A couple of the guys at Begging to Differ are tearing me a new one, in part for topping off a post—in which I quote several conservative bloggers regarding the al Qaeda/Saddam link—with this line: "That they can acknowledge Cheney's BS and simultaneously praise the Bush administration over Iraq is still beyond me." Were I to have been very to-the-point in what I wrote, I would've said that none of the bloggers/writers I quoted (who didn't flatly disavow Dick Cheney's comments, as Oxblog and Tacitus did) was able to provide even a middling defense for Cheney's assertion. His comments call for empirical evidence. What I read from those sources was: Americans don't care anyway (Derbyshire); an ABC News reporter says that a Clinton-era source once said that bin Laden would "almost certainly... be welcome in Baghdad" (Tim Graham); Cheney was wrong about WMD, and though he may be wrong about al Qaeda too, the war was otherwise justified (Sully); and, I'm crazy-crazy-crazy (LGF).
BTD Steve says that these quotes prove the opposite of what I'm saying. I don't see that, clearly. Let me be more explicit, by repeating what I said before: You tell me. Because I'm baffled. I tentatively supported the war, because 1) I was told Iraq possessed WMD, 2) I was told Iraq had connections to al Qaeda, and 3) I'm something of a liberal interventionist.
On point 1, the administration was either supernaturally wrong or intentionally deceiving the citizenry. On point 3, the administration's abject lack of preparation seems to have quelched the war's potential for positive change; only time will tell if Iraq will fall apart utterly, but that's a lousy standard to bear. An imminent state of martial law probably wasn't what any of us had in mind.
On point 3, the march to war saw the administration drumming confidential intelligence that proved Saddam's ties to al Qaeda. Which was fine—America understands confidentiality, even if the international community wanted to set a higher bar. But then the 9/11 commission dug deep and astonishingly referred to a lack of "credible evidence" suggesting any such thing—leading Dick Cheney and subsequently President Bush to stick to their guns, holding high the vagueries of the English language as compelling evidence that the American people. . . misheard them in early 2003? Ought to have realized that the relationship that obviated war fell short of collaborative?
BTD Nick thinks I should "add constructively to the debate, not just snidely." Truth be told, I've been busy with work, I'm smug like that, and, frankly, there's not much of a debate in my mind. So long as Kerry doesn't pull off his Treebeard mask to reveal that he is in fact Dick Cheney, Kerry gets my vote. But BTD Steve says that "[w]e are rapidly approaching the point (if it is not already past) at which productive debate about this issue will be impossible." This I agree with, but I think that this trend is less dependent on purely partisan bulwarks than a state in which two sides of the aisles are drawing from entirely disparate sets of facts. And I am baffled at the Republican set of facts, because I see—and these items have yet to be reasonably refuted—an absence of WMD; a less than hypothetical cooperation between Saddam and Osama; no hearts and minds won over; significant strain on our worldwide military presence; increased terrorist attacks across the globe; relatively obscure Iraqi religious figures rocketed into Islamicist godhead status; intentional escalation of the culture wars; degredation of the American intelligence apparatus, courtesy of Ahmed Chalabi, the Vice President's office, the Office of Special Plans, and one calculated CIA agent leak; administration-initiated obfuscation of our writs of prohibition against torture; a dissolving situation in Afghanistan; widespread evidence of the continued proliferation of nuclear arms; and no new ground won on the myriad, longstanding domestic issues that stymie our growth as a nation. I can't explain the Republican dataset, but it's not what I have in front of me, and I admit—it's all somewhat puzzling.
Posted by Kriston at June 24, 2004 8:55 PM"I'm smug like that."
LOL it's funny what busy + blogging turns into.
Posted by: Balasubramani at June 25, 2004 1:07 PM--Connections per the New York Times.
--More weapons, reported by the moonies but from a transcript of a Britt Hume live interview.
So...folks can be against the war or the handling of the war for lots of reasons and should continue to shout their criticisms from the rooftop. "Bush lied" ain't one of them. Reason 1 and 2 are being answered for you Kriston, on a daily basis now. --s
Posted by: j.scott barnard at June 25, 2004 1:30 PMFrom the above...
