So far, the war protestors are wrong on all counts

[Skeptic]

Well, the war is not over, but if things continue as planned, it seems that--as usual--the protestors against "american agression" were wrong on all points.

1). "This will be a proctracted war". It will be over before the weekend, probably.

2). "The US will kill thousands of innocent civilians". So far, the only casulties--even from the bombing of Baghdad--are airports, Saddam's palaces, bunkers, communications, and other military targets. No schools, hospitals, or iraqi children.

3). "The Iraqis will resist american occupation". The instant they are sure the Marines control the area, the Iraqi civlians are quite happy to pledge their support of the united states and their disgust of Saddam the butcher.

4). "The US will suffer political isolation". The US-led coalition includes over 30 nations, including most of Europe.

5). "Congress didn't declare war". Congress authorized Bush long ago to take military action on Iraq if necessary, and confirmed its support as the war started.

6). "Saddam doesn't have illegal weapons". Tell that to the Kuwaities, who were bombed with nonexistant SCUD missles yesterday.

7). "Saddam will set fire to all of the oil wells". So far, this hasn't happened--the fires that were started were local, and by no means a general strategy.

8). "The US public is against the war". Latest poll shows 76% support.

Things are very fluid right now, of course; and there are many longer-terms predictions by the protestors that cannot be checked yet. But isn't is SUCH a shock, that EVERY "war protestor" cliche that CAN be checked as I write this... turned out to be utter bulls--t?

[kourama]

strawman.

[Advocate]

This is not a strawman. It doesn't say anything about the arguments that the war might be wrong. It is still possible that the war could be morally wrong without having any negative consequences for the US. The argument is that their predictions were pretty much all wrong. So have there been any correct predictions other than "some other countries will get upset"?

[DrChinese]

There is only one thing that the war protesters agree on, and I didn't see it in the list.

THIS WAR IS WRONG.

There are currently 20 policemen and about 8 vans blocking off either end of my very short street, and a very loud protest going on, which roused me from my bath.

This was Brighton yesterday :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2870459.stm

:)

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by Advocate
This is not a strawman. It doesn't say anything about the arguments that the war might be wrong. It is still possible that the war could be morally wrong.

In theory, you are of course correct. In practice, however, the two are connected: both the argument that the war will proceed in a certain way and the argument that the war is morally wrong stem from the same general worldview about how the world works. If this worldview leads to so many wrong predictions in the practical field, it isn't likely it magically leads to all the correct conclusions in the moral field.

Morality and realism go hand in hand; if you look at all the examples of morally superior people in history--Lincoln, Jefferson, Churchill, FDR, Ghandi, MLK Jr.--you will find that they were first of all REALISTS who saw the world as it is, not as they wished it to be, and devoted themselves to changing it.

The converse is also true: moral perfidity and fantasy-prone thinking go together, as anybody who considers John Edward or Sylvia Browne will agree. To give another example, Chamberlin's cowardly betrayal of Checkoslovakia was at least in part due to his desire to believe Hitler was something different than he really was.To give an example from this forum, "A Unique Person"'s support and understanding for terrorism stems, at least in part, from his conspiracy-theory worldview, where the jews and America control everything.

The truth is that superior morality DOES NOT go together with idealism, but with realism. If there is one "big lie" the left truly is guilty of--although it lies to itself about it most of all--it is the belief that idealism means to be more moral. If anything, the opposite is (usually) true. It is the realists--those who support the war with Iraq and the removal of Hussein--that have the higher moral ground here, not the protestors.

[Smalso]

It is the realists--those who support the war with Iraq and the removal of Hussein--that have the higher moral ground here, not the protestors

And, of course, it is the conservatives that, as usual, have the higher moral ground.

(There are many liberals who support the war.)

[Smalso]

1). "This will be a proctracted war". It will be over before the weekend, probably

Actually, the Administration is saying that it might be a protracted war. Bits and pieces of a press briefing that I heard earlier, it was stated that the war could last six days, six weeks, or six months.

[shanek]

Originally posted by Skeptic
Well, the war is not over, but if things continue as planned, it seems that--as usual--the protestors against "american agression" were wrong on all points.

Disclaimer: I'm speaking only for myself here.

1). "This will be a proctracted war". It will be over before the weekend, probably.

I never claimed the war would last. In fact, I've claimed the opposite since Iraq never had a chance of standing up to our military, and never, ever, ever were a threat to us in the first place.

2). "The US will kill thousands of innocent civilians". So far, the only casulties--even from the bombing of Baghdad--are airports, Saddam's palaces, bunkers, communications, and other military targets. No schools, hospitals, or iraqi children.

I never claimed "thousands," but are you saying that not one single innocent civilian will be killed in this war?

3). "The Iraqis will resist american occupation".

Never claimed this either.

4). "The US will suffer political isolation".

Nor this.

5). "Congress didn't declare war". Congress authorized Bush long ago to take military action on Iraq if necessary, and confirmed its support as the war started.

That wasn't a declaration of war, and I challenge you to quote one single Congressman who claims that it was.

Also, see this thread. (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=16019)

6). "Saddam doesn't have illegal weapons". Tell that to the Kuwaities, who were bombed with nonexistant SCUD missles yesterday.

Those haven't been confirmed as scuds, although the news sources has been calling them that. More than one have retracted the claim. And even if they are scuds, they're loaded with conventional payloads.

7). "Saddam will set fire to all of the oil wells".

Never claimed this, either.

8). "The US public is against the war".

Nor this.

Now, do I really need to re-re-repost Ron Paul's questions about the war that were never answered?

[Advocate]

Originally posted by Smalso
(There are many liberals who support the war.)

True, but there are very few conservatives (in the US anyway) that oppose it. There are a few, but not many.

[a_unique_person]

accusing war protestors of behaving as a closed group of identically minded people reminds me of something.

[Troll]

Originally posted by a_unique_person
accusing war protestors of behaving as a closed group of identically minded people reminds me of something.

Like your assumption that people that aren't for a socialist or welfare state are all rich and have never seen poverty? Is that what it reminds you of?

[rockyroad]

Originally posted by kourama
strawman.

You do mean strawmEn right? - I agree, it's almost a textbook example.

[Jedi Knight]

Originally posted by DrChinese
There is only one thing that the war protesters agree on, and I didn't see it in the list.

THIS WAR IS WRONG.

No, the other thing war protestors agree on is that they are communists supporting communist anti-capitalist causes. The war just gave them the venue to act like they actually cared about the fate of Iraq while their real goal was media attention for their Marxist agenda.

JK

[My Final Spider]

Originally posted by Jedi Knight


No, the other thing war protestors agree on is that they are communists supporting communist anti-capitalist causes. The war just gave them the venue to act like they actually cared about the fate of Iraq while their real goal was media attention for their Marxist agenda.

JK

Look out, comrades! He's somehow cracked our master plan!

:rolleyes:

[Jedi Knight]

Originally posted by My Final Spider


Look out, comrades! He's somehow cracked our master plan!

:rolleyes:

Yep.

JK

[DrChinese]

Originally posted by Jedi Knight


Yep.

JK

I think Morpheus was a commie, wasn't he? Probably an Iraqi intelligence agent, too. Certainly a terrorist.

[Jedi Knight]

Originally posted by DrChinese


I think Morpheus was a commie, wasn't he? Probably an Iraqi intelligence agent, too. Certainly a terrorist.

Morpheus wasn't a commie. That was obvious when he was looking for the "one". Commies can't do anything without thousands, and tens of thousands thinking for them.

JK

[Denise]

Originally posted by Jedi Knight


Morpheus wasn't a commie. That was obvious when he was looking for the "one". Commies can't do anything without thousands, and tens of thousands thinking for them.

JK

Kind of like an ant farm, pretty sure.

[John Bryce]

I'll throw in my two cents worth:

1). "This will be a proctracted war". It will be over before the weekend, probably.

I would guess the invasion (this isn't a war in my view) will take a total of about three weeks.

2). "The US will kill thousands of innocent civilians". So far, the only casulties--even from the bombing of Baghdad--are airports, Saddam's palaces, bunkers, communications, and other military targets. No schools, hospitals, or iraqi children.

Until independent verification can be done, I'm not believing either side's casualty count. The first casualty of war is the truth.

3). "The Iraqis will resist american occupation". The instant they are sure the Marines control the area, the Iraqi civlians are quite happy to pledge their support of the united states and their disgust of Saddam the butcher.

The southern part of Iraq is home to the Shiite Muslims. They have been brutally repressed by Saddam for about 25 years. The reaction the US and British troops got in southern Iraq isn’t hard to figure out. In fact, it was expected the media would get lots of photos and film of the Shiites dancing, and giving out rice and flowers to US and British troops. We will have to wait see what happens at Baghdad.

4). "The US will suffer political isolation". The US-led coalition includes over 30 nations, including most of Europe.

Most of the support is luke-warm at best. Of the 30 countries (http://www.cbc.ca/news/iraq/players/coalition.html) supporting the US in this invasion, only two countries are providing a commited military contribution: UK and Australia. Compare that to Operation Desert Storm 12 years ago.

6). "Saddam doesn't have illegal weapons". Tell that to the Kuwaities, who were bombed with nonexistant SCUD missles yesterday.

The media called them SCUDS, probably because they don't know what else to call them. I am guessing the missiles were the al-Samoud 2 (http://www.abcactionnews.com/stories/2003/02/030213iraqmissiles.shtml) missiles that Iraq was in the process of destroying before the invasion. We will have to wait for expert confirmation on the type of missiles launched into Kuwait.

7). "Saddam will set fire to all of the oil wells". So far, this hasn't happened--the fires that were started were local, and by no means a general strategy.

The Iraqi army probably intended to blow the oil wells like they did back in 1991, but the American and British advance was so swift in taking the oil wells the Iraqi army didn't have the time to blow them all. This was part of the US/UK strategy: get to the oil wells before the Iraqi army has a chance to blow them. It worked.

8). "The US public is against the war". Latest poll shows 76% support.

Support for a war always goes up once a country goes to war (in the beginning, at least). People get behind their troops once the war starts. "Support for the war" most likely includes “support for the US troops” now that they are committed to battle. “Support for the troops” and “support for the war” are not the same thing.

[Zep]

Well said, John Bryce! A little bit of reality goes a lo..o..o..ng way!

Incidentally, as I said in another forum: Until we get any facts to the contrary, it appears that this Coalition of the Willing has so far managed to kill far more of its own people than "enemy forces" have.

Good or bad? YOU make the call! :rolleyes:

Zep

[Earthborn]

1). "This will be a proctracted war". It will be over before the weekend, probably. Chief Staff Meyers seems to disagree: "We think we are on our plan and on our timeline. Again this is not a prediction of the future. This is going to be a lot harder. Anyone who thinks this is going to be quick and easy is just wrong. I don't think it has been quick and easy. We lost 14 Americans, 7 in combat, 7 in non-combat. The British have lost some as well. This is not going to be an easy fight."

(Emphasis mine. Transcribed from Dutch radio)3). "The Iraqis will resist american occupation". The instant they are sure the Marines control the area, the Iraqi civlians are quite happy to pledge their support of the united states and their disgust of Saddam the butcher.The few images of Iraqis surrendering is not proof that this is happening en masse. 4). "The US will suffer political isolation". The US-led coalition includes over 30 nations, including most of Europe. Depends on how you define 'coalition'. The support of the Netherlands was given by a fallen government consisting of a 3 party coalition that lost tremendously in the last election. The Christian Democrats and the labour party are forming a new government, but the war in Iraq is a controversial subject that may make forming this government impossible. They made a compromise that the Netherlands would give support to the US led action in Iraq 'politically' but not 'militarily'.

However... At the press conference of General Frank, a Dutch military called Luitenant Colonel Blom, appeared giving the impression that the Netherlands do support the US militarily. This mistake caused quite a stir in Dutch politics, may cause further trouble in the formation of the new government.

Labour party leader Wouter Bos: "It's not a matter that he was at that pressconference by accident. What matters is: what was he doing there anyway?"

It may not sound like a big deal to any of you, but it just shows that the support for the war on Iraq is not so great as it may seem. I wonder how creatively the US has been defining support by other countries...

[Earthborn]

I thought it was a nice idea to bump up this thread, to see how well the predictions of the war protestors turned out to be after a while.1). "This will be a proctracted war". It will be over before the weekend, probably. It took a few weeks IIRC after this statement was made before the war was declared over. However, until today both coalition soldiers and Iraqis are dying.2). "The US will kill thousands of innocent civilians". So far, the only casulties--even from the bombing of Baghdad--are airports, Saddam's palaces, bunkers, communications, and other military targets. No schools, hospitals, or iraqi children.According to Iraqi Body Count (http://www.iraqbodycount.net/background.htm) between 6118 and 7836 civilians were killed. Hospitals got hit by bombs and a schoolchildren were shot by gunfire (see Latest Database Entry). Iraqi children were killed by clusterbombs. However, most of these incidents happened when the war was declared 'over'.3). "The Iraqis will resist american occupation". The instant they are sure the Marines control the area, the Iraqi civlians are quite happy to pledge their support of the united states and their disgust of Saddam the butcher.Well, that turned out not to be true.4). "The US will suffer political isolation". The US-led coalition includes over 30 nations, including most of Europe. The US is suffering political isolation at this very moment. However, the war in Iraq is not the only reason for that.
6). "Saddam doesn't have illegal weapons". Tell that to the Kuwaities, who were bombed with nonexistant SCUD missles yesterday.There were SCUDs, but the illegal weapons that were the reason for this war, turn out to be extremely hard to find.8). "The US public is against the war". Latest poll shows 76% support.I haven't seen a recent poll, but this seems to be changing.

The lesson we should learn from this: don't shout 'Victory!' too soon.

[Jon_in_london]

Originally posted by Skeptic
Well, the war is not over, but if things continue as planned, it seems that--as usual--the protestors against "american agression" were wrong on all points.

1). "This will be a proctracted war". It will be over before the weekend, probably.

The war is still on, people are still being killed. In fact a whole new war has started

2). "The US will kill thousands of innocent civilians". So far, the only casulties--even from the bombing of Baghdad--are airports, Saddam's palaces, bunkers, communications, and other military targets. No schools, hospitals, or iraqi children.

A figure of about 6,000 is probably pretty close to the truth

3). "The Iraqis will resist american occupation". The instant they are sure the Marines control the area, the Iraqi civlians are quite happy to pledge their support of the united states and their disgust of Saddam the butcher.

Sure, theres no resistance to the occupation and not one single US/UK soldeir has been attacked or killed in Iraq since the war 'ended'

4). "The US will suffer political isolation". The US-led coalition includes over 30 nations, including most of Europe.

Then why are you finding it so hard to get people to bail you out of the mess you have made?

5). "Congress didn't declare war". Congress authorized Bush long ago to take military action on Iraq if necessary, and confirmed its support as the war started.

Wrong Bush

6). "Saddam doesn't have illegal weapons". Tell that to the Kuwaities, who were bombed with nonexistant SCUD missles yesterday.

Actually its weapons of mass destruction, biological, nuclear and chemical. And he did have any did he?

7). "Saddam will set fire to all of the oil wells". So far, this hasn't happened--the fires that were started were local, and by no means a general strategy.

Good on the paras for preventing this

8). "The US public is against the war". Latest poll shows 76% support.

yes and like 60% of Americans think Saddam was responsible for 9/11 so lets maybe leave American public opinion out of this ok?

Things are very fluid right now, of course; and there are many longer-terms predictions by the protestors that cannot be checked yet. But isn't is SUCH a shock, that EVERY "war protestor" cliche that CAN be checked as I write this... turned out to be utter bulls--t?

True believer anyone?

[Mr Manifesto]

Isn't it a shock that EVERY "peace protestor" cliche that CAN be checked as I write this turned out to be such utter bulls--t?

[Jon_in_london]

2). "The US will kill thousands of innocent civilians". So far, the only casulties--even from the bombing of Baghdad--are airports, Saddam's palaces, bunkers, communications, and other military targets. No schools, hospitals, or iraqi children.



No Iraqi children? then I guess Ali (http://www.songaweek.com/lyrics/04142003_theboywithnoarms.html) isnt a child? Or maybe he isnt an innocent civillian? Yes! hes an al-queda jihadist from syria!!!!!

[Mr Manifesto]

Meanwhile, another Yankee soldier is coming home in a box (http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s943018.htm) six months after the war is 'over'.

[baggie]

Originally posted by Earthborn
There were SCUDs, but the illegal weapons that were the reason for this war, turn out to be extremely hard to find.

actually as far as I know no scuds OR ANY ILLEGAL WEAPONS OF ANY KIND have been found . The missiles fired at Kuwait were all al Samouds with a limited range and allowed under the Treaties. there was a storm in a teacup about them having a slighter greater range than allowed (150 km) and Iraq was in the process about destroying them when war broke out.

love to hear from Skeptic, but war supporters seem to be deserting

[Earthborn]

Originally posted by Jon_in_london

No Iraqi children? then I guess Ali (http://www.songaweek.com/lyrics/04142003_theboywithnoarms.html) isnt a child? Or maybe he isnt an innocent civillian? Yes! hes an al-queda jihadist from syria!!!!! Well, he isn't dead, so he doesn't count as killed. The rest of his family would have been a better example of how wrong Skeptic has been.

You did notice that this is a very old thread I just bumped, didn't you?

[MRC_Hans]

Yeah, interesting to review this old thread. With the benefit of hindsight, let's review those points :D :

Originally posted by Skeptic
Well, the war is not over, but if things continue as planned, it seems that--as usual--the protestors against "american agression" were wrong on all points.

1). "This will be a proctracted war". It will be over before the weekend, probably.

Turned out true. While the war officially is over, the US engagement has been protracted, 6 months now, with no end in sight.

2). "The US will kill thousands of innocent civilians". So far, the only casulties--even from the bombing of Baghdad--are airports, Saddam's palaces, bunkers, communications, and other military targets. No schools, hospitals, or iraqi children.

Turned out true. Civilian casualties did run into thousands.

3). "The Iraqis will resist american occupation". The instant they are sure the Marines control the area, the Iraqi civlians are quite happy to pledge their support of the united states and their disgust of Saddam the butcher.

Turned out true. While relieved at the fall of Saddam, Iraquis in great numbers clamor for US to go home.

4). "The US will suffer political isolation". The US-led coalition includes over 30 nations, including most of Europe.

Turned out true. And the resistance did not vane with time. On the contrary, several of the original allies are having second thoughts.

5). "Congress didn't declare war". Congress authorized Bush long ago to take military action on Iraq if necessary, and confirmed its support as the war started.

Without going into technicalities, I will count this as a miss.

6). "Saddam doesn't have illegal weapons". Tell that to the Kuwaities, who were bombed with nonexistant SCUD missles yesterday.

Turned out true. No WMD's found, and by now I'd like to see anybody still claim that they'll be found.

7). "Saddam will set fire to all of the oil wells". So far, this hasn't happened--the fires that were started were local, and by no means a general strategy.

Miss.

8). "The US public is against the war". Latest poll shows 76% support.

Let's call this a miss, since at this point vaning support is almost a natural law.

Things are very fluid right now, of course; and there are many longer-terms predictions by the protestors that cannot be checked yet. But isn't is SUCH a shock, that EVERY "war protestor" cliche that CAN be checked as I write this... turned out to be utter bulls--t?

So, the score of war protesters is: Hits=5, misses=3.

Not bad.

Hans

[Jon_in_london]

Originally posted by Earthborn
Well, he isn't dead, so he doesn't count as killed. The rest of his family would have been a better example of how wrong Skeptic has been.

You did notice that this is a very old thread I just bumped, didn't you?

He was still a casualty.

Of course I did!!!! *clears throat*.....mmmmm....isnt it a lovely day today...

[Malachi151]

Edit: Oh, I just realized that this was an old resurected thread. Sorry :p

I think your post may have been a joke, but if not:

1). "This will be a proctracted war". It will be over before the weekend, probably.

I think everyoen knew the initial fightin gwoudl be over soon. My claim from the very beginning was that the initial war would be quick and then an endless guerilla war and eventually civil war would break out. Hmm....

2). "The US will kill thousands of innocent civilians". So far, the only casulties--even from the bombing of Baghdad--are airports, Saddam's palaces, bunkers, communications, and other military targets. No schools, hospitals, or iraqi children.

Are you kidding?

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

So far we have a min of 6,000 civilians killed.

Did you already forget about that famous shooting of a family in a car as they drove towards a checkpoint?

Iraqi civilian casualties mount

At least 11 members of the same family - mostly children - have been killed in a coalition air strike on a residential district in central Iraq, western news reports say.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2907373.stm

3). "The Iraqis will resist american occupation". The instant they are sure the Marines control the area, the Iraqi civlians are quite happy to pledge their support of the united states and their disgust of Saddam the butcher.

Again, are you insane? I have not heard of a single Iraq pledging his support for the United States. In fact there are repeated anti-American demonstrations all over Iraq.

4). "The US will suffer political isolation". The US-led coalition includes over 30 nations, including most of Europe.

:rolleyes:

I think that its obvious that the US is facing politcal isolation with the US now being identified world wide as the greatest threat to peace.

