Terrorism (19 Viewers)
- Thread starter Zlatan
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OK, so I saw Scott Ritter speak today. Great stuff. As a lot of things at the Commonwealth Club, his speech will likely be aired on NPR within a few days.
The (not so quick) story...
He didn't fault so much Republicans or Democrats -- or "intelligence failures" -- for the whole WMD bust in Iraq. Rather, he traced today's outcomes back to policies implemented under the first George Bush administration that wanted to depose Saddam Hussein -- plain and simple. Policies upheld from Bush to Clinton to Bush Jr.
At first the hope was that there would be an internal coup d'etat after the first Gulf War in 1991. That was wholly mismanaged, and the Sunni and Kurdish efforts were crushed, etc.
So the U.S. implementation of that policy instead shifted to economic sanctions. And the way to maintain popular support for sanctions was to create a boogeyman scenario under the guise of disarmament. Everytime that UN inspectors (or someone else) could say they didn't find anything, the strategy to maintain the U.S. policy of removing Saddam through economic sanctions would be upheld by continuing to claim phantom WMDs that their intelligence sources would know about but couldn't share the info with anybody. Iraq could be falsely held in perpetual non-compliance, allowing the sanctions to persist with the hope of ultimately destabilizing the country and triggering the overthrow of Saddam. Meanwhile, it's estimated that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died as a result of these sanctions. All in an effort to depose Saddam.
That still didn't work. And by the time food-for-oil programs were instituted, the quality of life in Iraq started to improve in the late 1990s. And with 9/11, a ready window opened up for the U.S. to take military action where sanctions failed. Meanwhile, in that 6-year period Israeli intelligence, for example, reranked Iraq from their #1 national threat to #6 -- indicating that their perception of the Iraqi threat of WMDs was completely out of line with the White House's message in 2002.
Intelligence officials were basically instructed to scrounge for evidence to support the policy to support a U.S. invasion to depose of Saddam. Meanwhile, he fully believes that all U.S. top-level officials knew full well there were no WMDs throughout... that it was all just a ruse to disguise the real intentions of their policy towards Iraq, and one that would trigger more popular support for a war -- a war with popular support based on fear and uncertainty.
He felt that if we really believed in evidence of WMDs, we would have taken out those targets first -- instead of strategic targets as the U.S. military did. And thus we sent U.S. troops into Iraq wearing chemical weapons gear -- knowing full well that we endangered our troops with bulky gear in the field of battle that was wholly unnecessary ... other than to keep up appearances. (It was really aggravating to listen to this, to hear him step through his logic, and to ultimately feel that he is probably dead right yet again with what I now think is the most plausible explanation for why the U.S. is in Iraq right now.)
He drew from his training as a U.S. Marine, where he says you learn to reinforce success, not failure. And he feels that the U.S. presence in Iraq now has no chance but failure: it's an unwinnable war, there are no clear objectives for success, and thus no achievable means of ever gaining that success. He predicted that the U.S. would either eventually leave Iraq or be chased out. He thinks that Saddam knows Iraq far better than we ever could, and he and his Baathists ensured that systems, plans and organizations were in place in Iraq before the invasion to ensure the U.S. could not succeed at any long-term occupation there.
Pretty harrowing stuff. I haven't seen the guy since Oct 2002 when he so accurately predicted that Iraq had no WMDs and the U.S. would soon invade anyway. I think he has the most credible explanation I've heard yet, and I am fully convinced that he'll be right once again for how this war will turn out.
...And here's a bad picture I took from the 4th row...
The (not so quick) story...
He didn't fault so much Republicans or Democrats -- or "intelligence failures" -- for the whole WMD bust in Iraq. Rather, he traced today's outcomes back to policies implemented under the first George Bush administration that wanted to depose Saddam Hussein -- plain and simple. Policies upheld from Bush to Clinton to Bush Jr.
At first the hope was that there would be an internal coup d'etat after the first Gulf War in 1991. That was wholly mismanaged, and the Sunni and Kurdish efforts were crushed, etc.
So the U.S. implementation of that policy instead shifted to economic sanctions. And the way to maintain popular support for sanctions was to create a boogeyman scenario under the guise of disarmament. Everytime that UN inspectors (or someone else) could say they didn't find anything, the strategy to maintain the U.S. policy of removing Saddam through economic sanctions would be upheld by continuing to claim phantom WMDs that their intelligence sources would know about but couldn't share the info with anybody. Iraq could be falsely held in perpetual non-compliance, allowing the sanctions to persist with the hope of ultimately destabilizing the country and triggering the overthrow of Saddam. Meanwhile, it's estimated that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died as a result of these sanctions. All in an effort to depose Saddam.
