air. In the end lying worked out just fine, I suppose, but still.
Also, what's this about supporting our troops? Cause that sounds like the President devised a suicide mission for propaganda purposes.
On second thought, obviously a surveillance plane need not be manned. Carry on.
11: I wouldn't go so far by that standard; if Iraq wasn't a threat to us, but could use its Scary Weapons to dominate the area or whatever, that would have been bad. (Not that I'm sure we're much better off with Saudi Arabia dominating the area.) But there's just no fucking way that chem or bio weapons could ever have let him do that.
Nor would they have been any use in terrorism, compared to more conventional attacks. Aum Shinrikyo didn't kill as many people in the Tokyo subway as some crazy guy with paint thinner did in Daegu. I think the anthrax terrorist killed more people than the Unabomber, but it was close. I'd be a bit concerned about smallpox, but there was never a shred of evidence that he had any.
Well, now that former Iraqi general (who Jon Stewart calls a "sweet old man") is making the rounds saying that Saddam did in fact have chem/bio weapons, but hid them in Syria.
I always thought that scenario was wildly implausible, if for no other reason than it would surely have ended along these lines:
Saddam: Now that the inspectors have left my country and the UN has voted to ease sanctions, I'd like my chemical and biological weapons back now.
Syria: No.
Saddam: Come again?
Syria: Screw you. We're keeping 'em.
Saddam: Well then, I'll invade you and take them by force.
Syria: Bear in mind, we have chemical and biological weapons, and you don't.
Saddam: Curses, foiled again!
Information won't matter generally in the war of public opinions, since there's already been a subtle shift from 'Iraq supported terror' to 'Iraqis needed freedom.' And the cool thing is that you can use whichever version of the invasion story you need to beat up your political opponent.
Incidentally, re: *red* blogosphere... Y'all need to get with a hundred-plus years of political symbolism where red = left rather than red = right.
I hate that. Red is our color, goddamit.
Actually, I like the blue / red reversal for just this reason. The war aims and methods of the administration come straight from the most-discredited lefty handbook. Real conservatives—blues—want to preserve the New Deal. It's entirely apt.
Damn straight. Come the revolution, blood will flow in streets like borscht.
"With the adoption of color television in the 1960s (and continuing with increased use of color in newspapers in the 1980s and 1990s) media outlets took advantage of this in their electoral maps on election night. But until the 2000 election, there was no consensus on color schemes between the networks (although an unstated rule has been suggested [1]). For example, from 1972 until at least 1992, NBC consistently showed Republican-won states in blue, and Democratic-won states in red. But other networks used other patterns. ABC, in at least two presidential elections during this time, used yellow for one major party and blue for the other. However, in 2000, for the first time ever, all the major broadcast networks and all the cable news outlets utilized the same color scheme: red for Republicans and blue for Democrats."
But Kevin Drum seems to be working off a different dataset.
Also. Wikipedia's a little lame for back-pocket boy, isn't it?
Watch it, slol, or I'll stop taking you out of my back pocket so you can comment.
#32:
Like the blue eagle! I like it. Contrary to the impression I may have given in my exchange with LB yesterday, I've always been fascinated by the New Deal, whose partisan lore I absorbed as a child. But in my case, constant meditation leads usually to complication.
Le Rouge et le Bleu: tragic story of a flawed young man and his women.
A little touchy about the capacity of our back pocket, are we?
38: Yes, though the NRA is an example of a not-very-good New Deal policy. The NRA, the AAA, all that stuff was ill-advised, I think. Me, I'm all about the Social Security, the FDIC, the SEC; secondarily the WPA, the PWA, the CCC....
I'm with slol. We're clearly "blue," especially insofar as most criticisms of this Administration are pretty straight-line Establishment criticisms. That the media can't recognize this is yet another thing to be sad about.
: I wouldn't go so far by that standard; if Iraq wasn't a threat to us, but could use its Scary Weapons to dominate the area or whatever, that would have been bad....But there's just no fucking way that chem or bio weapons could ever have let him do that.
I'm not sure I see the disagreement between us. As I said, if Saddam had nukes, I might have supported invasion on another pretext. That said, I don't believe nukes would have let Saddam dominate the region. His potential enemies would have simply become a client of the U.S., and we'd have continued to have conventional wars in the area. Nukes would, however, made it well-nigh impossible to dislodge.
A little touchy about the capacity of our back pocket, are we?
Ah, so it seems I'm not the only one who has trouble being accomodating.
I remember hearing something like the following: Until 1992, the incumbent was always red, and the challenger always blue. (I've also heard that it alternated.) But in 1996, Clinton, who was accused of being commie all the time by the right, was the incumbent, so they made him blue.
In 2000, they continued this tradition with Bush/Gore, but then we had the recount and the red/blue map was seared into everyone's brains and became a shorthand for talking about which way the state had swung.
Seriously, you didn't like Giuliani?
Being unable to formulate an answer with only moderate rudeness, I'll stick with yes, I disliked him.
Where does baa live? The only people I know who like Guliani are people who didn't live in NYC at any time during his reign.
