GWB has been a good Commander-in-Chief

"Emmanuel Gustin" wrote in message
...
"Kevin Brooks" wrote in message
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And that was basically the conclusion forwarded by the US.

The conclusions forwarded by the US went way beyond that.
The US position was not only that Saddam was actively
pursuing the acquisition of other WMD, including nuclear
weapons, and also that he was, if not actually producing
them, then at least close to getting them -- for example nuclear
weapons within a year. And it even implied that he was
willing to hand them over to terrorists.

Again, please provide Bush's words; you have proven thus far that you are
only capable of telling us what YOU say he said, not what he said--and your
view is a bit at odds with the pre-March 03 speeches of his that I have
read. Yes, we did say he was pursuing them--and Kay pretty much corroborated
that in his report to Congress regarding the ISG's work. Have you even
bothered reading that?

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KAY401A.html


You must have missed out reading kay's comments in January before
Congress?
Where he indicated that Iraq had indeed continued to work towards
creating
and protecting dual-use facilities for the express purpose of being able
to
switch them to WMD production? Their continued work on ricin right up
until
the last conflict kicked off?

The claim on ricin and other biological toxins seems to refer
to laboratory research on weaponizing them, the tail end of
an unsuccessful Iraqi attempt to produce such weapons. (At
one time they had tests ricin in artillery shells, but with poor
results.) Hardly an active WMD program; more likely a
benchtop research effort of the kind that could be run in every
university with a chemistry department. I'm not impressed. Nor
I am I much impressed by the claim about "dual-use" facilities;
in reality almost every chemical plant could be described as
"dual-use" and Iraq is a country with a petrochemical industry.

Who really cares if YOU are impressed or not? There was a continuing effort
to work with ricin as a weapon. That work was in violation of the
restrictions placed upon them. There were other violations noted as well.
All of those are FACTS. As to *your* assessment of dual-use facilities,
ricin, etc....gee, I am gonna kind of believe that Kay, with his background,
knows more about them than YOU do--or are you going to give us a CV that
proves otherwise?


What Kay's research discovered looks more like a defunct WMD
research program, destroyed by years of sanctions, inspections,
and bombing, with some tail ends still dragging on out of bureaucratic
inertia (and the desire of the scientists in it to continue to survive
and be paid.) The evidence indicates that Iraq had destroyed most
of its WMD stocks and was unable to restart WMD programs even
if it wanted to, but had not divested itself of the equipment (but
hardware and biological) that would be needed to restart them.
In violation of resolutions, but hardly an imminent threat.

And actively hid components, records, and reportedly agents. And produced
the AS II missiles which exceeded the range allowance. All were in
violation.


Now, can you show us where Bush stated categorically that the Iraqis
definitely had large stockpiles?

Dubyah never makes statements of fact, only of opinion, and his
speeches tend to be very low-content anyway. But Powell's statement
to the UN, which I presume to be the official US government position
at the time, was that Iraq had a stock of between 100 and 500 tons.

Ah-hah! So now you are backing off from your earlier claim that he DID
himself make such claims? Powell's estimate you noted is not really that
large, in terms of chemical weapons stockpiles, and was in line with earlier
UNMOVIC estimates of what was unaccounted for, IIRC. You continue, however,
to assign words to Bush without specificity, such as: "Bush managed to climb
the ladder of faulty intelligence and rethorical distortion from "Iraq
probably still has WMD stocks" up to "Iraq has active WMD programs."" Now,
can you show us where Bush said that they they definitely had WMD stocks?
Yes or no. Your second claim (about them having programs) has laready been
proven to be true.

And BTW, I missed where you earlier stated that maybe the rounds thus far
uncovered or detonated were from the Iran/Iraq era--can you point to where
the Iraqis ever fielded a true binary cyclosarin round during that conflict,
like the one that was set off near our convoy a few months back?


confirmation of the fact that he was indeed in violation of the UN
dictates,
and the ceasefire conditions from ODS, in regards to WMD, is also a bit
dishonest.

I have no problem admitting that Saddam was in violation of UN
resolutions.

Good. Case closed, then.

I would add, however, that the USA was also in violation,
if not of the letter, then at least the spirit of UN resolutions. The deal
was that Iraq would disarm, under control of inspections, and then
sanctions would be lifted. The USA made the removal of Saddam a
policy goal and made it clear that it did not intend to ever lift
sanctions
against him; this removed any incentive that Saddam might have had
to cooperate with disarmament. On the contrary, it made it essential
for him, right up to the very end, to retain the bluff that he had them.

You know, over here a bunch of folks, democrats and republicans both,
decided back in 1998 that Saddam had to go; you are indeed right about that.
And that decision was based upon a heck of a lot more than just the WMD
issue. It was subsequently made a part of US law (the Iraq Liberation Act),
with overwhelming support from both parties in congress, and was signed by
the last democrat we had in office as President. Now you may think that was
wrong--maybe we should have just turned our head to the question of mass
graves, continued threats to other neighboring states, one assasination
attempt against a former US President engineered by Iraqi intelligence
agents, along with continued and numerous violations of 687 and later 1441,
the fact that Saddam was the only still-serving national leader who had
proven willing to actually *use* WMD's, both in combat operations and asa
tool of genocide. But a lot of us over here don't agree with that
philosophy, and to tell you the truth, anyone who would be willing to accept
all of that and say, "Hey, let bygones be bygones, and lift the sanctions"
is probably not sombody we'd much care to hear opine about our subsequent
actions. It is odd, isn't it, how Eurolefties so willingly embraced the idea
of resorting to arms in stopping Milosevic and his Serbs on the basis of
claimed genocide, etc., but wanted no part of doing the same kind of thing
in Iraq?