6). "Saddam doesn't have illegal weapons". Tell that to the Kuwaities, who were bombed with nonexistant SCUD missles yesterday.

I never heard anyone say that he didn't have illegal weapons, just that he didn't have an arsenal of weapons of Mass Destruction.

7). "Saddam will set fire to all of the oil wells". So far, this hasn't happened--the fires that were started were local, and by no means a general strategy.

I never even heard that claim.

8). "The US public is against the war". Latest poll shows 76% support.

Actually the latest poll showed American support for the war at 46%.

Things are very fluid right now, of course; and there are many longer-terms predictions by the protestors that cannot be checked yet. But isn't is SUCH a shock, that EVERY "war protestor" cliche that CAN be checked as I write this... turned out to be utter bulls--t?

More of a shock how out of touch with reality that you are.

[UnrepentantSinner]

Originally posted by Earthborn
I thought it was a nice idea to bump up this thread, to see how well the predictions of the war protestors turned out to be after a while.

Delicious bump Earthborn, no wonder your one of my favorite non-native English speaking posters. :)

I wonder if anyone's willing to give Peter Arnett an ex post facto break on his comments during that bad week back in March.

[Cinorjer]

No one likes to admit when they're wrong. But I'd like to think that if I ended up wrong about everything I said before the war - if we did indeed find WMD stockpiles (including nuclear weapons material), captured Saddam, had the Iraqi people welcome our occupation, and we left for home soon after with a stable, democratic Iraq busy rebuilding their country - then I would have to change my beliefs about the President and our administration's handling of foreign policy.

The President's recent little speach was pitiful. Tapdancing around the issues, and of course his political career won't allow him to answer any hard questions or admit he made a mistake. But the facts speak for themselves. Unfortunately, most Americans can't be bothered to actually learn the facts.

So where are the warmongers now, who bought into our President's lies?

[Skeptic]

I think that its obvious that the US is facing politcal isolation with the US now being identified world wide as the greatest threat to peace.

...by bloodthirsty dictatorships like Iran and Syria. That's not saying much.

[Some Friggin Guy]

Let us not forget other blodthirsty dictatorships like Holland, Norway and Ireland.

[Mr Manifesto]

Originally posted by Skeptic
I think that its obvious that the US is facing politcal isolation with the US now being identified world wide as the greatest threat to peace.

...by bloodthirsty dictatorships like Iran and Syria. That's not saying much.

And India, and Germany, and France, and Russia, and...

[Sundog]

Originally posted by Cinorjer
No one likes to admit when they're wrong....

So where are the warmongers now, who bought into our President's lies?

Hiding.

Their shame is nowhere near complete. We haven't seen the worst of this yet. And the truly depressing thing is, they won't learn from this - they'll behave precisely the same way next time, unless we all stop this by voting Democrat in 2004.

I won't say that NO ONE on the right has the cojones to admit when they're wrong, but I haven't seen any of them do it yet. It's disgusting. In our office, a hotbed of conservative shouting a few months ago, suddenly no one talks politics. They know they were WRONG and they can't deal with it.

That's my theory of why RandFan and many others have left - they don't want to face up to some cold, hard realities. If you cannot admit when you're wrong, you are not a skeptic. Period.

[Malachi151]

The other thing here is that the people who were right were right in large part because they DO understand geo-politics and history adn reality.

Beign so wrong on an issue like this is A) proof that you have no clue about geo-politics, and B) that you are out of touch with reality.

Bush can say "well, we were wrong, but we will try harder and make this work" bull, you were either wrong because you don't understand the world and the situation, or you flat out lied and did understand the situation but choose to misrepresent it.

[shanek]

Originally posted by Sundog
Their shame is nowhere near complete. We haven't seen the worst of this yet. And the truly depressing thing is, they won't learn from this - they'll behave precisely the same way next time, unless we all stop this by voting Democrat in 2004.

That won't change anything. Harry Browne is coming out with a new book called The War Racket, and I'm very excited about it because it's supposed to be a detailed and fully-sourced account of all of the lies government has told us to justify war.

And he's right. With the possible exception of the Revolutionary War—and I'm not even positive about that one—the US government has lied to its people about every single war it's gotten involved in.

I won't say that NO ONE on the right has the cojones to admit when they're wrong, but I haven't seen any of them do it yet. It's disgusting. In our office, a hotbed of conservative shouting a few months ago, suddenly no one talks politics. They know they were WRONG and they can't deal with it.

"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion." —Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP keynote address

That's my theory of why RandFan and many others have left - they don't want to face up to some cold, hard realities. If you cannot admit when you're wrong, you are not a skeptic. Period.

I do have to say, RandFan was good in many ways about doing this. At least he recognized that the current glut of Republicans aren't dedicated to smaller government and fiscal conservatism.

[shanek]

Originally posted by Malachi151
Beign so wrong on an issue like this is A) proof that you have no clue about geo-politics, and B) that you are out of touch with reality.

Which is fine if you're on a piddly little Internet forum. Not so fine if you're the "leader of the free world."

[Tricky]

Some other threads with botched predictions and announcements of discoveries:

Eat A Booger... (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17514)

Weapons of Mass Destruction one step closer to being found (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=22027)

Chemical weapons plant found (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=16182)

Blix says no WMDs (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14115)

Inspectors say Iraq will reveal weapons program (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24505)

Chemical weapons found in Iraq (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17154)

U.S. finds buried chemical weapons (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17585)

I knew we'd find chemical weapons (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=16180)

WMDs - The Evidence (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8503)

[Kodiak]

Originally posted by Sundog


Hiding.

Their shame is nowhere near complete. We haven't seen the worst of this yet. And the truly depressing thing is, they won't learn from this - they'll behave precisely the same way next time, unless we all stop this by voting Democrat in 2004.

I won't say that NO ONE on the right has the cojones to admit when they're wrong, but I haven't seen any of them do it yet. It's disgusting. In our office, a hotbed of conservative shouting a few months ago, suddenly no one talks politics. They know they were WRONG and they can't deal with it.

That's my theory of why RandFan and many others have left - they don't want to face up to some cold, hard realities. If you cannot admit when you're wrong, you are not a skeptic. Period.

Who's hiding? Have I failed to address any of the questions put to me?

And what shame? That which you assign me?

"A Dem of '04 will fix everything"...RIIIGHT! :rolleyes: (Hint: Wilson...Roosevelt/Truman...Kennedy/Johnson...Clinton...)

Forgive me if I fail to agree with your's, and many other's, appraisal of the situation in Iraq. We disagree on so many fundamental points (like why we invaded; how many, if any, civilian casualties are acceptable; what the role of the UN should be; whether civilians are being purposefully targeted; how long we should stay; how much should it cost...) that your "cold, hard realities" are not mine, nor many others.

[Kodiak]

Originally posted by Mr Manifesto


And India, and Germany, and France, and Russia, and...

Where do you see isolation, except on the Iraq issue? Declining trade? Increased tariffs? The dissolution of NATO?

[Sundog]

Originally posted by Kodiak



"A Dem of '04 will fix everything"...RIIIGHT! :rolleyes: (Hint: Wilson...Roosevelt/Truman...Kennedy/Johnson...Clinton...)


Point taken. I am not so much for getting a Democrat in as for getting Bush out. The Democrats are the only hope of doing that this time.

I don't describe myself as a Democrat, more of an anti-Republican. Anything they're for, I'm against.

Good response though. I didn't really have you in mind. But it's true that most of the conservatives around here, who were so aggressive before the war, so insistent that those who opposed them were unAmerican traitors, have run for cover, or as someone said, simply resort to calling people names at this point.

[Kodiak]

Originally posted by Sundog


Point taken. I am not so much for getting a Democrat in as for getting Bush out. The Democrats are the only hope of doing that this time.

Well, you get a vote just like everyone else. Personally, Bush isn't my first choice (I'd prefer Kemp, Powell, Rice, Williams or most any libertarian candidate), but I find him preferable to all the Democrats currently running, though I'd take a hard look at General Clark depending on if he were a fiscal conservative and a narrow constructionist.

Originally posted by Sundog
I don't describe myself as a Democrat, more of an anti-Republican. Anything they're for, I'm against.

Well, if you're diametrically opposed to the conservative Republican platform, what else could you be?

Originally posted by Sundog
Good response though. I didn't really have you in mind. But it's true that most of the conservatives around here, who were so aggressive before the war, so insistent that those who opposed them were unAmerican traitors, have run for cover, or as someone said, simply resort to calling people names at this point.

Fair enough.

[Lurker]

Originally posted by Kodiak


(I'd prefer Kemp, Powell, Rice, Williams or most any libertarian candidate),



Rice? Isn't she the one who as National Security Advisor does not read reports on terrorism?

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh091003.shtml

"When the flap about the uranium-from-Africa broke, the White House explained that Rice hadn’t completely read the National Intelligence Estimate in which the State Department’s doubts were expressed."

Isn't her primary function to be reading these damn reports?

Lurker

[Silicon]

"I told you so's" are just not any fun when they come at the price of one american soldier a day.

I'm just sad about this whole lame thing.

Bush has spent 79 billion dollars on the war with Iraq. Now Bush wants 87 billion dollars for iraq next year.

What I want to know is:

Will America be 166 billion dollars safer next year than it was last year?

That's about 4 times what we spend on the entire Department of Homeland Security.


But we SHOULD spend the money, do it right. Elect someone to clean up this mess. Congress should own up to its own decisions (or rather its decision to let the Executive branch make the decisions).

This costly costly aftermath is EXACTLY why Congress should be the body to declare war. Because THEY have to pay for it. THEY have to face their constituents and explain why the deficit has ballooned, or cuts have to be made.

I'm just sad about this mess.

[Kodiak]

Originally posted by Lurker


Rice? Isn't she the one who as National Security Advisor does not read reports on terrorism?

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh091003.shtml

"When the flap about the uranium-from-Africa broke, the White House explained that Rice hadn’t completely read the National Intelligence Estimate in which the State Department’s doubts were expressed."

Isn't her primary function to be reading these damn reports?

Lurker


Cursory at best. Though the buck indeed stops with her, the information she receives is filtered and stressed by hundreds of staffers and analysts. Remember, the NSA is larger than both the FBI and CIA combined. Personally, I'd chalk it up to human error rather than incompetence.

[Lurker]

Originally posted by Kodiak



Cursory at best. Though the buck indeed stops with her, the information she receives is filtered and stressed by hundreds of staffers and analysts. Remember, the NSA is larger than both the FBI and CIA combined. Personally, I'd chalk it up to human error rather than incompetence.

I'll agree with that although it turned out to be a rather important report but Condi could not have known that beforehand.

Lurker

[shanek]

http://www.liberty-news.com/cartoons/BrokenBushActionFigure.gif

[jj]

Originally posted by Skeptic
Well, the war is not over, but if things continue as planned, it seems that--as usual--the protestors against "american agression" were wrong on all points.

1). "This will be a proctracted war". It will be over before the weekend, probably.

Yep, only it's still going on.

2). "The US will kill thousands of innocent civilians". So far, the only casulties--even from the bombing of Baghdad--are airports, Saddam's palaces, bunkers, communications, and other military targets. No schools, hospitals, or iraqi children.

We did well there, I believe. Not my argument, though.

3). "The Iraqis will resist american occupation". The instant they are sure the Marines control the area, the Iraqi civlians are quite happy to pledge their support of the united states and their disgust of Saddam the butcher.

In the light of recent events, I think we can dismiss your "happy to pledge" at least in any sincere sense.

4). "The US will suffer political isolation". The US-led coalition includes over 30 nations, including most of Europe.

See what happened with the Shrub's last foray to the UN?

I'm getting heat in standards bodies, by the way, for being from the USA, too. :(

5). "Congress didn't declare war". Congress authorized Bush long ago to take military action on Iraq if necessary, and confirmed its support as the war started.

Not my argument.

6). "Saddam doesn't have illegal weapons". Tell that to the Kuwaities, who were bombed with nonexistant SCUD missles yesterday.

But we're still waiting for the WMD.

7). "Saddam will set fire to all of the oil wells". So far, this hasn't happened--the fires that were started were local, and by no means a general strategy.

No, they're burning them and the oil lines one at a time, now.

8). "The US public is against the war". Latest poll shows 76% support.

Not sure what the present state of that is. Most of the polls I've seen violate the simplest rules of polling, so I can't take them seriously, either way.

Things are very fluid right now, of course; and there are many longer-terms predictions by the protestors that cannot be checked yet. But isn't is SUCH a shock, that EVERY "war protestor" cliche that CAN be checked as I write this... turned out to be utter bulls--t?

Actually, it looks like they were actually mostly right, at least the ones that I showed concern about....

Thanks for reminding me to point this out, btw.

[Silicon]

To be fair, brining this old argument up now in hindsight does 2 things.

First, it does establish that the poster declared victory way too soon. Also he was pretty blind to the possibility that he could be wrong about any of it. That goes more to an attack on the individual's poor sense of logic and arguing, as well as perhaps a gullibility.


But to pile on to this post (as I myself did earlier), is perhaps to attack a straw man. Skeptic's post has become a straw man in its own right, in that it doesn't attack the strongest reasons for going to war.

To me, the strongest reasons for going to war were and are:

To be safer from terrorism.
To make the region a place where terrorism won't thrive.
To end the suffering of the iraqi people.


Now whether or not this war accomplishes these goals, the jury is still out. (I don't think I'd take Skeptic's word on a positive prediction based on his track record.)

Just pointing out that there are stronger arguments for going to war than some of the issues in Skeptic's post.

I sure as hell hope that the Administration and the Neo-Conservatives are better at those 3 predictions than they were at the eight that Skeptic declared victory on.

[Malachi151]

To me, the strongest reasons for going to war were and are:

To be safer from terrorism.
To make the region a place where terrorism won't thrive.
To end the suffering of the iraqi people.


Ahh... but that is where this post does another service. You see that is not really what was on anyone's mind at the time....

[Silicon]

Originally posted by Malachi151


Ahh... but that is where this post does another service. You see that is not really what was on anyone's mind at the time....

I don't think you can make that case.

How can you simultaneously argue that limiting terrorism wasn't on people's minds, AND that Bush sexed-up the links between Al Quida and Saddam?

I think terrorism was the main reason why anyone went along with Bush on this one. That it wasn't brought up by Skeptic in his post, may have had more to do with the fact that he couldn't make a case that the terror threat from Iraq had been eliminated than the idea that nobody was using anti-terrorism as a rationale for the war.

I'm not using hindsite to pick 3 reasons for war. These were the main reasons for the war, though the justification was certainly the WMD's not in evidence.

[Malachi151]

Originally posted by Silicon


I don't think you can make that case.

How can you simultaneously argue that limiting terrorism wasn't on people's minds, AND that Bush sexed-up the links between Al Quida and Saddam?

I think terrorism was the main reason why anyone went along with Bush on this one. That it wasn't brought up by Skeptic in his post, may have had more to do with the fact that he couldn't make a case that the terror threat from Iraq had been eliminated than the idea that nobody was using anti-terrorism as a rationale for the war.

I'm not using hindsite to pick 3 reasons for war. These were the main reasons for the war, though the justification was certainly the WMD's not in evidence.

I was talking more about #2 and #3 actually. Yes #1 ws one of the things they did mention at the beginning as a reason for war. They threw in #3 right before the war started and hyped it more and more as it became apparent that WMDs were not to be found.

The case is still oput on #1 though, and many "experts" said at the beginning that #1 would get worse from this war, not better. You can never toally prove #1 though, because even if terrorism gets worse they can claim that its not as bad as it would have been.

[ImpyTimpy]

So do we get to claim the million dollar prize now that we have predicted no (or not enough) WMD's will be found, that there will be hostility towards American occupying forces from ordinary Iraqi's and that the whole thing will become a huge mess? Or are we disqualified because we used our common sense to arrive at those conclusions rather then some paranormal means :D

And where is skeptic (and the other peopl who put forth these sort of counter arguments) anyway. I'd like to see whether he still believes his points were valid, or he actually changed his stance in the face of overwhelming evidence.

[reprise]

I noticed this morning that our TV stations are yet again running polls on whether or not Australians believe that a terrorist act will be committed on Australian soil (there are no qualifiers on this question, such as a time frame or the mention of certain groups or as a response to certain events, although the fact that Bush is scheduled to visit Australia in a couple of months seems somewhat relevant to the question), and I couldn't help wondering whether the US media is doing something similar.

FWIW, I'd be incredibly surprised if there isn't another act of terrorism committed against the USA within the next year or two which equals or surpasses the magnitude of 11 September, 2001.

[Earthborn]

MRC_Hans:Let's call this a miss, since at this point vaning support is almost a natural law.So you say that it should be counted as a miss, because it was obvious it was going to happen? According to that logic, shouldn't all these be considered misses?

UnrepentantSinnerDelicious bump Earthborn, no wonder your one of my favorite non-native English speaking posters. :)Glad I could be of service.I wonder if anyone's willing to give Peter Arnett an ex post facto break on his comments during that bad week back in March.For those who don't remember (I certainly didn't):
Peter Arnett: U.S. war plan has 'failed' (http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/30/sprj.irq.arnett/)
Perter Arnett fired (http://www.militarycity.com/iraq/1724476.html)

Cinojer:No one likes to admit when they're wrong.I certainly don't. That's why I often don't make any judgements on things I know very little about. I never made the decision whether the war was good or bad, as I had no way to check the claims of the Bush administration. I have repeatedly stated that I was 'agnostic' about the war. That's as far as I'll ever go in 'supporting' anything that involves killing people.

This way I can almost never be proven wrong, whether the obvious propaganda turns out to be true or not. More people should learn not to make judgements about things they know nothing about, IMHO.

Skeptic:...by bloodthirsty dictatorships like Iran and Syria. That's not saying much.Some Friggin Guy:Let us not forget other blodthirsty dictatorships like Holland, Norway and Ireland.Mr Manifesto:And India, and Germany, and France, and Russia, and...Let's not forget the USA's biggest ally in this: Great Britain. It came into some serious political trouble over this, and I bet Britain will not be so eager to join another war with the US.

Malachi151:The other thing here is that the people who were right were right in large part because they DO understand geo-politics and history adn reality.Let's not forget that you don't have to understand geo-politics too well, to understand that many of the things some advocates of war were saying were terribly naive, or that the justifications the Bush administration used were very obvious propaganda.

Shanek:With the possible exception of the Revolutionary War-and I'm not even positive about that one-the US government has lied to its people about every single war it's gotten involved in.I'm sorry if this is too easy: And you want the government to be limited to such a degree that it is only involved in this. :)

Kodiak:Where do you see isolation, except on the Iraq issue? Declining trade? Increased tariffs? The dissolution of NATO?The US is of course still a very influential force in the world, and most countries are unable to cope without at least some ties. But you can be sure that when it comes to international politics, other countries are not so eager anymore to take the US seriously.

Silicon:"I told you so's" are just not any fun when they come at the price of one american soldier a day.And let's not forget the Iraqi civilians, please. They don't have 'dying for their country' in their job description.

jj:We did well there, I believe. Not my argument, though.There is no doubt the coalition forces did their best to spare lives. But the idea that there wouldn't be thousands of civilian lives lost was terribly naive. And the forces could even have been a bit more carefull, for instance by not clusterbombing civilian areas.But to pile on to this post (as I myself did earlier), is perhaps to attack a straw man. Skeptic's post has become a straw man in its own right, in that it doesn't attack the strongest reasons for going to war.Let's not forget that Skeptic used them as a strawman himself. He put some things in war protestors mouth that he thought were worst case scenarios. As it turned out, they were very modest estimates instead.

[Jon_in_london]

Originally posted by Earthborn
Let's not forget the USA's biggest ally in this: Great Britain. It came into some serious political trouble over this, and I bet Britain will not be so eager to join another war with the US.


I cant imagine any UK politician who values their political career and has an ounce of common sense trying to take us into another war instigated by the US.

The news of another 1,200 of our troops being sent to Iraq recently is a very serious problem for the Labour gov.

Iraq may well be Bliar's nemesis and I cant imagine anyone else being eager to follow in his shoes.

[Tricky]

Originally posted by Silicon
To me, the strongest reasons for going to war were and are:

To be safer from terrorism.
Are we? I cannot say for sure. There has been a lot more terrorist activity worldwide since the invasion, but not much, if any in the US. I heard on the radio today that less than 30% of Americans feel like we are safer from terrorism than we were immediately after 9-11.


To make the region a place where terrorism won't thrive.

A dismal failure. If anything, it has recruited for the terrorists. Terrorists seem to be clamoring to get into Iraq. Saudi Arabia has had it's first major terrorist attack. The Taliban is back in business and going strong.

I just don't believe that we can bomb people until they love us.


To end the suffering of the iraqi people.
Of course, sufering never ends, but we may have mitigated it. Certainly the lifting of sanctions helped there. I don't think we had to invade to do this though. We could have let the UN inspectors continue their investigation then ease off the sanctions as compliance was verified.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Silicon
To be fair, brining this old argument up now in hindsight does 2 things.


To me, the strongest reasons for going to war were and are:

To be safer from terrorism.
To make the region a place where terrorism won't thrive.
To end the suffering of the iraqi people.