Well, someone voted for him. Most of the partners at Ideal's law firm, for one.
But yes -- he's not really popular in NYC.
46: I lived in NYC during part of his mighty reign, and I liked him a lot. It might be true that many of the good things that happened during his time were not attributable to him, but who can tell? I still have my "My city can kick your city's ass" T-shirt somewhere.
He'd be a frightening President, though.
I can't help thinking sometimes that it might be good if tourists were more scared of Times Square.
I can't help thinking sometimes that it might be good if tourists were more scared of Times Square.
Good point. I used to work on Eighth Avenue between 49th and 50th. Things were normal there. However, on rare occasions I would walk a block over to Broadway and be stunned by the mass of people. Who are those people, and what are they all doing there?
Maybe the Shiites were involved with 9/11.
Who are those people, and what are they all doing there?
They are standing in my way.
At least the hookers and crack dealers knew how to let pedestrians through.
(Lower crime is good, I'm not really nostalgic for the nasty old TS. But I sure do hate the new TS.)
50 -- Check out this beautiful piece by Roy.
My usual thought is more like: These people are so clueless they don't know how to walk!
That is a good post, TMK. There's absolutely no way I would let a bar bouncer swipe my ID through a reader. Seriously: I would turn around and go somewhere else.
There's absolutely no way I would let a bar bouncer swipe my ID through a reader.
This happened to me not last week at The Living Room. And I liked it so much I begged him to do it again.
Wait, so they would even have used the assassination of Saddam as a pretext for the war? These guys were really eerily eager to put their troops in harm's way in a huge fucking civil war.
And how would the assassination of Saddam make for war pretense, anyway? In for a penny, in for a pound?
not last week at The Living Room
Were you there to see the Emerson kid?
42: Not much disagreement. I'm saying that my standard for fight to stop nasty people from getting bad weapons might be a little lower than yours–though I'm not at all sure–but even so it was clear that Saddam came nowhere near it.
they would even have used the assassination of Saddam as a pretext for the war?
You can't fake that kind of crazy.
They are standing in my way.
I have worked in a number of tourist-heavy cities, and boy, does that get my surl on. Look, you people, I know it's a very tall and pretty building, but it also happens to have my office in it, and could you ever so pretty please get out of the goddamned doorway! Thank you.
Has the memo itself been published? If so, a link would be great.
I'm not a New Yorker, but I know lots of New Yorkers who like him. LB, are you a ferret owner?
We already established that Matt Weiner was the ferret owner around here.
baa, you're a very brave man for linking that post on this thread.
Yeah, but what's a guy to do? It was the post with the ferret line in it...
I heard that interview -- it was hysterical.
No, the sort of thing I was thinking of was more his reaction to the shooting of Patrick Dorismond. (For those who don't remember, Dorismond was walking peacefully down a city street. An undercover officer approached him, asking to buy crack. Dorismond refused. A fight broke out, and the cop shot and killed Dorismond.)
Giuliani authorized the release of Dorismond's sealed juvenile arrest record, which contained nothing more serious than a violation punishable by a summons, to discredit him. Juvenile arrest records are supposed to be kept confidential, and Giuliani violated legal ethics by breaking the seal without getting a court order. Dorismond was 13 at the time his arrest was entered into a police computer. At a press conference Giuliani argued that the dead man's conduct at age 13 was "highly relevant." Dorismond, he sneered, was "no altar boy." But Dorismond had actually been an altar boy. He had even attended the same elite Catholic high school as the Mayor--Bishop Loughlin in Brooklyn.
To come out and say what I thought in response to your initial question, if I saw Rudy Giuliani on fire in front of me, it's the only day of my life I wouldn't spit on him.
"This excessive concern about little weasels is a sickness." I love it.
66: No problem, I think teh bravery is admirable.
So, this is a big duh, but this is the question about the Dorismond case: You're an undercover cop. You're trying to see if someone will sell you crack, so you can arrest him. He tells you to fuck off. What public policy reason is there for you to do anything other than fuck off?
Also, IIRC it was one of the other cops who killed Dorismond, which I think makes it worse.
Assassinating Saddam as a pretext for invading makes no sense, but it certainly puts into perspective that last-minute proposal that if he went into exile Iraq would be spared war. Anybody else remember that?
What public policy reason is there for you to do anything other than fuck off?
But maybe you really think he is selling crack.
66: True, it was the initial cop's backup who did the shooting. Giuliani's reaction, though, to badmouth the poor guy, was about the most morally bankrupt thing I've ever seen. The rest of the linked article is good too, as a summary of what a filthy, disgusting excuse for a human being Giuliani is.
(Also very tight with my cousin Bobby, who's big in the Nassau Republican party. Bobby's a good guy, generally, but we don't talk politics.)
It's really hard to remember all the crazy that was floating around. I was looking at Drum's archives for March '03 and it reminded me of Bush pumping his fist and saying "feel good!" on the morning of the invasion or thereabouts.
(The Giuliani "no altar boy" line ties in to the discussion we were having the other day about blacks and whites and the police -- admit for the sake of argument that a white teenage boy having an arrest on his record might be evidence for him being no altar boy. This does not hold for a black teenage boy.)