That still didn't work. And by the time food-for-oil programs were instituted, the quality of life in Iraq started to improve in the late 1990s. And with 9/11, a ready window opened up for the U.S. to take military action where sanctions failed. Meanwhile, in that 6-year period Israeli intelligence, for example, reranked Iraq from their #1 national threat to #6 -- indicating that their perception of the Iraqi threat of WMDs was completely out of line with the White House's message in 2002.
Intelligence officials were basically instructed to scrounge for evidence to support the policy to support a U.S. invasion to depose of Saddam. Meanwhile, he fully believes that all U.S. top-level officials knew full well there were no WMDs throughout... that it was all just a ruse to disguise the real intentions of their policy towards Iraq, and one that would trigger more popular support for a war -- a war with popular support based on fear and uncertainty.
He felt that if we really believed in evidence of WMDs, we would have taken out those targets first -- instead of strategic targets as the U.S. military did. And thus we sent U.S. troops into Iraq wearing chemical weapons gear -- knowing full well that we endangered our troops with bulky gear in the field of battle that was wholly unnecessary ... other than to keep up appearances. (It was really aggravating to listen to this, to hear him step through his logic, and to ultimately feel that he is probably dead right yet again with what I now think is the most plausible explanation for why the U.S. is in Iraq right now.)
He drew from his training as a U.S. Marine, where he says you learn to reinforce success, not failure. And he feels that the U.S. presence in Iraq now has no chance but failure: it's an unwinnable war, there are no clear objectives for success, and thus no achievable means of ever gaining that success. He predicted that the U.S. would either eventually leave Iraq or be chased out. He thinks that Saddam knows Iraq far better than we ever could, and he and his Baathists ensured that systems, plans and organizations were in place in Iraq before the invasion to ensure the U.S. could not succeed at any long-term occupation there.
Pretty harrowing stuff. I haven't seen the guy since Oct 2002 when he so accurately predicted that Iraq had no WMDs and the U.S. would soon invade anyway. I think he has the most credible explanation I've heard yet, and I am fully convinced that he'll be right once again for how this war will turn out.
...And here's a bad picture I took from the 4th row...
swag said:
OK, so I saw Scott Ritter speak today. Great stuff. As a lot of things at the Commonwealth Club, his speech will likely be aired on NPR within a few days.
The (not so quick) story...
He didn't fault so much Republicans or Democrats -- or "intelligence failures" -- for the whole WMD bust in Iraq. Rather, he traced today's outcomes back to policies implemented under the first George Bush administration that wanted to depose Saddam Hussein -- plain and simple. Policies upheld from Bush to Clinton to Bush Jr.
At first the hope was that there would be an internal coup d'etat after the first Gulf War in 1991. That was wholly mismanaged, and the Sunni and Kurdish efforts were crushed, etc.
So the U.S. implementation of that policy instead shifted to economic sanctions. And the way to maintain popular support for sanctions was to create a boogeyman scenario under the guise of disarmament. Everytime that UN inspectors (or someone else) could say they didn't find anything, the strategy to maintain the U.S. policy of removing Saddam through economic sanctions would be upheld by continuing to claim phantom WMDs that their intelligence sources would know about but couldn't share the info with anybody. Iraq could be falsely held in perpetual non-compliance, allowing the sanctions to persist with the hope of ultimately destabilizing the country and triggering the overthrow of Saddam. Meanwhile, it's estimated that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died as a result of these sanctions. All in an effort to depose Saddam.
That still didn't work. And by the time food-for-oil programs were instituted, the quality of life in Iraq started to improve in the late 1990s. And with 9/11, a ready window opened up for the U.S. to take military action where sanctions failed. Meanwhile, in that 6-year period Israeli intelligence, for example, reranked Iraq from their #1 national threat to #6 -- indicating that their perception of the Iraqi threat of WMDs was completely out of line with the White House's message in 2002.
Intelligence officials were basically instructed to scrounge for evidence to support the policy to support a U.S. invasion to depose of Saddam. Meanwhile, he fully believes that all U.S. top-level officials knew full well there were no WMDs throughout... that it was all just a ruse to disguise the real intentions of their policy towards Iraq, and one that would trigger more popular support for a war -- a war with popular support based on fear and uncertainty.
