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<p>I don’t think that was really what Cheney’s recent visits were about. IMO, that was all just a ruse for public consumption. I believe the real purpose of Cheney’s whirlwind tour of Sunni states was setting the table for the planned attacks on Iran (and their Shi’a clients).</p>
<p>“Why should we define winning when most of you here don’t want to win”</p>
<p>Because people are dying regardless of what we want, and because it matters what they’re dying for?</p>
<p>Just a thought.</p>
<p>Is Petraus’s “go long” strategy sort of like a “Hail Mary” strategy?</p>
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<p>That’s a pretty accurate, concise statement. I would add three points:</p>
<p>1) Tenant had close ties to the Saudis and, thus, was able to finesse questions about why the Saudis obstructed our post-911 efforts to track down al Queda.</p>
<p>2) Tenant met with W. every morning, knew that his bread was buttered by the Cheney/Rumsfeld power base, and therefore fed W. a steady diet of appropriate “intelligence”.</p>
<p>3) We paid Chalibi $100 million over the years to feed us a pack of lies about Iraq. I don’t think anyone knows how much the Iranians paid him over the same time frame to feed us the same lies. It must have been substantial since he informed the Iranians that we had broken their diplomatic codes and been reading all of their ciphered communications between their embassies and Tehran for years.</p>
<p>In fairness, Sadaam was his own worst enemy. He did NOT have WMD programs, but went out of his way to make it look like he did (by kicking the inspectors out starting fitfully in 1996 and continuing until 2002). I don’t understand his motivation, but I suspect he came to realize that the sanctions and black-market Oil for Food [sic] program was an effective political tool for him.</p>
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<p>There was no WMD program in Iraq from 1991 on and no efforts to start one. That’s why we didn’t find anything during the pre-war IAEA inspections or the post-invasion survey. It wasn’t from lack of effort looking. There was nothing to find.</p>
<p>Dad, remember, all those WMDs were squirreled off to Syria in underground tunnels.</p>
<p>Well, we certainly have our finger in the dyke on this one, don’t we.</p>
<p>Left to their own devices and assuming that superior numbers would previal, Iraq would be a fairly staunch ally of Iran. That would only strengthen the “axis of evil” since two of the countries would actually be on speaking terms. All of this would happen after a period of escelated violence upon our departure as the factions jockey for postion and power. Other contries in the region would become involved out of percieved self-interest. It would just be (more of) a bloodbath before things got sorted out.</p>
<p>The only way this is a victory is if we leave Iraq to be a better place for U.S. interests than it was under Saddam and it has to be a better enough place that makes it worth our casualities. I don’t see how we ever get there.</p>
<p>“In fairness, Sadaam was his own worst enemy. He did NOT have WMD programs, but went out of his way to make it look like he did (by kicking the inspectors out starting fitfully in 1996 and continuing until 2002). I don’t understand his motivation, but I suspect he came to realize that the sanctions and black-market Oil for Food [sic] program was an effective political tool for him.”</p>
<p>Saddam Hussein kicked them out in 1996 because having them in and reporting that there WERE NO WMD PROGRAMS OR DELIVERY SYSTEMS resulted in the death of a MILLION Iraqis at the hands of Bill Clinton. So telling the truth, and demonstrating the truth to the inspectors, was absolutely suicidal, and children were dying. So he decided to try another strategy - bluff, and he could only bluff by kicking the inspectors out.</p>
<p>Your dates are wrong. Oil for Food started AFTER the bombing of the wastewater treatment and electrical generation plants, and the sanctions against simple medical necessities had already killed a million people. Corrupt? You bet. It also saved hundreds of thousands of innocent lives.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the astute and intelligent Carl Levin and the experienced Joe Biden bought Tenet’s lies, demonstrating that a strategy of lying and deceit on the part of the President of the United States could be extremely effective. George Bush only continued to do what was already well-established among Democratics under the mass child murderer in their own party.</p>
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And given how bad Saddam was, this is a horrible testament to just how badly we’ve bungled things there. Where did we go wrong? Thinking that invading Iraq was a justified response to 9/11 in the first place. It’s like getting sucker punched by a bully and then going out and beating the crap of somebody else you don’t like.</p>
<p>Hopefully in 30 years it will turn out as well as Vietnam with a relatively peaceful government slowly turning into to a modern capitalist society.</p>
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<p>Well, that’s true about the dates. For two reasons:</p>
<p>a) the bombing that destroyed waste treatment and electricity plants took place during the 1991 Gulf War</p>
<p>b) The UN approved the Oil For Food program in 1991, but Saddam refused to participate for five years.</p>
<p>The sanctions had an impact on child mortality rates, but not the 500,000 figure cited in the press. By 1998, the Iraqi oil sales far exceeded pre-1990 levels, except for times when Sadaam stopped the sale of oil. It’s interesting to note that that, during the sanctions period, child mortality rates increased in the [Shi’a] south, but decreased in the [Sunni and Kurdish] north. Thus, there was almost certainly a Sadaam ethnic cleansing component to the issue. To be sure, the economic sanctions crippled the Iraqi economy; however, Saddam made sure that the economic impact was distributed to concentrate the impact on the Shi’a population.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.thenation.com/doc/20011203/cortright[/url]”>http://www.thenation.com/doc/20011203/cortright</a></p>
