So, Mr. Hitchens, Weren't You Wrong About Iraq?(Slate)

[White_Male_Canada]

Damn that F`n Neocon and his common sense

Hard questions, four years later.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, March 19, 2007, at 1:53 PM ET



Four years after the first coalition soldiers crossed the Iraqi border, one can attract pitying looks (at best) if one does not take the view that the whole engagement could have been and should have been avoided. Those who were opposed to the operation from the beginning now claim vindication, and many of those who supported it say that if they had known then what they know now, they would have spoken or voted differently.

What exactly does it mean to take the latter position? At what point, in other words, ought the putative supporter to have stepped off the train? The question isn't as easy to answer as some people would have you believe. Suppose we run through the actual timeline:

Was the president right or wrong to go to the United Nations in September 2002 and to say that body could no longer tolerate Saddam Hussein's open flouting of its every significant resolution, from weaponry to human rights to terrorism?

A majority of the member states thought he was right and had to admit that the credibility of the United Nations was at stake. It was scandalous that such a regime could for more than a decade have violated the spirit and the letter of the resolutions that had allowed a cease-fire after the liberation of Kuwait. The Security Council, including Syria, voted by nine votes to zero that Iraq must come into full compliance or face serious consequences.

Was it then correct to send military forces to the Gulf, in case Saddam continued his long policy of defiance, concealment, and expulsion or obstruction of U.N. inspectors?

If you understand the history of the inspection process at all, you must concede that Saddam would never have agreed to readmit the inspectors if coalition forces had not made their appearance on his borders and in the waters of the Gulf. It was never a choice between inspection and intervention: It was only the believable threat of an intervention that enabled even limited inspections to resume.

Should it not have been known by Western intelligence that Iraq had no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction?

The entire record of UNSCOM until that date had shown a determination on the part of the Iraqi dictatorship to build dummy facilities to deceive inspectors, to refuse to allow scientists to be interviewed without coercion, to conceal chemical and biological deposits, and to search the black market for materiel that would breach the sanctions. The defection of Saddam Hussein's sons-in-law, the Kamel brothers, had shown that this policy was even more systematic than had even been suspected. Moreover, Iraq did not account for—has in fact never accounted for—a number of the items that it admitted under pressure to possessing after the Kamel defection. We still do not know what happened to this weaponry. This is partly why all Western intelligence agencies, including French and German ones quite uninfluenced by Ahmad Chalabi, believed that Iraq had actual or latent programs for the production of WMD. Would it have been preferable to accept Saddam Hussein's word for it and to allow him the chance to re-equip once more once the sanctions had further decayed?

Could Iraq have been believably "inspected" while the Baath Party remained in power?

No. The word inspector is misleading here. The small number of U.N. personnel were not supposed to comb the countryside. They were supposed to monitor the handover of the items on Iraq's list, to check them, and then to supervise their destruction. (If Iraq disposed of the items in any other way—by burying or destroying or neutralizing them, as now seems possible—that would have been an additional grave breach of the resolutions.) To call for serious and unimpeachable inspections was to call, in effect, for a change of regime in Iraq. Thus, we can now say that Iraq is in compliance with the Nonproliferation Treaty. Moreover, the subsequent hasty compliance of Col. Muammar Qaddafi's Libya and the examination of his WMD stockpile (which proved to be much larger and more sophisticated than had been thought) allowed us to trace the origin of much materiel to Pakistan and thus belatedly to shut down the A.Q. Khan secret black market.

Wasn't Colin Powell's performance at the United Nations a bit of a disgrace?

Yes, it was, as was the supporting role played by George Tenet and the CIA (which has been reliably wrong on Iraq since 1963). Some good legal experts—Ruth Wedgwood most notably—have argued that the previous resolutions were self-enforcing and that there was no need for a second resolution or for Powell's dog-and-pony show. Some say that the whole thing was done in order to save Tony Blair's political skin. A few points of interest did emerge from Powell's presentation: The Iraqi authorities were caught on air trying to mislead U.N inspectors (nothing new there), and the presence in Iraq of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a very dangerous al-Qaida refugee from newly liberated Afghanistan, was established. The full significance of this was only to become evident later on.

Was the terror connection not exaggerated?

Not by much. The Bush administration never claimed that Iraq had any hand in the events of Sept. 11, 2001. But it did point out, at different times, that Saddam had acted as a host and patron to every other terrorist gang in the region, most recently including the most militant Islamist ones. And this has never been contested by anybody. The action was undertaken not to punish the last attack—that had been done in Afghanistan—but to forestall the next one.

Was a civil war not predictable?

Only to the extent that there was pre-existing unease and mistrust between the different population groups in Iraq. Since it was the policy of Saddam Hussein to govern by divide-and-rule and precisely to exacerbate these differences, it is unlikely that civil peace would have been the result of prolonging his regime. Indeed, so ghastly was his system in this respect that one-fifth of Iraq's inhabitants—the Kurds—had already left Iraq and were living under Western protection.

So, you seriously mean to say that we would not be living in a better or safer world if the coalition forces had turned around and sailed or flown home in the spring of 2003?

That's exactly what I mean to say.

http://www.slate.com/id/2162157/

[chefmike]

From retired Marine Colonel Rep. John Murtha:

Four Costly Years at War

Our Military men and women deserve the utmost praise and gratitude for their commitment and valor. I am inspired by their dedication and sacrifice. But the burden of a war that has been so costly in terms of dollars and lives cannot and should not continue to fall solely on them. We must honor our military by providing them with missions they can accomplish and with the equipment and training they need to fight and to protect their lives. We must insist that before we send our battle weary warriors back into intense combat, we give them the time they need to rest and reconstitute and the time they deserve to spend with family and loved ones.