Now, next time you want to tell us what Bush has *allegedly*
said, why don't you instead use his actual words, in context if you
don't
mind?

Mainly because that isn't the style this White House communicates.
Bush is very much a snake-oil salesman, always making statements
that are artfully vague on facts but high on emotional value.
Meanwhile, various underlings throw out statements in the press,
or leak them if they prefer that, maintaining maximal deniability.

Translation: "I can't, so instead I'll continue to ionaccurately paraphrase
his comments to best suit my position"?


But his latest gem was "We removed a declared enemy of America,

Yeah, that is an accurate picture so far--did you miss the prewar comments
from Saddam and his thug-sons, including the one where we were warned of
unleashing a disaster upon ourselves that would make 9-11 pale by
comparison?

who had the capability of producing weapons of mass destruction

Yeah, they did, and what's more they were continuing proscribed WMD programs
up until the outbreak of armed hostilities.

and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring
them."

Zarqawi; 'nuff said.

This no longer even is a claim that Saddam had the intent
of producing WMD, only the capability;

Do you seriously doubt that Saddam would not have reopened production ASAP
if he had been allowed to? I gave you credit for possessing a bit more
common sense than that.

on these grounds the invasion
of every country could be justified except the most impoverished and
backward ones -- and perhaps not even those, considering the relative
ease with which low-tech chemical weapons can be produced.

Nope. You are stretching WAY too far with that kind of crap, and you know
it.


Since when do you think the President is involved with intel analysis in
terms of determining reliability? He is the President, for gosh sakes,
not
a
bean-counting intel analyst sitting in a cubicle at Langley.

This was not about counting beans. This was about intelligence
that was at the center of US foreign policy and at the center of
military planning, and intelligence that was being contested from
both outside and inside the intelligence services. His duty both
as president and as commander-in-chief required that he should
get acquainted with it as well as he could, studying arguments
pro and contra, and make his own judgement as to its reliability.

Believe me, there are good precedents for wartime leaders getting
involved in the study of intelligence. Churchill certainly too such
matters seriously, and FDR even became notorious for his penchant
for getting first-hand information from semi-official envoys. He also
created a 'map room' in the White House as a collection point for
information.

I see you remain an astute hairsplitter--first you tell us that Russia
was
telling us that we were all wrong about Iraq, and when you are presented
evidence that Russia was at the same time providing us intel related to
a
purported direct Iraqi threat, you want to start speculating that it may
not
have been anything but some kind of raw intel that should have
apparently
been disregarded out of hand?

You still don't make a difference between raw intelligence material
and an intelligence analysis. Putin's actions indicate that Russia was
basing its policy on the assumption that Iraq did not have active
WMD programmes, and they must have been fairly confident of
this, as they could always be proven wrong. But that need not to
stop him from passing on information to the USA that indicates
a possible threat to that country, exactly because such information
could NOT be dismissed out of hand. Whether he believed it or
not is and was irrelevant to that action. It was morally and politically
justified to pass on such information in any case, and allow the US to
make its own judgement of it. There is no contradiction involved and
it does not involve splitting hairs, only assuming that Putin was acting
rationally.

See Franks' book:

It may surprise you, but autobiographies are usually considered
somewhat biased and not entirely reliable. And the particular
sub-genre of autobiographies of retired generals has come in
for much criticism...

Gee, especially when such first-person accounts tend to toss monkey wrenches
into your pet beliefs?


Anyway, Franks' version corresponds to the official US version,
but I doubt that this is more than the best guess of US intelligence
services (for whatever that is worth.) And even he hedges a little
bit here and there.

Errr...I listed power and water, didn't I? Where did your attention on
oil
come from?

You started with 'energy', did you not?

Nope, I started with power, as in electrical power production and
distribution, and added water in as the other category; you chose to ignore
those and then instead twist it into some weird claim that getting Iraqi oil
production back online was somehow really a *bad* thing for the Iraqis
themselves? Do you also think they should have not bothered with the power
and water?

Iraqi oil production got
close to pre-war levels in the spring, well ahead of other elements
of the reconstruction of the country.

No, power production and distribution got there first. You like USAid as a
source--here is what they have to say on the subject: "By October 2003,
facilitated the rehabilitation of the national electric grid to produce a
peak capacity greater than the pre-war level of 4,400 MW. In June, after
months of power reduction for generation unit maintenance, generation began
steadily increasing and reached 5,000 MW in July 2004. Daily production is
now regularly exceeding 110,000 MW hours." Or do you consider October 2003
to be *after* this past spring?

As for water, at the time of the
handover to the Iraqi government the water purification capacity
was at 65% of its pre-war level (USAid figure!), and 4 out of 10
Iraqis in urban areas had no access to safe drinking water.
Electricity provision was also below pre-war levels.

Not sure about the water situation, to be honest (and looking only at the
purification issue may not provide the whole picture, either--but i am sure
it provides the one you want).

Then there is telecommunications; subscriptions are up over 60% above the
pre-war level.

The 'all is doom and gloom' view in terms of Phase IV operations and
planning that you appear to cling to is just not a very accurate assessment.


The test is not whether you can remove Saddam, but whether
you can replace him by something better. Iraq's democracy
still has to be born, and it is already very ill.

It is a lot more robust than it was a year and a half ago.

The chance that Iraq will descend in complete chaos is also
higher than a year and a half ago. At this time I would say it
could still go either way, but the odds are against Iraq becoming
a peaceful and democratic country. The people who have most
influence on events there now appear to intend to turn the country
into an islamitic theocracy, hostile to the USA and sponsoring
terrorist groups.

Unfortunately, I suspect you may be pulling for it to go the chaos route?

Brooks


--
Emmanuel Gustin