Frankly, I could not give a rat's ass about Iraq, per se. I supported the war, initially, because the President of the US, POTUS, The Man, The Big Dude, looked me in the eye and told me, personally, on repeated occasions that the Iraqis had WMD's and that they represented a clear and present danger to moi. That was the reason that he gave that had traction. It was the only one that was not simpering BS.

The bastard lied to me. F him, F his entire administration. F Condolisa Fing Rice, F Colin Powell, Rumsfield, Ashcroft, the whole sorry lot of liars and liar enablers.

Oh, yeah, F that thrombotic wierd grinning bastard Chaney, too.

F that pseudo Jew Wolf, and that grinning Irish pansey leprechon prick Hannety should suffer in an inner circle of hell.

Liars, liars, liars. All of them. Not to ever be trusted on anything ever again.

[Agammamon]

Originally posted by Lurker


I'll agree with that although it turned out to be a rather important report but Condi could not have known that beforehand.

Lurker

True, but the reason she has all those people to filter information is so that the reports she does get only contain stuff she needs to know. The very fact it makes it to her desk is supposed to indicate that her subordinates feel it is important.

[shanek]

Originally posted by Earthborn
Shanek:I'm sorry if this is too easy: And you want the government to be limited to such a degree that it is only involved in this. :)

Just because something is a valid function of government doesn't mean that we shouldn't be vigilantly cautious about it doing so. Even with ignoring the Constitutional requirement of a Congressional Declaration of War (something avoided since WWII), Bush still had to rely on the support of the people to get the war going. He could only do that by lying, as has been the case so often in the past. If people were more skeptical about the claims of government, especially when it comes to war, such support would be much harder to come by and there would be a greater chance that we would only get involved in the wars that are absolutely necessary, and even then after every other possibility has been exhausted. That precise goal may be unattainable, but it would be nice if there were at least movement in that direction.

[shanek]

Originally posted by Ed
Frankly, I could not give a rat's ass about Iraq, per se. I supported the war, initially, because the President of the US, POTUS, The Man, The Big Dude, looked me in the eye and told me, personally, on repeated occasions that the Iraqis had WMD's and that they represented a clear and present danger to moi. That was the reason that he gave that had traction. It was the only one that was not simpering BS.

The bastard lied to me. F him, F his entire administration. F Condolisa Fing Rice, F Colin Powell, Rumsfield, Ashcroft, the whole sorry lot of liars and liar enablers.

Oh, yeah, F that thrombotic wierd grinning bastard Chaney, too.

F that pseudo Jew Wolf, and that grinning Irish pansey leprechon prick Hannety should suffer in an inner circle of hell.

Liars, liars, liars. All of them. Not to ever be trusted on anything ever again.

Stop being ambiguous, Ed—what are you really trying to say? :D

[Ed]

Originally posted by shanek


Stop being ambiguous, Ed—what are you really trying to say? :D

One more.

F me for falling for it. After Viet Nam, I should have learned. Lieing bastards, everyone of them.

[Dancing David]

Hey Sceptic!

You left out the main reason for protesting the war, it was an unjust cause. It was expensive, killing is the last option not the first.

Your first post is a right media characterization of why the war was protested, some of us thought that the intervetion in Afghanistan was okay but that the war in Iraq was unjust.

It has nothing to do with the war on terrorism.

Killing is solemn, and should only be used when nessecary. Syria is , and always has been a much greater threat than Iraq.

War is sometimes needful, but never the first solution.

Respectfully

[Victor Danilchenko]

shanek

...the current glut of Republicans aren't dedicated to smaller government and fiscal conservatism.that's what kills me. I read a column in Time the other day -- by Andrew Sullivan, a noted conservative columnist! -- which expressed anger at Bush. Apparently, under Bush's first three years, the government spending increased faster than under any other recent president, and by quite a bit, too... A figure of about 21% was floated, I believe; and that was with the support of GOP-dominated legislature. Sullivan concluded that we now face the choice between a big insolved government under republicans, and a big slightly-lessl-insolvent government under democrats...

What was that fiscal conservative crap again?..

oy vey.

[Silicon]

Hey, Congress loves to spend. That's what they do, regardless of party.

Clinton was effective in cutting a lot of the fat, what he called the "peace dividend". That and a boyant economy reduced the national debt and eliminated deficits.

But he had the help of the Republican Congress, to be sure. Without their blocking of Public Health Care, we'd have spent a lot of that peace dividend. It's just the kind of program that writes a blank-check entitlement that Republicans wouldn't want.

Now that Republicans control both houses and all 3 branches, there's no need to reign in the spending. So it's deficit city! Congress does what it does best, carving up pork to their own districts.

Republicans, however, shrink from raising taxes. Which will make it awful hard to pay for all of this current mess. Especially since there's no more peace dividend and $500 (Reagan-Bush era) toilet-seats to cut.

The amazing thing was, why the hell were the republicans estimating huge gains in federal revenue back in 2000 when it was obvious that the economy was already tanking? They based the 2001 tax-rebate on that, and the new 10% income tax bracket (remember that big fat check?!!) and they were projecting revenues for 2001, 2002 and 2003 that continued the growth of 1995-2000. Apparantly they weren't looking at the dot.bombbing of the stock market!

[specious_reasons]

Originally posted by Kodiak



Cursory at best. Though the buck indeed stops with her, the information she receives is filtered and stressed by hundreds of staffers and analysts. Remember, the NSA is larger than both the FBI and CIA combined. Personally, I'd chalk it up to human error rather than incompetence.

Rice is the National Security Advisor.
The NSA is the National Security Agency.
Are you confusing the two?

Of course information is filtered and stressed, so that the most important, most accurate information is presented to the leaders who make the decisions.

The most important, most accurate information did not make it into the hands of the National Security Advisor, or it did, and it was ignored.

The document is question is called the "National Intelligence Estimate."

From Google cache of 07/30/03 Boston Globe article:
A National Intelligence Estimate is a top-secret document that pulls together the views of the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research on a subject of intense interest to top policy makers. The last intelligence estimate on Iraq, completed in October 2002, became the focus of scrutiny two weeks ago when the White House declassified portions of its findings on weapons of mass destruction.

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:i62cdjx4yJkJ:www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/212/nation/US_orders_new_intelligence_estimate_on_Iraq%2B.sht ml+National+Intelligence+Estimate&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Sound like something she could safely ignore, right?

[Kodiak]

Originally posted by specious_reasons

Rice is the National Security Advisor.
The NSA is the National Security Agency.
Are you confusing the two?


No.

Though there is technically no organizational link between the National Security Council, headed by Ms. Rice, and the National Security Agency, the NSA does report to the head of the NSC.

[BrianSI]

Bumping this because I was Googling "proctracted", since dictionary.com didn't have it, and this thread was on the second page of Google results.

It means really long, right?

[kmortis]

Well, Skeptic, it look like you'll have to turn in your crystal ball now.

[a_unique_person]

Hmmmm.

[Tricky]

My comments in RED
Well, the war is not over, but if things continue as planned, it seems that--as usual--the protestors against "american agression" were wrong on all points.

1). "This will be a proctracted war". It will be over before the weekend, probably.
WRONG

2). "The US will kill thousands of innocent civilians". So far, the only casulties--even from the bombing of Baghdad--are airports, Saddam's palaces, bunkers, communications, and other military targets. No schools, hospitals, or iraqi children.
WRONG
3). "The Iraqis will resist american occupation". The instant they are sure the Marines control the area, the Iraqi civlians are quite happy to pledge their support of the united states and their disgust of Saddam the butcher.
WRONG-ish they are disgusted with Saddam. Everything else is wrong.

4). "The US will suffer political isolation". The US-led coalition includes over 30 nations, including most of Europe.
WRONG Our closest ally, England is dumping Blair because of the war. Our allies are overjoyed with our recent election results.

5). "Congress didn't declare war". Congress authorized Bush long ago to take military action on Iraq if necessary, and confirmed its support as the war started.
WRONG-ish. Their authorization was based on cherrypicked intel. When they learned the truth, even his own party turned against Bush.

6). "Saddam doesn't have illegal weapons". Tell that to the Kuwaities, who were bombed with nonexistant SCUD missles yesterday.
WRONG

7). "Saddam will set fire to all of the oil wells". So far, this hasn't happened--the fires that were started were local, and by no means a general strategy.
RIGHT - But again, based on bad intel. We were told he would fight.

8). "The US public is against the war". Latest poll shows 76% support.
RIGHT then WRONG now. Saber rattlers always get public support... at first.

Things are very fluid right now, of course; and there are many longer-terms predictions by the protestors that cannot be checked yet. But isn't is SUCH a shock, that EVERY "war protestor" cliche that CAN be checked as I write this... turned out to be utter bulls--t?
It is not a shock that you were wrong about the majority of things. I don't know if you've since retracted this in other posts. You may have. You are, after all, a skeptic, and skeptics change their minds with new evidence, but it is interesting to have a "blast from the past" that reminds us of the jingoism that was going on three and a half years ago.

[Tony]

I see a lot of old names I miss. ShaneK, Kodiak and Malachi, where are thee?

[Mephisto]

It is still possible that the war could be morally wrong without having any negative consequences for the US.

Only if you consider 2,800 + American lives inconsequential.


The argument is that their predictions were pretty much all wrong. So have there been any correct predictions other than "some other countries will get upset"?

I'm a war protestor, and I'm a disabled veteran and my main objection to this war is that it is unwarranted and likely illegal. Iraq had absolutely NOTHING to do with 9/11. I protest using American soldiers as pawns on spur of the moment invasion whims.

I don't see any of my concerns on Skeptic's list.

[SlippyToad]

I had to hit myself on the forehead there for a minute. How HILARIOUS. People wonder why I'm so fscking rude about conservatives, Bush, and the entire war movement. I had almost, but not quite, completely forgotten just how strident authoritarians had made their shilling predictions, mere DAYS after the whole spectacle had started, and immediately tried to shout down anyone who disagreed with the venture.

My answer then was "time will tell." And it's amazing how much of what I imagined would happen turned out to be DEAD-ON. There are other predictions I made as well, some of which predated the Iraq war. One of them was that Bush would turn out to be the last Republican President for a long time, if ever. That one I should have made a monetary bet on. He's the fricking albatross of the Party right now.

But at any rate, in the last 3 years I have developed an increasingly confrontational style of political discussion, and it started in 2003 with having to beat back this kind of steaming horse malarkey, this smug, selfsure authoritarianism that brooked no protest or disagreement.

And over the last 3 years I've been called traitor, coward, and a dozen other variants. Again, it grew out of this very quivering pile of BS talking points that every Conservative seemed to recieve as a radio transmission from Karl Rove's brain. And my response has become by turns dismissive and hostile as a result. It turns out that I was RIGHT. I've never been so sorry to be right about something, but I've also never been so sure that I would be.

[Beerina]

2). "The US will kill thousands of innocent civilians". So far, the only casulties--even from the bombing of Baghdad--are airports, Saddam's palaces, bunkers, communications, and other military targets. No schools, hospitals, or iraqi children.
WRONG

Has the US killed thousands of civilians? Or have the terrorists?

[Mephisto]

I had to hit myself on the forehead there for a minute. How HILARIOUS. People wonder why I'm so fscking rude about conservatives, Bush, and the entire war movement. I had almost, but not quite, completely forgotten just how strident authoritarians had made their shilling predictions, mere DAYS after the whole spectacle had started, and immediately tried to shout down anyone who disagreed with the venture.

My answer then was "time will tell." And it's amazing how much of what I imagined would happen turned out to be DEAD-ON. There are other predictions I made as well, some of which predated the Iraq war. One of them was that Bush would turn out to be the last Republican President for a long time, if ever. That one I should have made a monetary bet on. He's the fricking albatross of the Party right now.

But at any rate, in the last 3 years I have developed an increasingly confrontational style of political discussion, and it started in 2003 with having to beat back this kind of steaming horse malarkey, this smug, selfsure authoritarianism that brooked no protest or disagreement.

And over the last 3 years I've been called traitor, coward, and a dozen other variants. Again, it grew out of this very quivering pile of BS talking points that every Conservative seemed to recieve as a radio transmission from Karl Rove's brain. And my response has become by turns dismissive and hostile as a result. It turns out that I was RIGHT. I've never been so sorry to be right about something, but I've also never been so sure that I would be.

I agree 100% and I can only hope that your prediction regarding Republican Presidents holds up for a long time. I'm frankly surprised that so many conservatives put so much behind a man who never suceeded at anything. All it took was a quick look at all Dubya's business ventures to see that he didn't have the savy to run much beyond a lemonade stand.

He was a "uniter" though, as I also remember the name-calling and questions raised over anyone actually using their brain and their right of free speech to speak out against this administration's injurious policies. Too bad so many conservative, but apparently intelligent men were united against what has finally turned out to be the majority of Americans.

[Upchurch]

Some other threads with botched predictions and announcements of discoveries:

Eat A Booger... (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17514)

Weapons of Mass Destruction one step closer to being found (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=22027)

Chemical weapons plant found (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=16182)

Blix says no WMDs (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14115)

Inspectors say Iraq will reveal weapons program (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24505)

Chemical weapons found in Iraq (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17154)

U.S. finds buried chemical weapons (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17585)

I knew we'd find chemical weapons (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=16180)

WMDs - The Evidence (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8503)

It kills me that these links are broken. :(

[Crossbow]

Good thread resurrection!

As an anti-war person from the start, I have (and I have seen it happen to several others) been called a "Saddam supporter", a "liar", a "coward", "stupid", a "traitor", as well as several other things.

I had hoped that the war would have gone much better, but I am not at all surprised to find out that we have lost the war and are in the process of killing of tens of thousands for the mistakes made Bush and his assorted lackeys. I find this far, far, farm more depressing than the name calling could ever be.

[Tricky]

It kills me that these links are broken. :(
You can still find them in the archives, but searching for them is hell. For example, here ist the Eat a Booger (http://forums.randi.org/archive/index.php/t-4174.html)thread.

("booger" is a pretty unusual search word.)


The Weapons of Mass Destruction are one step closer to being found. (http://forums.randi.org/archive/index.php/t-6790.html)
Chemical weapons found in Iraq (http://forums.randi.org/archive/index.php/t-3860.html)
Blix Says No WMD Found in Iraq (http://forums.randi.org/archive/index.php/t-1077.html)

[Upchurch]

You can still find them in the archives, but searching for them is hell. For example, here ist the Eat a Booger (http://forums.randi.org/archive/index.php/t-4174.html)thread.
Been trying since I posted that. the Booger-related threads are the only ones I've found. It's a shame the thread numbers have changed.

[Tricky]

Been trying since I posted that. the Booger-related threads are the only ones I've found. It's a shame the thread numbers have changed.
They seem to be all between pages 47 and 60. Sadly, the archive doesn't go any farther back than that. :(

[ImaginalDisc]

All things considered, I actually would have been happy if Skeptic had turned out to be right, rather than completely wrong.

[Tricky]

All things considered, I actually would have been happy if Skeptic had turned out to be right, rather than completely wrong.Parts of it yeah. I wouldn't be happy if Saddam really did have WMDs, because he probably would have used them against us. That would have meant a whole lot more dead people. But I sure do wish the war had been over in weeks.

[ImaginalDisc]

Parts of it yeah. I wouldn't be happy if Saddam really did have WMDs, because he probably would have used them against us. That would have meant a whole lot more dead people. But I sure do wish the war had been over in weeks.

If he did have WMD's that would have meant that we weren't callously lied to.

[Tricky]

If he did have WMD's that would have meant that we weren't callously lied to.Yeah, that's the upside. The downside would be that our troops (and anybody nearby) got gassed.

[ImaginalDisc]

Yeah, that's the upside. The downside would be that our troops (and anybody nearby) got gassed.

Having them and deploying them are two dfferent things. There's no way he'd have been able to deloy chemical weapons from airplanes, as we had air superiority. From artilery, like in WWI? Again, air superiority means the weapons would have been hit.

[Darth Rotor]

I had hoped that the war would have gone much better, but I am not at all surprised to find out that we have lost the war and are in the process of killing of tens of thousands for the mistakes made Bush and his assorted lackeys. I find this far, far, farm more depressing than the name calling could ever be.
Hi Crossbow.

Who is this "we," paleface? How many people did you kill in Iraq? I know roughly how many people died in the operations I was involved with, though the logs enumerating the confirmed EKIA (Enemy Killed in Action) were left on the Secret workstation/network when I came home.

Also, who is killing, and has been doing the bulk of the killing, for the past 2.5 years, of Iraqis trying to get on with their lives, by the dozen, and occasionally by the hundreds, and killing Americans in the twos and threes?

Iraqi's, from a variety of tribes and factions, and folks like Al Qaeda in Iraq, a mix of Iraqi and foreign fighters. We used to refer to them as "anti coalition forces." There's clarity for you. :p

Please define what you mean by "lost the war."

Some of the war aims have been achieved, some have not. You may have a good point if your criterion is "zero war aims not achieved." Is that your criterion?

A war aim achieved. Saddam be gone. (BFD, at this point.) Regime change policy dating to 1998 is now complete. Hmmm, I note a lack of confetti, no party hats, this morning. He has also been tried by the lynch mob/"Iraqi people," and no surprise, looks to take a one way ride on the gallows.

Another of the war aims achieved, though in an inside out sort of way: Iraqi WMD programs, in whatever state of repair or disrepair they were actually in as of Feb 2003 (think back to last week and the stuff posted on the internet that needed to come down due to its content) are off the table. Again, BFD from many on that. (Cost benefit analysis says: if you had bribed Saddam with 50 billion in cash, a tenth the cost of the war to date, would he have given them up? Interesting hypothecitcal, in hindsight.)

War aim achieved: free and fair elections have taken place.

This war aim ought to elicit great joy from UN supporting liberal, perhaps a person like yourself. This meme was consistently trumpeted as a UN goal for most of my professional career, in forms that boiled down to: "give the people elections, and we can declare that they have democacracy."

Iraq, like Haiti, is another example of how elections do not a democracy make. Democracy has to grow from within. But that war aim was achieved.

What isn't achieved is "stable" and the various factions singing "Kumbaya" around the campfire. The same lack of harmonious singing is also true in Cyprus, and in Kosovo, but with fewer bombs going off. ;) Did we lose the war in Kosovo too? :p

However misguided the inflicting of democracy on a land at the point of a bayonet may be as a strategy, it has been done. That no one wants to play democracy until their faction is in charge is another matter, and of course, the key matter to life coming back to something resembling normal for Ma and Pa Khettal in Iraq.

The domino-theory style spread of democracy into the rest of the mid east is, at this point, looking to be put on hold, or forever broken. The aim of using this spread to squeeze Iran is a bust, in the short term at least, and likely in the long term thanks to BushCo failing to get Russia on board as an ally. (A gross strategic diplomatic error, going back about 4 years.)

The restoration of Iraqi oil production into global markets is, at best, partially achieved, and at worst, at risk of being a mess for at least the next decade. Can't call that achieved, I don't think.

The "cheap war" ($3 billion reconstruction cost to US treasury) is a complete bust.

The "no nation building" policy of 2000, from the lips of GW Bush is a complete bust.

The "turn it over to the Kumbaya singing Iraqi government" goal is, as of now, unachieved. Is it achievable? At present, I am betting the under on that. SASO continue.

As I look back on Ed's post from Sept 11, 2003, it needs to be nominated.

Was it?

F Them All (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=245525&postcount=62)

DR

[Darth Rotor]

Having them and deploying them are two dfferent things. There's no way he'd have been able to deloy chemical weapons from airplanes, as we had air superiority. From artilery, like in WWI? Again, air superiority means the weapons would have been hit.
In some cases, that would be after the "special" rounds were fired, in others, before. Depends on the air assets available, and the cover and concealment used by Saddam's boys.

Recall the Great Scud Hunt of 1991, which came a cropper. Saddam's lads were pretty good at cover and concealment when they had to be.

DR

[Garrette]

The domino-theory style spread of democracy into the rest of the mid east is, at this point, looking to be put on hold, or forever broken. The aim of using this spread to squeeze Iran is a bust, in the short term at least, and likely in the long term thanks to BushCo failing to get Russia on board as an ally. (A gross strategic diplomatic error, going back about 4 years.) DRImmediately after 9/11, before Afghanistan and long before Iraq, I told a colleague in my Reserve unit that, whatever else happens, we need to come out of this with Russia as an ally. I couldn't then and still can't now articulate the reasons well, but I still hold the position. I hope we haven't blown it long term.

[ImaginalDisc]

In some cases, that would be after the "special" rounds were fired, in others, before. Depends on the air assets available, and the cover and concealment used by Saddam's boys.

Recall the Great Scud Hunt of 1991, which came a cropper. Saddam's lads were pretty good at cover and concealment when they had to be.

DR

Good points. I suppose they have been used effectively.

[SlippyToad]

I find it important to detail here just how wrong war supporters were. Vital, in fact. We were led to this catastrophe by some of the worst, most jingoistic, most intolerant and ill-willed rhetoric I have seen in my life. It's apparent that many who initially stood behind Bush in his unchecked surge to unnecessary aggression were fooled by a compliant media and a corrupted government, but there were many who were capable of going outside the mainstream media and paying attention to the true story.