<p>As for Clinton’s bombing, he ordered two major campaigns (plus some additional retribution for no-fly zone violations). The bombing in 1993 was a large-scale cruise missle attack in retribution for the attempt to bomb President Bush on a trip to Kuwait. The second was a very large scale four-day bombing assault in December 1998, as punishment for the end of UN weapons inspections. I haven’t seen any evidence to suggest either of these attacks included civilian targets. I’ve seen fairly detailed target lists for the 1998 campaign – missle defense, air defense, military factories (based on solid intelligence from the weapons inpsectors), TV/Radio, command/control, one Sadaam palace, and one economic target (an oil refinery).</p>
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<p>In all likelihood, Iraq will eventually break apart into three states. Five to ten years of ethnic cleansing will allow/force that to happen.</p>
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<p>Interesteddad: Unfortunately, you are entirely correct. I remember telling a friend about a week after we went to war that it would take 3-5 years for Iraq to fall into civil war. I really don’t think I knew this 'cause I’m brilliant; actually I think it’s a function of the common sense of this conclusion – and many, much smarter people presaged it but received no attention.</p>
<p>The important point about Vietnam, the real moral, is that it embarked on the path to what it is now only after we left. Who knows how much faster it might have gotten to what it is now, had we not involved ourself in the Vietnamese civil war or even more so had supported the Vietnamese against the French (unlikely in the Cold War, I realize, but we can dream, no)?</p>
<p>Barrons has captured the ugly irony of the whole thing.</p>
<p>Yes, strange isn’t it, that even in their eternal optimism about our war mongering, the best the right wing can muster up is “hopefully”, “relatively peaceful”, and of course…the best…“modern, capitalist”.</p>
<p>As if even that sanguinity, minimal though it is, would somehow justify the death and descruction we have wrought.</p>
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<p>I think this is a mischaracterization of the surge/escalation that Lieberman is supporting. General Odom, General McCaffery, and other military experts have said the surge/escalation is going to produce MORE instability in Iraq and actually DELAY stabilization. </p>
<p>So Lieberman’s position would more accurately be described as “continuing support of prosecuting the war in Iraq” regardless of whether increased stability will result. </p>
<p>When the expert opinion is that A yields B, and you insist on going forward with A, you can’t in any fairness then claim that you’re supporting “the opposite of B.”</p>
<p>Vietnam as a success story? Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese who were killed or imprisoned under a Stalinist regime when a Democratic Congress cut military and financial assistance. Tell that to the 2 million Cambodian victims (40% of the population) who were slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge. Tell that to the Hmong people – between 10,000 and 20,000 men, women and children were killed and more than 100,000 who fled to Thai refugee camps. While these people apparently thought that freedom was worth fighting for, those of us who have it don’t seem to care.</p>
<p>For an interesting comparison of Iraq and Vietnam, read this article by Melvin Laird. <a href=“http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20051101faessay84604-p10/melvin-r-laird/iraq-learning-the-lessons-of-vietnam.html[/url]”>http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20051101faessay84604-p10/melvin-r-laird/iraq-learning-the-lessons-of-vietnam.html</a>
There’s much more – if you really want to understand the situation in Iraq as it compares to Vietnam, read the article.</p>
<p>The bipartisan Iraq Study Group, by the way, also lent support to a “temporary surge” in U.S. forces if deemed necessary (see page 48 of the report). The ISG report also warned of the potential dire consequences – Iraq as a failed, terrorist state, a destabilized Middle East, and spreading regional conflict – of a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq that many Democrats favor.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone buys that Liebermann is supporting the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. The “temporary surge” supported by the ISG was in support of a plan to stablize the region. Liebermann and the other pro-war politicians have specifically rejected the ISG’s plan. A surge by itself isn’t going to bring stability anymore than if your doctor tells you to get plenty of rest and take medication, the rest alone will cure you.</p>
<p>You can use a hammer to build a house or you can use a hammer to kill a cow. But you can’t swing a hammer to kill a cow and reasonably claim that what you’re doing is support of homebuilding.</p>
<p>“By 1998, the Iraqi oil sales far exceeded pre-1990 levels, except for times when Sadaam stopped the sale of oil.”</p>
<p>There’s the key - by 1998 (not 1994-1995-1996).</p>
<p>“I haven’t seen any evidence to suggest either of these attacks included civilian targets. I’ve seen fairly detailed target lists for the 1998 campaign – missle defense, air defense, military factories (based on solid intelligence from the weapons inpsectors), TV/Radio, command/control, one Sadaam palace, and one economic target (an oil refinery).”</p>
<p>The whole point of the 1998 bombing campaign was to hit military targets. Once the genocide had failed (with a million dead - and it should be noted that the lower figure is for children under age 5, the total for all children is well higher than 500,000) and the palace revolt had not occurred, the Clinton murderers figured they might as well try the direct assault on military installations, and maybe get lucky. So Tenet was brought in to sell the Clinton genocide coverup to the astute, intelligent, and experienced Democratic leaders.</p>
<p>As for the 1993 bombings of the wastewater treatment plants, if you contact AFSC in Philadelphia, or Denis Halliday at Swarthmore (if he’s still there), they’ll send you pictures.</p>