Anyone taking the slightest look at Iraqi history would realize that we will never gain any “permanent victory over the insurgency.” That’s a pipe dream. At best, we can keep a lid on it. That’s what everyone from the Seljuks to the British to Saddam himself have done in the past. The question is, how much money and how many men do want to lose holding the lid down.

Mr. Copold’s point is a little off from mine. My point is, and has been for a long time, if we must stay there forever to keep the lid on, then regardless of how great or even how little the human and financial cost, we will not have won a victory. If we cannot win a victory, then we must be frank about that with ourselves and decide on our policy accordingly. Maybe we would decide that it was like the Cold War, where we had to leave hundreds of thousands of troops in Europe for decades in order to keep Europe free from Soviet domination or invasion. But if that’s the case, we need to be truthful about that. What is intolerable about George W. Boilerplate and his supporters is that they never come clean with us about these problems.

I should like to pose the following question: How do you define the word “victory”? There have been so many twists on the idea that many of us are in the dark as to the substance of your disagreement.

I remember when we were all gearing up to head over to Iraq in February of ‘03. The media knew the war was coming just as we did, and they threw everything they had at us, from heavily entrenched, “elite” Republican Guard units just waiting to spring devastating ambushes, to the hovering spectre of Vietnam waiting to stake it’s claim to the earth once again. This was before we took many of the major cities in a blitzkrieg that would have impressed Rommel, and with decidedly few casualties. So I don’t buy the whole dreaded “step horde” argument; these people aren’t wily Arab horsemen waiting in their native desert to strike without warning at the haughty and naive Christian invaders. The American soldier has proven time and again that he is one of the most efficient killers in history, and that he can go anywhere in the world, learn the ways of the locals, and beat them at their own game.

Unconditional victory is not only possible, it is also plausible. The British did conquer and hold Afghanistan for a time, and our own Blackjack Pershing met and defeated Muslim terrorists in the Philippines at the turn of the century. At the siege of Vienna, the Viennese wrapped the bodies of the janissaries they killed in a shroud of pigskin, knowing that, according to the Koran, a Moslem buried in this way could not go to paradise. This broke the back of the Turkish army and proved to be the high water mark of their conquest in Europe. Pershing captured 50 Moslems in 1902 and had 49 of them executed with bullets dipped in pig’s blood. The last man he let go to tell his comrades, and soon the Moslem rebellion dissolved into nothing.

Moslem extremists are certainly beatable. There are no people in history who proved to be unbeatable. We simply have to be prepared for what unconditional victory means: the surrender or complete annihilation of ALL enemy forces.

The media is part of the Left, and as such hates America, specifically our Western Anglo-Saxon heritage, our Christian values, and our willingness to actually use violent force against our enemies. The so-called “progressives” of the world think that man right now is unlike how man has ever been. He is smarter, wiser, and more evolved. So such archaic notions as national defense, religion, and indeed nationalism itself is going the way of the dodo and should hurry up in getting there. The media are always mentioning Vietnam, as they did before the war started, because they WANT Iraq to become another Vietnam; they want us to fail and be defeated; and they want the Iraqis to rise up against their “occupiers” and kill them. But man never changes, at least not enough for the pages of history to notice. There will always be nations great and otherwise, and there will always be war. And, unfortunately, there will always be tories.

van Wijk,

You’re simply not looking at the situation in Iraq clearly. Every case where we won counterinsurgencies, we had some kind of signficant support from the populace. We have none—nothing—in the way of support from the Iraqis, save the Kurds, who are so marginalized they make very little difference. The Shia are, for the moment, sullen, but if they don’t get their way after January, you can kiss that good-bye, too.

The best we can hope to do is, as I said, keep a lid on things. Which, BTW, is exactly what happened in both Afghanistan and the Phillipines. The Islamic radicals and Moros outlasted the Brits and us there, and they are STILL fighting today. There’s nothing about “wiliness” or skill involved. It’s the demographics of the area, combined with their religious focus. The Iraqis will not peaceably accept a government imposed from an outside non-Muslim power. They cannot do so and remain good Muslims. So either we kill them all, force to apostasize or make the best deal and go.

As for Vienna, that siege was broken by Sobieski’s troops, not clever and over-publicized stunts and outrages. It was also won because the territory and supply lines favored the Christian armies, who were fighting on their own territory.

None of this obtains in Iraq. We are on their territory, and we are there in contradiction of our basic founding philosophy. All of the justifications for our invasion and occupation have been vitiated by reality. In the long run, the Iraqi insurgents will prevail because they want to win more than the American people do. Really, they have no choice, as they live there and we don’t.

