Iraq Was a Distraction
I found this on Instapundit, so probably you’ve already read it, but what the heck. One or more regular readers here have claimed that Iraq was a distraction from the REAL important anti-terrorism task: capturing Bin Laden in Afghanistan. As far as I know (but I could be wrong), none of these readers are 4-star Generals (NY Times, registration required, sorry):
Contrary to Senator Kerry, President Bush never “took his eye off the ball” when it came to Osama bin Laden. The war on terrorism has a global focus. It cannot be divided into separate and unrelated wars, one in Afghanistan and another in Iraq. Both are part of the same effort to capture and kill terrorists before they are able to strike America again, potentially with weapons of mass destruction. Terrorist cells are operating in some 60 countries, and the United States, in coordination with dozens of allies, is waging this war on many fronts.
As we planned for potential military action in Iraq and conducted counterterrorist operations in several other countries in the region, Afghanistan remained a center of focus. Neither attention nor manpower was diverted from Afghanistan to Iraq. When we started Operation Iraqi Freedom we had about 9,500 troops in Afghanistan, and by the time we finished major combat operations in Iraq last May we had more than 10,000 troops in Afghanistan. [Emphasis added]
But what the hell does this guy know about anything, anyway?
October 19th, 2004 at 6:30 pm
Goddam Halliburton!
October 19th, 2004 at 7:21 pm
Arguing things to the letter I see. I think the real question is “were 9500 troops enough in Aghanistan?”
The question isn’t solely one of where military resources are allocated. That’s falling into Bushco’s trap of measuring everything with the “war” metaphor. The size of our war machine has very little to do with our ability to identify and destroy or disable terrorist cells that are poised to strike Western targets on Western soil. Taking the battle to the terrorists is a bunch of shit. The most important resource of all is our national attention and collective political will. From where I’m sitting it looks like Bush squandered that resource on Iraq with very little to show for it.
I want to beat those fuckers. The current course isn’t doing if for me. Perhaps I’m sitting on the left bank of the American mainstream. I hope not.
October 19th, 2004 at 8:02 pm
Lobbygow, if you really think the war on terror is a metaphor, you’re sitting well to the left of the left bank.
October 19th, 2004 at 9:06 pm
And how, exactly, does “our national attention and collective political will” “identify and destroy or disable terrorist cells?” This I gotta hear.
October 20th, 2004 at 12:45 am
Operation Enduring Freedom essentially ended (prematurely, IMO) in January or February of 2002. Operation Iraqi Freedom started in March of 2003. I’m not interested in how many troops were in Afghanistan at the start of Iraqi Freedom. I’m interested in when/why/how many troops were pulled from Afghanistan (without really securing the country or its borders) in the interim, and how many of them were reassigned to the Iraq theater in the buildup to the war.
October 20th, 2004 at 8:23 am
And I’m interested in what qualifies you to assess 1) the proper mission of our troops there and 2) the number of troops necessary to achieve that mission.
October 20th, 2004 at 10:42 am
Lobbygow, if you really think the war on terror is a metaphor, you’re sitting well to the left of the left bank.
Where is “Terror” on the map?
Wars are declared by congress and fought against enemy states. That’s my “conservative” definition of war.
AQ doesn’t have a conventional army or a state. Military force is one useful tool to destroy or disrupt terrorist capability, but it’s foolish to think it’s the primary tool.
Can you explain how a military action could prevent another 9/11? Would we bomb flight schools in Florida?
Conservative like jets, bombs and takes because they make big noises. After all, anything that makes a big noise has got to be working, right?
I think this war needs fewer soldiers and more assassins. We need to think outside of the box. Taking over the entire Middle East is soooo overdone.
October 20th, 2004 at 10:44 am
Too fast on the keyboard.
Should read “Conservatives like jets, bombs and tanks.”
Then again, I’m sure Dick Cheney enjoys being on the take.