LB: I weep for the gullibility of my sex.
Weep for the gullibility of your race (assuming you're white). Men still got suckered in more by the Shrub than women.
70: Iraq would have been spared "war," but would have been at the butt end of a "peacekeeping operation."
a "Times" story....hmmmm now there is a fair and unbiased source. Hah!
See Rick, man, you're just making us look bad here. And by us, I mean, unrepentant war supporters.
There either is or is not such a memo. It either does, or does not say these things. The likelihood that the Times has fabricated the existence of this memo is zero. I too, want to take a look at the whole thing before passing judgment on the contents, of course, but it should really not be much a surprise that the President thought that ousting Saddam by force was the only way to ensure a good result in Iraq. The dominant adminstration view was that sanctions were a disaster, and Saddam was just going to befuddle and wait out inspectors until the French or Russians (or someone else he could bribe) subverted any meaningful verification regime. That still seems like an awfully reasonable position to me. War supporters, I would suggest, are better served defending the plausible reasons for war, than impugning every anti-Bush news item that emerges.
baa -
1. How do you feel about the Smiths, and in particular "Ask"?
2. Did you see this, from the review of Cobra II in the New Yorker:
"After the fall of Baghdad, three years ago, the United States military began a secret investigation of the decision-making within Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. The study, carried out by the U.S. Joint Forces Command, drew on captured documents and interviews with former Baath Party officials and Iraqi military officers, and when it was completed, last year, it was delivered to President Bush. The full work remains classified, but "Cobra II," a recently published book about the early phases of the war, by the Times reporter Michael Gordon and Lieutenant General Bernard Trainor, has disclosed parts of the study, and the Pentagon has released declassified sections, which Foreign Affairs has posted on its Web site. Reading them, it is easy to imagine why the Administration might resist publication of the full study. The extracts describe how the Iraq invasion, more than any other war in American history, was a construct of delusion. Frustratingly, however, we now understand much more about the textures of fantasy in Saddam's palaces in early 2003 than we do about the self-delusions then prevalent in the West Wing.
The study portrays the Iraqi President as a fading adversary who felt boxed in by sanctions and political pressure. Saddam's former generals and civilian aides—such as his principal secretary, Lieutenant General Abed Hamid Mahmoud, and the former Iraqi foreign minister, Tariq Aziz—describe their old boss as a Lear-like figure, a confused despot in the enervating twilight of a ruthless career: unable to think straight, dependent upon his two lunatic and incompetent sons, and increasingly reliant on bluff and bluster to remain in power. Saddam lay awake at night worrying about knotty problems, and later issued memos based on the dreams he had when he drifted into sleep. As the invasion approached, he so feared a coup that he refused to allow his generals to prepare seriously for war. Instead, he endorsed a plan for the defense of Baghdad that essentially instructed his generals to talk with no one, think rousing thoughts, and await further orders. The generals knew that to question their leader or his sons was suicide, so they just saluted. "We're doing great!" the Minister of Defense wrote to his field commanders on April 6th, as Baghdad fell."
I haven't read the book, so I can't claim either that the New Yorker is fairly relating what the book says, or that the book is compelling on this claim. But ... not ...looking...good...for...your...side.
3. Becks, are font changes not persistent across paragraphs?
The plan to trick Hussein into firing onto a phony UN plane is just astonishing.
I'm glad someone else was astonished by this. I was astonished by it to Mr. B., and he was all, "yeah, no biggie" and I was all "what do you mean, no biggie?!?" and he was all, "compared to anything else they did?" and I was all, "well, yeah, but... but... but..."
Font changes are not persistent, SomeCallMePimp, and they never will be. Otherwise, we'll end up with a bunch of "who didn't close that stupid italics tag" comments.
Oh come on Becks. Who here could possibly screw up some HTML?
And thank goodness baa said it, 'cause otherwise we look like a bunch of meanie liberals pointing out the blindingly obvious.
From everything that's happened in the last couple of years it's pretty clear that Saddam was right to fear a coup.
Seems like if we wanted Saddam gone, we could have gone ahead and let it happen -- you know, kind of watched from here in the US. It might have resulted in, say, three-year power outages, massive human rights abuses, multiple terrorist campaigns carried out by multiple factions, at best a tentative parliamentary system always in danger of immanent collapse -- you know, kind of like what we have now. Except probably fewer people would have died because the Saddamites and whoever the fuck else don't have the same kind of air support the US military enjoys.
In short: supporting the Iraq War was stupid from day one and gets stupider as time goes on.
Even better, we could have waited for Iraq to turn into a failed state, and then gone in with broad international support. We could even have encouraged the assasination of Hussein to push the chaos along. An Iraq that depended, in any part, on the leadership of his sons was an Iraq destined to fail as a state.
danger of immanent collapse
Is that a typo, or an extremely apt pun?
I really doubt that either of Saddam's sons would have been given a chance to lead Iraq.
89: I agree. I think they would have been shot first thing. Great - two steps closer to failed state. There's no way Saddam has a lieutenant that is his obvious successor while he has his sons.
