Laurie Mylroie

[Ignatius]

I remember seeing this woman on CSPAN several years ago speaking in front of a group and promoting her book Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America.

It was one of the things that made me believe that the conservatives were not waging war against Iraq just for the oil or some other nonsense, but because at least some of them genuinly (and foolishly) believed it was the right thing to do.

I didn't remember her name but I happened upon this article today: Laurie Mylroie: The Neocons' favorite conspiracy theorist. (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0312.bergen.html)
From the article:
Mylroie became enamored of her theory that Saddam was the mastermind of a vast anti-U.S. terrorist conspiracy in the face of virtually all evidence and expert opinion to the contrary. In what amounts to the discovery of a unified field theory of terrorism, Mylroie believes that Saddam was not only behind the '93 Trade Center attack, but also every anti-American terrorist incident of the past decade, from the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania to the leveling of the federal building in Oklahoma City to September 11 itself. She is, in short, a crackpot, which would not be significant if she were merely advising say, Lyndon LaRouche. But her neocon friends who went on to run the war in Iraq believed her theories, bringing her on as a consultant at the Pentagon, and they seem to continue to entertain her eccentric belief that Saddam is the fount of the entire shadow war against America.

Another interesting article from the same magazine on how low the standards are in one of the main think tanks that this administration seems to draw from:

The intellectual decline of AEI (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0312.wallace-wells.html)

In 1998, John R. Lott Jr., an economist then working as an instructor at University of Chicago Law School, published More Guns, Less Crime, a book that argues that arming civilians has a substantial deterrent effect on violence. He produced data seeming to show that deaths from multiple-victim shootings dropped 90 percent in states that passed laws permitting concealed weapons. His book tipped the terms of the debate, handing the gun lobby, which had previously relied on brute politicking to win over lawmakers, a devastatingly effective academic study supporting their side. Conservative legislators in several states used his book to push through laws permitting civilians to carry guns. Lott used the book's profile to get off the itinerant academic circuit, and land a permanent post as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Washington's premier conservative think tank.
This spring, two economists, Ian Ayres of Yale and John J. Donohue III of Stanford, published a paper charging Lott with falsifying his statistics. Then things really got weird. Someone named "Mary Rosh" started turning up on Web sites where Lott's work was being discussed, claiming to be a former student of the embattled academic and defending him vigorously. Some Web loggers investigated and couldn't find any student of his by that name. Eventually, Lott admitted that he himself was "Mary Rosh." Criticism continued to mount, though both Lott and his sponsors at AEI have argued that Ayres and Donohue's paper contained inaccuracies of its own. Several other academics called into question separate aspects of his scholarship, the National Academy of Sciences set up an expert panel to establish whether he'd fabricated data (the panel is still investigating), and the editor in chief of Science called Lott a "fraud."

Edited for smelling

[Monketey Ghost]

Why do you disappear for great lengths of time, and then pop up with this depressing stuff? You never call, you never write. All that stuff about "secret missions" and "need to know" information... you could have at least sent a postcard.

Lott had a sock? Oh my...

It seems the push to war was an extremely myopic affair. Ugh.

[Ignatius]

Originally posted by No Answers
Why do you disappear for great lengths of time, and then pop up with this depressing stuff? You never call, you never write. All that stuff about "secret missions" and "need to know" information... you could have at least sent a postcard.


Sorry that I've been away, but I've finally aborted my mission and can now safely talk about it.


I originally set out to personally slap every individual in the nation that proudly announced that they voted for Ralph Nader in the last election. I would then read them my prepared statement about how there were plenty of conservatives that didn't think that GWB was conservative enough and yet still weren't so bat-***** crazy as to vote for Pat Buchanan and other ramblings. Then I would force them to read a newspaper.

I enjoyed the work and everything (and they always got me high afterward) but the places I had to go...ewwww. I eventually just went home.

Oh that, and I'm finally finishing up an engineering class with an instructor that is about as inspiring as a tree sloth on tranquilizers.

[Ignatius]

Bumping my own thread. Not because of anything that I have said, but because these are very interesting articles. Read them both if you get a chance.