Both Mr. Wijk and Mr. Copold make good points. However, I strongly disagree with the implication of Mr. Copold’s comment that the Iraqi insurgents “have no choice [but to drive out the Americans], as they live there and we don’t.” If the Iraqi insurgents have no choice but to oppose us, then why isn’t the same true of all the Iraqis? Why does Mr. Copold speak of the insurgents as having no choice but to mass murder their fellow Iraqis and kidnap and behead innocent civilians and keep trying to disrupt the election, while he ignores the choice and the desires of all the other Iraqis? I think that only a person who wanted to put the most negative possible construction on our actions in Iraq would describe things this way. Read the e-mails from servicemen in Iraq. Read the accounts from the many Iraqis who, while not happy about being occupried, understand its necessity and are glad for the American help and want the insurgency defeated and want the new government to work.

It’s entirely possible that none of this will work, that it is doomed in the long run; I’ve been suggesting the same for a long time. But that is very different from Mr. Copold’s anti-American slant on the issue.

If you look at even CPA polls you will see that the Arab population wants us out by a number over 80%, approaching 90%. As I pointed out the Shia’ are sullenly going along only because we’ve buckled to Sistani’s demands for a general election. They are not supporting us. The entire Sunni Arab area is opposed to us, militantly. The only Arabs with us are the scum we’ve empowered, like Allawi—a man who got his start in politics as one of Saddam Hussein’s hit men.

Yes, I’ve read the rah-rah-rah e-mails. They are not convincing. Why? Because events on the ground show no improvement. NONE. We are losing just as many (probably more) men per day as we were when we invaded. We are now dragging in men from the IRR and we have disgruntled units going so far as to mutiny.

As to having no choice about “murdering innocent Iraqis” that was not what I said, Mr. Auster. You’re creating a strawman. My point is, given the dictates of their religion, Iraqis have no choice but to oppose our presence in their region. The means by which they express that opposition may very, from the beastly to the politic, but the opposition will be there. They will continue to heave against us as long as we are there. The intensity of that heaving may wax and wane, but it will always be present.

As for being anti-American, that’s a bogus claim. If you want play cheerleader, go right ahead, but I’m not wearing those rose-colored glasses. And so far, my prediction of events has been far more accurate than anyone’s on the pro-war side. The most pro-American attitude to take right now is to find the best way out of this mess—because that’s what it is: a mess. And no amount of closing your eyes and wishing ever so hard for good things to happen will change that.

Taking the wishes and desires of our jihadi enemies as an absolute, while ignoring the wishes and desires of the Iraqis who are on our side, is a classic example of anti-Americanism.

What is anti-Americanism? It is a form of bigotry, bigotry directed against America or its government. What is bigotry? It does not mean criticism. It means the tendency always to portray the actions of the object of one’s bigotry in the worst possible light.

I’m probably as pessimistic as you about the long term prospects in Iraq. That’s what I’ve been obsessing about incessantly in case you haven’t noticed. But when people write about the issue the way you do, in a way that justifies our enemies and ignores the human reality of the Iraqis who are on our side, I am frankly suspicious.

I for one think Allawi is doing a damn good job and think he is an ideal strongman, though a little restrained in the strongman department.

Mr. Auster,

I constantly portray Islamists in the worst possible light is that bigotry acceptable? Try as I might, I cannot find anything redeeming about them.

I am not against ALL Muslims as I think it is clear they are not all Islamists. However, despite that, I think Muslim immigration is especially a problem and should be controlled.

Since I do not view all Muslims as Islamists, that is, in the worst possible light, yet I view Islamist, exclusively Muslims, in the repellent category, how do I reconcile the dilemma? I think this is a problem for many people.

I don’t think you should portray anyone in the worst possible light. You should try to convey the truth as best as you can. If the truth about particular people is really bad, then you don’t have to concern yourself with portraying them in the worst possible light. The truth will be enough.

It’s wrong to portray anyone in the worst possible light because it means that with regard to every issue that comes up, you will construct it so as to make that party look bad. For example, no matter what the issue is with regard to neocons, paleocons use it to paint the neocons in a negative light. That is bigotry. If you’re set on portraying a party in the worst possible light, you lose the ability to tell truth from falsity. If your enemy is falsely accused of some wrongdoing, you will automatically agree with the charge. Again, that is bigotry.

Second, the duty we owe our own country is different from the duty we owe to strangers or enemies. You at least ought to give your country the benefit of the doubt, to treat it with decent respect, not instantly jumping to the worst conclusions about it. So, in the debate on the war in Iraq, to look for the most sinister possible construction on what your own government is doing, especially when a majority of your countrymen support the war and see it as a necessary and justified act of self-defense, is wrong. But not only is it wrong, it is more wrong than, for example, looking for the worst things to say about your country’s enemies. Painting your own government in the worst possible light is more objectionable than painting an enemy in the worst possible light.

“So, in the debate on the war in Iraq, to look for the most sinister possible construction on what your own government is doing, especially when a majority of your countrymen support the war and see it as a necessary and justified act of self-defense, is wrong.”
Speaking of which, has anyone seen this mindblowingly despicable article?

http://www.counterpunch.org/fisk11182004.html

Read the last two paragraphs, where he clearly implies that the US had a hand in her death.
I was vehemently against the war in Iraq and very skeptical that the Bush administration acted in good faith, but I find it unbelievable that a western journalist would stoop to accusing us of murdering an aid worker to use as propaganda.
At least, that’s what he is implying, although he doesn’t have the - er, male gonads - to come out and say what he means.