During this year, the Bush Administration has requested $1 trillion for the Department of Defense. $9 billion a month is being expended for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including a $2 billion a month logistic trail for transporting equipment and personnel into Iraq.

Over 3,200 of our sons and daughters have lost their lives in Iraq and close to 25,000 have been wounded, to include thousands of traumatic brain injuries and hundreds of limb amputations. The cost of disability benefits as a result of this protracted and intense war will be staggering. A recent report by the Harvard University School of Government put the total cost of providing medical care and disability benefits to veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan at $350 to $700 billion.

While the U.S. continues to deplete its resources in Iraq, our ground forces in the United States are short on training, equipment and personnel. At the beginning of the Iraq war, 80% of all Army units and almost 100% of active combat units were rated at the highest levels of readiness. Just the opposite exists today. General Peter Schoomaker, Army Chief of Staff, said last week during a hearing on the Hill, "We have a strategy right now that is outstripping the means to execute it." General Cody, the Vice Chief, said that the Army's readiness level is "stark."

Meanwhile in Iraq the situation remains dire. Benchmarks established by this Administration are elusive and routinely ignored. Official reports sent to Congress indicate that oil production and electricity remain below prewar levels and less than half of the Iraqi population is employed. Attacks on U.S. forces have increased by 10 more percentage points over the last four months and the Iraqi Security Forces are not taking over the fight as promised. Two million Iraqis, many of who made up the brain trust in Iraq, have fled to neighboring countries. A new BBC poll shows that only 18% of Iraqis have confidence in U.S.-led forces and 53% of Iraqis believe security will improve when the U.S. withdraws from Iraq. The Pentagon is finally coming around to the fact that Iraq is engulfed in its own civil war. In its most recent report to Congress, Pentagon analysts reported "some elements of the situation in Iraq are properly descriptive of a "civil war," including the hardening of ethno-sectarian identities and mobilization, the changing character of the violence, and population displacements."

After four years of incompetence and mismanagement, this Administration must come to the realization that Iraq's civil war can only be solved by the Iraqi people and that stability in Iraq can only be accomplished when U.S. and coalition forces end the occupation and redeploy.
_________________

[guyone]

I guess some people won't wake up until they smell the U-235 isotope.

[qeuqheeg222]

is that the same u-235 isotope in our own depleted uranium shells or the tanks armoured with this same?why have we been shootin these rounds at the iraqies since the first go round and still?people have wondered if this is the real reason behind gulf war syndrome...

[guyone]

salama lakim my friend.

[LG]

What was LG saying about the link between being right-wing and mental illness? Maybe it's actually brain-damage!

It was right here:
http://www.hungangels.com/board/viewtopic.php?t=13375

I didn't put much credence into it, initially. I just used it to counter WMC ridiculous argument. But he's managed to proved it right.

See also:
http://www.healthscout.com/template....ap=1&id=500579

[White_Male_Canada]

What was LG saying about the link between being right-wing and mental illness? Maybe it's actually brain-damage!

It was right here:
http://www.hungangels.com/board/viewtopic.php?t=13375

I didn't put much credence into it, initially. I just used it to counter WMC ridiculous argument. But he's managed to proved it right.

See also:
http://www.healthscout.com/template....ap=1&id=500579

We all knew your inner thoughts.

It just happened you were the first sucker to take the bait and expose your Stalinist views.

Its just too easy exposing the you leftists[, you do all the work.

[trish]

isn't that nice...WMC watches the afternoon soaps and posts gifs from them. did i say nice...i meant pathetic.

[White_Male_Canada]

isn't that nice...WMC watches the afternoon soaps and posts gifs from them. did i say nice...i meant pathetic.

Trish, you`re so mean.

[LG]

It just happened you were the first sucker to take the bait and expose your Stalinist views.

You know WMC, that could be libellous to the good LG?

Its just too easy exposing the you leftists[, you do all the work. [/b]

Who the hell are the, "you leftists["? I've never heard of them before. Are they one of the parties that fit into that large space between Republican and Libertarian on that American Federalist Spectrum you posted on another thread? Or are the "you leftists[", really just one of those many kooky ideas that seem to inhabit the large space between your ears, WMC? Anyway, I don't think LG is a "you leftist[", whatever they are.

I think we should change that to "the large empty space"

And thank you, ILCB. I am indeed not a Stalinist nor indeed one of the "you leftists" but an independent (who has actually voted for the right wing candidate in the latest local elections because I believed she could do a better job).

I have never met a "you leftist", but if I do, I'll pass on my regards from our Canadian friend, possibly a former member of the "you leftists", since he seems to know such a great deal about what a "you leftist" stands for.



Good one, ILCB. Please note that in a recent post, WMC effectively admitted that he was aware that the study he was posting at the time was a pile of old shite, because, he says "debate is like chess" (the object of the game, as WMC sees it, being to sacrifice your queen as soon as possible and then bitch about how the piece that took her was a "you leftist").

By admitting this now (although at the time he was pretty riled when I exposed the absurdity of his post), WMC is effectively also admitting that he is liable to post any old shit on these forums just to see who "will take the bait". Of course, we knew this.

Having also admitted that he visits the forums just to annoy us, WMC has in fact proven that he is not, as ezed suggested, a "chimp" "throwing shit" from "a cage called Canada" but an ugly hairy animal with a big nose and bulging eyes that lurks in the forests of Norway (starts with a "t").