[rikzilla]

Ignatius,

I have read Ms. Mylroie's book. Although I do not agree with all her assumptions, some of her facts are very interesting.

for instance:
#1. Saddam gave haven and support to the terrorist Abu Nidal and his organization

#2. Abdul Rahman Yasin, the one terrorist not captured from the first WTC bombing is currently living free in Baghdad. The only named conspirator still at large. He was one of the "blind Sheik's" nutty Islamic fundie followers....so why did he run for Iraq...and why did Saddam harbor him ?

#3. On August 8, 1995 Hussein Kamil (Saddam's son-in-law) defected to Jordan. He had supervised Iraqi unconventional weapons programs. His information confirmed that Iraq had developed and possesed weaponized biological agents.

#4. Egyptian officials arrested one of the first WTC bombers where he was hiding with family in Cairo. He is Abu Halima. He told them about the involvement of two Iraqi intelligence agents who had managed to flee.


Her assertions that Ramzi Yusef (aka Abdul Basit) was an active Iraqi intelligence agent were shown to be false. However, she did have a decent circumstantial case for this. Mr. Yusef (mastermind of the first WTC bombing) did travel as Mr. Basit, on a faked Kuwaiti passport. The real Mr. Basit and his entire family mysteriously disappeared during the Iraqi invasion. Somehow, Ramzi Yusef's photo and information was inserted into Abdul Basit's file at the government ministry that issued the passport. So the passport was not just crudely faked,...it was an authentic official government document, backed up by the files on record. Mylroie posits that this could only have been done by the Iraqi Mukhabarrat during the occupation of Kuwait.

In hindsight, it has been proved that Ramzi Yusef was not an Iraqi agent, but was an associate of Al Qaida....also, the fact remains that terrorists have been captured worldwide bearing false Kuwaiti passports which date to the Iraqi occupation. (They've since changed their passport documentation)... but it does at least seem to give strength to the argument that Saddam was fostering worldwide terrorism since it's hard to figure who else would have had access to all those stolen blank Kuwaiti passports.

As to the charge that she is the darling of the neo-cons,..well I guess she would certainly fit that bill now,...but it is worth remembering that she was Bill Clinton's hand-picked Iraq expert during his first term. Her credentials are solid, yet her ideas are a little radical.

After reading both Scott Ritter's, and her books....I'd have to admit that she makes some really good yet scary points.

-z

[Ignatius]

Thanks zilla,

I appreciate your input on this. I know that you have been a strong supporter on this board of the idea that Saddam did have strong links to Al Qaida and have linked to articles supporting this assertion. I consider you a pretty knowledgable fellow on this subject even if I often disagree with you.

Originally posted by rikzilla
Ignatius,

I have read Ms. Mylroie's book. Although I do not agree with all her assumptions, some of her facts are very interesting.

for instance:
#1. Saddam gave haven and support to the terrorist Abu Nidal and his organization

But isn't Abu Nidal more of a Palestinian terrorist? Not that that makes it ok, but it is suspicious that we would single out Iraq for supporting these terrorists when just about every other Arab country does so also.


#2. Abdul Rahman Yasin, the one terrorist not captured from the first WTC bombing is currently living free in Baghdad. The only named conspirator still at large. He was one of the "blind Sheik's" nutty Islamic fundie followers....so why did he run for Iraq...and why did Saddam harbor him ?

Well, because they both hate us. That does not mean that Saddam had anything to do with planning the attack, just that the "enemy of my enemy is my friend".

#3. On August 8, 1995 Hussein Kamil (Saddam's son-in-law) defected to Jordan. He had supervised Iraqi unconventional weapons programs. His information confirmed that Iraq had developed and possesed weaponized biological agents.

IIRC, this was one of the main reasons that our intelligence officials believed that Saddam had WMD. It became common knowledge at the time that he did. I believed it until several months after the war. I'm still not so sure that they didn't, but it is curious that they have not found it yet despite capturing so many high-level officials and having the cooperation of so many other Iraqis.

I think that it has been shown, and maybe you will agree, that the information that we got from a lot of these defectors turned out to be less than credible. In many cases because the defectors had their own interests in seeing Iraq invaded (they were part of the resistance anyway) or maybe there were other advantages to telling US officials what we wanted to hear.