October 20th, 2004 at 11:54 am
Thibodeaux:
If we’re limiting our commentary to just those subjects we’re fully qualified to discuss, then you and I both need to enjoy a piping hot cup of STFU about all kinds of issues! 😉
In the meantime, however, I never claimed I was an expert. But I don’t have to be one to know that using the start of Iraqi Freedom as your point of comparison is disingenuous. And my non-expert-ness is precisely why I asked the open questions, rather than speculating as to what the answers might be.
October 20th, 2004 at 12:04 pm
Right there next to “World.” I guess that means World Wars I & II were metaphors, too.
October 20th, 2004 at 1:04 pm
I’ll gladly enjoy a nice cup of STFU if you go first. And I still wonder how, even though you’re asking “open questions,” you’re going to evaluate the answers.
October 20th, 2004 at 3:05 pm
Right there next to “World.” I guess that means World Wars I & II were metaphors, too.
Who won the “War on Drugs” by the way?
October 20th, 2004 at 3:15 pm
Xrlq:
Nice try, but in World War I and World War II, the enemies were still clearly delineated on country lines. That’s simply not true of terrorist organizations. Invading Iraq to fight terrorism seems about as productive as invading New Jersey to fight the mafia.
Thibodeaux:
Really? I might take you up on that! 🙂 Let’s talk terms!
The same way I would with any other subject: listen to the experts and see what seems to make sense.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it makes sense that 43,000 troops are required to keep that terrorist hotbed of Japan secure, while only 9,000 are needed to keep the peace in a stable country such as Afghanistan. Maybe Afghanistan does remain a top priority for the administration. Nevertheless, it’s hard not to see how someone could think this isn’t the case.
October 20th, 2004 at 4:08 pm
LG: the “war” on drugs is indeed a metaphor, and a rather crappy one at that. The very real war on terror is nothing like the metaphorical one on drugs.
Tgirsch: the war on terror is primarily a war on terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, Ansar al-Islam, and the like. It also applies to states that sponsor them. AFAIK, the New Jersey government does not willfully allow the Mafia to run its operations there, and does cooperate with the federal government in going after them. If I’m wrong about that, perhaps we should consider invading their “country,” too.
October 20th, 2004 at 5:01 pm
“43,000” troops in Japan doesn’t have a lot to do with keeping Japan secure.
October 20th, 2004 at 5:06 pm
See, Xrlq, it’s funny you should bring that up, because I wasn’t aware Iraq was even on the top-5 list of state sponsors of terror. Afghanistan? Of course. Syria? Sure. Iran? Absolutely. Iraq? Not comparatively speaking.
October 20th, 2004 at 6:47 pm
The very real war on terror is nothing like the metaphorical one on drugs.
I agree. The “War on Drugs” could not have been used as a catch-all phrase used to justify just about anything Bushco does. I mean goddam, who knew that AQ was targeting the Canadian drug supply?
I live in New York. I take the defeat of the current crop of terrorist groups as seriously as anyone. Ultimately, they cannot prevail simply because their dream is fundamentally flawed. I pan-Arab Islamic caliphate is simply not sustainable in this era of globalization. Pretty soon, individuals in those regions will want a taste of “self-actualization.” It’s happening in Iran, it’s happening in China, it will eventually happen in the Middle East.
Can we help this process along? Sure. Can we do it without wasting our military and increasing the risk of short term attacks on U.S. citizens? I believe we can. I certainly don’t believe the neocon “strategery” is the way to do it. It relies way too much on faith in Ivory Tower theories and not enough on facts on the ground. Flowers and candy my ass.
I want an empiricist president. I really don’t give a shit whether they are Democrat or Republican.
October 20th, 2004 at 8:58 pm
TG: I quoted an expert—some might say THE expert—on the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Maybe what he says doesn’t make sense to you, but if that’s the case, again, I question your qualifications to make the asessment.
For example, we DON’T have 43,000 “troops” in Japan. We have around 47,000 “military personnel”—20,000 of which comprise the 7th Fleet. Now, I’m not a military expert by any means, but I’ve got a feeling the Navy ain’t exactly the first choice for “securing” Afghanistan. Some of the rest are going to be things like support personnel and so forth for the Air Force, and their job is to fix airplanes and load bombs, not be border patrol.