The Times:
American officials described the document as an internal report by the Iraqi intelligence service detailing efforts to seek cooperation with several Saudi opposition groups, including Mr. bin Laden's organization, before Al Qaeda had become a full-fledged terrorist organization. He was based in Sudan from 1992 to 1996, when that country forced him to leave and he took refuge in Afghanistan.
The document states that Iraq agreed to rebroadcast anti-Saudi propaganda, and that a request from Mr. bin Laden to begin joint operations against foreign forces in Saudi Arabia went unanswered. There is no further indication of collaboration.
and on the WMD...
Duelfer told Fox that even if the shells had degraded over time, they were still capable of killing "dozens" of people. He warned that both soldiers and civilians in Iraq should carry gas masks and have access to chem-bio suits.
Remember when we used to talk about Iraq's connections to the modern al-Qaida, and by some stretch, to 9/11? Remember when we used to talk about an "imminent" (yes, even if that specficic word never came out of Bush's mouth) threat to the United States and active WMD programs?
I bring this up to further Kriston's point about data sets. To you, Scott, I take it this evidence of some propaganda the Iraqis broadcast in the mid-'90s and some old, possibly obsolete warheads we dug up are convincing evidence that war was necessary immediately. Fair enough. It's not good enough for me, for a variety of reasons, but primarily because I thought we should continue to focus on Afghanistan and al-Qaida itself.
Maybe everyone's right and debate is now pointless, no matter which side you're arguing for. Especially since we're still wasting so much damn energy debating why we went to Iraq when that decision has already been made.
I don't have any idea what to make of Iraq right now or where it's going, and I wish people would talk about THAT more than invasion, or Clinton's stupid book, or whatever.
Posted by: matty at June 25, 2004 7:06 PMI was aghast when the media said that WMDs have been found in Iraq. A few empty shell casings are not WMDs, they're relics of the past with no military use other than to carry a warhead. Show me a warhead containing a chemical, biological or nuclear payload and I'll say you've found evidence of WMDs.
We all know Iraq 'Had' WMDs, he used chemical weapons against the Kurds. But the war was about Iraq 'having' WMDs, present tense, you'd think operational weapons of that kind would leave Some kind of trail, at least a few trucks running around or something.
Posted by: Justin at June 26, 2004 8:20 AMJustin, the shell casings weren't empty. They had mustard gas...some had sarin. Jeebus, folks. This obsession with WMD does cloud the overarching global-strategic imperative of democratizing as much of the region as possible. Whose side are we on? My senator walks out of a film where Michael Moore claims we went to Afghanistan to build a pipeline....and he gives it two thumbs up, literally. WTF? I understand the obsession with taking down Bush, and I'm all fine with that if that's what folks want, but we're in a war, not just in Iraq, and folks need to start coming together or we're going to vietnamize the whole war on terror...
I'd rather Bush lose, and we win the war in Iraq and the war on terror. Are you sure you could say the same thing about Kerry? I know there's an air of self-righteousness to what I'm saying, and I apologize in advance for the tone...but we need to check ourselves right now. Are we letting our partisanship get in the way of doing what's right in the world? ..for our nation?
--s
Posted by: j.scott barnard at June 26, 2004 11:57 AMKriston - I think I misunderstood your point. My apologies for "ripping you a new one." I really only meant to beg to differ.
My frustration is with the constantly moving goalposts regarding Iraq. There are "no WMD" (except for the mustard gas and sarin shells, which don't matter for some reason), there were "no ties" between Iraq and Al Qaeda (which has now, in the face of incontrovertible facts, become "no evidence of a collaborative relationship"). I thought the media irresponsibly reported the 9/11 Commission report (the NYT's Public Editor admitted as much in the Sunday Times) and if a bunch of bloggers, right wing or left wing, subsequently said things that didn't make sense, well, that's not surprising to me.
All the reasons you cited for supporting the Iraq war are legitimate, and persistent reports to the contrary notwithstanding, none of them has been conclusively disproved.
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