Internet denziens and especially people who have the unmitigated gall to title themselves as "Skeptic" who spend their time making a pretense at critical thinking and yet are clearly interested in no such thing especially deserve the humiliation of having their own nearly 100% erroneous predictions permanently scarred into their forehead for the rest of their lives, so that the next time they shove their face into someone else's and start yammering about how WRONG they are, the receipient of said abuse has a quick and easy guide to follow. Kind of like when Randi embarassingly reprints the failed predictions of psychics for the previous year.

This war was predicated on a triad of premises, all of which turned out to be wrong. War protestors such as myself were convinced that this triad was wrong from the beginning because the evidence was right in front of us. When I and others pointed these things out we were mocked, we were dismissed, and we were rebutted with out-and-out lies.


#1: Iraq posed a threat to the United States.

This premise contained many sub-premises, including the now-utterly discredited Yellowcake Uranium claim, the overall claim of weapons of mass destruction, and the equally-discredited claim that Iraq had anything at all to do with Al-Queda. The WMD claims have been dispensed with. There was nothing in Iraq that we didn't already know about, and Hussein's weapons programs had lain dormant for years before we pre-emptively invaded. Even Rick Santorum's desperate attempt to mis-identify a bunch of defunct weapons as the "Smoking gun" months and months after the Bush Admin had conclusively given up on the WMD excuse failed to pan out. The "connection to terrorists" claim has also been definitively refuted. There were no connections between Saddam Hussein, a secular dictator, and Al-Queda, a heavily religious, near-messianic group created by a Saudi expatriate and based out of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But the reasons why I and many others were right about this, and Skeptic and many others were wrong about this were plainly visible in the run-up to the war. The phony WMD claims were readily and credibly dismissed before the war by Hans Blix, the UN weapons inspector who must still be wondering to this day how he could have better sold his case against the war. Blix was in Iraq, with the support of the international community, and with what we now know was the cooperation of a very probably alarmed Saddam Hussein. It turns out containment had been working for decades. On the other hand, the case for these WMD's was coming from the same Administration and intelligence agencies who had utterly blown it in the run-up to the 9/11 attack in New York. I knew this at the time and the public was capable of knowing it. Again, someone who maybe casually followed the news wouldn't know this, but anyone who repeated the claims of the Administration and had the information literally shoved in their faces that they were wrong now has to admit that in fact what they did was ignore reality.

As for the connection between Iraq and Al-Queda, it seemed patently clear then that Al-Queda originated with a Saudi expatriate, Osama bin Laden, and was based in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which aren't Iraq. I can only put down this failure to understand the geography of the Middle East to subtle racism ("they all look alike") and jingoistic ignorance. The fact that Al-Queda is NOW recruiting from Iraq is not proof that they were there before or had anything to do with 9/11, and no person with any credibility in this country is claiming that these days. The purpose and composition of Al-Queda are far more complex than "Islamofascists want to kill Americans" and anyone who can't manage to think beyond this unbelievably moronic premise needs to be put in the corner with a dunce cap on.


#2: The threat was imminent and required immediate intervention

This was nothing more than scare-mongering. Defeating premise #1 made it impossible to support premise #2. Without a real threat, there was no real need for immediate intervention. Note that I'm not even going into the long chain of absurd justifications that were trotted out after the WMD's weren't found, because none of them were present in the original case that was made to the American People, Congress, or the international community. Any purple-fingered delusion that we're bringing rule of law or Democracy to Iraq has been shattered. The sheer arrogance of assuming that Iraq's centuries-long social issues could be solved with a little 'merican kno-how is again one of those things that seems hilarious, if it weren't for the sheer number of wasted lives that have resulted from this hubris.

Rather, the immediacy behind the run up to war was evidently born out of the need to take advantage of the public's attention to "terrorism" in regards to 9/11. By creating a false equivalency between Iraq and Al-Queda by joining Iraq to an "axis of evil" and continually referring to Iraq as part of the "War on Terror" people became quite erroneously convinced that the secular dictatorship under Saddam Hussein was sponsoring a militant religious group, and that this group was planning an imminent assault on the United States. Fear really can cloud people's judgment, but again anyone with a high-school reading comprehension could have gone out and in a few hours' time worked out where all of these elements fit, and decided that our real threat was hiding out in Afghanistan. Of course I'm a firm believer in the theory that Osama bin Laden died in late 2001 or early 2002 because we've not seen a credible videotaped message from him since that time. And I think the reason the U.S. has not fallen under attack since then was because as part of the redeployment of our forces into Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush caved to one of the main demands of bin Laden and removed our military forces from Saudi Arabia.

The real reason all along to have invaded Iraq seems to be boiling down, really to what we the d*mn librulz said all along: it's the oil, stupid (http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/08/31/bush_gives_new_reason_for_iraq_war/). This is actually a resource war, or more accurately a gigantic land grab, which is a big freaking DUH to anyone with even a passing understanding of the Bush Family's priorities for America (which don't include, by the way, the needs of any ordinary American). But it's taken almost four years for this truth to sink in so much that even Bush forgetfully admits it.


#3 The War would be Easy

This premise is laughable on its face and always was. Even a casual reader of history knows that invading and occupying a land is very difficult. The Bushites made little or no effort to understand the various ethnic, demographic details of the nation we were about to conquer, and more revealingly we've recently learned that Don Rumsfeld threatened to fire (http://159.54.227.3/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060909/NEWS/609090335) anyone who talked about post-war plans. So in retrospect the fact that the Bushites were selling us a six-week war is an obvious follow-up to the fact that they were only planning for a six-week war to begin with, not due to any prescience on their part.

But the premise was silly for a different reason. In the first two legs of the Tripod of Iraq War, we were told that Iraq had weapons and was a major, immediate threat to us. The logical response is, then, why if they're such a threat do we expect the war to be so easy? Or, conversely, if they're so easy to defeat how can they be such a threat?

And of course because of the simplistic jingoism we were sold, the war turned out to be both far too easy, as in Saddam himself was a paper tiger, and far too dificult in the respect that holding a conquered nation without a clear plan for occupation and a clear exit strategy is a prescription for disaster. Anyone with even a modest breadth of reading on the topic was able to say this. Anyone who had even spent a little time following history in regards to say, Vietnam, knew this. But despite the clear and painfully obvious lack of a plan or a clue, Bush cheerleaders continued to clap louder as the war in Iraq gradually spun out of control. A compliant and completely neutered news media "embedded" with the very people they were suposed to be objectively reporting on didn't help. It was months after the toppling of the Saddam statues, for example, before we were able to see the wide-angle photos of these events (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2838.htm) and realize that they were staged, as so much of the Bush presidency has been.

I'm sure we could dig up a dozen posts just like Skeptic's to humiliate and embarass conservative cheerleaders with. The talking-points rhetoric was disseminated far and wide although I'm sure if I stepped into Skeptic's TV room this evening I'd find his TV blaring the shrill ignorance of Fox News, surely the major propaganda outlet implicated in this sham of a war. It's taken six years for the propaganda to wear off on the citizens of America (people living outside the U.S. recovered rather more quickly) and it's been six long years of listening to lies, stupidity disguised as common sense, and out-and-out insults disguised as patriotic fervor. But it's now over with, and I think the Republican brand has been spoiled for a generation at least. The fallout of this war's failure is going to be massive and it's going to cast a very long shadow on American politics.

And thanks to the Internet, and google caching, people are going to have a much clearer picture than we've ever had before of exactly who is responsible for that shadow, and what comforting illusions they indulged themselves in at the expense of others.

I also do not think I'm being unnecessarily harsh. For the very reasons I describe above anyone who did a modest amount of reading and thinking could have and should have known that this trumped-up war was going to cost us dearly and leave a large number of people with a lifetime of regret. I honestly don't follow enough threads here to know what Skeptic's current opinion is, and I really don't care. There are and were a large number of clap-harder cheerleaders on this forum who, being members of a SKEPTICS forum, had all of the intellectual tools and community support they needed to work out for themselves what was going to happen. You can't call yourself a skeptic when the hallmarks of your intellectual style are ignorance and laziness. All of this information was out there before the war. All of these conclusions were reachable before the war.

[Gurdur]

Good thread resurrection!
The OP is certainly excruciatingly funny, in a painful sort of way. It was a cheerleading OP, and some bits:
Well, the war is not over, but if things continue as planned, it seems that--as usual--the protestors against "american agression" were wrong on all points.

1). "This will be a proctracted war". It will be over before the weekend, probably.
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar. Prediction made in 2003. 109 American troops killed in October 2006 alone.
2). "The US will kill thousands of innocent civilians".
This one is the saddest of all. Thousands --- maybe hundreds of thousands -- of innocents have died. Most not because of direct American action, but because the occupation is so terribly mismanaged. There is a civil war going on at the moment, uncontrollable and vicious. Shi'ite versus Sunni, Al-Qaeda versus everyone else, etc.
3). "The Iraqis will resist american occupation". The instant they are sure the Marines control the area, the Iraqi civlians are quite happy to pledge their support of the united states and their disgust of Saddam the butcher.
yaaaaaaaaaaaar, well. What is the death toll of American troops now in Iraq? Over 2,800? Mostly after winning the war?
4). "The US will suffer political isolation". The US-led coalition includes over 30 nations, including most of Europe.
whooops.
Things are very fluid right now
A sad heh.
But isn't is SUCH a shock, that EVERY "war protestor" cliche that CAN be checked as I write this... turned out to be utter bulls--t?
Speak in haste, repent in leisure.

[ponderingturtle]

Well, the war is not over, but if things continue as planned, it seems that--as usual--the protestors against "american agression" were wrong on all points.

1). "This will be a proctracted war". It will be over before the weekend, probably.

2). "The US will kill thousands of innocent civilians". So far, the only casulties--even from the bombing of Baghdad--are airports, Saddam's palaces, bunkers, communications, and other military targets. No schools, hospitals, or iraqi children.

3). "The Iraqis will resist american occupation". The instant they are sure the Marines control the area, the Iraqi civlians are quite happy to pledge their support of the united states and their disgust of Saddam the butcher.

4). "The US will suffer political isolation". The US-led coalition includes over 30 nations, including most of Europe.

5). "Congress didn't declare war". Congress authorized Bush long ago to take military action on Iraq if necessary, and confirmed its support as the war started.

6). "Saddam doesn't have illegal weapons". Tell that to the Kuwaities, who were bombed with nonexistant SCUD missles yesterday.


The weird thing is I thought this was satire up till this point and then checked the date.

[Earthborn]

Has the US killed thousands of civilians? Or have the terrorists?Both have. At the moment the death toll by insurgents is greater than the death toll caused by the US military. But when I first bumped this thread in 2003 there were already thousands of civilian deaths and the insurgency hardly even started. (see post #23 (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=243739&postcount=23)) The civilian death toll would rise to about 10 000 (according to Iraq Body Count) before that happened. Many people died in the initial bombings from the air.

Immediately after the start of the insurgency, there were people arguing that the insurgents had killed more civilians than the US military, even though it was not yet true. It is now. The "suicide bombers" and makers of "road side bombs" had 3 years to catch up with the "aerial bombardments" and "missile strikes".

[Garrette]

Both have. At the moment the death toll by insurgents is greater than the death toll caused by the US military. But when I first bumped this thread in 2003 there were already thousands of civilian deaths and the insurgency hardly even started. (see post #23 (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=243739&postcount=23)) The civilian death toll would rise to about 10 000 (according to Iraq Body Count) before that happened. Many people died in the initial bombings from the air.

Immediately after the start of the insurgency, there were people arguing that the insurgents had killed more civilians than the US military, even though it was not yet true. It is now. The "suicide bombers" and makers of "road side bombs" had 3 years to catch up with the "aerial bombardments" and "missile strikes".A year or two ago I went to IraqBodyCount on your advice and did a quick review of their methods and found it wanting. I don't have my original results, and am not too inclined to recreate it, but I don't consider IBC reliable.

In your post 23 you give a combined tally of roughly 14,000 Iraqis killed by the US in bombings and direct action. That's far too high.

The bombings were not perfect, but were closer to it than not. It is easy to tell when in Baghdad or elsewhere in Iraq which buildings were bombed and which looted; the press frequently conflated the two. I and some colleagues walked one reporter in particular through the difference more than once.

iirc, IBC also counts intended victims as collateral, i.e., members of the regime and Baath Party leadership are in their numbers.

Regarding shootings at school, I won't argue that it didn't happen some, but I will that it happened to a great degree, and mostly when Iraqi forces used schools (and hospitals) as fighting positions.

[varwoche]

I don't consider IBC reliable. I agree. Their methodology of counting fatalities based on multiple press reports per incident is in all likelyhood going to undercount.

[Garrette]

I agree. Their methodology of counting fatalities based on multiple press reports per incident is in all likelyhood going to undercount.Undercount, overcount, count exactly right, are all separate from attribution which was my point.

[Earthborn]

A year or two ago I went to IraqBodyCount on your advice and did a quick review of their methods and found it wanting.At the moment, their numbers are the most conservative there are. If you know of a better methodology than theirs, lets hear your count or estimate. Other methodologies, such as from both Lancet studies, result in far higher numbers.

In your post 23 you give a combined tally of roughly 14,000 Iraqis killed by the US in bombings and direct action. That's far too high.Yes, that's far too high. Not because of a flaw by the IBC, but by the fact that you add two numbers that cannot be added. The numbers represent a minimum and a maximum, which means that the real number must be in between those two; not lower than 6118 and not higher than 7836. Certainly not 14 000, that's counting many people twice. The higher number of 7836 includes the people from the lower number 6118.

iirc, IBC also counts intended victims as collateral, i.e., members of the regime and Baath Party leadership are in their numbers.I imagine they do. They don't try to count the "collateral damage", but the civilian death toll. If a bomb is dropped on a government building, I see no reason why they should not count the deaths of the civil servants who were in it.

It is easy to tell when in Baghdad or elsewhere in Iraq which buildings were bombed and which looted; the press frequently conflated the two. I and some colleagues walked one reporter in particular through the difference more than once.Were there any reports of people being killed in buildings that were just looted and where they did not get killed? If so, and you can prove it, I'm sure the IBC is willing to remove those numbers from their database.

Regarding shootings at school, I won't argue that it didn't happen some, but I will that it happened to a great degreeI think you'll find that the IBC database reflects this.

[Garrette]

At the moment, their numbers are the most conservative there are. If you know of a better methodology than theirs, lets hear your count or estimate. Other methodologies, such as from both Lancet studies, result in far higher numbers.I'll leave it to others; I'm too embroiled in other threads right now. Take it as a concession if you like.

Yes, that's far too high. Not because of a flaw by the IBC, but by the fact that you add two numbers that cannot be added. The numbers represent a minimum and a maximum, which means that the real number must be in between those two; not lower than 6118 and not higher than 7836. Certainly not 14 000, that's counting many people twice. The higher number of 7836 includes the people from the lower number 6118.Ah, my mistake, and my apologies.

I imagine they do. They don't try to count the "collateral damage", but the civilian death toll. If a bomb is dropped on a government building, I see no reason why they should not count the deaths of the civil servants who were in it.It depends on the categorization, I suppose. "Unintended dead" versus "Intended dead", the latter of which should, I think, include troops. Then moralize how you/they wish based on that.

Were there any reports of people being killed in buildings that were just looted and where they did not get killed? If so, and you can prove it, I'm sure the IBC is willing to remove those numbers from their database.Proof? Not of which I am aaware.

I think you'll find that the IBC database reflects this.Then I'm at a loss as to why you highlighted the shootings of schoolchildren in your initial post (#13) as if they comprise a significant number or percentage.

[The Atheist]

The weird thing is I thought this was satire up till this point and then checked the date.Same here, I though Skeptic was taking the piss, then I saw the date of the OP.

Masterpiece!

[Earthborn]

Then I'm at a loss as to why you highlighted the shootings of schoolchildren in your initial post (#13) as if they comprise a significant number or percentage.I assume you mean post #23.

You should see it in relation to the OP by Skeptic. In it he tries to argue why war protestors are wrong. He claimed that war protestors have argued that certain things will happen, and he thinks that they were wrong to think that. In #23 I show that all those things did happen, at least once.

How often they happened, or would happen later is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the worst fears Skeptic attributes to war protestors (probably as a strawman) have come true. And we now know that there was much more to come.

[Garrette]

I assume you mean post #23.Yes. Sorry again.

You should see it in relation to the OP by Skeptic. In it he tries to argue why war protestors are wrong. He claimed that war protestors have argued that certain things will happen, and he thinks that they were wrong to think that. In #23 I show that all those things did happen, at least once.Okay.

How often they happened, or would happen later is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the worst fears Skeptic attributes to war protestors (probably as a strawman) have come true. And we now know that there was much more to come.I'm not in complete agreement with this.

Skeptic: Over the top and premature crowing about apparently mistaken predictions of others.

Others: Hah! It did happen. We were right and you were wrong!

While it tilts heavily in the favor of the Others, it is not completely so, and I think the school shootings is an example of the incomplete part.

I think it is more reasonable to think that, at least on the topic of the school shootings it should be interpreted more along these lines:

Skeptic: Of course the tragedies that normally attend war will happen, but they will not happen on a large scale or in any intended sense.

Others: Hah! Bad things happened. You were wrong and we were right!

[ponderingturtle]

Yes. Sorry again.

Okay.

I'm not in complete agreement with this.

Skeptic: Over the top and premature crowing about apparently mistaken predictions of others.

Others: Hah! It did happen. We were right and you were wrong!

While it tilts heavily in the favor of the Others, it is not completely so, and I think the school shootings is an example of the incomplete part.

I think it is more reasonable to think that, at least on the topic of the school shootings it should be interpreted more along these lines:

Skeptic: Of course the tragedies that normally attend war will happen, but they will not happen on a large scale or in any intended sense.

Others: Hah! Bad things happened. You were wrong and we were right!

I don't agree with this reinterpretation. He made 8 claims, 6 of which are explicitly wrong.

Claims
1.War will be over this weekend- False 3 years latter and the violence has only increased.

2.The US will kill thousands of Civilians a lie- False the US has killed thousands of civilians, possibly tens or even hundreds if you take all the violence that our invasion caused into account. It is like attributing all deaths to Hitler from WWII, so it is not with out precedent to have such an accounting. But even with limiting it to direct involvement it is false.

3.Iraqis will not resist Americans- False

4.US will not suffer Political Isolation- I would say somewhat false, the US is to important to be fully isolated politically, but it has hurt our standing in the eyes of many in the world

5.Congress didn't declare war- This can be debated, but if congressmen didn't mean to declare war they should have got that in writing, that is the problem with letting someone else do your bluffing for you. I will give him this one, but it is somewhat open to debate what individual congressmen intended when they voted for it.

6.Saddam had Illegal Weapons- False he even goes to claim that a rocket fired was an illegal weapon, the only rocket I remember hearing about was a legal anti ship missile modified as to target ground areas, and with in the legal range limitations.

7.Saddam didn't set fire to oil Fields- True

8. People in favor of the war- Well not at the moment, with is record low approval ratings and the like.

So 4 out of 8 are completely wrong, and a few are open to debate as to what they ever could mean

[Mycroft]

At the moment, their numbers are the most conservative there are. If you know of a better methodology than theirs, lets hear your count or estimate. Other methodologies, such as from both Lancet studies, result in far higher numbers.

Isn't it a bit of a streatch to claim their numbers are the most conservative there are? They are conservative compared to the Lancet study, but that only makes them the "most conservative" if those are the only two estimates available.

[Earthborn]

Isn't it a bit of a streatch to claim their numbers are the most conservative there are?No.

They are conservative compared to the Lancet study, but that only makes them the "most conservative" if those are the only two estimates available.There are more than two estimates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_conflict_in_Iraq_since_2003) available (there has even been more than one Lancet study), and they are the most conservative.

[Earthborn]

I think it is more reasonable to think that, at least on the topic of the school shootings it should be interpreted more along these lines:With the benefit of hindsight, you can reinterpret Skeptic's words into something more reasonable all you like, but I think it is pretty obvious that at the time he really did think "the tragedies that normally attend war" would not happen.

[Darth Rotor]

With the benefit of hindsight, you can reinterpret Skeptic's words into something more reasonable all you like, but I think it is pretty obvious that at the time he really did think "the tragedies that normally attend war" would not happen.
Be the prognostications good, bad, or indifferent, the protests were ultimately futile, (not worthless by any stretch) in that they prevented nothing.

Their influence on policy was nil.

War came. I don't see how anyone can take comfort in "I told you so." My suggestion is that people adopt a "get on with it" attitude, with "it" being the business of this nation, part of which is resolving the mess in Iraq.

DR

[a_unique_person]

You can still find them in the archives, but searching for them is hell. For example, here ist the Eat a Booger (http://forums.randi.org/archive/index.php/t-4174.html)thread.

("booger" is a pretty unusual search word.)


The Weapons of Mass Destruction are one step closer to being found. (http://forums.randi.org/archive/index.php/t-6790.html)
Chemical weapons found in Iraq (http://forums.randi.org/archive/index.php/t-3860.html)
Blix Says No WMD Found in Iraq (http://forums.randi.org/archive/index.php/t-1077.html)



I recommend that you people who think that the U.S. government had no evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction go ahead and take back what you said while you have the chance. If these things are found, boy are you going to be sorry.