Mr. Copold’s Nov. 18 5:45 PM post is a beaut! I agree with him completely, but I was on others’ from VFR side last year up to the time we began being nation-builders and that was when our casualties began to mount. This occurred because Bush had not seen fit (unless one would prefer to blame Tommy Franks and the other Generals or Rumsfeld) to seal the border between Iraq and Iran and Iraq and Syria. With so few troops in the country as an occupying force, how could we expect to win?

Now, we are going from city to city, doing what we should have done in the first place with planes destroying the cities instead of leaving those “hotbeds of insurgency” alone as we did last year and up til April. But that is because in a sick, cynical way, Bush purposely waited until he had won re-election for sacrificing more American boys for his political whims. Carpet bombing Fallujah and other insurgent strongholds would have saved a lot of American lives, but it wouldn’t have been pc or accepted by the EU and the World so no, Bush had to send our boys in on the ground—with the supposed “Iraqi army” behind us at a safe distance. Thus, only 7 Iraqi soldiers killed and now, over 100 American soldiers killed in Fallujah alone.

Mr. van Wijk thinks we can wipe out all our Islamic enemies. Really?? Are we attacking Saudi Arabia where all of this started with Wahhabiism, where most of the 9/11 murderers came from? No, the Saudis are Bush’s and our Banks’ friends. We need their oil and investments. So who does that leave? Iran? We will never attack Iran. Too close to Russia. All we are doing is talking semi-tough (sanctions) and the Iranians are about the get the bomb and a missle to take it to its target. Syria? We warned them last year and earlier this year, but we’ve done nothing to them. What we are doing is peacemeal advances on the enemy, not Islamic obliteration. Were it obliteration, we would be having a different discussion here.

What remains to be seen is whether after “cleaning up”, mopping up a city of the insurgents, it will stay “clean”. My fear is that the insurgency is stronger and more viable than the way our military and Adminsitration are portraying it. Until the borders with Iran and Syria are shut down, Iraq will continue to be a mess, elections or no elections. And besides, we are “the occupiers” as seen by Iraqis. Mr. Auster is right. How can we win without bringing back the Draft and without pouring in hundreds of thousands of new troops?

I also take issue with what Mr. Auster has said about Mr. Copold and those of us against the war on the right as being “bigots” for constantly painting our government or military big wigs (our govt) in a bad light! How ridiculous! We do not paint our SOLDIERS is a bad light—we support them 100% and always have. We—I should say “I”, but I would hope and assume that Mr. Copold is this way, too—are not “Pat Buchanans” who blame Israel for our involvement in Iraq or for Gulf War I so to keep them out of the struggle. That IS bigotry! I for one am glad we have come close to cleaning up Fallujah, but I was against the occupation of Iraq from day one and I am still against it. It is a war, a fight we cannot sustain, because it is a foreign, alien country to us both in their way of life and especially in their Christian-hating religion. We can clean up Fallujah and beat our chests, put in a strongman as we have apparently done and hope for the best but in the end, we are alone there, save for the Brits who are much smaller force.

The only reason there are not huge marches in the streets protesting this war here as there were during Vietnam is because so many Americans were duped by Bush into believing that the terrorists (al Qaida, the enemy we were/are after) WERE the Iraqis! Al Qaida and other terror groups only came into Iraq AFTER Saddam fell from power and his Army was beaten. Iraq was not our enemy, but Bush and his minions (sorry, Mr. Auster!) changed that equation and made many Americans believe, apparently, that Iraq is where the war on terror needed to be fought, and won. I couldn’t have disagreed more. We have destroyed that country, or certainly its military. Saddam was in hiding, a beaten man. We killed or captured many of his henchmen. But then, we became occupiers.

We can thrash about back and forth on the yeahs and nays of going to war in Iraq. In the end, those of us who oppose the war and want us out of there are on the side of the pro-war folk—because we must support the troops or look like the Commie, leftist anti-Americans in the streets during Vietnam. Call me any name you wish, but bigot? I am certainly no neo-con and am no paleo-con, either. I want our focus to be on Iran and N. Korea—the real bad guys—and I think we ought to leave Iraq to the Iraqis.

Mr. Auster,

Thank you for your kind reply. I agree with everything you’ve said and especially find the logic of your argument with regard to those individuals who attack every aspect of America’s actions as their ‘patriotic’ duty very insightful.

I agree with your observations about bigotry, especially the important example you make about blindly accepting a falsehood about an enemy as truth. We should let our conscious be our guide in such matters. An agenda, hatred or bias posing as truth is morally wrong to entertain. Truth, whatever it may be, should be our highest goal, to that end, principles of decency and fairness, are vital.