Now look at the Order of Battle in Afghanistan. What do we got? Special Forces and Light Infantry. Why is that? Well, it might have something to do with the fact that maybe the mission there is NOT to “keep the peace,” but to sneak around the mountains and kill terrorists. I don’t know; I’m not in charge.
Finally, it seems pretty likely to me that regardless of the mission, logistics in Afghanistan are a nightmare (remember: amateurs talk strategy and professionals talk logistics), what with being a landlocked, mountainous hellhole, so you probably CAN’T support 43,000 “troops” there. And even if you could, a heavy/mechanized unit isn’t going to be the right tool for the task.
But hey: I’m not an expert, so I don’t know. I do know enough that I have no business telling Tommy Franks he’s full of shit.
October 21st, 2004 at 11:21 am
Thib:
I haven’t (yet) suggested he was full of shit; I merely suggested that comparing personnel in Afghanistan at the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom to now isn’t necessarily the most fair comparison, and I don’t think I need to be a military expert to point this out. Just as you reasonably and accurately pointed out that comparing troop numbers in Japan do those in Afghanistan isn’t fair.
However, I don’t have to be a military expert to judge the efficacy of the Afghanistan effort by its results. Is the Afghan/Pakistani border secure? By all accounts, not even close. Have the Taliban been vanquished? From the reports I’ve seen (including in the Washington Times — hardly a liberal paper), they’ve been chased out of Kandahar and Kabul, but continue to regain strength and influence throughout the rest of the country, and casualties at their hands are increasing.
Those are the types of things that lead me to question whether our presence in Afghanistan is sufficient.
Is Franks full of it? Maybe. This is, after all, an administration that tends to fire, ignore, or ask for the resignation of anyone who tells them things they don’t want to hear. So you don’t get to Franks’ position and stay there in this administration without being a bit of a yes man. Does that by itself make him full of it? No. But coupled with the reports coming out of Afghanistan, it does tend to make one raise an eyebrow.
As to the troop deployments in Afghanistan, I could very well be wrong about this, but my understanding is that most of our presence is concentrated in and around Kandahar and Kabul.
October 21st, 2004 at 11:24 am
And, of course, troop counts don’t have much of anything to do with whether or not Iraq was a distraction. Of course Iraq was a distraction, considering that they had no significant WMDs, no significant links to al-Qaeda, and weren’t even close to the top of the list in terms of state sponsors of terrorism.
October 21st, 2004 at 1:25 pm
Hogwash, Tgirsch. The only reason Democratss don’t think Iraq was among the major state sponsors of terror is because Republicans led a war against Iraq. Three years ago, when President Bush identified Iraq as part of the axis of evil, I heard plenty of caterwauling from the left over the fact that he had used the word “evil,” but none over Iraq’s inclusion in (or Syria’s exclusion from) the Big Three.
It’s one thing to argue that going after Iraq rather than Iran or North Korea was a tactical mistake. It’s quite another to call a key stage of the war on terror a “diversion” from the war on terror. The latter makes you wonder if the average liberal thinks “war on terror” was a code phrase for “war on the specific individuals who put 19 guys up to murdering 3,000 of us on September 11, 2001.”
October 21st, 2004 at 3:07 pm
Xrlq:
Sorry, but I call bullshit on several levels. First, I opposed the war as a distraction from the war on terror long before we ever went in, and I was far from alone on that count. Second, no one denies that Iraq was sometimes a state sponsor of terror; it’s just that they weren’t anywhere near the most egregious offenders on that count.
But third, and most importantly, you refer to Iraq as a “key stage” on the war on terror, in the absence of any evidence that it was, in fact, “key,” in any measurable way. Please spare me the Abu Nidal bullshit. Show me one major terror attack that Iraq is known to have sponsored — anywhere — in the last five years. Show me one major terror attack in that time by an organization that Iraq was known to be harboring. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, even Algiers, all have such attacks to their credit. Iraq? Give me a break.