He felt that if we really believed in evidence of WMDs, we would have taken out those targets first -- instead of strategic targets as the U.S. military did. And thus we sent U.S. troops into Iraq wearing chemical weapons gear -- knowing full well that we endangered our troops with bulky gear in the field of battle that was wholly unnecessary ... other than to keep up appearances. (It was really aggravating to listen to this, to hear him step through his logic, and to ultimately feel that he is probably dead right yet again with what I now think is the most plausible explanation for why the U.S. is in Iraq right now.)
He drew from his training as a U.S. Marine, where he says you learn to reinforce success, not failure. And he feels that the U.S. presence in Iraq now has no chance but failure: it's an unwinnable war, there are no clear objectives for success, and thus no achievable means of ever gaining that success. He predicted that the U.S. would either eventually leave Iraq or be chased out. He thinks that Saddam knows Iraq far better than we ever could, and he and his Baathists ensured that systems, plans and organizations were in place in Iraq before the invasion to ensure the U.S. could not succeed at any long-term occupation there.
Pretty harrowing stuff. I haven't seen the guy since Oct 2002 when he so accurately predicted that Iraq had no WMDs and the U.S. would soon invade anyway. I think he has the most credible explanation I've heard yet, and I am fully convinced that he'll be right once again for how this war will turn out.
...And here's a bad picture I took from the 4th row...
The (not so quick) story...
He didn't fault so much Republicans or Democrats -- or "intelligence failures" -- for the whole WMD bust in Iraq. Rather, he traced today's outcomes back to policies implemented under the first George Bush administration that wanted to depose Saddam Hussein -- plain and simple. Policies upheld from Bush to Clinton to Bush Jr.
At first the hope was that there would be an internal coup d'etat after the first Gulf War in 1991. That was wholly mismanaged, and the Sunni and Kurdish efforts were crushed, etc.
So the U.S. implementation of that policy instead shifted to economic sanctions. And the way to maintain popular support for sanctions was to create a boogeyman scenario under the guise of disarmament. Everytime that UN inspectors (or someone else) could say they didn't find anything, the strategy to maintain the U.S. policy of removing Saddam through economic sanctions would be upheld by continuing to claim phantom WMDs that their intelligence sources would know about but couldn't share the info with anybody. Iraq could be falsely held in perpetual non-compliance, allowing the sanctions to persist with the hope of ultimately destabilizing the country and triggering the overthrow of Saddam. Meanwhile, it's estimated that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died as a result of these sanctions. All in an effort to depose Saddam.
That still didn't work. And by the time food-for-oil programs were instituted, the quality of life in Iraq started to improve in the late 1990s. And with 9/11, a ready window opened up for the U.S. to take military action where sanctions failed. Meanwhile, in that 6-year period Israeli intelligence, for example, reranked Iraq from their #1 national threat to #6 -- indicating that their perception of the Iraqi threat of WMDs was completely out of line with the White House's message in 2002.
Intelligence officials were basically instructed to scrounge for evidence to support the policy to support a U.S. invasion to depose of Saddam. Meanwhile, he fully believes that all U.S. top-level officials knew full well there were no WMDs throughout... that it was all just a ruse to disguise the real intentions of their policy towards Iraq, and one that would trigger more popular support for a war -- a war with popular support based on fear and uncertainty.
He felt that if we really believed in evidence of WMDs, we would have taken out those targets first -- instead of strategic targets as the U.S. military did. And thus we sent U.S. troops into Iraq wearing chemical weapons gear -- knowing full well that we endangered our troops with bulky gear in the field of battle that was wholly unnecessary ... other than to keep up appearances. (It was really aggravating to listen to this, to hear him step through his logic, and to ultimately feel that he is probably dead right yet again with what I now think is the most plausible explanation for why the U.S. is in Iraq right now.)
He drew from his training as a U.S. Marine, where he says you learn to reinforce success, not failure. And he feels that the U.S. presence in Iraq now has no chance but failure: it's an unwinnable war, there are no clear objectives for success, and thus no achievable means of ever gaining that success. He predicted that the U.S. would either eventually leave Iraq or be chased out. He thinks that Saddam knows Iraq far better than we ever could, and he and his Baathists ensured that systems, plans and organizations were in place in Iraq before the invasion to ensure the U.S. could not succeed at any long-term occupation there.
Pretty harrowing stuff. I haven't seen the guy since Oct 2002 when he so accurately predicted that Iraq had no WMDs and the U.S. would soon invade anyway. I think he has the most credible explanation I've heard yet, and I am fully convinced that he'll be right once again for how this war will turn out.
...And here's a bad picture I took from the 4th row...
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