You expressed the simple yet fundamental point that expressing only the truth should suffice, and if that truth is bad, you don’t have to concern yourself with spinning it in the worst light. I agree that some actions speak for themselves. Yet, I find myself often wondering how people who defend certain atrocities can possibly justify or overlook them. This problem occurs frequently for example, with people who sympathize with the Palestinian cause.

In this example, I am aware there is suffering on the Arab side as well, yet I cannot understand the mindset of the many people who empathize with suicide bombers who murder and maim innocent people in a bistro or on a bus by claiming that if they were in that situation, they would do the same. For such people, even the reality of the worst possible potential of human evil seems not to speak for itself, but gets compared and equated in such a way as to place blame and legitimize the truly indefensible.

Thank you.

I appreciate Mr. Levin’s defense of my view.

I know Mr. Auster wants to believe there are Iraqis who are on the side of goodness, and that’s because at heart he’s a good man, too. I agree that you can find Iraqis who support us. The problem is that they are a tiny minority. Most of them are so secularized or westernized that they’re not really even seen as being Iraqi by their compatriots. It’s just not enough to make a difference.

As for the individual soldiers, I really don’t have anything against them. They’re in a sh*tty situation not of their own making. In fact, I’m not all angry with the guy who capped the insurgent in the mosque. C’est la guerre.

I’m also not surprised to see a few of them trying to find flowers on the dunghill, so to speak. But their letters do not obviate the unpleasant truth: an active, native guerrilla movement is killing them, and that it has done so for nearly two years now shows how little support we truly have. Given this and the total sum of Iraq’s history, it doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to see that it’s only a matter of time before we are forced to leave. At best, we can hope to install a moderate Shiite quasi-theocracy in January. Perhaps that’s better than Hussein, but whether it was worth the lives of some 1250 soldiers dead (and thousands more maimed), as well as tens of thousands of Iraqi civilian lives, I leave to you.

Let me address the possibly off-topic view on the cause of the war. I do not think the war was started solely for the benefit of Israel. I have no doubt that it played a role in the thinking of some influential figures, some in the government, like Douglas Feith, or out, like Richard Perle. However, there were also other elements at play: oil, Bush’s desire to go daddy one better, the whole “End of History” trope, partisan politics, revenge for 9/11 against the Arab, and basic liberal do-gooderism fed by Steven Spielberg’s films. No one particular thing here caused the war, rather it was all of them together creating “storm conditions.”

Dubya’s failure wasn’t so much succumbing to these pressures, as his inability to rise above them and evaluate the long-term interests of the country.

I appreciate Mr. Copold’s more moderate tone. But while he expands his list of reasons why the president went to war, the reasons he attributes to the president are all still of the illegitimate variety: bettering daddy, End of History, partisan politics, revenge on Arabs, etc. Mr. Copold still leaves out of his list the supreme reason that drove Bush and that convinced a majority of the country: that Hussein (as all the world believed) possessed and was further developing WMDs, that we now knew that terrorist groups would wreak unlimited destruction on America if they could, that the possibility of Hussein handing over WMDs to these groups had to be prevented.

Can Mr. Copold acknowledge that this was at least a leading reason why we went to war?

Mr. Copold said:
“Every case where we won counterinsurgencies, we had some kind of signficant support from the populace. We have none—nothing—in the way of support from the Iraqis, save the Kurds, who are so marginalized they make very little difference.”

I’ve heard quite a bit from both sides of that argument. I’ve heard many arguments similar to yours, and I’ve heard that the majority of Iraqis favor U.S. troops being there. So I can’t simply take your word for it. Personally I believe they will give their support to whoever is currently winning, and I believe that that is our troops most of the time.

“The Islamic radicals and Moros outlasted the Brits and us there, and they are STILL fighting today.”

All empires fail over time. How long is long enough to hold down a rebellion? We held the Phillippines and the Brits held Afghanistan for quite a while. So to properly address this point we’d have to know what our country’s long-term goals for Iraq are, and it seems that the end-all and be-all of Iraq right now is the next election. After that, I’m not sure if anyone in the Bush administration has thought of what is to come next.

“As for Vienna, that siege was broken by Sobieski’s troops, not clever and over-publicized stunts and outrages.”

I wouldn’t classify psychological warfare as “clever and over-publicized stunts and outrages,” and I’d be wary of using that classification if I were you. There were many aspects of the victory by the Viennese over Suleiman the Magnificent, including Sobieski, psychological warfare, the fact that most of the Sultan’s camels died on the march up due to the weather, the rounded shape of the Austrian buildings that caused some cannon balls to deflect, and the valorous cavalry charges employed by the Christians when the Turks let their guard down. Unfortunately, only one of these aspects bears out my original point of using every weapon at our disposal against the current enemy. So in that context, the context I thought I made clear, it does pertain to Iraq. Personally I don’t want to bore the board with a long-winded lecture about a battle.