I'm sure there were ways of verifying the information of defectors other than from other defectors, do you happen to have any good info on this?


#4. Egyptian officials arrested one of the first WTC bombers where he was hiding with family in Cairo. He is Abu Halima. He told them about the involvement of two Iraqi intelligence agents who had managed to flee.

Her assertions that Ramzi Yusef (aka Abdul Basit) was an active Iraqi intelligence agent were shown to be false. However, she did have a decent circumstantial case for this. Mr. Yusef (mastermind of the first WTC bombing) did travel as Mr. Basit, on a faked Kuwaiti passport. The real Mr. Basit and his entire family mysteriously disappeared during the Iraqi invasion. Somehow, Ramzi Yusef's photo and information was inserted into Abdul Basit's file at the government ministry that issued the passport. So the passport was not just crudely faked,...it was an authentic official government document, backed up by the files on record. Mylroie posits that this could only have been done by the Iraqi Mukhabarrat during the occupation of Kuwait.

That does sound compelling, but I really don't know enough about it to comment.

In hindsight, it has been proved that Ramzi Yusef was not an Iraqi agent, but was an associate of Al Qaida....also, the fact remains that terrorists have been captured worldwide bearing false Kuwaiti passports which date to the Iraqi occupation. (They've since changed their passport documentation)... but it does at least seem to give strength to the argument that Saddam was fostering worldwide terrorism since it's hard to figure who else would have had access to all those stolen blank Kuwaiti passports.

As to the charge that she is the darling of the neo-cons,..well I guess she would certainly fit that bill now,...but it is worth remembering that she was Bill Clinton's hand-picked Iraq expert during his first term. Her credentials are solid, yet her ideas are a little radical.

I think that I saw her on C-SPAN during the Clinton administration. No question that Clinton was at least somewhat influenced by her as well which would explain why he gave credance to some of the neocon thinking at the time in regards to Iraq.

You have to admit, though, that Mylroie is a person that became obsessed with Saddam and found his handiwork in everything that she looked at whether it was there or not. This should make us at least re-examine all of her work, especially when the stakes were so high and she apparantly had so much influence in this administrations thinking (and yes, some of the last administrations).

A bigger question comes out of this (see the other article) about think tanks like the AEI and the amount of influence they are able to assert with a frightful lack of accountability or any reasonable oversight.
[/QUOTE][/i]
[i]
After reading both Scott Ritter's, and her books....I'd have to admit that she makes some really good yet scary points.
-z [/B]
If you ever get a chance, I would be curious to know what you thought of Ritter's book and his turnaround in thinking and if he was essentially bought off. I've heard Ritter speak many times (but not in a while) and always found him interesting. My ears would always perk up when I got a chance to hear him or Holbrooke talk about the first Gulf war.

-Ig

[rikzilla]

Ignatius,

Just a note to express my pleasure in conversing with you on this topic. It's highly enjoyable to have conversations with people who disagree with me, of course I wouldn't be here if I wasn't getting something out of it too. How boring it would be if we all just blandly agreed all the time eh? But then again, it's so much nicer when it's all done with decent manners.

I don't have much time today, but perhaps tomorrow I can address your points and try to give you my take on Mylroie now. (with the benefit of all these months of hindsight.) :)

Scott Ritter is a whole other kettle of fish....but again....tomorrow!

Thanks,
-z

[Ignatius]

Originally posted by rikzilla
Ignatius,

Just a note to express my pleasure in conversing with you on this topic. It's highly enjoyable to have conversations with people who disagree with me, of course I wouldn't be here if I wasn't getting something out of it too. How boring it would be if we all just blandly agreed all the time eh? But then again, it's so much nicer when it's all done with decent manners.

I don't have much time today, but perhaps tomorrow I can address your points and try to give you my take on Mylroie now. (with the benefit of all these months of hindsight.) :)

Scott Ritter is a whole other kettle of fish....but again....tomorrow!

Thanks,
-z

I look forward to it zilla.

You wrote some things a year or two ago on this board that reminded my of some buddies I have. We go out and have some beer, disagree with each other on absolutely everything the other says but never miss a beat when ordering the next round. There are a few guys on this board that I always disagree with but would leap at the chance of having a beer with them sometime. You are one of them.