Boy, I'm still not sorry.

[a_unique_person]

``It is sort of fascinating that you can have 100 percent certainty about weapons of mass destruction and zero certainty of about where they are,'' Hans Blix NYT, today.



That Blix, what a dupe.

[ImaginalDisc]

Be the prognostications good, bad, or indifferent, the protests were ultimately futile, (not worthless by any stretch) in that they prevented nothing.

Their influence on policy was nil.

War came. I don't see how anyone can take comfort in "I told you so." My suggestion is that people adopt a "get on with it" attitude, with "it" being the business of this nation, part of which is resolving the mess in Iraq.

DR

Just as soon as the liars, crooks and thieves who shouted down serious criticism, ramrodded through the Patriot Act and lied to us so that our soldiers, sailors and marines died needlessly in a futile war are all investigated, I'd be happy to drop it. Accountability, ain't it a btich?

[Darth Rotor]

Just as soon as the liars, crooks and thieves who shouted down serious criticism, ramrodded through the Patriot Act and lied to us so that our soldiers, sailors and marines died needlessly in a futile war are all investigated, I'd be happy to drop it. Accountability, ain't it a btich?
I was surprised, in mid to late 2004, when the WMD caches were still "missing," and the interviews with Iraqi cabinet level officials and program participants showed how the programs had been at least part bluff and part self deception within Iraq, that there wasn't a massive backlash, both in Congress and at the voting booth, over the war having been sold with that factor so heavily weighted. The House of Representatives was where I expected to see a significant change take place. It seemed to me that the Democratic campaign plan to get seats back in 2004 was muted, perhaps due to complicity in the Senate over the "authorization to use force in Iraq?" I got the sense that I was missing a few points in understanding why the fall 2004 campaign was run the way it was.

There were well over a hundred "no, don't go to war" votes in the House. IIRC, most of them were from Democrats, though the occasional Ron Paul stood up as a Republican and broke ranks. That less was made of that in the campaign, or that the campaign was as ineffective as it was, spoke poorly for the strategy and tactics within the Democratic party, and the integrity of some of the Reps running for re-election.

DR

[ImaginalDisc]

I was surprised, in mid to late 2004, when the WMD caches were still "missing,"

With respect, if you were actually surprised at that fact, despite the criticisms of the "intelligence" in favor of WMD's for everyone and their mother, you probably hadn't paid much attention to the situation.

Being surprised there were no WMD's is a bit like being surprised that your recently purchased deed to the Brooklyn Bridge isn't valid.

[Upchurch]

I was surprised, in mid to late 2004, when the WMD caches were still "missing," and the interviews with Iraqi cabinet level officials and program participants showed how the programs had been at least part bluff and part self deception within Iraq, that there wasn't a massive backlash, both in Congress and at the voting booth, over the war having been sold with that factor so heavily weighted.
You and almost half the country.

My mother-in-law voted for Bush in '04 under the reasoning, "I'm going to vote him back into office, so that he can clean up the mess he made in Iraq."

It's things like this that keep you up at night.

[Garrette]

Being surprised there were no WMD's is a bit like being surprised that your recently purchased deed to the Brooklyn Bridge isn't valid.I'll take issue with this.

Some said there were none, but not all, or even most. And those saying it existed were not lightweights. Whatever you may think of him now, when George Tenet (as head of the CIA) says it's a slam dunk, I give credence to that.

I also give credence to some of the photographic intel I saw which was compelling (though admittedly not conclusive).

I also give credence to communiques internal to Saddam's regime indicating the WMDs existed. Now that it turns out that the communiques were, as DR says, a ruse that not even many high level Iraqi officers knew about, does not change that it was convincing.

We got beat in the intel game. So did Saddam. He thought convincing us he had them would keep us out.

[ImaginalDisc]

I'll take issue with this.

Some said there were none, but not all, or even most. And those saying it existed were not lightweights. Whatever you may think of him now, when George Tenet (as head of the CIA) says it's a slam dunk, I give credence to that.

I also give credence to some of the photographic intel I saw which was compelling (though admittedly not conclusive).

I also give credence to communiques internal to Saddam's regime indicating the WMDs existed. Now that it turns out that the communiques were, as DR says, a ruse that not even many high level Iraqi officers knew about, does not change that it was convincing.

We got beat in the intel game. So did Saddam. He thought convincing us he had them would keep us out.

You can try to take issue issue with it, but the fact of the matter is that the intelligence data did not point to the existence of WMDs. What the American public was presented by the Bush administration, and what Colin Powel stacked his reputation on before the U.N. was built from cherry-picked images and documents taken out of a vast sea of data that contradicted the WMD's existence. It was obvious that it was junk, and international critics as well as domestic critics saw straight through it.

[pgwenthold]

Some said there were none, but not all, or even most. And those saying it existed were not lightweights. Whatever you may think of him now, when George Tenet (as head of the CIA) says it's a slam dunk, I give credence to that.


Did you happen to see the Frontline story on the intelligence. Reportedly, when Tenet went to the White House to lay out the case for WMD in Iraq, President Bush responded, "Is that all you got?"

An honest assessment of the intel couldn't even convince the president! So Tenet went back and tried to shore up his case.

[Darth Rotor]

With respect, if you were actually surprised at that fact, despite the criticisms of the "intelligence" in favor of WMD's for everyone and their mother, you probably hadn't paid much attention to the situation.

Being surprised there were no WMD's is a bit like being surprised that your recently purchased deed to the Brooklyn Bridge isn't valid.
Please, get off your soap box. You didn't know any more than anyone else did that there "were no WMD" as absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. I had paid a great deal of attention, for 12 years, to the UN sanctions and US/UK and allies occasionally, embargo. You guessed, and you put your trust in whoever's point of view appealed to you. If there were no WMD's, and it was confirmed and known, how in the hell does UNSCR 1441 get approved? It can't. But it did, and could, due to uncertainty, and due to the explicit lack of confirmation. 20/20 hindsight paints the process in a different light, once hard evidence from persons in the programs, Iraqis, was finally available.

Now we know, thanks to confirmation from persons in the programs, interviewed in 2003 and 2004, some of whom had been explicitly NOT made available by Saddam during 12 years of UNSCR's and sanctions. Your depth of understanding is a mile wide, and a centimeter deep.

I was surprised, no, stunned, that Colin Powell had briefed the UN as he did when things began to crystalize by the end of 2004 when I got home from the sandbox. What I know professionally about sources and methods made me confident that he had info he could not pass out in public. He wouldn't hang it in public like that without good background info, that he could not reveal, due to sensitivity of sources and methods. That he did, with the info he apparently had (and didn't have) still amazes and saddens me. Colin Powell was of the generation of officers who bitterly rejected the 1960's Army leadership who failed to "bet their stars" over misinformation in Viet Nam. A whole host of those men vowed "Never Again." (See McMaster's "Dereliction of Duty" for superb coverage of that matter.)

Of all people to go along with "the same thing, a generation later," he's the last I would have expected to do that. I trusted him. He was used, he let himself be used, and I felt used by the time the actual state of play came into hard focus, when actual evidence was available, from persons who were actually in volved in the programs at hand.

Evidence, ID, not supposition and estimation, evidence, that was not available until after those persons were available to interview.

Evidence.

DR

[ImaginalDisc]

Please, get off your soap box. You didn't know any more than anyone else did that there "were no WMD" as absence isn't evidence of absense, and I had paid a great deal of attention to 12 years of UN sanction and US embargo. You guesses, and you put your trust in whoever's point of view appealed to you. If there were no WMD's, and it was confirmed and known, how did 1441 get approved? It can't, due to the lack of confirmation. 20/20 hindsight paints the entire process in a different light.

Now we know, thanks to confirmation by persons in the programs, interviewed in 2004, some of whom had been explicitly NOT made available by Saddam. Your depth of understanding is a mile wide, and a centimeter deep. Thanks for playing.

I was surprised, no, stunned, that Colin Powell had briefed the UN as he did. What I know professionally about sources and methods made me confident that he had info he could not pass out in public. He wouldn't hang it in public like that without good background info, that he could not reveal, due to sensitivity of sources and methods. That he did, with the info he apparently had, still amazes me. Powell was of the generation of officers who bitterly rejected the 1960's Army leadership who failed to "bet their stars" over the misinformation in Viet Nam. A whole host of those men vowed "Never again." (See McMaster's "Dereliction of Duty" for superb coverage of that matter.)

Of all people to go along with "the same thing, a generation later," he's the last I would have expected to do that. I trusted him.

DR


This is not based on hindsight. From the moment the Bush administration tried to fool people with this nonsense, it was scathingly criticised. They could find no corroboration from foriegn intelligence agencies, and the fact that they fooled so many is a testament not to the value of their data, but to their ability to wield power.

[pgwenthold]

Scott Ritter, for example, was all over the place talking about how nothing was there. All they did with him was to paint him as a traitor, in the ultimate ad hominem attack.

Of course, he has been shown to be pretty much right on everything he said.

[Darth Rotor]

This is not based on hindsight. From the moment the Bush administration tried to fool people with this nonsense, it was scathingly criticised. They could find no corroboration from foreign itnelligence agencies, and the fact that they fooled so many is a testament not to the value of their data, but to their ability to wield power.
It was obvious that it was junk, and international critics as well as domestic critics saw straight through it.
Only if you were already predisposed to believe so due to your emotional bias. Thanks for your post hoc, ergo prompter hoc attempt.
and the fact that they fooled so many is a testament not to the value of their data, but to their ability to wield power
No, their ability to sell soap. ;) One of my unpublished (rejected) articles is on information warfare, and the cold hard fact that there were two targets in the run up to March 2003: the international target, against whom the PR/information campaign is now a three year losing battle, and the domestic target, which was a tactical success for the time horizon it was intended for.

DR

[hgc]

No, their ability to sell soap. ;) One of my unpublished (rejected) articles is on information warfare, and the cold hard fact that there were two targets in the run up to March 2003: the international target, against whom the PR/information campaign is now a three year losing battle, and the domestic target, which was a tactical success for the time horizon it was intended for.

DR
All of which is useless if you can't actually win on the ground, like, you know, take control of the country you've invaded. That's the losing battle to loses all the PR battles, ultimately. Don't you see? Bush's war-fighting incompetence is reason we're losing, and not because people are pre-disposed not to like Bush.

[Garrette]

Did you happen to see the Frontline story on the intelligence.No.

Reportedly, when Tenet went to the White House to lay out the case for WMD in Iraq, President Bush responded, "Is that all you got?"

An honest assessment of the intel couldn't even convince the president! So Tenet went back and tried to shore up his case.Assuming this is true (it doesn't change my point whether it is or isn't), then it goes more toward vindicating my position than yours. GWB wanted more evidence before he made the claim.

[Garrette]

I was surprised, no, stunned, that Colin Powell had briefed the UN as he did when things began to crystalize by the end of 2004 when I got home from the sandbox. What I know professionally about sources and methods made me confident that he had info he could not pass out in public. He wouldn't hang it in public like that without good background info, that he could not reveal, due to sensitivity of sources and methods. That he did, with the info he apparently had (and didn't have) still amazes and saddens me. Colin Powell was of the generation of officers who bitterly rejected the 1960's Army leadership who failed to "bet their stars" over misinformation in Viet Nam. A whole host of those men vowed "Never Again." My reaction, too. I've avoided talking about it.

[Darth Rotor]

Scott Ritter, for example, was all over the place talking about how nothing was there. All they did with him was to paint him as a traitor, in the ultimate ad hominem attack.

Of course, he has been shown to be pretty much right on everything he said.
Scott Ritter was no traitor. He had a lot to say worth listening to. I found his accounts in the mid and late 1990's of how the shell game had been conducted by the Iraqis fascinating. If you peel the onion skin back a bit, when was the last time he had been in Iraq?

In January of 1998, his inspection team into Iraq was blocked from some weapons sites by Iraqi officials, and Ritter was accused by Iraq of being a spy for the CIA. He was then expelled from Iraq by its government in August 1998. Shortly thereafter, he spoke on the Public Broadcasting Service show, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

I think the danger right now is that without effective inspections, without effective monitoring, Iraq can in a very short period of time measured in months, reconstitute chemical and biological weapons, long-range ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons, and even certain aspects of their nuclear weaponization program
I recall well that tumultuous period of UN Sanctions.

Time changes all things. When he was (after being accused of being a spy by Saddam's people, remember?) gone, and the inspection regime interrupted (1998, eh?) the UN was a bit blinder than it had previously been.

DR

[ImaginalDisc]

Only if you were already predisposed to believe so due to your emotional bias. Thanks for your post hoc, ergo prompter hoc attempt.

No, that's an ad hominem. Their evidence was simply unconvincing.

[Garrette]

All of which is useless if you can't actually win on the ground, like, you know, take control of the country you've invaded. That's the losing battle to loses all the PR battles, ultimately. Don't you see? Bush's war-fighting incompetence is reason we're losing, and not because people are pre-disposed not to like Bush.IN a sense you're right, but it's not the current topic (which isn't to say it can't become the topic...)

Ultimately as the CinC, GWB bears responsibility. Grinding it down, though, you have to include Rumsfeld, and Franks (which galls me to say because the man displayed brilliance at times). Then throw in the bulk of the military bureaucracy that is so slow to accept change and resists changing its focus from a massive army-on-army war to one that includes 4GW (and whatever 5GW) style fighting.

Finally, a very large part of losing it on the ground is exactly the Information Warfare that Darth has mentioned. The military (both in the maneuver units and at CPA like I was) voiced that opinion early and often in Iraq. We were out propagandized--needlessly so.

[pgwenthold]

No.

Assuming this is true (it doesn't change my point whether it is or isn't), then it goes more toward vindicating my position than yours. GWB wanted more evidence before he made the claim.

So after searching all he did, he came up with...well, see Powell's lame-arse case to the UN.

After being sent away by the president because his case was too weak, that was all they could come up with. Tells you about how weak it was in the first place.

[Darth Rotor]

All of which is useless if you can't actually win on the ground, like, you know, take control of the country you've invaded. That's the losing battle to loses all the PR battles, ultimately. Don't you see? Bush's war-fighting incompetence is reason we're losing, and not because people are pre-disposed not to like Bush.
Hi:

"Don't you see?" Thanks for that, really, I saw more than I ever wanted to "see" while I was in theater on the disconnects in policy and chosen tools, the disconnects between what was happening and what was being fed to the 24/7 media by all sides in the information/propaganda war. The media is not a neutral arena, it is part and parcel to the 21st century battlefield.

I think you have the relationship backwards. The "purely military" fight was a success, in terms of army on army. The losing PR battle is the critical piece -- the battle for trust and postive symbols -- in winning a hearts and minds campaign. (So too is a non fragmented mesh between political and military means, which was obviously dysfunctional when I was in theater. Garrette saw this far more clearly than I in his work in Bagdad) Winning international support for a rebuilding effort requires an immense effort in PR and positive symbol reinforcement. The campaign where the PR fight predominates, the current SASO, has been underway since fall of 2003. Without a successful Information/PR piece, the efforts on the ground are massively hampered.

You get no argument from me that BushCo failed to match means and ends effectively.

DR

[Gurdur]

.....We got beat in the intel game. So did Saddam. He thought convincing us he had them would keep us out.
Bingo.
One of the sad ironies of history.

Bush and his cabinet, by most accounts, convinced themselves though; they really wanted to believe WMD's existed, since it made a great excuse to go after Saddam; and I am reasonably sure that even though the evidence showed no WMD's, they convinced themselves that the WMD's would be found anyway. Wishful thinking & machismo directly massively influencing perception.

Saddam wanted to convince everyone he did have them, right up to the moment where he suddenly realised it was a very bad idea. The politics of machismo agitprop.

All in all, the whole Iraq2 mess demands that Barbara Tuchmann come out with a new sequel to her March Of Folly.

[Darth Rotor]

Bingo.
One of the sad ironies of history.

Bush and his cabinet, by most accounts, convinced themselves though; they really wanted to believe WMD's existed, since it made a great excuse to go after Saddam; and I am reasonably sure that even though the evidence showed no WMD's, they convinced themselves that the WMD's would be found anyway. Wishful thinking & machismo directly massively influencing perception.

Saddam wanted to convince everyone he did have them, right up to the moment where he suddenly realised it was a very bad idea. The politics of machismo agitprop.

All in all, the whole Iraq2 mess demands that Barbara Tuchmann come out with a new sequel to her March Of Folly.
She's dead, and probably would not want to appear redundant. ;)

DR

[Gurdur]

She's dead
Damn. I did not know that. Very sad news.
She was a brilliant historian, and a brilliant author about history.

[ImaginalDisc]

Hi:

"Don't you see?" Thanks for that, really, I saw more than I ever wanted to "see" while I was in theater on the disconnects in policy and chosen tools, the disconnects between what was happening and what was being fed to the 24/7 media by all sides in the information/propaganda war. The media is not a neutral arena, it is part and parcel to the 21st century battlefield.

I think you have the relationship backwards. The "purely military" fight was a success, in terms of army on army. The losing PR battle is the critical piece -- the battle for trust and postive symbols -- in winning a hearts and minds campaign. (So too is a non fragmented mesh between political and military means, which was obviously dysfunctional when I was in theater. Garrette saw this far more clearly than I in his work in Bagdad) Winning international support for a rebuilding effort requires an immense effort in PR and positive symbol reinforcement. The campaign where the PR fight predominates, the current SASO, has been underway since fall of 2003. Without a successful Information/PR piece, the efforts on the ground are massively hampered.

You get no argument from me that BushCo failed to match means and ends effectively.

DR

I think it's way too simplistic to say the miltiary fight was won, but the "PR" "fight" was lost. Dismissing the Iraqi military and failing to disarm them is a failure to use one's brain, and that's just one of a host of bone-headed moves made. One cannot blame the media for the administration's incompetence. While the coalition forces fought skillfully and bravely, democracy can't be forced on a country that doesn't want it no matter how many guns one has.

[Garrette]

Bingo.
One of the sad ironies of history.

Bush and his cabinet, by most accounts, convinced themselves though; they really wanted to believe WMD's existed, since it made a great excuse to go after Saddam; and I am reasonably sure that even though the evidence showed no WMD's, they convinced themselves that the WMD's would be found anyway. Wishful thinking & machismo directly massively influencing perception.

Saddam wanted to convince everyone he did have them, right up to the moment where he suddenly realised it was a very bad idea. The politics of machismo agitprop.

All in all, the whole Iraq2 mess demands that Barbara Tuchmann come out with a new sequel to her March Of Folly.I'll agree with this, and for pgwenthold, I'll offer this on the early intel and the selling of the war, just to make it clear. Then I'll back out of this aspect of the discussion:

I think now that BushCo sold us a bill of goods. I think now that Bush, at least, did not think it was a bill of goods but had convinced himself of his rightness.

Perhaps I should have thought this then, but I did not. Insofar as I am responsible for all my decisions, I accept responsibility for this one, but I will not accept insinuations that I blindly fell for a bill of goods myself.

As I said, I saw some of the intel. I had, not much prior, worked fairly heavily in the intel community and had good ideas about how it worked and what could be (usually safely) assumed was true but not said in the press.

My assumptions were reinforced with Tenet's "slam dunk" and Powell's UN speech.

And I continue to think that those who think that a lack of WMDs was obvious then are either failing to admit that they had biases then or misremembering now.

I will dig my grave even further by stating that had the issue of WMDs never come up, I would still have supported the war.

I also do not think leaving now is right, and I am not convinced that historians in 50 years will look back on this as a bad thing when judged from the Iraqi perspective.

[Darth Rotor]

I think it's way too simplistic to say the miltiary fight was won, but the "PR" "fight" was lost.
It is, and I am not. The post "beat the army" phase is still underway. That is not how the campaign plan was written.
Dismissing the Iraqi military and failing to disarm them is a failure to use one's brain, and that's just one of a host of bone-headed moves made.
I didn't do that, and you get no argument from me that De Baathification was a bad idea, and this isn't news. It was blatantly obvious to me in mid 2004.
One cannot blame the media for the administration's incompetence.
I am not, and I agree with you wholeheartedly. The administration failed miserably in the information/media strategy, and implementation.
While the coalition forces fought skillfully and bravely, democracy can't be forced on a country that doesn't want it no matter how many guns one has.
The problem of "can you impose democracy at the point of a bayonet" was one of my own concerns as far back as October 2002 (I mentioned this in detail in the recent thread on "The Real Reason For Iraq War) and seems to be panning out about as I feared: Iraq first partitions, then breaks a la Yugoslavia, then becomes host to yet another Islamic Republic. :( Those were known risks of failure to "get it right" at the political level, and at the political/military interface on the ground.

Every corporal is an ambassador.

