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Heard Andrea Mitchell make the same claim on an NPR interview on Friday with zero challenge from the NPR interviewer (so glad we have this last bastion of "alternative" voice in the MSM ... NOT). Guess we're supposed to go "o well, we meant well" and forget that we illegally and immorally invaded another nation, killed tens-of-thousands (if not over a hundred thousand) of its citizens, and laid its infrastructure to ruin.
However, even in the MSM, I recall pre-war a number of articles sourced from mid-level CIA personnel, military generals, and of course Scott Ritter, all giving doubt to any significant presence of WMD in Iraq and questioning Bush's motives and honesty.
Both Colin Powell and Condaleeza Rice are both on video, prior to the Orwellian march to war, announcing that Iraq represented zero threat to the U.S., our allies, or its neighbors. I think the videos were from the February 2002 timeframe. This literally right before the decision to wage imperial war. The march began a few months later when Condi announced with scowl that Saddam Hussein appeared to be holding a pilot from the first Gulf War prisoner somewhere in the bowels of Baghdad. Clearly a trial balloon to see how much anger and death-lust it could rile up. When I saw Condi make the announcement at a Sunday press conference, I turned to my wife and said we'd be at war with Iraq within a year.
But WMD are beside the point when it comes to the wrongness of the Bush ambition for war. At the risk of raising annoyance when quoting myself, I offer what I wrote in March 2003 on the matter:
"First, I see no reason to believe that Iraq represents the intensity of threat that the GWB administration has claimed; there has been zero serious evidence that the U.S. or our friends face imminent threat of any kind from Iraq. Instead, there has been a laughable series of half-truths, eliding justifications, and bald-faced lies. I therefore don't see any legal or moral justification for attacking Iraq at this time.
Second, I suggest the U.S. keep to its sound principles of Deterrence and Containment. They represent principles that have served our security interests very well since WWII. I reject the National Security Strategy’s newly announced (9/20/2002) principle of pre-emptive aggression (as well as the rest of its happy-politics-speak rewrite of the PNAC agenda).
I understand the arguments that, in the age of WMD proliferation and of ferocious terrorist will (greatly elevated with the attacks of 9-11), we may now need to rethink policy. Significant threats may no longer announce themselves as armies massing along borders, allowing time for security-maintaining (and legal) first strikes based on observed imminent threats. Some reasonable and thoughtful people today believe that the first sign of "imminent threat" might now be a rising mushroom cloud over Manhattan or Washington DC. They think, therefore, we must eliminate, not just real present threats, but the potential for such threats to emerge. Children and mothers in foreign lands might have to die based on a whim and a fear held by our President that someday – perhaps in a month, a year, or ten years – their leaders may develop the means and the will to attack the United States directly or by proxy via terrorists. Saddam Hussein, for example, might be developing nuclear weapons, and he might share them with terrorists, therefore we must amass our armies on his borders and attack to protect ourselves. I wholly reject this thinking.
Iraq has not sent its armies outside its borders since 1990; by our own CIA's reporting, they have had zero involvement with international terrorism since 1993. They have only used WMD twice, in 1988 and 1983 (while allied with U.S. interests). It's now, what? 2003? Deterrence and Containment works, my friends, and has been working very well in the case of Iraq for over a decade. Why abandon these sound principles now?
When in 1990 dear April Glaspie gave Saddam the green light to invade Kuwait (OK, a neutral light), we then hit Iraq with overwhelming force and pushed them back into their own borders. We did so quickly, legally, and morally; we were triggering the muscle of Deterrence and Containment. Iraq paid a terrible price for the foolhardy actions of their leader. Both his regime, and much of the rest of the world, learned that the U.S. has the might and the will to uphold the sanctity of sovereign borders (at least when its in our self-interest). The UN sanctions, UN inspection regimes, and no-fly zones (which are not authorized by the UN) have effectively quelled all further Iraqi aggression. Saddam Hussein has been successfully deterred from all further adventurism. Again, Deterrence and Containment worked and continues to work. Who disputes this?
Some say, "we can't continue to absorb the expense of maintaining the no-fly zones". Why not? Maintaining them is hugely less expensive than the estimated costs of war, rebuilding, and occupation, never mind the future costs that will accrue through erosion of our moral standing throughout the world.