I tend to be a fairly mellow guy. Manners are good and make for a more reasoned discussion, but as you know very well there is a time and place for them. On some issues I would prefer the participants not pretend that they are sitting around at the gentlemans club sipping tea.;) Sometimes a good brawl is in order, but I enjoy the tone of this thread much more.

[rikzilla]

Originally posted by Ignatius
Thanks zilla,

I appreciate your input on this. I know that you have been a strong supporter on this board of the idea that Saddam did have strong links to Al Qaida and have linked to articles supporting this assertion. I consider you a pretty knowledgable fellow on this subject even if I often disagree with you.


Thanks. As most folks were, I was horrified watching so many people die right there on tv in New York...in buildings which I had visited with my family on vacation. As a consequence I supported the swift action against Afghanistan without much research into the subject. I figured we had the intelligence pointing to Bin Laden....and an obligation to protect our people.

But Iraq was an entirely different situation. As we all know, there was great controversy as to the threat posed by Iraq. As a skeptic, I sought to educate myself. I find it sad and pathetic that so many people rely on tv news sound bites to inform themselves....therefore I went to the library and got out 4 books on Iraq. One was Mylroie's, another Ritter's "EndGame". The other two were a bit dry, and it's been a year now so I can't easily remember the titles. But what I gleaned from these readings was that there was ample evidence that Saddam was involved in the support of various and sundry terrorist activities, from the payment of Palestinian suicide bombers to the operation of a Muhabarrat terrorism "school" which was detailed in Ritter's book.


But isn't Abu Nidal more of a Palestinian terrorist? Not that that makes it ok, but it is suspicious that we would single out Iraq for supporting these terrorists when just about every other Arab country does so also.

True,...there can be no doubt that there were many more reasons for the WOT heading to Iraq than Saddam's cache of WMD. There are certainly other WOT target countries such as Syria, Iran, or even Saudi Arabia...but then there are political reasons why they were not attacked. Iraq was an admittedly imperfect target...but only IMHO because the WMD intelligence was so inexplicably flawed.

[/i]
Well, because they both hate us. That does not mean that Saddam had anything to do with planning the attack, just that the "enemy of my enemy is my friend".
[/i]
IIRC, this was one of the main reasons that our intelligence officials believed that Saddam had WMD. It became common knowledge at the time that he did. I believed it until several months after the war. I'm still not so sure that they didn't, but it is curious that they have not found it yet despite capturing so many high-level officials and having the cooperation of so many other Iraqis.

Well, of course I believed it too. What research I was able to do not only bolstered the contention that Saddam had hidden stores of WMD,..it implicated him in alot of other crimes such as terrorism, torture, murder...etc....this was, as we all know, not a very nice fellow.

I think that it has been shown, and maybe you will agree, that the information that we got from a lot of these defectors turned out to be less than credible. In many cases because the defectors had their own interests in seeing Iraq invaded (they were part of the resistance anyway) or maybe there were other advantages to telling US officials what we wanted to hear.

Well, the info from Hussein Kamal came in 1995, when we had limited ability through UNCOM to check up on it. Some of his information was however confirmed. In Ritter's book he detailed how they dug up SCUD parts in a chicken farm owned by a Saddam cousin based on Kamal's info.

Saddam is a strange guy. I think that all his life he learned that ruthlessness paid off in spades...and that being heavily armed was a pre-requisite(sp?) to being taken seriously as a ruthless thug. (Hey, who's gonna be afraid of the ruthless 98lb weakling?)
:)

Anyway,..I think Saddam likely did destroy his WMD caches. We know he had them...so he either sent them away to really great hiding places, or he unilaterally destroyed them as he claimed he did to UNSCOM inspectors. Now, it is incredible to me that he would have destroyed everything out of sight of UNSCOM...I mean, why would he do that? Unless,...unless he wanted to bluff the world into thinking he's still dangerous? If so, maybe his bluff worked a whole lot better than he tought it would. I guess a lifetime of ruthless behavior may have doomed him to be target #2 in the WOT.



I'm sure there were ways of verifying the information of defectors other than from other defectors, do you happen to have any good info on this?