Mr. Levin said: “Mr. van Wijk thinks we can wipe out all our Islamic enemies. Really??”

Hmm, I don’t remember stating that we could kill every Islamic terrorist on the planet. I thought the topic was on Iraq. If the borders are properly sealed then it is very plausible to be able to kill every terrorist inside Iraq. Let’s stay on topic.

Mr. Copold’s new tone is welcome. Civilised discussion is a must have prerequisite for any hope to advance our understanding of complex issues.

I was a lukewarm supporter of the war and remain so. I’m more optimistic about outcome than Mr. Auster and some other posters.

I would have been a very strong supporter of the war before it started if not for the following reasons:

1. I was not sure that Iraq should be the first target or second or even third after Iran and Saudis.

2. By that time I knew that El Presidente, talking loudly and having soft Texas cotton balls, would conduct the war in PC mode, will tie one hand of the Matines behind their back and will cause more deaths to our boys than necessary.

3. I didn’t like El Presidente blabbering about freedom and democracy for Iraqis at all. But I thought it was for propaganda and we will shoot for Afganistan-type arrangement. It turned out that we abandoned or tried to abandon Afganistan model with bad consequences. I don’t know why we did it - was Bremer naive idiot? Did State dept messed up things?

4. GWBush by background is a crony capitalist from Texas. To me, the President he resembles most is Lindon “Great Society” Johnson, another Texas crony capitalist. It was clear that the war will cost us arm and leg in financial terms.

My wife is not very interested in politics but mostly shares my views. She was against the war because she thought that Bush will quickly win and will put Iraq , in essence, on welfare. Lots of money will be spent, lots of Iraqis will make their way into US (to get on welfare here) and nothing tangibly positive for Americans will come out of it.

Before the war I thought that by killing enough Saddammites and offering bribes to others we will convince them to come to a new arrangement with us and each other - ala Afganistan.

For some reason I don’t understand, Sunny have refused to take a part in the new bargain. Perhaps we didn’t kill enough of them. Perhaps there are other reasons.

I don’t blame Bush admin for the Sunny decision. Bushies miscalculated in regard to Sunny. Perfect plans don’t exist. What is more important if the Bushies learnt from that. It is not possible to say because Bushies don’t discuss policies in the open and Dems have totally failed as loyal opposition in forcing dialog on majority.

Even if Sunny are totally gone for the time being we still have 20% of Iraq, Kurds, as a hopefully loyal ally. It is up to Shia. I’m still hopeful, less so than 1 year ago, that Shia will find their long lost balls and take Iraq that we are giving to them.

Look at Shia from a rational Western mindset:

US will give them second biggest oil lake in the world, US will protect them from Iran, they will get all kind of financial aid.

What the US is asking from them:

Not to be hostile to the US interests in the region, share booty with Kurds, allow Kurds a de-facto independence, don’t do genocide of Sunny, at least not on TV, don’t get too friendly with Iran.

To a Western mind these constraints are extremely reasonable. That’s why I remain (very) mildly optimistic.

Will I be shocked if Shia reject this great bargain and choose instead of bloody civil war and powerty? No, I don’t understand Arab/Moslem mind but I do know from observation that their culture is very different and they are perfectly capable to choose a very different outcome using the same information.

If President Bush was truly convinced that Saddam Hussein was a credible WMD threat, the military would have secured the suspected WMD sites. They never did. Looters made off with all sorts of nuclear, chemical biological materials, which had previously been secured by UN inspectors. Yet they had plenty of soldiers to secure the Oil Ministry and other economic assets. As Dubya’s favorite political philosopher remarked, “Your heart is where your treasure is.”

In fact, Paul Wolfowitz later admitted that the WMD’s were a pretext.

Given this, I simply don’t think it’s credible to believe that the adminstration truly thought there was any serious WMD threat from Iraq.

Sorry.

So here we go looping around again, the futile debate that never stops, year after year. Mr. Copold actually believes that Bush thought there was no WMD threat, meaning that Bush argued for a whole year about this threat, knowing that it didn’t exist, and that as soon as he had conquereed Iraq his fraud would be discovered. This is the nonsense we have to believe to believe Mr. Copold.

Also, Mr. Copold has his facts very wrong about Wolfowitz. Wolfowitz didn’t admit that WMDs were a “pretext,” he said that of the several strong reasons there were for war, WMDs were the one they emphasized.

I’m not willing to start going in circles around these old arguments again about WMDs. If this is the way it’s going to be, I’m not going to post any more blog entries in the war. There must be other weblogs that are a more appropriate venue for that.

“…meaning that Bush argued for a whole year about this threat, knowing that it didn’t exist, and that as soon as he had conquereed Iraq his fraud would be discovered.”

I think Bush believed he might find some surplus crap from the old Iran-Iraq War, which he would use to browbeat his opposition. He also has this view that he can fool enough people enough of the time to stay in power. And so far he’s been proven right on that score.