Even if you don’t limit the scope to anti-American terror, and include all nations that harbor active terrorists of any stripe, Iraq is pretty far down the list. When you narrow it down to al-Qaeda (which you would do, if you were truly concerned with what is by far the most important enemy in the war on terror), the case for Iraq as a “key” component of the war completely dissolves, and was paper-thin even before we invaded.
The truth of the matter is that the neo-cons currently in power have been jonesing to invade Iraq since long before 9/11, for reasons having nothing at all to do with terror or terrorism. (Don’t believe me? Go read the letters from 1998 on the PNAC web site, and count the number of references to “terror,” “terrorism,” “militant Islam,” etc.) The “war on terror” was a politically expedient — and completely disingenuous — excuse for the administration to do what it had been wanting to do in Iraq for years.
October 21st, 2004 at 3:12 pm
Xrlq, I think that’s exactly what tgirsch is getting at. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think he’s saying that The War on Terror should be restricted to—or at least conducted with priority given to—fighting in Afghanistan so that its border with Pakistan is “secure” (whatever that means) and “vanquishing” the Taliban.
Ok, that’s fine. But maybe that’s not necessarily the way everybody sees it. Maybe the Administration has a completely different metric. Maybe they are using the same metric, but the constraints of Afghanistan itself—not diversion of effort—are responsible for the progress on his metric.
My point is, I don’t think he’s qualified to make that assessment. And on top of that, we get criticism of Franks as a disingenuous yes-man.
October 21st, 2004 at 3:25 pm
But hey, don’t take my word for it. Have a look at this CRS report from 2002. Hardly a damning indictment of Iraq, particularly as compared to what it has to say about Iran and Syria.
October 21st, 2004 at 3:58 pm
Ok, tg, here’s a scenario. Let’s say you WANT to invade Syria or Iran. What’s your pretext? Doesn’t that distract you from the REAL fight in Afghanistan? What about the logistical problems. Where do you base from? What are your supply lines like? There’s a reason the first country we invaded in WWII was Morocco.
Or what if your goal isn’t necessarily to go around toppling regimes. What if you think that a better strategy to combat Islamism is to create secular democracies (I don’t like that word, but it’ll have to do) in the Middle East. Maybe that’s a crazy plan, but suppose it is your plan. Which country represents the best candidate? Hard to say, but look! Here’s one 1) that’s fairly secular to begin with, 2) we’re already patrolling a good portion of its airspace with our warplanes which 3) they shoot at fairly frequently,
4) has a genocidal despot at the helm who 5) has pissed off several larges sectors of his population and 6) is already in violation of several UN resolutions. Furthermore, this country borders 3 sort-of allied nations, one of which owes us BIG TIME, which we could use for basing.
Furthermore, this candidate nation has fairly long borders with two of the baddies, Syria and Iran. Sure, the country isn’t all that hospitable, but a lot of it is flat, which is nice for our tanks to roll across.
Now, I’m not saying this means that invading said country is a no-brainer, but these are things you have to think about. It seems to me, though, that you believe any deviation between your goals and the administration’s in the fight against terrorism represent perfidy on the part of the administration.
October 21st, 2004 at 6:15 pm
… he said, meaning the opposite. First Iraq is such a minor, non-terror state that it doesn’t even make the top five. Now I’m supposed to believe the CRS report, which singles out five countries as state sponsors of terror. What the devil is Iraq doing on that short list? The paper appears to predate Iraq’s hosting of Ansar al-Islam, and also does not mention Iraq’s offer of safe haven to Osama bin Laden. Despite those omissions, I don’t see how anyone who has actually read the sections you point to can come away thinking Iraq was less of a terror state than Syria.
