Justifying the Iraq invasion

If the Center for Public "Integrity" were truly non-partisan, why is their focus on Bush?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Charles Lewis is a former 60 Minutes producer who left the ranks of commercial journalism to found, in 1989, the Center for Public Integrity,[1] a non-partisan group which reports on political and government workings. When commenting on his move away from primetime journalism, Lewis expressed his frustration that the most important issues of the day were not being reported. Lewis and the Center recently won the first George Polk Award for Internet Journalism for the piece "Windfalls of War." He is also a hardcore liberal, as seen through many of his publications.</div>

Fund for Independence in Journalism?

Neato.

http://www.tfij.org/about/president/

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>President Charles Lewis
Background

Charles Lewis is the founding president of the Fund for Independence in Journalism. Lewis founded and for 15 years was executive director of the nonprofit investigative reporting organization the Center for Public Integrity, which produced roughly 300 reports and 14 books during his tenure, garnering 35 national journalism awards. In 1997, he began the Center's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the world's first working network of premier investigative reporters, currently 95 people in 48 countries.</div>

No connection? LOL

I see they didn't bother to count things like this:

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For any of Bush's statements to be lies, he'd have had to know he wasn't telling the truth. See the definition of "lie" (as in falsehood) in the dictionary of your choice.

I certainly question the integrity of the study, and rightly so.

What my previous post shows is that 2 years before Bush even ran for president (and few people knew of him), the Clinton administration was saying the same things. And Democrats were saying the same things. And the French were saying the same things. And the Russians, and the Germans.

As AEM pointed out, it's a complicated issue. Saddam fooled everyone, including his own generals, into believing he had stockpiles of WMDs.

The NY Times is no friend of the Bush administration, yet:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/internat...amp;oref=slogin

The Iraqi dictator was so secretive and kept information so compartmentalized that his top military leaders were stunned when he told them three months before the war that he had no weapons of mass destruction, and they were demoralized because they had counted on hidden stocks of poison gas or germ weapons for the nation's defense.

...

Much of this material is included in a secret history prepared by the American military of how Mr. Hussein and his commanders fought their war. Posing as military historians, American analysts interrogated more than 110 Iraqi officials and military officers, treating some to lavish dinners to pry loose their secrets and questioning others in a detention center at the Baghdad airport or the Abu Ghraib prison. United States military officials view the accounts as credible because many were similar. In addition, more than 600 captured Iraqi documents were reviewed.

...

Mr. Hussein did take some steps to avoid provoking war, though. While diplomatic efforts by France, Germany and Russia were under way to avert war, he rejected proposals to mine the Persian Gulf, fearing that the Bush administration would use such an action as an excuse to strike, the Joint Forces Command study noted.

In December 2002, he told his top commanders that Iraq did not possess unconventional arms, like nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, according to the Iraq Survey Group, a task force established by the C.I.A. to investigate what happened to Iraq's weapons programs. Mr. Hussein wanted his officers to know they could not rely on poison gas or germ weapons if war broke out. The disclosure that the cupboard was bare, Mr. Aziz said, sent morale plummeting.

To ensure that Iraq would pass scrutiny by United Nations arms inspectors, Mr. Hussein ordered that they be given the access that they wanted. And he ordered a crash effort to scrub the country so the inspectors would not discover any vestiges of old unconventional weapons, no small concern in a nation that had once amassed an arsenal of chemical weapons, biological agents and Scud missiles, the Iraq survey group report said.

Mr. Hussein's compliance was not complete, though. Iraq's declarations to the United Nations covering what stocks of illicit weapons it had possessed and how it had disposed of them were old and had gaps. And Mr. Hussein would not allow his weapons scientists to leave the country, where United Nations officials could interview them outside the government's control.

Seeking to deter Iran and even enemies at home, the Iraqi dictator's goal was to cooperate with the inspectors while preserving some ambiguity about its unconventional weapons — a strategy General Hamdani, the Republican Guard commander, later dubbed in a television interview "deterrence by doubt."

That strategy led to mutual misperception. When Secretary of State Colin L. Powell addressed the Security Council in February 2003, he offered evidence from photographs and intercepted communications that the Iraqis were rushing to sanitize suspected weapons sites. Mr. Hussein's efforts to remove any residue from old unconventional weapons programs were viewed by the Americans as efforts to hide the weapons. The very steps the Iraqi government was taking to reduce the prospect of war were used against it, increasing the odds of a military confrontation.

