Friday, June 18, 2004

I can’t say that I put much stock in the 9/11 Commission or the CNN & NYT coverage of it. I’d be very surprised if the commission comes up with any significant recommendations that the Bush administration hasn’t already pursued. The anti-war assumption that a link between Saddam and al Qaeda is so doubtful is simply unrealistic. The left is so ready to criticize Bush for seeing things as black and white and for his lack of nuance that it is odd that they can’t fathom a secular government cooperating with a radical Islamic terror group, nor can they distinguish between Saddam’s ties to al Qaeda & his involvement with 9/11. And it’s odd that the left would completely rule out the latter because there isn’t a long paper trail to base it on. Fact: Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda communicated and had agreements. Both hate America. What is not known: just how deep those ties went. We also don’t know if Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. What we should assume: that Saddam and al Qaeda would cooperate to hurt the US. Is that so complicated – so steeped in what-ifs that the left can’t grasp it?

Reactions to the commission’s statements regarding Iraq and al Qaeda:

Russia warned the US that Saddam wanted terrorist attacks in the US post 9/11

9/11 commissioner comments on the comments

and another commissioner

Bush’s reaction & insistence that there were links

Cheney’s complaints on how the story has been covered

Clinton Administration on al Qaeda / Saddam ties

A USA Today story

Andrew Sullivan

And a fairly comprehensive piece in Tech Central
Posted by at

6 comments:

Dude said...

Just because there's no paper trail definitively showing a tie between Saddam and aliens doesn't mean they weren't cooperating. http://www.ufocity.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=3319

North Korea hates America. Is that a causality link between Kim Jong Il and al Qaeda?
And it's not an issue of those ties between Iraq and al Qaeda, it's an issue of how strong those ties were to justify $119 billion and 800+ American lives, versus the opportunity costs of not securing Afghanistan (the once-training home of al Qaeda!) due to a stretched-thin military. Or the opportunity cost of not taking a stronger stance against North Korea. Clearly, our Iraq invasion has not changed Kim Jong Il's mind about developing nukes.
Not only that, but is our occupation of Iraq serving as a recruiting tool for terrorist groups?
Wait, we don't have proof establishing ties to Osama and Wayne Newton, so maybe the Vegas act was an inroad to 9/11!
What is really going on is that by downgrading expectations for a democratic Iraq, and with no WMD found (except for an artillery shell), the only reason left that would matter to Americans is retaliation for 9/11. Big-hearted as we are, we aren't sinking that many resources into a country to liberate them. It's a nice thought, but it's a leap Average Joe is willing to make. (Think Rwanda, Bosnia in the early 90s, France before Pearl Harbor.)
Do you not put much stock into the 9/11 Commission because Bush stonewalled the creation of the commission? Or is it because the chair is a Republican?
You say Saddam and al Qaeda had agreements - what were they?

Here's an interesting bit comparing Clintonian symantec parsing with Bush's wording of al Qaeda-Iraq relationships -

"The operative word in the commission's finding is 'collaborative.' Contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida, it reported, 'do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship.' Bush doesn't dispute this either. In fact, he agrees; he claims that he never said that Saddam and Bin Laden 'orchestrated' the attacks.
"But didn't he at one point? Wasn't the claim of collaboration a rationale for invading Iraq? On Sept. 25, 2002, Bush said, 'You can't distinguish between al-Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror.' On May 1, 2003, aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, beneath the 'Mission Accomplished' banner, he declared, 'We have removed an ally of al-Qaeda and cut off a source of terrorist funding.'" - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5240374/

8:18 PM
Jeffrey Hill said...

To address the latter points of your comment:
I don’t put stock in the 9/11 Commission for a variety of reasons. You are correct: I think Bush was wise to resist the commission. First, the timing of it, so close to the attacks and right in the middle of the election year, means that their findings will be based on politics more than anything else (politics on both sides, admittedly). Second, I saw Bob Kerrey’s conduct during Rice’s second testimony (as well as that of Ben Veniste) & realized they care more about nailing Bush than they do about analyzing our preparedness. I also thought Richard Clarke’s apology to the victims was, though perhaps sincere, was reckless and damaging. I know you once referred to him as Bush’s Terrorism expert, but I think it’s more accurate to refer to him as Clinton’s terrorism expert who stayed on awhile after the transition.

The agreements between al Qaeda and Saddam that I was referring to came from the Clinton era grand jury indictment on Osama that I referenced in the post:

“Additionally, the indictment states that Al Qaeda reached an agreement
with Iraq not to work against the regime of Saddam Hussein and that
they would work cooperatively with Iraq, particularly in weapons
development.”

To me, one artillery shell found means that there are others that are not found. I wonder what happened with that story about the UN saying WMDs were moved before and during the war?