DR

[Garrette]

I think it's way too simplistic to say the miltiary fight was won, but the "PR" "fight" was lost. Dismissing the Iraqi military and failing to disarm them is a failure to use one's brain, and that's just one of a host of bone-headed moves made. One cannot blame the media for the administration's incompetence. While the coalition forces fought skillfully and bravely, democracy can't be forced on a country that doesn't want it no matter how many guns one has.I don't think DR is blaming the media per se. I'm not. I'm blaming us for not making better use of the non-government media and for not making better use of the government media. CPA had (has?) a Media Office that in theory ran a radio station and put out press releases. It was a miserable failure but never admitted to be such.

[Gurdur]

... Then I'll back out of this aspect of the discussion:
A pity, since I for one enjoy your posts. I find often I don't agree, but I greatly appreciate the high level of both factualness and analysis you bring to your posts.

I was against the whole Iraq2 war from the start; not wildly against it (who misses Saddam after all?) but against it, and on record as such.

My own failed prediction was that I thought Afghanistan would bugger up before Iraq2 did, when in fact it was more the other way round, and I never thought Iraq2 would bugger up quite as badly as it did and does.

[ImaginalDisc]

It is, and I am not. The post "beat the army" phase is still underway. That is not how the campaign plan was written.

I didn't do that, and you get no argument from me that De Baathification was a bad idea, and this isn't news. It was blatantly obvious to me in mid 2004.

I am not, and I agree with you wholeheartedly. The administration failed miserably in the information/media strategy, and implementation.

The problem of "can you impose democracy at the point of a bayonet" was one of my own concerns as far back as October 2002 (I mentioned this in detail in the recent thread on "The Real Reason For Iraq War) and seems to be panning out about as I feared: Iraq first partitions, then breaks a la Yugoslavia, then becomes host to yet another Islamic Republic. :( Those were known risks of failure to "get it right" at the political level, and at the political/military interface on the ground.

Every corporal is an ambassador.

DR

Oh, I think I misread your earlier post. My apologies. Still, I'm at a loss when trying to understand how you thought the administration's case for WMD's was convincing.

[Darth Rotor]

Oh, I think I misread your earlier post. My apologies. Still, I'm at a loss when trying to understand how you thought the administration's case for WMD's was convincing.
Easy to misread what I am writing. I am spraying a wide pattern of points here. As I am not editing and paring down my posts, the blame is on me for any lack of clarity. :boggled:

"To understand how I thought . . ."

Because I know how sensitive and compartmented intelligence is supposed to work. The average guy on the street does not get exposed to that. I did in my profession (it began when I was hunting submarines a couple of decades ago) and so I, like any number of those familiar with how that's supposed to work, didn't have an emotional basis to immediately disbelieve whatever came out of an administration official's mouth. (Particularly Powell, whom I'd have voted for Pres in 96 in a heartbeat) Those whose emotional hatred for Bush began in the November 2000 election, or at least disdain for him, would not see through the same lens as I. ( I wanted McCain on the ballot in 2000, not GW, and was disappointed in how that played out.)

GW Bush was the fifth President to act as my Commander in Chief, Carter my first, Reagan the best, GHW Bush the best qualified, Clinton the most naive on what military force can politically accomplish "at what cost." His aims were limited, but he believed you could get something for nothing. He nickel and dimed away the winning hand that he was dealt as Commander in Chief.

GWB has his own special category in misunderstanding means and ends, but Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld know, and knew, good and damned well what the limitations of military force are. Their biggest failure, IMO, was their assuming away inconvenient facts in an operation/war that was a big (some say bold) gamble to start with. Given the libraries full of lessons learned from Somalia, Afghanistan, and Bosnia, Zinni's Op Plan, Shinseki's Cassandra call that went unheeded, and a silver bullet mind set, the myopia is easy to see, but not to forgive.

DR

[ImaginalDisc]

Easy to misread what I am writing. I am spraying a wide pattern of points here. As I am not editing and paring down my posts, the blame is on me for any lack of clarity. :boggled:

"To understand how I thought . . ."

Because I know how sensitive and compartmented intelligence is supposed to work. The average guy on the street does not get exposed to that. I did in my profession (it began when I was hunting submarines a couple of decades ago) and so I, like any number of those familiar with how that's supposed to work, didn't have an emotional basis to immediately disbelieve whatever came out of an administration official's mouth. (Particularly Powell, whom I'd have voted for Pres in 96 in a heartbeat) Those whose emotional hatred for Bush began in the November 2000 election, or at least disdain for him, would not see through the same lens as I. ( I wanted McCain on the ballot in 2000, not GW, and was disappointed in how that played out.)

GW Bush was the fifth President to act as my Commander in Chief, Carter my first, Reagan the best, GHW Bush the best qualified, Clinton the most naive on what military force can politically accomplish "at what cost." His aims were limited, but he believed you could get something for nothing. He nickel and dimed away the winning hand that he was dealt as Commander in Chief.

GWB has his own special category in misunderstanding means and ends, but Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld know, and knew, good and damned well what the limitations of military force are. Their biggest failure, IMO, was their assuming away inconvenient facts in an operation/war that was a big (some say bold) gamble to start with. Given the libraries full of lessons learned from Somalia, Afghanistan, and Bosnia, Zinni's Op Plan, Shinseki's Cassandra call that went unheeded, and a silver bullet mind set, the myopia is easy to see, but not to forgive.

DR

DR, most of the people who didn't believe Bush's snow-job about WMD's weren't basing this off of their bias, but because the facts just weren't there. I don't care who was saying it, it wasn't convincing. "Just trust me on this and go to war for me based on their clearly false assessment" doesn't work for me. Did it work for you just because you respected Powell?

[Darth Rotor]

DR, most of the people who didn't believe Bush's snow-job about WMD's weren't basing this off of their bias, but because the facts just weren't there. I don't care who was saying it, it wasn't convincing. "Just trust me on this and go to war for me based on their clearly false assessment" doesn't work for me. Did it work for you just because you respected Powell?
I didn't say that, ID, just because I respected Powell, but I did believe him, however that was grounded in 12 years of studying, paying attention to, researching, writing for professional reasons on the Iraqi sanctions and WMD inspection, and my long term understanding of realpolitik.

No single thing, ID, a whole stew of inputs. But I have to admit, Secretary Powell's brief, due to my previously stated understanding of the situation and how compartmented information works, seemed to me a confirmation of a surmise fed by 12 years of attention to the situation.

DR

[ImaginalDisc]

I didn't say that, ID, just because I respected Powell, but I did believe him, however that was grounded in 12 years of studying, paying attention to, researching, writing for professional reasons on the Iraqi sanctions and WMD inspection, and my long term understanding of realpolitik.

No single thing, ID, a whole stew of inputs. But I have to admit, Secretary Powell's brief, due to my previously stated understanding of the situation and how compartmented information works, seemed to me a confirmation of a surmise fed by 12 years of attention to the situation had built.

DR

I don't mean to impune the value of your experience, but was your experience in the field of intelligence?

[Darth Rotor]

I don't mean to impune the value of your experience, but was your experience in the field of intelligence?
You don't have to have an Intel MOS to use and be painfully familiar with Military and national Intelligence, sources and methods, classification, EEFI, handling of EEFI and classifications above secret, etc. It was part of what comes with the badge.

I was in Operations, and in some cases in Plans. I wrote (drafted actually, which always got chopped to hell) Op Plans, other plans, declassified stuff, classified stuff. I destroyed material, culled files for stale and overdue material, including intel (which I had to consult the 2 shop about) and was involved in theater (and a small amount of national) strategy level stuff, all of which was imbedded with military and political intel, day in and day out. I stood watch for three years, as part of one assignment, for Joint and Combined operations which included daily, hell, hourly, interaction with my dear friends in the "2" shop.

DR

[ImaginalDisc]

You don't have to have an Intel MOS to use and be painfully familiar with Military Intelligence, sources and methods, classification, EEFI, handling of EEFI and classifications above secret, etc. It was part of what comes with the badge.

I was in Operations and Plan, wrote Op Plans, other plans, declassified stuff, destroyed stuff, culled files for stale and overdue material, including intel (which I had to consult the 2 shop about) and some strategy level stuff, all of which was imbedded with military and political intel, day in and day out. I stood watch for three years, as part of my duties, on Joint and Combined operations which included daily, hell, hourly, interaction with my dear friends in the "2" shop.

DR

I have no idea what data you handled, or what those responsabilities specifically entail, but did you ever come across substantive evidence for WMD's in Iraq before the 2003 invasion?

[RandFan]

DR, most of the people who didn't believe Bush's snow-job about WMD's weren't basing this off of their bias, but because the facts just weren't there. How do you control for bias in a situation like this? If there was zero reason to think Saddam had WMD then I would agree. However Saddam had been caught obfuscating many times. His games with the inspectors was legendary and he was a dictator of a country capable of great deception and there were a lot of places to hide things. I'm not convinced that it was as obvious that there was no WMD. In the end it looks like the evidence did point more to no WMD. But that is, too a large degree, confirmation bias. After the fact we find out which facts are right and so our perception of our confidence at the time as to those facts increases.

I'm skeptical of claims of confidence. It's like the guy who splits 10's in black jack, wins and declares that the strategy correct. If he only plays once in his life he can forever declare himself correct.

[Darth Rotor]

I have no idea what data you handled, or what those responsabilities specifically entail, but did you ever come across substantive evidence for WMD's in Iraq before the 2003 invasion?
As I wasn't on the CENTCOM/NAVCENT battle staff from 1998-2003, nor at JCS, that wasn't in my box.

DR

[pgwenthold]

DR, most of the people who didn't believe Bush's snow-job about WMD's weren't basing this off of their bias, but because the facts just weren't there. I don't care who was saying it, it wasn't convincing. "Just trust me on this and go to war for me based on their clearly false assessment" doesn't work for me. Did it work for you just because you respected Powell?

Moreover, I was actually listening to counter arguments. See my comments about Scott Ritter. Those on the right dismissed him because they painted him a Saddam-sympathizer (at best, traitor at worst). OTOH, I noticed that they never actually addressed his claims about what Iraq had or did not have.

When were the first counters to Powell's "mobile weapons lab" claims? Those explanations that they were for hydrogen production for weather balloons? Yeah, we would be wise to be skeptical about Iraqi's explanations, but when going to war, shouldn't the burden be more to the level of "they could be lying?" Wouldn't you want to rule out the possibility that they were hydrogen production facilities, a perfectly reasonable explanation and easily testable given the extent of weapons inspectors ("we have seen these by satellite - show them to us") before concluding they were mobile weapons labs as a basis for war?

As you say, the facts, when taken at face value, were lacking, and even when they were suggestive, we had the means to investigate them without going to war.

[ImaginalDisc]

How do you control for bias in a situation like this?

Reason and logic are best tools we have. "I discovered this empty lollipop wraper in Saddam's palace, ergo, he must have lollipops" is fairly sound reasoning. The Bush administration's case in '03 was not.

If there was zero reason to think Saddam had WMD then I would agree. However Saddam had been caught obfuscating many times. His games with the inspectors was legendary and he was a dictator of a country capable of great deception and there were a lot of places to hide things. I'm not convinced that it was as obvious that there was no WMD. In the end it looks like the evidence did point more to no WMD. But that is, too a large degree, confirmation bias. After the fact we find out which facts are right and so our perception of our confidence at the time as to those facts increases.

I'm skeptical of claims of confidence. It's like the guy who splits 10's in black jack, wins and declares that the strategy correct. If he only plays once in his life he can forever declare himself correct.

RandFan, I of course agree that Saddam wanted WMD's, at one time, our own government gave him some to play with, but the facts is that we had Iraq well locked down and that no credible nuclear experts or intelligence experts were willing to say that the evidence pointed to Saddam actually having WMD's in 2003.

[hgc]

Hi:

"Don't you see?" Thanks for that, really, I saw more than I ever wanted to "see" while I was in theater on the disconnects in policy and chosen tools, the disconnects between what was happening and what was being fed to the 24/7 media by all sides in the information/propaganda war. The media is not a neutral arena, it is part and parcel to the 21st century battlefield.

I think you have the relationship backwards. The "purely military" fight was a success, in terms of army on army. The losing PR battle is the critical piece -- the battle for trust and postive symbols -- in winning a hearts and minds campaign. (So too is a non fragmented mesh between political and military means, which was obviously dysfunctional when I was in theater. Garrette saw this far more clearly than I in his work in Bagdad) Winning international support for a rebuilding effort requires an immense effort in PR and positive symbol reinforcement. The campaign where the PR fight predominates, the current SASO, has been underway since fall of 2003. Without a successful Information/PR piece, the efforts on the ground are massively hampered.

You get no argument from me that BushCo failed to match means and ends effectively.

DR
I appreciate very much that your direct experience gives you great insight, but with all due respect I think it is you that has it backwards. In terms of what "winning" means to us in this case, winning the "purely military" fight is pretty much worthless if we cannot provide security within the conquered territory, have control over it completely, provide a framework for pervasive political control by the government and bureaucracy, provide for basic services and infrastructure, etc. Start with the security issue, if this fails, all else is doomed. This is not a PR failure. This is a military failure. The US Military is not in control of the territory. If you still claim that is a PR failure, or failure of cooperation of our allies, I'd like to know precisely how.

I think this is exactly on topic for this thread. This is what protesters, especially Scott Ritter, warned about. Ritter, for instance, did not just talk about how Iraq didn't have WMD; he also clearly predicted that we would be unable to control the territory and provide security there -- and that the standing of the U.S. would drop internationally because of our failure there.

[Darth Rotor]

Moreover, I was actually listening to counter arguments. See my comments about Scott Ritter. Those on the right dismissed him because they painted him a Saddam-sympathizer (at best, traitor at worst). OTOH, I noticed that they never actually addressed his claims about what Iraq had or did not have.

When were the first counters to Powell's "mobile weapons lab" claims? Those explanations that they were for hydrogen production for weather balloons? Yeah, we would be wise to be skeptical about Iraqi's explanations, but when going to war, shouldn't the burden be more to the level of "they could be lying?" Wouldn't you want to rule out the possibility that they were hydrogen production facilities, a perfectly reasonable explanation and easily testable given the extent of weapons inspectors ("we have seen these by satellite - show them to us") before concluding they were mobile weapons labs as a basis for war?

As you say, the facts, when taken at face value, were lacking, and even when they were suggestive, we had the means to investigate them without going to war.

What bugged me most was "why now?" I am still of the opinion that Cheney and Rumsfeld figured that 2004 re-election would be lost, and the opportunity to ice Saddam's programs (in whatever state) for at least 5 years (2003-2008) would be lost, to the long term strategic detriment to our position in the region.

I'd like to sit down with Mr Rumsfeld, for about an hour with a beer or two, and discuss a number of things, that one at the top of the list.

DR

[ImaginalDisc]

As I wasn't on the CENTCOM/NAVCENT battle staff from 1998-2003, nor at JCS, that wasn't in my box.

DR

Then, with all due respect for the value your experience may have in other areas, I don't see how it was applicable to the question of whether Saddam had WMD's in 2003. You had the data the Bush administration presented, and that was enough to convince you?

[ImaginalDisc]

Wait DR, maybe I see what you're getting at. In 2003 I had a conversation with another retired career military person about this, who shared your views, and his position was that while the evidence presented was total garbage, he was confident that the Bush administration had better and much more convincing data that they could not divulge for tactical reasons. Is that something that influenced your determination?

[Garrette]

I appreciate very much that your direct experience gives you great insight, but with all due respect I think it is you that has it backwards. In terms of what "winning" means to us in this case, winning the "purely military" fight is pretty much worthless if we cannot provide security within the conquered territory, have control over it completely, provide a framework for pervasive political control by the government and bureaucracy, provide for basic services and infrastructure, etc. Start with the security issue, if this fails, all else is doomed. This is not a PR failure. This is a military failure. The US Military is not in control of the territory. If you still claim that is a PR failure, or failure of cooperation of our allies, I'd like to know precisely how.

I think this is exactly on topic for this thread. This is what protesters, especially Scott Ritter, warned about. Ritter, for instance, did not just talk about how Iraq didn't have WMD; he also clearly predicted that we would be unable to control the territory and provide security there -- and that the standing of the U.S. would drop internationally because of our failure there.I will give this a brief shot, though it is difficult to do in a post.

In saying "PR", we do not mean simply putting a happy face on a billboard nor in putting some articles about schools being rebuilt in the NYT.

Nor can it be separated from the military aspect.

Security must be provided, but one necessary condition for that to happen is the belief of the populace that it can be provided. Such belief is nurtured through a constant campaign of information. That campaign is tied in to the military operations and to the political operations. All of it is directed by a unified political head.

Information campaigns change to fit their audience. What is presented to the international community (including the US public) is not the same as what is presented to the Iraqi populace is not the same as what is presented to the insurgents. None of it is lies, but it emphasizes different aspects, answers different questions, and is framed and delivered in different fashions.

Put a soldier on guard over every person in Iraq and lock down all their weapons. It will not win the fight.

[RandFan]

Reason and logic are best tools we have. "I discovered this empty lollipop wraper in Saddam's palace, ergo, he must have lollipops" is fairly sound reasoning. The Bush administration's case in '03 was not. Thanks but that does not answer the question. If you say that the Bush administration's case was not sufficent for war I will agree. However that is not point I'm addressing. It's the assertion that our knowledge of no WMD was high and that bias had nothing to do with the conclusion that there was no WMD. Ok, tell me how you contol for bias in a situation like this? It is a perfectly valid question if you are really going to claim that bias played no part. Reason and logic are fine but if you do not control for bias (see Randi's many excellent examples) then you cannot just dismiss it.

RandFan, I of course agree that Saddam wanted WMD's, at one time, our own government gave him some to play with, but the facts is that we had Iraq well locked down and that no credible nuclear experts or intelligence experts were willing to say that the evidence pointed to Saddam actually having WMD's in 2003. I'm not sure how significant this is or even if it is true. There were a lot of unknowns. Again, it is easy in hind sight to say that those who believed there was no WMD were right. It is certainly withing the realm of possibility that they were wrong. Does the evidence suggest that Bush overplayed his hand? Yeah. I've conceded this for years but I'm skeptical of the confidence that is due to post hoc reasoning. That's just me. I'd be skeptical of Republican confidence had WMD been found for the same reasons.

[hgc]

I will give this a brief shot, though it is difficult to do in a post.

In saying "PR", we do not mean simply putting a happy face on a billboard nor in putting some articles about schools being rebuilt in the NYT.

Nor can it be separated from the military aspect.

Security must be provided, but one necessary condition for that to happen is the belief of the populace that it can be provided. Such belief is nurtured through a constant campaign of information. That campaign is tied in to the military operations and to the political operations. All of it is directed by a unified political head.

Information campaigns change to fit their audience. What is presented to the international community (including the US public) is not the same as what is presented to the Iraqi populace is not the same as what is presented to the insurgents. None of it is lies, but it emphasizes different aspects, answers different questions, and is framed and delivered in different fashions.

Put a soldier on guard over every person in Iraq and lock down all their weapons. It will not win the fight.
I don't disagree with any of that in theory. You say security must be provided, and the populace must believe in it. But security was not provided, period. What was the populace to believe? How can they have faith that the U.S. will provide security when from the very beginning, they did not?

[Darth Rotor]

I appreciate very much that your direct experience gives you great insight, but with all due respect I think it is you that has it backwards. In terms of what "winning" means to us in this case, winning the "purely military" fight is pretty much worthless if we cannot provide security within the conquered territory, have control over it completely, provide a framework for pervasive political control by the government and bureaucracy, provide for basic services and infrastructure, etc. Start with the security issue, if this fails, all else is doomed. This is not a PR failure. This is a military failure. The US Military is not in control of the territory. If you still claim that is a PR failure, or failure of cooperation of our allies, I'd like to know precisely how.
.
The "military" and the PR are entwined. The linkage between the political and the military is closer now than it has ever been, with both acting on each other in a non linear fashion.

"The purely military fight" was a phase. Do you understand what I am talking about? Let me explain how a phased operation works, notionally something like a war in Iraq or Afganistan, or for that matter, Bosnia, though it didn't need Phase II.

Phase one Deployment, Phase 2, combat operations, Phase III post combat operations and establishing provisional government (after the organized opposition is gone) Phase IV, SASO, Phase V, redeployment.

Phae III began about the day GW showed up on an aircraft carrier, and somewhere between fall 2003 and June 2004 (Bremmer gone) Phase IV began. Part of a Phase III piece of a plan like this is dealing with "remnants." Those would be Rumsfeld's "dead enders."

Zinni's CENTCOM plan had about 300,000 troops on the ground in a notional Phase III and early IV, Shinseki's (IIRC) about 220,000. When I was in the sandbox in 2004, the head count was upwards of 170,000.+ SHort two complete divisions. (The logistics constraints are an element of why keeping the "footprint" down is a non trivial factor.)

You call that a military failure? OK, by all means, there's a finger to be pointed to there. There was also a sound critique of technical methods done by a Brit one star last year that is making the rounds of the Joint Professional required reading lists. (IIRC, it was published in Military Review.)