No. I have no idea. Only that the prevailing wisdom,...even from UNSCOM was that Iraq's disarmament could not be verified. This inability to check out what we thought was solid intel should give all of us pause. We need to investigate what went wrong with CIA's methods and fix this before it bites us yet again.

I think that I saw her on C-SPAN during the Clinton administration. No question that Clinton was at least somewhat influenced by her as well which would explain why he gave credance to some of the neocon thinking at the time in regards to Iraq.

You have to admit, though, that Mylroie is a person that became obsessed with Saddam and found his handiwork in everything that she looked at whether it was there or not. This should make us at least re-examine all of her work, especially when the stakes were so high and she apparantly had so much influence in this administrations thinking (and yes, some of the last administrations).

Yes. I was floored by Mylroie's book. She makes a great case for Saddam being behind alot of nasty stuff...but then later I found a web site she ran that was heavily religious in a Christian-right kind of way. It made me suspicious of her motivation...but now I cannot find this page anymore. Perhaps she shut it down in order to distance herself from some of the nuttier neo-cons?? I just don't know.


A bigger question comes out of this (see the other article) about think tanks like the AEI and the amount of influence they are able to assert with a frightful lack of accountability or any reasonable oversight.


Well, I don't know that think tanks should have oversight. (Sounds too much like a thought-police function) Of course if government adopts some of these suggestions...that's where the oversight should come in.


If you ever get a chance, I would be curious to know what you thought of Ritter's book and his turnaround in thinking and if he was essentially bought off. I've heard Ritter speak many times (but not in a while) and always found him interesting. My ears would always perk up when I got a chance to hear him or Holbrooke talk about the first Gulf war.

-Ig

Ritter's another strange case. He started out in his first book offering a copious amount of good reasons why we should remove Saddam. Then his most recent book is touted by the left, and is full of invective against Bush for wanting a "war for oil" (Gee, where have I heard that before?)

Anyway,...I was suspicious of this change of heart...and I still wonder if it had anything at all to do with Ritter's arrest for luring a child across state lines for sex. (Amazingly enough, our hero Mr. Ritter is an internet pedophile in his spare time) Weird stuff. the jury's still out on him.

Let me leave you with this quote from an interview Ms. Mylroie did with PBS:
PBS: Lastly, there's a lot of evidence, but it's all circumstantial. Is it enough to turn this country towards what could be a very difficult and damaging war against Iraq, the possibility of the loss of the coalition, and the chance of making a mistake? Is it enough?

MYLROIE: An assessment has to be made by the political leadership of this country, whether it is more likely that bin Laden acted on his own or more likely that bin Laden acted in concert with Iraq. That involves questions about could bin Laden himself have carried out the attack on September 11 or was a state required. It means going back and looking at the previous terrorism, including the first attack on the World Trade Center n 1993.

If the assessment concludes -- which I believe it should -- that Iraq was most probably involved, then that means Saddam is a very, very big danger. Don't forget, there's biological weapons now involved. And this anthrax can cause more Americans to die, and many, many more Americans than died on September 11. Is that a threat that we want to sit passively for and wait to happen, or do we want to pre-empt it? Because the odds are very high that Saddam is going to do that at some point.

... I used to teach at the Naval War College, the Navy's senior academy, and one of the things the teachers said and the students learned is you go after the center of gravity, the main force -- and that's Iraq. That information that the president needs does not have to be definitive, because that information may not be available. What it has to do is be convincing. If the president's convinced of it, then we take the war to Iraq and we persuade our coalition partners it has to be done.

The whole interview,...which is very informative BTW, can be found

here (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gunning/interviews/mylroie.html)

Let me know what you think.


Regards,
-z

[Ignatius]

Good post. You gave me a lot to chew on. I haven't got a chance to read the rest of that interview yet. I'll only be able to start responding tonight.
Originally posted by rikzilla


Thanks. As most folks were, I was horrified watching so many people die right there on tv in New York...in buildings which I had visited with my family on vacation. As a consequence I supported the swift action against Afghanistan without much research into the subject. I figured we had the intelligence pointing to Bin Laden....and an obligation to protect our people.