Last and least, Iraq’s hosting of Abu Nidal is not “bullshit,” just one more fact that doesn’t support leftist ideology over Iraq. Of course, what fits or doesn’t fit is all event-driven. If the U.S. had invaded Syria instead of Iraq, you’d almost certainly be arguing that that was a distraction from the “real” war on terror (assuming you are charitable enough to acknowledge that there is one). In that case, you’d be pointing to Iraq as one of the major terrorist states Bush would have gone after if he were serious about terrorism. I know the drill.
October 22nd, 2004 at 12:49 pm
Thib:
If that’s the case, you might actually bother to mention it at some point when you’re making the case for war.
Xrlq:
You’re right, I was wrong: Iraq is in the top five. It just happens to be fifth out of five. Maybe the administration’s goal was to go after the low-hanging fruit?
Oh, you mean the group that Saddam tolerated — not supported but tolerated — because they were fighting against the Kurdish separatists? You know, the al-Qaeda-connected group that only operated in the Northern part of Iraq where Hussein had no control? The group that the Bush Administration could have taken out but didn’t? Yeah, I can see why we’d invade and take Baghdad because of them…
You’re right, they did indeed host him, but I never said they didn’t. I said it was “bullshit” as a justification, because intelligence agencies widely considered ANO to be inactive and no longer a threat since the late 1990’s. Their last terror act, if I’m not mistaken, was in the early 1990’s. And Nidal himself was killed before we even invaded. But hey, they used to host that dead guy with the defunct organization! Let’s get him!
That depends. Does Syria have known ties to al-Qaeda, up to and including state sponsorship? Are they known hosts of any other active anti-US terror group? If so, it would be hard to argue against taking action against them. Of course, I tend to put the highest priority on anti-US terror operations. If we’re worried about all terror operations equally, then Palestine should have been our first stop.
See, now you’re proving that you’re completely full of shit. If I had only opposed the Iraq war with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, you may have a point there. But I questioned the wisdom of the move long before we ever went in, and I publicly supported our actions in Afghanistan, so that’s impossible to square with your idea that I would deride any US action as the wrong one. Here’s an idea: try attacking my positions, instead of your caricature of them.
How would I have suggested we proceed in the war on terror, you ask? First, I would have worked to build a stable Afghanistan, since we were already there anyway. Second, I would have put the squeeze on our “friends” in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan — both of whom have far more to do with al-Qaeda in particular and terrorism in general than Iraq ever has. Third, when my intelligence agencies told me that any connection between Iraq and 9/11 or even Iraq and al-Qaeda was highly doubtful, I would have listened to them.
October 22nd, 2004 at 1:47 pm
Thib:
In the article you cite, Franks says this:
You found it so important that you highlighted it. Well as it turns out, either Franks is lying, or today’s Washington Post is:
[Emphasis Added.] Gee, that sounds an awful lot like diverting attention and manpower to me…
October 22nd, 2004 at 2:40 pm
I’m going to trust Franks over the WaPo.
October 22nd, 2004 at 5:34 pm
Thib:
In other words, you’re taking Franks’ word over the word of people who were and are actually in Afghanistan. In any case, your question about by what right I question Franks is now answered. Multiple sources with firsthand knowledge.
October 23rd, 2004 at 3:24 am
Tgirsch, you just don’t know when to quit when you’re behind. First Iraq was a piddly, non-terror state that didn’t even make the top five. Then you cite a report that lists the top five, and for some strange reason, that non-terrorist state Iraq made the list after all. Now, rather than just admitting you were full of crap and moving on, you’re trying to fall back on a theory that it was number 5 out of 5, even though I’ve already pointed out that the report clearly paints Iraq as worse than Syria on this count. I haven’t read the other three and don’t care to, but no, that doesn’t mean I’m going to accept your next argument that Iraq was “only” the fourth worst terror state in the world, nothing for the U.S. to be concerned about.
Equally silly is your claim that Saddam Hussein’s regime didn’t support Ansar al-Islam (it probably did), or that the group only existed in the parts of Iraq Saddam Hussein didn’t control (it was in Baghdad, too).