None of them makes up for assuming away problems at the political layer, which is who resources the war, nor is the military accountable for the de Baathification program (that was dreamed up in Washington, thanks) nor the ****** RoE. :mad: The US has been in Phase IV for about 3 years. Phase IV has different tasks, entry and exit conditions, and requirements than phases I, II, or III. In all five Phases, the Information/PR strategy has to be imbedded with appropriate messages and symbols, at all levels: tactical, theater, and strategic. The messages have to be coherent. They have not been since about the day the President stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

The diplomatic failure to build and hold together a more robust multinational coalition is hardly the military's fault, but it has imbedded in it the implied task of a good sales job, negotiating in good faith, give and take, and a massively successfulr PR/Symbology campaign. As you have seen yourself, that last has not been successful.

It isn't a separate task, the Information arena, it is part and parcel to the entire political effort, of which war/military actions are a subset.

War is a political act of armed force. In the 20th and 21st century, this carries an implied task of effectively using the information arena to complement physical efforts.

DR

[Garrette]

A pity, since I for one enjoy your posts. I find often I don't agree, but I greatly appreciate the high level of both factualness and analysis you bring to your posts.Thanks. I appreciate that.

But I'm shocked that someone would disagree with me. In the POLITICS forum, no less! What have we come to...

[ImaginalDisc]

Thanks but that does not answer the question. If you say that the Bush administration's case was not sufficent for war I will agree. However that is not point I'm addressing. It's the assertion that our knowledge of no WMD was high and that bias had nothing to do with the conclusion that there was no WMD. Ok, tell me how you contol for bias in a situation like this? It is a perfectly valid question if you are really going to claim that bias played no part. Reason and logic are fine but if you do not control for bias (see Randi's many excellent examples) then you cannot just dismiss it.
I'm not clear what you mean, are you asking me about the techniques of intellignece gathering that circumvent bias? If so, I'd like to point out that Bush's administration went data mining to find material that corroborated their bias rather than listening to the assessment that trained intelligence experts were giving them.

I'm not sure how significant this is or even if it is true. There were a lot of unknowns. Again, it is easy in hind sight to say that those who believed there was no WMD were right. It is certainly withing the realm of possibility that they were wrong. Does the evidence suggest that Bush overplayed his hand? Yeah. I've conceded this for years but I'm skeptical of the confidence that is due to post hoc reasoning. That's just me. I'd be skeptical of Republican confidence had WMD been found for the same reasons.

If the best case for WMD's is "he wants them, and just maybe possibly has them in moving labs" then there's plenty of good ways for intelligence experts to follow up on that that do not involve invading Iraq.

[Garrette]

I don't disagree with any of that in theory. You say security must be provided, and the populace must believe in it. But security was not provided, period. What was the populace to believe? How can they have faith that the U.S. will provide security when from the very beginning, they did not?Absolutely untrue that it wasn't or isn't provided "period."

During my year there, it was common for us to switch on CNN and see reports about how unsafe it was to which we responded "WTF?"

It wasn't as safe as hometown, USA, and it got progressively less so.

It was never a free for all, either for soldiers or the Iraqis.

It's been over two years since I left, though, and can't claim first hand knowledge anymore, though I occasionally get updates from colleagues who are there.

Summary: Be careful out there, but you can still go out there, and the Iraqis do.

In another thread I linked to a few articles, one of which was a textbook example not only of how security should be provided, but how it was being provided, particularly in Mosul.

The military has screwed some things up, some badly, but it is not and has not ever been a royal screw up on the strictly military side.

But, as DR has said, and I have said over and over, it's not a strictly military thing. Thinking it is has been one of the problems.


ETA: The British One Star Darth Rotor referred to is Aylwin-Foster. He has two critiques out there. The controversial one is about the US' improper transition into/in Phase 4. It may be online, I'm not sure. I have it hard copy at home.

[Darth Rotor]

Wait DR, maybe I see what you're getting at. In 2003 I had a conversation with another retired career military person about this, who shared your views, and his position was that while the evidence presented was total garbage, he was confident that the Bush administration had better and much more convincing data that they could not divulge for tactical reasons. Is that something that influenced your determination?
More like it, and I was not naieve enough to look only at what was being presented by the BushCo in 2002. A pattern of behavior by Saddam from the day of the 1991 ceasefire, and his failure to comply within the UN"s 90 day timeline, and the continued games he played, successfully I might add, at playing one UNSC party off against another, was an input that was completely independent of what was on the table in the fall of 2002. I'd been on that line of thought since the UN inspectors got tossed in 1998. I had little faith they'd ever find what they wanted, due to Saddam's well documented shell game. Ritter had some great discussions of that, in both print and visual media.

DR

[ImaginalDisc]

More like it, and I was not naieve enough to look only at what was being presented by the BushCo in 2002. A pattern of behavior by Saddam from the day of the 1991 ceasefire, and his failure to comply within the UN"s 90 day timeline, and the continued games he played, successfully I might add, at playing one UNSC party off against another, was an input that was completely independent of what was on the table in the fall of 2002. I'd been on that line of thought since the UN inspectors got tossed in 1998. I had little faith they'd ever find what they wanted, due to Saddam's well documented shell game. Ritter had some great discussions of that, in both print and visual media.

DR

At best, I'd say that's an arguement for better inspection methods, but even so, it's not evidence for the actual existence of WMD's.

[Garrette]

In another thread I mentioned that much of the blame for strategic failures initially lay with Bremer and Sanchez (primarily Sanchez).

I meant that, but only from the perspective that they were the top two on the ground there.

The real blame goes back to Rumsfeld who had control of both of them and did not (a) force their cooperation or (b) establish a single, unified, command structure.

CPA was a mistake, at least as implemented, because it separated authority for policy from both authority over the military and access to resources (the military had nearly all of them).

Far better to have declared martial law and, IAW the Geneva-Hague Conventions, told the senior military commander: "You own the country. Run it, rule it, rebuild it, make it safe."

The fact that Bremer (who was a very hard-working man and was not, in my experience, driven by anything other than a desire to make it work) came in feeling he needed to prove himself his own man didn't help. He ignored Garner's advice and the advice of the military and within three days of his arrival in a culture with which he was unfamiliar ordered the disbandment of the Army. De-Baathification followed closely with the same lack of research.

[hgc]

The "military" and the PR are entwined. The linkage between the political and the military is closer now than it has ever been, with both acting on each other in a non linear fashion.

"The purely military fight" was a phase. Do you understand what I am talking about? Let me explain how a phased operation works, notionally something like a war in Iraq or Afganistan, or for that matter, Bosnia, though it didn't need Phase II.

Phase one Deployment, Phase 2, combat operations, Phase III post combat operations and establishing provisional government (after the organized opposition is gone) Phase IV, SASO, Phase V, redeployment.

Phae III began about the day GW showed up on an aircraft carrier, and somewhere between fall 2003 and June 2004 (Bremmer gone) Phase IV began. Part of a Phase III piece of a plan like this is dealing with "remnants." Those would be Rumsfeld's "dead enders."

Zinni's CENTCOM plan had about 300,000 troops on the ground in a notional Phase III and early IV, Shinseki's (IIRC) about 220,000. When I was in the sandbox in 2004, the head count was upwards of 170,000.+ SHort two complete divisions. (The logistics constraints are an element of why keeping the "footprint" down is a non trivial factor.)

You call that a military failure? OK, by all means, there's a finger to be pointed to there. There was also a sound critique of technical methods done by a Brit one star last year that is making the rounds of the Joint Professional required reading lists. (IIRC, it was published in Military Review.)

None of them makes up for assuming away problems at the political layer, which is who resources the war, nor is the military accountable for the de Baathification program (that was dreamed up in Washington, thanks) nor the ****** RoE. :mad: The US has been in Phase IV for about 3 years. Phase IV has different tasks, entry and exit conditions, and requirements than phases I, II, or III. In all five Phases, the Information/PR strategy has to be imbedded with appropriate messages and symbols, at all levels: tactical, theater, and strategic. The messages have to be coherent. They have not been since about the day the President stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

The diplomatic failure to build and hold together a more robust multinational coalition is hardly the military's fault, but it has imbedded in it the implied task of a good sales job, negotiating in good faith, give and take, and a massively successfulr PR/Symbology campaign. As you have seen yourself, that last has not been successful.

It isn't a separate task, the Information arena, it is part and parcel to the entire political effort, of which war/military actions are a subset.

War is a political act of armed force. In the 20th and 21st century, this carries an implied task of effectively using the information arena to complement physical efforts.

DR
When I talk about military failure in Iraq, I am mainly addressing the policy decisions in the civilian layer -- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Rice, Powell, Bremer, Tenet, etc. Whatever failures or faults may lie in the uniform command structure, they are insignificant in light of the massive incompetence from the above named characters. This was the case starting in the desire to peg 9/11 on Saddam, the misidentification of WMD programs (willful, I believe), the intense desire to fight and finish before the onset of summer 2003, the go-ahead before the 3rd Infrantry Div could be redeployed from the waters off Turkey to Kuwait, the inability to secure supply lines during the hurried advance, dismantling of all Iraqi government, police and military infrastructure, the lack of security at weapons depots, the open borders, etc.

[hgc]

...
The fact that Bremer (who was a very hard-working man and was not, in my experience, driven by anything other than a desire to make it work) came in feeling he needed to prove himself his own man didn't help. He ignored Garner's advice and the advice of the military and within three days of his arrival in a culture with which he was unfamiliar ordered the disbandment of the Army. De-Baathification followed closely with the same lack of research.
I failed to mention in my complaint list the firing of Garner in favor of Bremer. When will the story be told on this? Was Garner fired because he wanted to do things a different way than Rummy and Cheney wanted? The right way, perhaps?

[Darth Rotor]

At best, I'd say that's an arguement for better inspection methods, but even so, it's not evidence for the actual existence of WMD's.
A WMD program, over time, produces a WMD, be it chem, bio, or nuke. Most Americans have a time horizon as far as next month.

The time horizon for the problem of WMD programs, as well as whatever might still be hidden from the Inspectors, is that once blind, programs are free to cook away with little oversight other than intel. In Saddam's Iraq, reliable intel was hard for much of anyone to get, thanks to his sound counter-intelligence methods.

The Inspectors left in 1998. For 4 years, Blinder then during the inspections regime.

So, if you let the programs go for 4 years unfettered by UN inspectors, since the UNSC really doesn't care -- US and UK do, that's about it -- you have to estimate what -- in nuke, bio, and chem -- has gone on.

Intelligence is a fun thing to work with, but it isn't like buying a twinkie at 7-11. Its quality is variable. You never have perfect intelligence, but sometimes you have some damned good stuff. By the way, the real world is not a lab, nor is it subject to controls the way an experiment is.

Your suggestion of a confirmation bias in the BushCo circles is a sound one. It gets fed by three things. Standard worst case security planning. Risk management, and risk tolerance. The lovely human trait, thanks Simon and Garfunkel, that "a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest." :p

LTGEN Newbold, USMC, retired in fall of 2002 over what he saw going on. In spring of 2003, two of Powell's top aids left for similar reasons. I never got the impression that they left over the WMD intel, but over another point we agree on: can you implant democracy at the point of a bayonet, do your means match your ends, and have you explored all paths to success? Do you really want to gift wrap Iran a present like this, by taking out their biggest regional rival?

The problem came down to what seemed, even to me, a false dilemma. What do you mean, we only have two choices, more useless UN inspections and a full up war? There isn't a third choice? No third Course of Action to explore?

What none of the three high profile resignees had, or were unwilling to say then, was a clear declaration of fraud and the means to back it up. I get the feeling that they suspected it, but either were afraid they could not prove it, or were afraid of the retribution if they could.

DR

[ImaginalDisc]

A WMD program, over time, produces a WMD, be it chem, bio, or nuke. Most Americans have a time horizon as far as next month.

The time horizon for the problem of WMD programs, as well as whatever might still be hidden from the Inspectors, is that once blind, programs are free to cook away with little oversight other than intel. In Saddam's Iraq, reliable intel was hard for much of anyone to get, thanks to his sound counter-intelligence methods.

The Inspectors left in 1998. For 4 years, Blinder then during the inspections regime.

So, if you let the programs go for 4 years unfettered by UN inspectors, since the UNSC really doesn't care -- US and UK do, that's about it -- you have to estimate what -- in nuke, bio, and chem -- has gone on.

Intelligence is a fun thing to work with, but it isn't like buying a twinkie at 7-11. Its quality is variable. You never have perfect intelligence, but sometimes you have some damned good stuff. By the way, the real world is not a lab, nor is it subject to controls the way an experiment is.

Your suggestion of a confirmation bias in the BushCo circles is a sound one. It gets fed by three things. Standard worst case security planning. Risk management, and risk tolerance. The lovely human trait, thanks Simon and Garfunkel, that "a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest." :p

LTGEN Newbold, USMC, retired in fall of 2002 over what he saw going on. In spring of 2003, two of Powell's top aids left for similar reasons. I never got the impression that they left over the WMD intel, but over another point we agree on: can you implant democracy at the point of a bayonet, do your means match your ends, and have you explored all paths to success? Do you really want to gift wrap Iran a present like this, by taking out their biggest regional rival?

The problem came down to what seemed, even to me, a false dilemma. What do you mean, we only have two choices, more useless UN inspections and a full up war? There isn't a third choice? No third Course of Action to explore?

What none of the three high profile resignees had, or were unwilling to say then, was a clear declaration of fraud and the means to back it up. I get the feeling that they suspected it, but either were afraid they could not prove it, or were afraid of the retribution if they could.

DR


DR, I don't see any credible eveidence for WMD's in that post. Do you agree that there was no credible evidence in favor of the existence of WMD's?

Edited to add: While you and can disagree about what should have been done about Iraq, can we at least agree that there was no evidence that Saddam had WMD's?

[Garrette]

I failed to mention in my complaint list the firing of Garner in favor of Bremer. When will the story be told on this? Was Garner fired because he wanted to do things a different way than Rummy and Cheney wanted? The right way, perhaps?I don't know. I was in Baghdad while he was, but never met him. I did meet Barbara Bodine, though, and helped her move into her office. (It was not planned. I and a colleague were walking through the then-very-open Republican Palace looking for the Governance Team. We walked into a suite of rooms with a few relevant pieces of paper taped to a support column. As we read them, a lady in dirty t-shirt, khaki shorts, and barefeet came in with an armload of boxes. "Can we help?" "Sure." "Do you know where we can find somebody in charge around here?" "That's probably me." "Oh. Sorry, ma'am." "No problem."). She was sharp and down-to-earth and if the rest of Garner's team was like her, I think they'd have done well.

It is true that Garner was envisioned as only a short term guy anyway (I think through August of 2003), but he was abruptly made shorter term.

I would speculate that his looser style and talk of establishing an interim government within a few weeks were seen as contrary to the desired tack. But I'm speculating.

[Darth Rotor]

When I talk about military failure in Iraq, I am mainly addressing the policy decisions in the civilian layer -- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Rice, Powell, Bremer, Tenet, etc.
Whatever failures or faults may lie in the uniform command structure, they are insignificant in light of the massive incompetence from the above named characters.
The failures in discipline (not sure where the policy piece fit into this bit) with prisoner handling in Iraq proper were a massive screw up on the uniform side, and IMO at the leadership level for allowing those conditions to arise.
This was the case starting in ]the desire to peg 9/11 on Saddam, the misidentification of WMD programs (willful, I believe), the intense desire to fight and finish before the onset of summer 2003, the go-ahead before the 3rd Infrantry Div could be redeployed from the waters off Turkey to Kuwait, the inability to secure supply lines during the hurried advance, dismantling of all Iraqi government, police and military infrastructure, the lack of security at weapons depots, the open borders, etc.
1. Domestic information campaign
2. Programs existed, their state was overstated (to say the least)
3. METT-T. Assume chem -> assume MOPP III or IV -> drives limitations in operational flexibility -> drives campaign season -> driven by water and heat casualties as critical logistical factor.
4. That was the 4TH ID, not 3 ID, who got to Bagdad rather smartly.
5. Risk assumed in the rear to allow for high tempo ops to overwhelm Iraqi forces ability to respond. See John Boyd, OODA loop. Hackworth's articles on the lack of fighting skills in logistics units is the best stuff on the topic, for my money. By the way, in war, the enemy gets a vote. Recent interview by Dreyfuss with Iraqi ambassador to Hanoi (2005) indicates that the Baath/Sunni guerilla campaign was pre planned in late 2001, with Al Douri tagged as general in charge of guerilla operations.
6. Aye, what Patton fought his masters over before being fired as Mil Governor of Bavaria
7. Early or late? See Zinni's and Shinseki's troop requirements
8. See Zinni's and Shinseki's troop requirements. See also failures between Washington and Saudi, as well as Washington and Syria.

I'll again mention physical limitations.

The logistics throughput into central Iraq isn't trivial. The bigger the force you put in there, the more vulnerability you create to a fifth column. Air logistics is limited in throughput when you get into sustained operations over time, and it is quite possible to fly the life out of the wings of your air fleet, which is a Global Strategic asset. (See what happened to C-141's in Iraq War I.) Air logistics is, in Iraq, constrained by Small Arms Fire and hand held surface-to-air missiles in urban and suburban areas. This argues against an airbridge feeding entire divisions. The MSR's are pretty busy.

The border matter was a matter of risk accepted.

DR

[hgc]

The failures in discipline (not sure where the policy piece fit into this bit) with prisoner handling in Iraq proper were a massive screw up on the uniform side, and IMO at the leadership level for allowing those conditions to arise.

1. Domestic information campaign
2. Programs existed, their state was overstated (to say the least)
3. METT-T. Assume chem -> assume MOPP III or IV -> drives limitations in operational flexibility -> drives campaign season -> driven by water and heat casualties as critical logistical factor.
4. That was the 4TH ID, not 3 ID, who got to Bagdad rather smartly.
5. Risk assumed in the rear to allow for high tempo ops to overwhelm Iraqi forces ability to respond. See John Boyd, OODA loop. Hackworth's articles on the lack of fighting skills in logistics units is the best stuff on the topic, for my money. By the way, in war, the enemy gets a vote. Recent interview by Dreyfuss with Iraqi ambassador to Hanoi (2005) indicates that the Baath/Sunni guerilla campaign was pre planned in late 2001, with Al Douri tagged as general in charge of guerilla operations.
6. Aye, what Patton fought his masters over before being fired as Mil Governor of Bavaria
7. Early or late? See Zinni's and Shinseki's troop requirements
8. See Zinni's and Shinseki's troop requirements. See also failures between Washington and Saudi, as well as Washington and Syria.

I'll again mention physical limitations.

The logistics throughput into central Iraq isn't trivial. The bigger the force you put in there, the more vulnerability you create to a fifth column. Air logistics is limited in throughput when you get into sustained operations over time, and it is quite possible to fly the life out of the wings of your air fleet, which is a Global Strategic asset. (See what happened to C-141's in Iraq War I.) Air logistics is, in Iraq, constrained by Small Arms Fire and hand held surface-to-air missiles in urban and suburban areas. This argues against an airbridge feeding entire divisions. The MSR's are pretty busy.

The border matter was a matter of risk accepted.

DR
1. International information campaign. #2 justification for war. Misinformation as it turns out.
2. #1 justification for war. "Overstated" is understating it, IMHO. Non-existent is more like it.
3. Assume chem? No justification to do so. But the seasonal timing cuts to the heart of the matter. See below.
4. My mistake on 4th ID. But were they needed or not? There was a big deal about getting them over the northern border for invasion, but then barring that, were they really needed in the invasion or not? More to the timing.
5. Yes! The enemy gets a vote. And they're still wielding greater power than ever because they had fertile ground in an unsecure Iraq to gain it.
6. Occupation of Germany was a resounding success, by comparison or by any measure, I think.
7. ???
8. Yes, failures to deal effectively with bordering states is part of the failure of the Iraq military venture.

So, a lot of this has to do with the timing. I think that Cheney needed to get his war under way in early 2003 because the justification (see 1, 2) would have evaporated under closer scrutiny, over time. That's why Cheney's lying initimations of "imminent threat" and Bush's "last resort" are so significant. This had to be done in a hurry, or the bloom would go off the rose -- even though there was no imminent threat and war was the first resort.

What I'm saying is that the political desire to fight this optional war totally envelopes the military failures that ensued.

[Darth Rotor]

That's why Cheney's lying initimations of "imminent threat" and Bush's "last resort" are so significant. This had to be done in a hurry, or the bloom would go off the rose -- even though there was no imminent threat and war was the first resort.

What I'm saying is that the political desire to fight this optional war totally envelopes the military failures that ensued.
Your version of "why now" and mine differ, no matter. Your last I agree with completely.

I disagree with the strawman "imminent" regarding threat, as the threat was the regrowth of programs over time, and the perceived (or protested) need to nip them in the bud, and not let them grow to fruition. Once reconstitutied, too late to act preemptively. (Then again, other COA seemed to be ignored . . .)

Your "non" existent regarding WMD makes no sense other than in hindsight. With 4 years of unknown and untracked activity -- inspectors tossed in 1998 -- and known leaks in sanctions, you cannot assume away chem and bio weapons due to their tactical impact, and follow on political impact when used and troops possibly not correctly MOPP'd due to assumptions.

The deployments began in mid 2002. I watched the force build up at first as a pressure measure, and as time went on, with a sense of impending inevitability: with that big a foot print, one either had to attack or redeploy two divisions, and look a bit foolish.