As I said, though, if there was a belief that this was a threat, then why were so many ammunition dumps left unguarded? That’s a fact that needs to be explained. And simple oversight won’t account for a boner this big. The Bush Administration and the Pentagon decided not to use their assets to secure these places, while securing other areas, like the Oil Ministry. One can only conclude that he didn’t take the threat very seriously.

As for Wolfowitz, it was clear that they pushed this WMD idea because it was the only thing that would justify war, but it was not the threat actuating them. Thus they pushed it, ignoring all the counter-evidence and basic logic. The stepped on any analyst who dared point out the unreliability of their sources—like Ahmed Chalabi. Thus we have, at best, a serious case of self-deception. But that only begs a further question: what motivated them to deceive themselves.

It is worth noting Mr. Copold’s strange insistence that Bush was consciously lying about the WMDs. I have seen and heard this assertion over and over again with hardly anyone making the logical point made by Mr. Auster, that neither Bush nor anyone else would have told a lie so easily exposed. What is that causes so many people to insist that Bush and those around him are liars (even genius level liars!) when it is far more likely that they are incompetent, clueless nebbishes?

Strange insistence. What? With your use of yiddishisms, you never heard of chutzpah?

One thing I’ll give Bush: he’s a master politician. He’s probably better than Bill Clinton. Scratch that. He is better than Bill Clinton. But his foreign policy acumen sux. He’s sort of a reverse of his dad, who was an awful politician.

Bush lied because he figured, correctly, that the issue would dwindle away, or perhaps be obviated by finding some 20-year-old crap that had not been reported by the Iraqi military due to incompetent bookkeeping. He also figured he could shift the headlines after the fact by pointing to mass graves (many of which were filled during his father’s term) and happy, shiny Iraqis dancing in the streets. What he didn’t count on was the unfortunate fact that not every culture is alike, people aren’t just people with the same values. So, he got himself into a no-win guerrilla war.

I think Mr. Copold has made my point for me! What evidence is there that this man is a master politician, or a master of anything? He crawled into office and crawled back again, thanks to the Dems stupidity in nominating Kerry. The WMD issue hardly dwindled away, it made Bush (and Americans in general, unfortunately) look like clowns…. or liars, as Mr. Copold would have it.

Bush “crawled” in against an incumbent with a good economy. His feat was remarkable. He’s also built a solid majority in Congress. Compare this with Clinton, who devestated his party.

Sure, he’s been dealt some lucky breaks, but he’s taken advantage of them to overcome his glaring boners, such as the war in Iraq which did not break in his direction due to his bad understanding of foreign affairs.

Mr. Copold,

I read you position and think it seriously flawed on grounds of common sense alone.

It seems straightforward that the reason Iraq was invaded was that President Bush believed that there were weapons of mass destruction there and that Saddam possibly had some involvement in the atrocities of September 11, 2001.

The president acted on intelligence that in hindsight was flawed, so did the British. Former President Clinton thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and said it, senators from both sides of the aisle thought it including Senator Kerry who at the apogee of a flip-before the flop moment, even said it. Tony Blair was convinced as well. Think of all the leaders who made direct unequivocal statements about the dangers of Iraq’s biological and chemical capabilities and to a lesser extent their dabbling in the arena of possible nuclear type deadly mischief.

Saddam said he had such weapons, he actually used them on the Kurds, he was known to shelter several fugitive terrorists, everyone, even the UN at various times thought that his WMD’s were a genuine significant threat.

The direct evidence of a connection between the 9-11 attacks and Saddam’s involvement has not been made. The arrangement would have been best protected by the lack of a paper trail, Saddam would have wanted such an arrangement untraceable as it would certainly offer him plausible deniability. I think the meeting said to have occurred between Atta and an Iraqi official if true, is a significant lead in unraveling Iraq’s possible involvement.

Everything else which occurred with regard to locating these weapons is after the fact. I just don’t think it is that unreasonable to think that Saddam would work with the fundamentalists in a clandestine fashion in order to focus their attention on the Arab world’s favorite punching bag while getting some satisfaction in being immune from any responsibility for deadly terrorist attacks which I believe for him would be revenge related.

“The president acted on intelligence that in hindsight was flawed…”

No, Andrew. It was flawed from the get-go. The British Dossier was built around a plagiarized grad student paper. Parlaiment wound up saying the case was overstated. Colin Powell’s speech had glaring errors in it as well. Bush State of the Union address was simply risible in its claims. Most of the evidence we used came from exiles like Chalabi, who were notorious liars.

To believe Bush actually thought there was a credible WMD threat would mean having to believe one of two things:

1. He’s every bit the moron his enemies make him out to be.

or

2. He’s a liar.

Which one of these guys do you want him to be?

“The direct evidence of a connection between the 9-11 attacks and Saddam’s involvement has not been made.”

NO. You don’t say.

That’s because it’s non-existent.

There were three countries in the Middle East in 2001 where Al-Qaeda did not operate Israel, Syria and Iraq. Well, Iraq’s off that list now.