Taking the cake is your claim that Abu Nidal was no big deal since he was a retired terrorist, and “Nidal himself was killed before we even invaded.” We’ll probably never know for sure why Nidal was allowed in the country to begin with or why he was murdered (your buddy Hussein’s regime took the implausible position that it was a suicide), but the most likely explanation is that they took him in in hopes of bringing him out of retirement, and bumped him off when it became clear he was not interested. The one thing we do know, both from our own intel and from that shared by Russia, that Hussein’s government was plotting attacks against us in the wake of 9-11, either with or without Nidal. Of course, you don’t care.
October 24th, 2004 at 12:53 am
Xrlq:
Wow, that’s impressive. Your speculation about Nidal trumps what intelligence agencies thought about him. You’re in the wrong line of work, apparently. Meanwhile, please do enlighten me as to what about the report says Iraq has had anything at all to do with anti-US terror operations since 1993.
As for Syria in the report, I wouldn’t classify their portrayal as being less-welcoming to terrorists than Iraq. And in any case, you’ll notice that the report doesn’t include our “friends” in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Egypt.
See, here’s the thing: you have to cling to the idea that Iraq was not only a terror-sponsoring state, but an active and extremely dangerous threat (in fact the largest threat) to the United States, because to admit otherwise would be to admit that your boy George sold you a bill of goods, and you bought it hook, line and sinker. And I don’t think your ego could take that. You’re so desperate about it that you cite purported intel from Russia that’s so rock-solid, even the administration hasn’t bothered to cite or acknowledge it.
The facts here are really quite simple: no substantial WMDs or WMD programs. No substantial links to al-Qaeda or any other anti-US terror organziation. But hey, Saddam was thinking about maybe one day trying to start WMD programs, so it’s a good thing we sent over 1,000 of our finest to die to take him out of power, leave much of his country in the hands of insurgents, and turn what formerly wasn’t an al-Qaeda haven into a fairly active one, all the while allowing the Taliban to regroup throuhgout much of Afghanistan. But hey, Saddam’s in prison! Good trade!
By the way, I don’t suppose you’ve got a credible source for this, besides your backside, do you?
In the meantime, I’m still waiting for you to answer these questions, which you’ve conveniently ignored:
October 24th, 2004 at 2:44 pm
As usual, you’re wrong. The administration has indeed acknowledged receiving the Russian intel; they just didn’t make a big deal out of it because it didn’t tell them anything they didn’t already know.
None, on three technicalities. First, the fact that al-Qaeda was headquartered in Afghanistan rather than Iraq was by Osama bin Laden’s choice, not Saddam Hussein’s. Second, Hussein took in Zarqawi & Co. after 9-11, which if anything is more damning than if he had taken them in before. Third, the fact that Hussein’s various and sundry plots against the U.S. ultimately proved unsuccessful does not make him less of a threat, and certainly doesn’t mean we should have let him keep trying until he finally got it right.
A more sensible question would be how many international terrorist incidents has Hussein supported, one way or another. To which the answer is, just about every suicide bombing in Israel whose killer’s family received, or expected payment. Or Israeli victims don’t count, maybe we should ask how many major terrorist incidents against the U.S. have been successfully pulled off by the states of Syria, Iran, North Korea, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan combined? By your reasoning, there are no terrorist states left in the world, now that the Taliban is gone (I’m assuming even you will concede 9-11 was major).
October 25th, 2004 at 12:49 am
Cite? That would be surprising, after all, since intelligence that directly contradicts one of the most damning findings of the 9/11 Commission report would seem to be something that they’d want to make a pretty big deal out of.
The few times that Saddam thought about hosting bin Laden, it wouldn’t have been to help him; not even close. It would have been to keep an eye on him (probably to control him), and to eliminate the risk bin Laden posed to Hussein’s regime. There’s little disagreement about that in the intelligence community.
Your speculation is uncompelling. I’ve not seen any intelligence to suggest that Hussein actively helped Zarqawi in any way. That doesn’t mean there isn’t any, of course, just that I haven’t seen it. You’d think that would be a pretty big deal, something that would have gotten a great deal of attention.