Some say, "the sanctions are barbaric and must be stopped; we need to exact 'regime change' in order to do so". Bunk! We could've stopped the sanctions before they started. They have almost zero to do with why Saddam Hussein has not resumed his own desires for empire (which are greatly dwarfed by the ambitions of our own Caesar, thirsting for a new millennial Pax Americana). The example of Gulf War I, plus the no-fly zones and inspection regimes are what held him in check.
Some say, "Saddam is brutal, vile, represses his people -- war will free the Iraqi people and allow American-style democracy to emerge". If the lessons of history didn't stand in my way, I might believe this to be our motive and thus democracy the likely outcome. But our actions in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Panama, Grenada, Colombia, Chile (to name a few) lead me to believe the more likely outcome is the installation of a new repressive regime more friendly to American corporate interests.
So: Why abandon the sound principles of Deterrence and Containment now and leap to a new policy of pre-emptive attack? Where is the justification? Where is the evidence? Where is the imminent threat? Where is the moral clarity? I've been waiting for a smidgeon of these things since I first heard Condi Rice announce with feigned fervor and concern, back in March of 2002, that Iraq might be holding as a prisoner a pilot downed during the first hours of the first Gulf War. Trial balloon #1? You betcha! How can anyone trust anything these people have said since?
I recall Admiral Billingslea's testimony before Congress in the summer of 2002 overviewing the risks associated with unfriendly nations harboring terrorist groups (several of which undisputedly reside in Iraq -- though not Al Qaeda) while at the same time acquiring or building WMD. The fear is that one day an unfriendly leader will hand these weapons of violence to a terrorist group willing to use them.
First, its notable that the only weapons of mass destruction used to date have been fuel-full Boeing 747's with boxcutters serving as triggers. The leaders in unfriendly nations have so far refrained from sharing their WMD with terrorist groups for the same reason the U.S. has refused, for example, to share ours with terrorist client states: There is nothing to gain by it and more to lose. These are our toys, the powerful think, an underpinning of our power. Why dilute matters by sharing these means with others?
What the Billingslea argument demands is vigilant anti-proliferation regimes, not implementation of the insane Bush Doctrine underway now, where Iraq is to serve as an example to the rest of the world of our willingness to use our overwhelming force to unilaterally further our self-interest (the self-interest of an elite few at the top of our socioeconomic ladder). The message: Bend to our will, or else. It’s the message of the schoolyard bully.
So, if at the nation-state level Deterrence and Containment still works, why discontinue it now? And if 9-11 examples the stealthiness of future threat, then I advise that we thoroughly examine how 9-11 came to be. I remain puzzled why the GWB administration didn't on 9/12 authorize a full and complete investigation into how our hundreds of billion dollar security apparatus failed to prevent 9-11.
When that hijacker's passport magically appeared in the WTC rubble -- or was it when I learned that we already had full active Air Force protocols to follow whenever a domestic jet is hijacked that were, for some unexplained reason, NOT followed on 9-11 -- or was it when we were promised a full "white paper" detailing the evidence of Al Qaeda involvement, evidence that has never been presented to the world -- these things lead me to conclude that this war has just about nothing to do with WMD or terrorism or the desire to bring democracy to Iraq (after all, GWB's dad promised the same thing for Kuwait!), but instead more likely is meant to advance the interests of, well, whom? Halliburton? They have, note, already been awarded huge post-war contracts, and dear Cheney still receives $1mm a year from his old firm. Who else is lined up at the trough? But mostly, the question to ask is who's megalomaniacal ego will be advanced? Who is it that desires future schoolchildren to sing songs praising their names? What arrogance! And what folly!!
(And who PAYS for war, rebuilding, and occupation? Meanwhile GWB pushes a second trillion dollar tax break for the wealthy while polishing future speeches that surely will inform us that we can no longer afford Medicare and Social Security as we know it, or occupational and environmental regulations, or money for educating our young or feeding our needy. What a F*CKING DAMN TRAVESTY! And it continues...)
OK. Rant over. You can all go back to your seats and carry on..."
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