Mr. Copold

If your theory is President Bush lied, I think you are being far to conspiracy minded. But your particular affliction is shared by many.

I won’t try to convince you since it would be an exercise in futility so I can only say that neither you nor I have the power to peer into a persons mind and must therefore try to use our powers of deduction and reason as well as trust to to try to gain the likely truth.

Bush’s personality and record indicates to me that he is being straight foreward and has not acted in bad faith. The atmosphere of WMD hysteria since it became an issue before the war should clue you in that factually this is was an concern which did not begin with President Bush.

You assert with absolute certainity that there was not connection between Saddam and Bin Ladin. I think there are signs there was and you should
not be so quick to dismiss them.

Last night I announced that I would not allow comments at this site to the effect that “If you say anything to question Israeli policy, you’re automatically called an anti-Semite.” Now I’m going to add a second item to the index of prohibited opinions: “Bush lied about WMDs.” Perhaps there are other sites suitable to the pursuit of this question; who knows, maybe in some alternative universe it will turn out to be right. But I am not lending this site to, or spending any of my time discussing, assertions that I regard as crackpottery.

For useful discussions, there needs to be a minimum of a common ground that people are sharing. “Bush lied” lies outside that common ground as far as I’m concerned.

Therefore, in future, anyone who says, “Bush lied about WMDs” will be excluded from this site.

“You assert with absolute certainity that there was not connection between Saddam and Bin Ladin. I think there are signs there was and you should
not be so quick to dismiss them.”

I dismiss them because if they existed, you can bet the Bush Administration would have placed them front and center.

As for a “conspiratorial mindset,” one doesn’t need to believe in Roswell Aliens to note that conspiracies do exist. The Watergate Cover-up and the Clinton Administration provided us with plenty of examples.

Mr. Copold’s reasoning is flawed again. There is a vast pattern of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda over the years. The problem is that the precise content of this relationship cannot be determined with absolute certainty. Rather than go out on a limb on this and being shot at by all their critics, especially after the WMD fiasco, the administration stays away from the subject altogether. At a minimum, there is no question of numerous contacts and negotiations between Iraq and Al Qaeda. That fact by itself disproves the assumption that the two entities would have nothing to do with each other.

Mr. Copold, See above.

Here’s what I think happened with Iraq and the WMDs: Bush knew there were no WMDs well in advance. So, instead of focusing on another country than Iraq, or making a case for invasion based on violations of the 1991 cease-fire agreement, he decided to claim to the world that Iraq had WMDs and use that to justify an invasion. That way, it would be discovered (right in the middle of his re-election campaign) that there were no WMDs, which would greatly harm his popularity and severely damage the allies (England, Poland, Italy, etc.) he had carefully assembled in a coalition. Pretty clever, huh?

Do the Copolds of the world ever stop to think about the situation facing Bush post-9/11, and which courses of action would make sense under what scenarios? Only if Bush actually thought there were WMDs in Iraq would the invasion make sense. Otherwise, it would be premeditated political suicide. Bush would have to know that the invasion would fail to uncover WMD stockpiles, UNLESS the intelligence reports he possessed concluded otherwise.

Mr. Copold might also explain why the intelligence services of countries such as France, Germany, and Russia thought there were WMDs in Iraq. These countries opposed invasion, so their intelligence services would not have much reason to lie about WMDs like that, would they? The consensus of the world’s intelligence services was that there were WMDs. Saddam obviously had them before 1991, and mass destruction of them had not been observed, so it was the logical position for intelligence services to take worldwide; not just the CIA.

Ah, the wonderful adjective game: “a vast pattern.” There was no vast pattern, and there was no connection to 9/11. Considering the flimsy conjecture used to [topic flushed down memory hole] the administration would have more than happily have used your “vast pattern” and tub-thumped it from here to doomsday. Lord, Dick Cheney was still going on about Prague long after it had been debunked and the only one foolish enough to take him seriously was William Safire.

You had a few fringe contacts, which is about what you’d expect from any Middle Eastern country. The Secular Ba’athists had a strong interest on keeping tabs to any movement that threatened them, which the Islamists did.

As for the French, Germans and Russians, they have stated that they assumed there were weapons there, but there wasn’t a solid enough case to justify an invasion. This was doubly so when Saddam caved in the Fall of 2002 and let the U.N. inspectors go whereever they wanted. At that point, it was apparent that the Bush Administration didn’t want to be bothered with the facts—or worse, proven wrong before the invasion got going.

A flaw in Mr. Coleman’s argument is that Bush did get re-elected, so claiming that there were WMDs and being incorrect (or at least not finding them yet) was not fatal.

I believe that someone at National Review, of all places, made the statement that a lot of the foreign inteligence services rely a lot on US reports to make their determinations (in order to save money on intelligence), which may help to lead them to mirror any intelligence mistakes that we made.