Even some Iraqi officials were impressed by Mr. Powell's presentation. Abd al-Tawab Mullah Huwaish, who oversaw Iraq's military industry, thought he knew all the government's secrets. But Bush administration officials were so insistent that he began to question whether Iraq might have prohibited weapons after all. "I knew a lot, but wondered why Bush believed we had these weapons," he told interrogators after the war, according to the Iraq Survey Group report.

 

Yes, it does depend on what the definition of lie is.

There's two real possibilities here. First, the administration knew there were no WMDs and absolutely did lie about what they knew. Second, the administration was no different than the Clinton administration and the rest of the world, including Saddam's own generals, in believing there were WMDs. There's no evidence of the former, just accusations from political enemies. There's plenty of evidence to the latter, just a smidge of which I've already posted.

Watch the end of that youtube video. Bush pretty much nailed it. He had the support of congress, including democrats on the intelligence and armed services committees with top clearance and access to the NIEs and closed door sessions with the people who wrote the reports. Bush acknowledges that people have reason to criticize a lot of things he's done poorly.

Let me add that the administration led a huge effort to find and secure the WMDs immediately, and didn't hide the truth (that they couldn't be found). If they wanted to lie about it, they'd have sent over an Ollie North type to plant WMDs to be found.

The "lie" smear is so full of holes, it's hard to believe that people fall for it.

 

Later today, I'll add to my blog my view of why taking out Saddam was fully justified and why we had a moral imperative to do so.

I will say this much here: as a libertarian, I generally agree that our troops should be here defending the homeland from attack. I voted for Mike Badnarik in 2004 because I felt we had done all we were morally obligated to do and he was the true candidate who'd have brought the troops home back then. However, the decision to nation build is not unreasonable and once that decision made, we have to see it through - again, we're morally obligated.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (blackadder @ Jan 24 2008, 02:59 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (AEM)</div><div class='quotemain'>AK-47s are not WMDs,</div>

I am aware. I'm just saying that the current admin knew there no true WMD's so they just told a partial truth, embellished, etc...

</div>

The thing is they didn't know there were no true WMDs. They sure sent in a lot of guys to look for them - not something they'd do if they knew they weren't there.

Something to consider. Clinton was president and obviously had access to NIE and other intel right up until Jan. 20, 2001, three years before Saddam was deposed, and two years before he wrote this op-ed in the Guardian. What exactly changed in the situation that could possibly lead anyone to conclude he had disarmed and there were no WMDs?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,...,916233,00.html

Trust Tony's judgment
<span style="font-family:arialhelveticasans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%">Bill Clinton</span></span>

<span style="font-family:GenevaArialsans-serif"><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:100%"> Tuesday March 18, 2003
The Guardian </span></span>

In November, the UN security council adopted unanimously resolution 1441, giving Saddam a "final opportunity" to disarm, after 12 years of defying UN resolutions requiring him to do so. The resolution made it clear that continued sanctions were not sufficient and that continued defiance would lead to serious consequences.

...

The credit for 1441 belongs in large measure to Blair, who saw it as a chance to disarm Saddam in a way that strengthened the UN and preserved the Atlantic alliance. Unfortunately, the consensus behind 1441 has unravelled. Saddam has destroyed some missiles but beyond that he has done only what he thinks is necessary to keep the UN divided on the use of force. The really important issues relating to chemical and biological weapons remain unresolved. In the face of the foot dragging, hawks in America have been pushing for an immediate attack on Iraq. Some of them want regime change for reasons other than disarmament, and, therefore, they have discredited the inspection process from the beginning; they did not want it to succeed. Because military action probably will require only a few days, they believe the world community will quickly unite on rebuilding Iraq as soon as Saddam is deposed.

On the other side, France, Germany and Russia are adamantly opposed to the use of force or imposing any ultimatum on Saddam as long as the inspectors are working. They believe that, at least as long as the inspectors are there, Iraq will not use or give away its chemical and biological stocks, and therefore, no matter how unhelpful Saddam is, he does not pose a threat sufficient to justify invasion. After 150,000 US forces were deployed to the Gulf, they concluded the US was not willing to give inspections a chance anyway. The problem with their position is that only the threat of force from the US and the UK got inspectors back into Iraq in the first place. Without a credible threat of force, Saddam will not disarm.

