One of the goofier theories making the rounds of right-wing blogs after the war is that the U.S. actually wanted to attract the hundreds -- or is it thousands -- of Islamic jihadis who appear to have shown up in Iraq so our military could dispatch them there rather than in the streets of the U.S. (as if there aren’t enough of these nuts to cause problems in both places). This notion was propounded at length by Andrew Sullivan.
“What else did president Bush mean when he challenged the terror-masters to ‘bring 'em on,’ in Iraq?" Sullivan wrote. "Those are not the words of a man seeking merely to pacify a country, but to continue waging war against terrorism. On August 25, Donald Rumsfeld said to a group called the Veterans of Foreign Wars: ‘In Iraq moreover we¹re dealing not just with regime remnants but also with tens of thousands of criminals that were released from the jails by the regime before it fell, as well as terrorists and foreign fighters who have entered the country over the borders to try to oppose the Coalition. They pose a challenge to be sure but they also pose an opportunity because Coalition forces can deal with the terrorists now in Iraq instead of having to deal with those terrorists elsewhere, including the United States.’ Opportunity knocks.”
This just didn’t make any sense to me as a policy – the president inviting terror-masters to slug it out with our troops in Iraq. It would endanger our forces, cause trouble pacifying Iraq that might otherwise not occur and would in no way ensure that terrorists won’t strike again in the U.S.
My own thoughts were much more in tune with this rebuttal of Sullivan by Gregory Djerejian in his blog, Belgravia Dispatch:
“We went into Iraq to forcibly disarm Saddam of his WMD and unseat his regime. Not to have foreign jihadis and al-Qaeda open up fronts in Iraq so we could (allegedly) mop them up outside of Tel Aviv, London and NYC. There was no such strategy. There still isn't. And it wasn't (and isn't) unfolding. To so intimate is to be lapping up Pentagon propaganda without rational antenna up and about.”
That’s what I thought, too, until “fair and balanced” Fox News’ softball interview of President Bush last night. Here’s what he said about it:
" … I'm a man of peace. And obviously I would hope that we wouldn't have combat. I also live in a real world of being the president during a war on terror. So I guess I would rather fight them there than here. I know I would rather fight them there than here, and I know would rather fight them there than in other remote parts of the world, where it may be more difficult to find them." Here’s the full text.
So it looks like this actually might be a policy of some kind; the prez is so unspecific it’s hard to tell.
Want to know how we got here? See this play
My colleague, Lucy Mohl, writes:
For readers of this blog in the Seattle area, a night (or matinee) at the theater is due: Tony Kushner's "Homebody/Kabul" is in the middle of its run at Intiman Theatre. Anyone interested in the geo-political tectonic shifts of Afghanistan and the region needs to watch it like a refresher course in reality: these are living characters onstage, not body counts in a headline, playing out the scary prequel to 9/11.
"Homebody/Kabul" isn't just dramatically relevant; first written in the late 90's, at this point in history it feels necessary.
The production runs through October 11th.
JetBlue blues
Sure enough, when you give away confidential information about your customers, they get mad. They sue.
Bush gets a cool reception at the UN
Hardly surprising. Nor was Bush’s speech, which restated his justifications for the war in Iraq and requested help restoring civil affairs, including representative government, in Iraq, but no troops.
The Seattle Times home page has a link to video of Bush's remarks. Secretary General Kofi Annan, was critical of U.S. “unilateralism,” but also emphasized the need to root out terrorism.
Aussie newsman says administration knew there were no Iraq WMDs
John Pilger is an unapologetic lefty journalist from Down Under, and his reporting shows it. That doesn’t necessarily make him wrong, however. In a new documentary aired last night on London’s ITV, Pilger had tape and other information from a couple of years ago in which Secretary of State Colin Powell said Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice described his regime as weak and "militarily defenseless."
“In Cairo, on February 24 2001, Powell said: ‘He (Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours.’ …
“Two months later, Condoleezza Rice also described a weak, divided and militarily defenseless Iraq. ‘Saddam does not control the northern part of the country,’ she said. ‘We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.’ “
So, in the spring of ’01, Saddam was a weakling, no threat to even his immediate neighbors, much less us. He only bulked up after 9/11. Amazing, no?
The whole thing is here.
Update: Now there's this: Remember how the administration sent David Kay, former chief inspector for the UN International Atomic Energy Agency, to Iraq with a mandate to find Saddam's weapons of mass destruction? Good. Now forget it.
As recently as a couple of weeks ago the administration was saying Kay "continues to do his work. He's been compiling massive amounts of documents about Iraq's history of weapons of mass destruction and weapons of mass destruction program." Now, however, Rice says there probably will be no Kay report. (Link via Steven Aftergood's excellent Secrecy News newsletter.)
Incredible. She and Powell must have forgotten that they knew Saddam didn't have WMDs two years ago. Sure enough, I guess he still didn't have them.
As noted in this Asia Times piece, the reason Kay's report -- if he ever writes one -- is unlikely to see the light of day is that, "the Kay Report will mark the official retreat of US and British prewar claims. However unintentionally, it will be a direct refutation of official assertions that we had to go to war to prevent Saddam Hussein from using massive stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and possibly nuclear weapons....' "
What do the French want, anyway?
Again, the Belgravia Dispatch makes some informed suppositions based on French President Jacques Chirac’s interview with the New York Times.
The short take is that he wants to move toward shoring up France’s relationship with the U.S., which has been sorely taxed by the Iraq war.
Djerejian says Chriac’s assertion that he won’t veto a U.S. resolution on aid to Iraq “would be a pretty good outcome in terms of helping heal the ill feelings over all the spilt milk at Turtle Bay earlier this year. Still, if the French don't agree to more realistic sovereignty handover time frames--we will likely see an abstention. But they are telegraphing that before the negotiations get down and dirty--thus reducing their veto leverage mightily. So, especially viewed in that context, it's all pretty conciliatory fare that Chirac laid out in the interview.”
Oh, yeah – the California recall is back on again
See how this one plays for you.
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