I don’t think the issue here is lying so much as it is whether the Bush administration’s desire to take out Saddam led them to be overly trusting of anything suggesting he had WMD and overly skeptical of anything suggesting otherwise. In other words, whether there was a tendency to trust things that agreed with what they wanted to hear (Which is a bias that the other side is guilty of, too), and none of which implies bad faith on anyone’s part.

The question isn’t so much whether or not Bush, in good faith, thought there were WMD - we can assume he did - but whether or not his judgment of the issue was clouded by his desire to see Saddam gone.

When I spoke of a vast pattern of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda I was thinking of this article I just at FrontPage. Warning: it’s long and detailed.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15919

Also, Mr. Copold’s sarcastic tone is out of place in this discussion.

Mr. Coleman’s post of 12:33 a.m. is an example of what I was talking about in reference to another post by Michael Jose in another thread. What Mr. Coleman says is completely logical and intelligent, and it’s been said over and over for almost two years. It is absurd to have to keep repeating the same thing. And that’s why the opinion that Mr. Coleman is refuting—“Bush lied”—will not be permitted here any more.

Orwell said that the duty of an intelligent man is to keep repeating the obvious. But there’s got to be a limit to that duty at some point.

I am very glad to have never stated here (nor at any other time here at VFR) that “Bush lied about WMDs” and thus “falsely took the U.S. into war with and invasion of Iraq” because I simply have NO way of knowing that, even if I believed it! I am not part of Bush’s inner circle nor do I have intel connections to be able to say such a thing, much less think such a thing. If I have “implied” that I have such a position, I apologize to Mr. Auster and Mssngrs all—it was certainly not my intent.

Speaking of “intel/military connections” with what is happening now in Iraq, I wonder what happened to our fellow Mssngr Ken Hechtman. I learned a lot from his posts and miss his input, particularly with the conflict at hand. Is he per chance in the military—or even in Iraq itself and unable to “chat”?

Part of what I find interesting in the “Bush lied!” line of thought is the fallacy that everything the president is thinking has to be made public in order for anything that he does to be legitimate. A long time ago I laid out what I thought Bush’s line of thinking was on Iraq. If you take Bush as basically honest in what he says and you accept political/social realities at the same time — that is, assume good faith on everyone’s part and at the same time accept the world as it is, rather than force-fitting it through a morally idealistic lense - then Iraq becomes *more* comprehensible not less.

I say all this now, as before, not as someone who _agrees_ with what-I-think-Bush-believed. But I think he did and does believe it, in good faith, and that it is transparent enough for any realistic person to grasp just by listening to what Bush actually says. The man is not that inscrutable; in fact he seems remarkably scrutable to me.

I think Bush did believe that there were active WMD programs in Iraq that Hussein was hiding. And I think that got emphasized in the marketing of the invasion, although it was not the sole plank in the marketing campaign. And I think that anyone who thinks that marketing an invasion is “lying” does not live in the real world, but rather has hemmed himself into a non-existent reality.

If I am right though, then there are important implications to our current predicament.

So where I believe Bush was coming from (without _agreeing_ with it, because in many or even most important points I do not agree, and I think some of them are outright nuts) was this:

1) Toppling Hussein was _morally_ justified because of what he was doing to his people. No other _moral_ justification for invasion was needed.

2) Toppling Hussein is _legally_ justified purely on the basis of his violation of the cease-fire, with the authorization from Congress that Bush received.

3) “Freedom” a.k.a. democracy is the only long-term way to prevent terrorism. And its great, because freedom is something everyone wants; we just have to awaken that desire for freedom (notice how a complete misreading of what happened in Afghanistan is reinforcing this false point among Iraq triumphalists).

4) If we put up walls around America and refuse to let some people in based on their religion, the terrorists will have won. We will have become just like them. Steve Sailor and Larry Auster and that goofy sometime commmenter Matt are as racist and backward as Osama bin Laden ideologically, they just aren’t violent about it so they aren’t _evil_ like Osama. Everyone is entitled to his opinion as long as he doesn’t crash airplanes into buildings over it. The only legitimate violence is the violence necessary to create the conditions for “freedom”.

5) Hussein had a clear “terrorist” (i.e. Islamic radical terrorist) connection. Even if he isn’t directly connected to _our_ terrorists, destroying him sends a clear message to all terrorists and it prevents a future developing connection to _our_ terrorists.

6) Iraq would make a great forward base in the global war on terror.

7) A happy democratic Arab Iraq will put so much pressure on adjacent regimes that the dominoes will fall. (This again is based on the ludicrous poignant belief that “everyone wants freedom” means something that maps to middle eastern reality)

I had mentioned implications. A lot could be said, but in a nutshell, the implication is that in order for Bush to adopt a realistic strategy _he would have to completely abandon his world view_. And that, more than any tactical or strategic point, is why I am pessimistic. I am not sure that Bush has it in him to settle for stability and market that as a victory. But even getting to stability will be a tremendous challenge.

I genuinely hope and pray that I am wrong.