Finally, in response to your line:
“big-hearted as we are, we aren't sinking that many resources into a country to liberate them.” What are you talking about? We just did that. The fact that is serves other interests doesn’t diminish the good we have done.

1:19 PM
Jeffrey Hill said...

To address the latter points of your comment:
I don’t put stock in the 9/11 Commission for a variety of reasons. You are correct: I think Bush was wise to resist the commission. First, the timing of it, so close to the attacks and right in the middle of the election year, means that their findings will be based on politics more than anything else (politics on both sides, admittedly). Second, I saw Bob Kerrey’s conduct during Rice’s second testimony (as well as that of Ben Veniste) & realized they care more about nailing Bush than they do about analyzing our preparedness. I also thought Richard Clarke’s apology to the victims was, though perhaps sincere, was reckless and damaging. I know you once referred to him as Bush’s Terrorism expert, but I think it’s more accurate to refer to him as Clinton’s terrorism expert who stayed on awhile after the transition.

The agreements between al Qaeda and Saddam that I was referring to came from the Clinton era grand jury indictment on Osama that I referenced in the post:

“Additionally, the indictment states that Al Qaeda reached an agreement
with Iraq not to work against the regime of Saddam Hussein and that
they would work cooperatively with Iraq, particularly in weapons
development.”

To me, one artillery shell found means that there are others that are not found. I wonder what happened with that story about the UN saying WMDs were moved before and during the war?

Finally, in response to your line:
“big-hearted as we are, we aren't sinking that many resources into a country to liberate them.” What are you talking about? We just did that. The fact that is serves other interests doesn’t diminish the good we have done.

1:19 PM
Dude said...

Liberating people is not the primary reason Americans send their soldiers off to war. Talk of a smoking gun being a mushroom cloud, sure. Securing a source of oil, sure. Establishing a long-term stabilizing force in the region (assuming that happens with Iraq), sure.

8:37 PM
Jeffrey Hill said...

Those are all still valid reasons for this war. This can't be the same dude that once cited a fact that no two democratic nations ever fought each other. Every one of those reasons you mentioned are done with liberating the country. A liberated representative government in Iraq will not threaten the US with nukes, will provide a fair and stable market for oil, will be a force for reform and eventually stabilization in the region. Bush isn't trying to stabilize the region. Bush is breaking the artificial stability that, admittedly, the west helped create, which produced 9/11. There are plenty of reasons other than liberation to fight this war, but liberalization is key to making all those happen.

You're argument is like saying that the Civil War was not primarily about ending slavery.

9:22 PM
Steve said...

What nukes in Iraq? Part of the still-unfound Weapons of Mass Destruction? Oh... the metal centrifuges... and the sponge cake uranium... right.
I find it interesting that Conservative Revisionism even extends back into the history of the Republican party.
The Civil War was not initiated over slavery - it began as a response to the secession of South Carolina. True, S.C. seceded in large part due to the anti-slavery platform of Lincoln's election, but this was part of a greater economic strategy on the part of the recently formed republican party to move the economic strength of the nation further from the south to the rapidly industrializing north - by way of the "western states" conflict. The morality of slavery was purely a social concern, and even then - mostly used as a political talking point. "The cry of Free Man was raised, not for the extension of liberty to the black man, but for the protection of the liberty of the white." - Frederick Douglas
Instead, the central issue was the divergence of the two economic systems (industrializing northern economies vs agrarian southern) and which of these would continue to hold sway in the future course of American government.
To oversimplify, the war itself was begun due to the fact that Lincoln could not have the Mississippi, a major trade route and transport route for northern factories not under Union Control, hence the battle of Ft. Sumter.
It was not until halfway through the war at the drafting of the Emancipation Proclamation that the Civil War was officially given the moral center of it being about ending Slavery. And as historians point out - the Emancipation Proclamation was nothing more than a symbolic act, since it specifically only freed slaves in the at-the-time seceded south, saying nothing of the western states where slavery was still being debated.
Morally a noble cause, yes, but as it came after hostilities had been initiated, suspect when used ex post facto as the whole basis for the conflict.

For your argument to have merit, I would have to say that the formal declaration of war that began the Civl War would have to have included slavery as one of the lists of greivances.
Much like how (if I'm understanding your analogy correctly) the assertion of Hussein's possesion of Weapons of Mass Destruction was the moral impetus for our invasion of Iraq.
But this also falls apart under closer scrutiny as there was direct evidence of the moral failure of the idea of enslaving and exploiting another human being (once again, not addressed until HALFWAY THROUGH the conflict) while in the case of Iraq, there have only been assumptions and beliefs, and very little credible evidence.

12:43 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)