I wanted an invasion of Afghanistan before 9/11 (at least on an emotional level). I’m sure you remember the reports about the Taliban knocking down the Buddhist statues that had been there for some 800 or so years and them thumbing their nose to the international community that condemned it. They were this nauseating, dangerous group of religious-zealot ******** that represent everything that I dislike.

I also remember reports about some of what I thought were the bravest people on the planet. I don’t recall their acronym but it was an organized group of women that would sneak around and hold school classes for little girls in basements. They would also secretly tape some of the crimes of the Taliban and try and get them out to international media. If they were caught, the best they could hope for was a quick ride to the stadium where they would be publicly killed.

Then, of course, there were the reports and interview with that Osama guy. What a dick.

I was furious with far left-wing friends that didn’t support the war in Afghanistan. We had a situation where we were directly and ruthlessly attacked by bin Laden and his organization. He and that organization were being harbored and supported by the Taliban. To not strike back forcefully is simply not realistic, it is foreign policy suicide.

To me, this was a very important war. With the overwhelming support of the world after 9/11 and our impressive initial victory in Afghanistan I think that there was a chance to do something great. Part of the reason that I have opposed the Iraq war starts here (but more on that tomorrow).


But Iraq was an entirely different situation...

I couldn't agree with you more!:D
More on that tomorrow.

[rikzilla]

Ignatius,

I agree with you wholeheartedly on Afghanistan. What the Taliban did was worse even than the French gunners who used the Sphynx for target practise back in Napolean's day. A-holes indeed!

As for Iraq, I think the reasons for removing Saddam were manifold. As a skeptic I do give some credence to the "oil" angle, but unlike the far-left I don't think it was that simple. I do believe after the reading I did, that WMD was a real worry in the time just prior to the invasion. Saddam had been playing a game of brinksmanship for an awful long time. Then there was the threat he posed to regional stability. The abject thuggery of his so called government. The prospect of a never ending regime of sanctions which hurt the Iraqi people, as well as never ending patrolling of "no flight zones" in order to keep the Kurds from being wiped out.

Understandably, the methods used to keep Saddam in the bag were not only expensive and oppressive to the Iraqi people..but they had no ending in sight. Saddam had set himself up like a mideaval English King before the advent of parliment. He was a brutal law unto himself,...answerable only to Allah...and his sons were poised to take over on Saddam's death...so there really was no end in sight to the status quo.

More later....gotta run....

-z

[Ignatius]

Hello and Happy Thursday! I'm skipping work today so maybe I will get a chance to post more between doing the projects that my wife keeps pointing out that I have sucessfully avoided on the weekends.
Originally posted by rikzilla

As for Iraq, I think the reasons for removing Saddam were manifold. As a skeptic I do give some credence to the "oil" angle, but unlike the far-left I don't think it was that simple.

Agreed. A quick aside on oil. I think that the left greatly overstated the oil angle and the right probably understated it.

1. Just by default, everything we do in regards to the Midde East has to do with oil. Without the oil that entire region matters to us about as much as Africa or South America. For good reason because...

2. Oil is important. There is no other resource the effects every single American so significantly. When we have any significant period where there is a shortage and oil prices increase dramatically it makes the history books and really defines that period of time.

It would be beyond foolish if oil were not a fairly significant part of our foriegn policy. Wouldn't it be nice if we ever heard politicians talk about it in these terms? I can understand why they don't, though. They know that the moment they say this they have just written their next opponents winning campaign commercial. However, if we were able to talk about this openly maybe that would be the thing that would inspire us to find better alternatives. At the very least, conservation wouldn't be talked about like it was a joke.

3. The Bush administration is, of course, filled with oil people. People that spend a good portion of their lives in a given profession tend to take positions that favor that profession more so than other people would. A webmaster preaches the importance of spending half your time on your computer doing things that will protect you from viruses. A mechanic friend will insist that you change your oil every 3k miles. etc.

I don't think that the oil was anything close to the reason for the war with Iraq. It was a bonus, one of several things that reinforced the administrations belief that this was the right thing to do. Another was the big potential political advantage (Rove saying that they were going to run on the war). These things are far less important that the main reasons we went to war (once again, more on that later), but they are worth mentioning.

Ok, I'm rambling and I haven't even got to your important points yet, more later.

-Ig