No, but the fact that he hadn’t tried anything in a decade would seem to make him less of a threat, and would lead one to believe that the priorities ought to be elsewhere.
As I’ve said several times before, if Israel is your concern, we should have sent troops to Palestine, not Iraq.
The same number that were officially sponsored by Afghanistan. But how much al-Qaeda activity can be found in those countries? Exempting North Korea (and possibly Syria), a lot more than ever existed in Iraq (at least until after we invaded).
The reason you and people like you will lose the war on terror is that you place far too much emphasis on states when fighting what is essentially a stateless enemy. Terror organizations don’t need state support; all they need is money and weapons, and both are remarkably easy to get. Your strategy of bombing places willy-nilly and spreading even more anti-American sentiment throughout the Middle East is highly unlikely to help, and I would sumbit highly likely to hurt.
When it comes to the war on terror, we’re not the ones thinking in a “September 10th” mindset. That distinction belongs to the Bush Administration and the neo-cons.
October 25th, 2004 at 12:59 pm
It was all over the Internet. The L.A. Times covered it, but their stuff gets moved to a pay-only archive after a few weeks. Fortunately, this guy copied most of the good stuff. Unfortunately, his account does include responses by U.S. officials, but it’s out there if you look. Google is your friend.
It doesn’t contradict any of the 9/11 Commission’s findings. The mission of the 9/11 Commission, as its name suggets, was to get at the bottom of 9/11, not Iraq, and not terrorism in general. Thus, its findings on Iraq were limited to Iraq’s provable, pre-9/11 contacts with al-Qaeda. The commission made no findings one way or the other about any Iraqi acts of terrorism after 9/11, nor of any conducted independently of al-Qaeda.
Do you have any sources to corroborate that, or did you just flat-out make it up? Of course Hussein didn’t want al-Qaeda targeting his regime. That doesn’t mean he didn’t want it to target ours. Contrary to popular opinion, triangulation is not a purely American concept.
Which I hardly find surprising. It was widely reported in the blogosphere, and also reported in the MSM, that Zarqawi received medical treatment at an elite hospital that was not accessible to ordinary Iraqis, let alone to foreigners who had snuck over the border to run terrorist camps over the objection of that model international citizen, Saddam Hussein.
It did get a lot of attention among the warbloggers. Should I be surprised that it got a bit less attention from the peaceniks or from an MSM which, almost to the man, wants Kerry to win?
October 25th, 2004 at 4:32 pm
Xrlq:
On the Iraq intelligence, I saw the story when it first broke, and have never seen anyone prominent in the administration acknowledge it in any meaningful way. You would think that, if the intelligence were credible, they would have hammered on it repeatedly, as they’ve done with so many other less important points.
To be fair, you’re right, because the purported Russian intel doesn’t state that al-Qaeda would have been involved. But you would still think that the administration would hammer that point home if they felt the intel was credible. They have not done this, which tells you a great deal about what they think of the intel (especially when you consider some of the questionable intel they have embraced.)
Unlike the right, I’m not in the habit of making stuff up. Start here:
Moving along:
If I’m understating the significance of this, you’re certainly overstating it:
The most you can say about Zarqawi’s presence in Iraq is that it was “tolerated.”
Of course it did. The warbloggers latched onto every shred of information that might justify their bankrupt worldview. Byt I give them about as much credence on the subject as you might give Oliver Willis.
Not necessarily, particularly if there’s no substance to it. What should surprise you is that the administration should all but ignore evidence that would greatly help their case. For an administration that has no trouble repeating talking points of questionable veracity, you have to wonder why they would skip such a useful one. (As it is, whenever they did bring up Zarqawi, it was usually not by name, and it was yet another futile attempt to tie Iraq to al-Qaeda in particular, rather than terrorism in general.)
It seems your case for Iraq being any sort of near-term threat to the US is almost entirely circumstantial, and very, very thin. But hey, as long as the possibility exists that Hussein may one day have become a threat, all the US casualties and all the tens of billions of dollars become completely justifiable.