Once again, Blair stepped into the breach, with a last-ditch proposal to restore unity to the UN and disarm Saddam without military action. He secured US support for a new UN resolution that would require Saddam to meet dead lines, within a reasonable time, in four important areas, including accounting for his biological and chemical weapons and allowing Iraqi scientists to leave the country for interviews. Under the proposed resolution, <span style="color:#ff0000">failure to comply with this deadline would justify the use of force to depose Saddam.</span>

Russia and France opposed this resolution and said they would veto it, because inspections are proceeding, weapons are being destroyed and there is therefore no need for a force ultimatum. Essentially they have decided Iraq presents no threat even if it never disarms, at least as long as inspectors are there.

The veto threat did not help the diplomacy. It's too bad, because if a majority of the security council had adopted the Blair approach, Saddam would have had no room for further evasion and he still might have disarmed without invasion and bloodshed. Now, it appears that force will be used to disarm and depose him.

As Blair has said, in war there will be civilian was well as military casualties. There is, too, as both Britain and America agree, some risk of Saddam using or transferring his weapons to terrorists. There is as well the possibility that more angry young Muslims can be recruited to terrorism. But if we leave Iraq with chemical and biological weapons, after 12 years of defiance, there is a considerable risk that one day these weapons will fall into the wrong hands and put many more lives at risk than will be lost in overthrowing Saddam.

 

Brand new story, today, from the network that brought us RatherBiased.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/24/...in3749494.shtml

Interrogator: Invasion Surprised Saddam
Jan. 24, 2008(CBS) Saddam Hussein initially didn't think the U.S. would invade Iraq to destroy weapons of mass destruction, so he kept the fact that he had none a secret to prevent an Iranian invasion he believed could happen. The Iraqi dictator revealed this thinking to George Piro, the FBI agent assigned to interrogate him after his capture.

Piro, in his first television interview, relays this and other revelations to 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley this Sunday, Jan. 27, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Piro spent almost seven months debriefing Saddam in a plan based on winning his confidence by convincing him that Piro was an important envoy who answered to President Bush. This and being Saddam's sole provider of items like writing materials and toiletries made the toppled Iraqi president open up to Piro, a Lebanese-American and one of the few FBI agents who spoke Arabic.

"He told me he initially miscalculated... President Bush’s intentions. He thought the United States would retaliate with the same type of attack as we did in 1998...a four-day aerial attack," says Piro. "He survived that one and he was willing to accept that type of attack." "He didn't believe the U.S. would invade?" asks Pelley, "No, not initially," answers Piro.

Once the invasion was certain, says Piro, Saddam asked his generals if they could hold the invaders for two weeks. "And at that point, it would go into what he called the secret war," Piro tells Pelley. But Piro isn’t convinced that the insurgency was Saddam's plan. "Well, he would like to take credit for the insurgency," says Piro.

Saddam still wouldn't admit he had no weapons of mass destruction, even when it was obvious there would be military action against him because of the perception he did. Because, says Piro, "For him, it was critical that he was seen as still the strong, defiant Saddam. He thought that [faking having the weapons] would prevent the Iranians from reinvading Iraq," he tells Pelley.

He also intended and had the wherewithal to restart the weapons program. "Saddam] still had the engineers. The folks that he needed to reconstitute his program are still there," says Piro. "He wanted to pursue all of WMD…to reconstitute his entire WMD program." This included chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, Piro says.

Saddam bragged that he changed his routine and security to elude capture. "What he wanted to really illustrate is…how he was able to outsmart us," says Piro. "He told me he changed…the way he traveled. He got rid of his normal vehicles. He got rid of the protective detail that he traveled with, really just to change his signature."

It took nine months to finally capture Saddam, but U.S. calculations on where he might be early on turned out to be accurate. Saddam was at Dora Farms early in the war when the known presidential site was targeted with tons of bombs and many missiles. "He said it in a kind of a bragging fashion that he was there, but that we missed him. He wasn't bothered by the fact that he was there," Piro tells Pelley.