DR

[hgc]

Your version of "why now" and mine differ, no matter. Your last I agree with completely.

I disagree with the strawman "imminent" regarding threat, as the threat was the regrowth of programs over time, and the perceived (or protested) need to nip them in the bud, and not let them grow to fruition. Once reconstitutied, too late to act preemptively. (Then again, other COA seemed to be ignored . . .)
Read these quotes (http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/kfiles/b24970.html), and tell me again it's a strawman. They pushed the urgency so that the war drums wouldn't have a chance to die down.

Your "non" existent regarding WMD makes no sense other than in hindsight. With 4 years of unknown and untracked activity -- inspectors tossed in 1998 -- and known leaks in sanctions, you cannot assume away chem and bio weapons due to their tactical impact, and follow on political impact when used and troops possibly not correctly MOPP'd due to assumptions. Oh, hindsight. It is for me, I'll admit, because I swallowed the WMD threat line of BS (and can you tell how bitter I am?). But plenty of other people, such as Scott Ritter, called a spade a spade about Iraq WMD. Don't they get credit for foresight? You seem to be saying that they couldn't have known what they seemed to know, and therefore don't get credit for correctly understanding the nature of the situation at the time.

The deployments began in mid 2002. I watched the force build up at first as a pressure measure, and as time went on, with a sense of impending inevitability: with that big a foot print, one either had to attack or redeploy two divisions, and look a bit foolish.
I'm getting that sinking feeling I got back when build-up was in full swing and the inevitability of war was apparent. How much better off would we be today if we had withdrawn our forces upon figuring out there was no threat there big enough to justify war? Talk about looking foolish. Jeez.

[Darth Rotor]

Read these quotes (http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/kfiles/b24970.html), and tell me again it's a strawman. They pushed the urgency so that the war drums wouldn't have a chance to die down.
Scott McClelland and Dan Bartlett. Mouthpieces. It was a load of noise when they said it, and it is still a load of noise. The nuclear threat was over the horizon, the chem and bio far more likely to manifest itself in the short term. I always got the sense that they used that phrasing as "trial balloon," and it blew up in their faces. As soon as a wag or two -- not sure who besides McClelland and Bartlett used imminent threat, Fleischer comes to mind -- tossed it out, that one word was leaped upon by critics, and interviewers, and was used in loaded question after loaded question in an attack mode, which IMO provided a smoke screen. The line of questioning was irrelevant, as the real problem was long term reconstitution of Saddam's old programs, and this single minded attack question obscured IMO the far more important question: "where is the third course of action?" Current Sanctions stink, war is huge risk, where is the third course of action?

It was sickening to watch the self blinding by the critics, whose instincts were correct (hindsight) but whose tunnel vision obscured IMO the more useful lines of inquiry.

I tended to pay more attention to Powell and Rumsfeld, whose discussions on immediacy of Iraq as a threat, relative to other threats both in and out of the region, are not well considered when on cherry picks a word like "immediate" out of context.

I don't recall Rumsfeld, Bush, nor Cheney, nor for that matter General Meyers, using "Iraq is an imminent threat" as a declarative statement. Nor did Powell.

Now, as to Rummy, he always into clever wordplay. There was little doubt that he felt -- this is my impression -- that the sooner that the threat was neutralized, the better off American security, in that region and elsewhere, would be served, and the sooner the Israel/Pal road map to peace could be moved forward. Saddam's known contribution to Intafada II was no big secret.
Oh, hindsight. It is for me, I'll admit, because I swallowed the WMD threat line of BS (and can you tell how bitter I am?). But plenty of other people, such as Scott Ritter, called a spade a spade about Iraq WMD. Don't they get credit for foresight? You seem to be saying that they couldn't have known what they seemed to know, and therefore don't get credit for correctly understanding the nature of the situation at the time.
I don't blame you at all for bitter. Anyone who doesn't feel at least slightly used over this matter probably has an agenda at stake. My cynical turned into Cynical by the time I got back.

Ritter's only shortcoming as a messenger -- again, he had a lot of important things to say -- was that he had been out of the box for four years. A lot can happen in four years.
I'm getting that sinking feeling I got back when build-up was in full swing and the inevitability of war was apparent. How much better off would we be today if we had withdrawn our forces upon figuring out there was no threat there big enough to justify war? Talk about looking foolish. Jeez.
Look foolish, and not have lost 3000 good men, nor had about 11,000 maimed? A decent combo.

DR

[RandFan]

I'm not clear what you mean, are you asking me about the techniques of intellignece gathering that circumvent bias? If so, I'd like to point out that Bush's administration went data mining to find material that corroborated their bias rather than listening to the assessment that trained intelligence experts were giving them. I have conceded that the Bush administration engaged in confirmation bias.

I only have one very simply point. You are looking back in hindsight and declaring that what we know now is what we knew then. It's not. There was much that we didn't know.

If the best case for WMD's is "he wants them, and just maybe possibly has them in moving labs" then there's plenty of good ways for intelligence experts to follow up on that that do not involve invading Iraq. The problem we had was that after 12 years Saddam had not demonstrated that he was sincere in his willingness to comply with international requirements to dissarm. There were not plenty of good ways to forever ensure that Saddam was going to comply.

[ImaginalDisc]

I have conceded that the Bush administration engaged in confirmation bias.

I only have one very simply point. You are looking back in hindsight and declaring that what we know now is what we knew then. It's not. There was much that we didn't know.

I regret that I wasn't a member of the forum in 2003, because I was saying then exactly what I'm saying now. I am not one of those people who needs to eat crow, becuse I was right all along, unfortunately. And, there was no shortage of experts and commentators who were calling this a snow-job based on the evidence from day 1.

The problem we had was that after 12 years Saddam had not demonstrated that he was sincere in his willingness to comply with international requirements to dissarm. There were not plenty of good ways to forever ensure that Saddam was going to comply.

You mean that the regular inspections and economic sanctions implemented to probihit Iraqi acccess to the materials needed to build a bomb that clearly worked to prevent him from building one weren't working?

[RandFan]

I regret that I wasn't a member of the forum in 2003, because I was saying then exactly what I'm saying now. I am not one of those people who needs to eat crow, becuse I was right all along, unfortunately. And, there was no shortage of experts and commentators who were calling this a snow-job based on the evidence from day 1. This is called confirmation bias. Psychics are really good at this. They make a number of predictions and then when one comes true the trumpet it. In any polemic that will have a conclusion some of the people will be right and some wrong. The disingenuous ones will seize on the correct hits to prove that THEY knew.

You really should check out Randi's weekly commentary to understand why we all need to be wary of our own bias. It's called skepticism.

You mean that the regular inspections and economic sanctions implemented to probihit Iraqi acccess to the materials needed to build a bomb that clearly worked to prevent him from building one weren't working?You mean the sanctions would have gone on forever?

[ImaginalDisc]

This is called confirmation bias. Psychics are really good at this. They make a number of predictions and then when one comes true the trumpet it. In any polemic that will have a conclusion some of the people will be right and some wrong. The disingenuous ones will seize on the correct hits to prove that THEY [I]knew[/I}

You really should check out Randi's weekly commentary to understand why we all need to be wary of our own bias. It's called skepticism.

Are you trying to say that by not having been fooled by a transpearantly vacuuous story from the administration, I'm not being a skeptic?

You mean the sanctions would have gone on forever?

As long as Saddam kept killing people on a whim, and trying to get nuclear arms, I'd say yes.

[pipelineaudio]

thats that damned if you do, damned if you dont thing we get from the slag fairys

choose between:

oooo evil america, starving children to death with their sanctions

or

oooooo evil america, targeting civilians with their bombs

never do we hear:

ooooo stupid UN wont enforce their rules

[RandFan]

Are you trying to say that by not having been fooled by a transpearantly vacuuous story from the administration, I'm not being a skeptic? Do you know what it means to beg the question?

As long as Saddam kept killing people on a whim, and trying to get nuclear arms, I'd say yes. And why would we suppose that he would keep doing this in an overt way?

[ImaginalDisc]

thats that damned if you do, damned if you dont thing we get from the strawmen I have imagined.
choose between:

oooo evil america, starving children to death with their sanctions

or

oooooo evil america, targeting civilians with their bombs

never do we hear:

ooooo stupid UN wont enforce their rules

Fixed for you.

[ImaginalDisc]

Do you know what it means to beg the question?

RandFan, can we start over? One or both of us isn't communicating well, and it could very well be me.

No credible experts accepted the Bush administrations' evidence of WMD's as convicning in 2003. I agreed with those critics. How does this make me a woo?

[pipelineaudio]

Fixed for you.

How are these strawmen?

You never heard how evil we were for denying iraqi children food with our sanction?

You never heard how we were denying them medicine?

There is a strong compulsion from so many on this board to bury their heads in the sand when information comes by they may not like.

Perhaps there is a simpler explanation, that being mom hasnt let most of you kids out of the house to see and hear what happens in the real world

[RandFan]

No credible experts accepted the Bush administrations' evidence of WMD's as convicning in 2003. I addressed this. I don't think this is a claim you could ever possibly prove.

Even if you could, history has shown that often the "experts" are wrong. Before the first Gulf war I listened as all of the "experts" predict tens of thousands dead. There are many such examples throughout history. As to WMD, the evidence was not absolute. On the contrary, the experts believed that the weight of the evidence was on the side of no WMD and not that there was an absolute certainty. I'm not sure where you get this notion that experts can have such absolute certainty given the problems of dealing with a dictator that has absolute control and a country that was as large as Iraq. Bush went with the evidence that pointed in another direction primarily because he was certain that it was there. He was wrong. In hindsight he should not have gone in that direction.

[ImaginalDisc]

How are these strawmen?

You never heard how evil we were for denying iraqi children food with our sanction?

You never heard how we were denying them medicine?

There is a strong compulsion from so many on this board to bury their heads in the sand when information comes by they may not like. WHO are these people? Are they perhaps filled with straw? Argue against a real person and what they actually say.

[ImaginalDisc]

I addressed this. I don't think this is a claim you could ever possibly prove.


Wait a second. My premise is that "no credible experts found the evidence conving, so I agreed with them." Sure, they could have been wrong, I would have changed my tune if convincing evidence to the contrary were uncovered. But I was adamantly against going to war based on an unsubstantiated claim that Iraq had WMD's. Tell me, how would you feel if someone invaded the U.S. because of unsubstantiated claims that we were eating french babies, in spite of evidence to the contrary? "Sacre bleu! Zees Americans really do not eat any of zee babies. Still, we shall stay zee course!" Going to war on the assumption that the facts will materialize after the invasion strikes me as presumptuous.

[pipelineaudio]

WHO are these people? Are they perhaps filled with straw? Argue against a real person and what they actually say.

You want to go on record stating that people havent accused us of starving and denying medicine to Iraqi children with our "American" embargo?

Yes or no?

[ImaginalDisc]

You want to go on record stating that people havent accused us of starving and denying medicine to Iraqi children with our "American" embargo?

Yes or no?

If I say yes or I say no, it's hearsay. Find a direct account and argue against the person who actually says it.

[pipelineaudio]

thats what I thought

[ImaginalDisc]

thats what I thought

Did you really expect me to argue on behalf of other people whose views you can't even articulate in a grammatically correct sentence?

[pipelineaudio]

you are grasping at something, what could it be?

[ImaginalDisc]

you are grasping at something, what could it be?

That you're a paranoid lunatic who can't use the shift key?

[RandFan]

Wait a second. My premise is that "no credible experts found the evidence conving, so I agreed with them." Sure, they could have been wrong, I would have changed my tune if convincing evidence to the contrary were uncovered. But I was adamantly against going to war based on an unsubstantiated claim that Iraq had WMD's. Tell me, how would you feel if someone invaded the U.S. because of unsubstantiated claims that we were eating french babies, in spite of evidence to the contrary? "Sacre bleu! Zees Americans really do not eat any of zee babies. Still, we shall stay zee course!" Going to war on the assumption that the facts will materialize after the invasion strikes me as presumptuous. If America had invaded another nation and the world had told us to leave and we defiantly refused, if we used WMD to indiscriminately kill innocent civilians without even a hint of justifiable reason and if America was ruled by a tyrant who refused for 12 years to comply with UN sanctions and was happy to build palaces while my family starved then I would probably be fine with it.

I would hope like hell that they would get out of my country as soon as possible and if they didn't I might join the local freedom fighters.

[pipelineaudio]

That you're a paranoid lunatic who can't use the shift key?

Let me get this right

You make a claim

Then you refuse to admit you made a claim

That makes me a paranoid lunatic?

cool

[ImaginalDisc]

If America had invaded another nation and the world had told us to leave and we defiantly refused, if we used WMD to indiscriminately kill innocent civilians without even a hint of justifiable reason and if America was ruled by a tyrant who refused for 12 years to comply with UN sanctions and was happy to build palaces while my family starved then I would probably be fine with it.

I would hope like hell that they would get out of my country as soon as possible and if they didn't I might join the local freedom fighters.

Whoa there. You're alluding to things Iraq did in the early 90's, or even earlier. How does that justify a war in 2003?

[RandFan]

Whoa there. You're alluding to things Iraq did in the early 90's, or even earlier. How does that justify a war in 2003? There was one long continuum. Saddam was at the helm the entire time and was considered a threat for all of that for that time. He was never in compliance. But that really is beside the point. You asked me a question and I could only answer it based on all of the facts. I could not honestly divorce all of those events to answer you truthfully.

[ImaginalDisc]

There was one long continuum. Saddam was at the helm the entire time and was considered a threat for all of that for that time. He was never in compliance. But that really is beside the point. You asked me a question and I could only answer it based on all of the facts. I could not honestly divorce all of those events to answer you truthfully.

So crap Saddam did a decade or more ago justifies a war?

[RandFan]

So crap Saddam did a decade or more ago justifies a war?That's not my argument. Crap Saddam did a decade or more ago contribute to wanting Saddam out of office. If we had managed the war properly and the insurgents hadn't been so succesful at killing Iraqis and Americans then George Bush would today be hailed a hero. It would have easly been worth it in my mind. The iraqis voting en masse easily was worth everything up until then. However the future is very uncertain and this has all come at a great price. It's not looking too good.

[ImaginalDisc]

That's not my argument. Crap Saddam did a decade or more ago contribute to wanting Saddam out of office. If we had managed the war properly and the insurgents hadn't been so succesful at killing Iraqis and Americans then George Bush would today be hailed a hero. It would have easly been worth it in my mind. The iraqis voting en masse easily was worth everything up until then. However the future is very uncertain and this has all come at a great price. It's not looking too good.

I'm sorry, I'm lost. What does this have to do withmy being credulous or having a confirmation bias regarding the WMD's?

It's one thing to say that Saddam was bad, and should have been deposed. It's another to say the Bush administration's case for WMD's was sound.

[RandFan]

I'm sorry, I'm lost. What does this have to do withmy being credulous or having a confirmation bias regarding the WMD's? You asked me a question in post #187. This is a direct result of that question.

It's one thing to say that Saddam was bad, and should have been deposed. It's another to say the Bush administration's case for WMD's was sound.Agreed however I think the fault for the divergent threads is yours.

[ImaginalDisc]

You asked me a question in post #187. This is a direct result of that question.

Agreed however I think the fault for the divergent threads is yours.

Ah, I don't see how, but I'm willing to take the blame. I think my brain is tired.

[RandFan]

Ah, I don't see how, but I'm willing to take the blame. I think my brain is tired. Hey, in the end you were right about WMD and Bush did BS the evidence so don't take me to say that you were wrong. You weren't at all. I wish, honestly, that Bush had made an honest case and then if the American public were not behind it then scuttle the damn war. Bush's arrogance was wrong and I think he paid a price for it at this election. I said, before the last election, that if the American people think Bush lied or mislead them about WMD then they damn well should vote him out of office. It just took a little while.

I'm wagering on a Democrat for President but I'm not sure that will be good either. I think we are better off with powers divided. Don't tell Tony I said that because he has been hounding me about that for years.

He's right.

[ImaginalDisc]

Hey, in the end you were right about WMD and Bush did BS the evidence so don't take me to say that you were wrong. You weren't at all. I wish, honestly, that Bush had made an honest case and then if the American public were not behind it then scuttle the damn war. Bush's arrogance was wrong and I think he paid a price for it at this election. I said, before the last election, that if the American people think Bush lied or mislead them about WMD then they damn well should vote him out of office. It just took a little while.

I'm wagering on a Democrat for President but I'm not sure that will be good either. I think we are better off with powers divided. Don't tell Tony I said that because he has been hounding me about that for years.

He's right.

Oh, I'll follow that derail for a bit. Democrat president? I don't see how. Our two biggest contenders are Hillary Clinton and Jr. Senator Obama. The former's a callous bitch no one likes and the the later's a smooth talking guy without any experience who, to borrow a Texas phrase, may just be all talk and no cattle. We're screwed.

[SezMe]

Oh, I'll follow that derail for a bit. Democrat president? I don't see how. Our two biggest contenders are Hillary Clinton and Jr. Senator Obama. The former's a callous bitch no one likes.
Sad continuation of derail. "No one likes" just won re-election with 67% of the vote. You want to define "no one"?

<snip>the the later's [referring to Obama] a smooth talking guy without any experience who, to borrow a Texas phrase, may just be all talk and no cattle.
Can you name a current sitting President with exactly the same credentials?

[The Fool]

to borrow a Texas phrase, may just be all talk and no cattle. We're screwed.
Isn't it "all hat and no cattle"?

[SezMe]

I think now that BushCo sold us a bill of goods. I think now that Bush, at least, did not think it was a bill of goods but had convinced himself of his rightness.
Two points: First, I'd like to express my appreciation to Garrette, DR and many other who have contributed to this thread. The give-and-take, the challenging of facts, etc. without resort to ad homs is exactly what this forum is all about. I have learned much. Thanks.

Regards the above quote, I agree and disagree. I don't think Bush convinced himself of his rightness but simply did what he publically admits he does, he "followed his gut". His gut told him to invade, period. There was no convincing later to be done.

[RandFan]

Oh, I'll follow that derail for a bit. Democrat president? I don't see how. Our two biggest contenders are Hillary Clinton and Jr. Senator Obama. The former's a callous bitch no one likes and the the later's a smooth talking guy without any experience who, to borrow a Texas phrase, may just be all talk and no cattle. We're screwed.Few people knew who Clinton was 2 years before he was elected. Few people believed anyone could win against Bush the elder. Clinton and James Carville recognized that there was a growing unease and worry about the economy and that the war would not be enough to secure victory for Bush.

If the Democrats field someone like Bill Clinton they have a damn good chance of winning. I honestly don't know how Hillary will fare. She is very polarizing but she energizes the base.

We will see.

[ImaginalDisc]

Isn't it "all hat and no cattle"?

Oy, yes. :boggled:

[ImaginalDisc]

Sad continuation of derail. "No one likes" just won re-election with 67% of the vote. You want to define "no one"?


Well, it was Clinton, or a Republican. Voting Democrat seems to be fashionable lately. I wouldn't assume that the most recent election is an endorsement of a Clinton presidential bid.

[ImaginalDisc]

Few people knew who Clinton was 2 years before he was elected. Few people believed anyone could win against Bush the elder. Clinton and James Carville recognized that there was a growing unease and worry about the economy and that the war would not be enough to secure victory for Bush.

If the Democrats field someone like Bill Clinton they have a damn good chance of winning. I honestly don't know how Hillary will fare. She is very polarizing but she energizes the base.

We will see.

A Clinton/Obama ticket might win, but somehow I don't approve of either of them. There's too moderate for my tastes. I'm left of Ghandi though, so I'll never get a candidate I like.

[SezMe]

I wouldn't assume that the most recent election is an endorsement of a Clinton presidential bid.
Nor would I.

I was just challenging your claim that Clinton was "callous bitch" that "no one likes".

Well, actually, all I was challenging was your "no one likes" part. Would you like to engage in an evidence-based challenge on the "callous bitch" part on these here skeptical fora? If so, define "callous" and provide evidence for your definition and define "bitch" and provide evidence for your definition so we can begin the debate.

But before we begin, let me note that I am NOT an HRC supporter. I will not defend her positions, policies nor politics. But that said, I will defend her against unfounded character assassination just as I would against someone on the other side of the aisle.

[pipelineaudio]

I got nothing specific on Hillary, besides possibly HillaryCare and the whole "it takes a village" idea

But my main fear is that she is completely unelectable and will give the republicans the election next presidency

[SezMe]

But my main fear is that she is completely unelectable and will give the republicans the election next presidency
Agree completely.

[ImaginalDisc]

Nor would I.

I was just challenging your claim that Clinton was "callous bitch" that "no one likes".

Well, actually, all I was challenging was your "no one likes" part. Would you like to engage in an evidence-based challenge on the "callous bitch" part on these here skeptical fora? If so, define "callous" and provide evidence for your definition and define "bitch" and provide evidence for your definition so we can begin the debate.

But before we begin, let me note that I am NOT an HRC supporter. I will not defend her positions, policies nor politics. But that said, I will defend her against unfounded character assassination just as I would against someone on the other side of the aisle.

That was just me spouting off my opinion. I'm sure some people think she's warm and cheerful, and like her immensely.