I think you're largely correct. But regarding your last paragraph, if the justness of the operation, despite its flaws, comes from the fact that it prevented a likely attack it would need to be shown that that information was known prior to the war--not a lucky ex post facto alibi. And right now that's the impression: that the Admin is working backwards on its initial logic.. that they made a decision and didn't bother to seek further support of their conclusion until they were already committed. That they happened to be right might win over some, but not a full mandate. Now if they did in fact have reliable knowledge of an attack that was further corroborated later, that should shut up a good many, myself included. But this Admin needs to get over its obsession with secrecy to move towards either of these possibilities.
If nothing more comes of this (supporting/denying the initial Why) then the Why loses all its potential power among all but the true believers. Like you said, the initial Why, which is pretty much the same as the broader strategic Why, can trump all the screwups among the Hows. But when the initial Why is seen as shaky people can only focus on the tactical Whys and Hows. That's why useless statistics like bodycounts (no disrepect intended against any in that number!) take on such importance in the media and public. Even with a sensible and agreeable initial Why the reasons why all the Hows got so screwed up can become overpowering. At this point that's how I see it going. Using June 30 as a cover for our abdication of any responsibility will only hurt us and the broader cause further.. The only conclusion that can be reached when so many Hows go wrong by design is that the initial Why must not have been deserving of the attention, otherwise why weren't its supporters sufficiently determined to pursue success and learn from failure?
(Sorry if that sounded dense.. I'm in the middle of writing something else altogether and my brain's still stiff :D )
If I understand what I think you said (and I believe that I do), we agree on a lot.
Actually, I'm quite interested in the Putin disclosure and why it came out now. I'm also interested in why the administration has taken the stance that it has with respect to it.
I can certainly see how cooperation between Russian and US intelligence can be a very sensitive thing. The basis of sharing might very well be that the party receiving the intelligence has promised not to reveal the source for all kinds of good reasons. But, in this case the source revealed the intelligence and one would think that such voluntary acknowledgement would waive any agreement by the recipient to keep it secret.
On the other hand, being pressured to prove the WHY in this hotly contested election, maybe Bush told Putin that the shared intelligence was going to be revealed (to the 9/11 committee, to the Congress, to ????). Maybe Bush gave Putin the opportunity to reveal the information first at the time and place of his choosing.
Whether it was accurate is a whole nother story. That Russian intelligence told our intelligence of the alleged terrorist plots has more than a hollow ring to it. If I were Bush, I'd jump out there and say that Putin did, in fact, share this intelligence with us.
"Yes, we believed it. Yes, that was one of the primary reasons why I chose to get rid of Saddam. I could not share this reason with the American people to protect the Russian sources and to keep the intelligence forthcoming. Sharing the intelligence at the time would have jeopardized our ongoing efforts to thwart the planned attacks and bring the plot organizers and would-be executioners to justice. Further, we have always said that there are countries and people who are helping us in our war against terror who simply cannot have their identities revealed. There are more reports that we received than just from the Russians but unless they choose to reveal themselves, they shall remain nameless. "
Here's news for you, myvoice. Putin also says that his election was free and fair, despite the overwhelming evidence of state abuse of the electoral process.
Putin also says that the war in Chechnya is over, despite Russian military casualties there on almost a daily basis, as well as periodic strikes (not that I'm saying they are a good thing) within Russia by the forces opposing the Russian occupation.
These are just 2 examples. Vladimir Putin is a known bull****ter and liar and nothing he says can be trusted at all.
[QUOTE] Originally posted by mAd_ScIeNtIsT: *
Vladimir Putin is a known bull***ter and liar and nothing he says can be trusted at all.
[/QUOTE]
Here's news for you, mAd_ScIeNtIsT. You could probably make the same accusation about every leader of every country in the world. You could probably make the same accusation about every leader of every major corporation in the world too.
Bull****ters and liars can also tell the truth, sometimes. 2 + 2 is still 4 even if Putin is the one who says so.
It's funny to see so many Guppies get lathered up about this disclosure being true. It's pretty obvious why so many want to discredit the story out of hand. If true, the story provides absolute justification for the invasion of Iraq by the US when combined with other things we believed to be true.
The interesting twist on this is that Putin opposed the US action even though he is the one now providing the legal and moral justification for it. That opposition lends credibility to what he is now disclosing.
and whats the point of all this? are you still trying to justify the invasion of iraq and the resultant killing of thousands of innocent iraqis?
because if you are, than save your breath. the invasion was carried out, saddam arrested, thousands killed and now the country is in a major mess. figure out a way to solve the problems of today instead of coming up with excuses for yesterday. more americans died today in iraq, simply because, iraqis like everyone else, hate occupation forces.
there is still going to be an election in iraq, and the three main ethnic groups in iraq will soon be at each other's throats. and if iraq breaks up, turkey, syria and iran will all be imbalanced and you will have a volatile middle east erupting into a giant messopotamia.
Here's news for you, mAd_ScIeNtIsT. You could probably make the same accusation about every leader of every country in the world. You could probably make the same accusation about every leader of every major corporation in the world too.
Bull****ters and liars can also tell the truth, sometimes. 2 + 2 is still 4 even if Putin is the one who says so.
[/QUOTE]
Trrue. However, once someone is established as a bull****ter he becomes like the little boy who cried wolf - it becomes nigh on impossible to distinguish truth from falsehood, you cannot assume that whatever he says is by default true.
If he lied for the sake of politics once, anything further he says may well be more lying for politics. For all we know Putin may be sitting there preferring a Bush re-election (given the benefits Putin is getting from Bush's so-called war-on-terror), and, worried about the effect of the 9/11's panels revelations, decided to shore up Bush a bit.
He's got a motive to lie as a political expediency, and has been known to do it before.
Aside from which, he's Russian, and the experience of the free world since 1917 has been that you can trust a Russian leader about as far as you can throw him. :)
Prism:
You’ve got to extend the horizons of your conversational abilities a little bit. Every conversation about Iraq does not have to start and end with Guppies opinionating whether the invasion was bad or good.
What Spoon and I have been discussing is how the debate about Iraq will play out in the American election and how disclosures like those made by Putin will impact that debate. We can discuss that topic without ever having to engage in a fruitless argument about our own respective beliefs regarding whether the war was justified.
Mad_S:
I tell you it takes a whole lot of straw grasping to ultimately believe that Putin prefers Bush over Kerry in the coming election and that his recent disclosure is a product of his attempt to influence the Presidential election outcome. If he wanted to do that, a much better route would have been to support the US during the UN Security Council debates and become part of the coalition of the willing. At every turn, Russia has taken positions vis a vis the Iraq war that have made things harder for the US to accomplish its objectives. Many of us have advanced the argument that those Russian positions have been adopted more from economic self interest than any moral imperative. My mind has now been set a-spinning by your assertion that all of a sudden Russia’s economic best interest is the polar opposite as before and that Russia is economically self-served by Putins statement regarding sharing intelligence.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by myvoice: *
Mad_S:
I tell you it takes a whole lot of straw grasping to ultimately believe that Putin prefers Bush over Kerry in the coming election and that his recent disclosure is a product of his attempt to influence the Presidential election outcome. If he wanted to do that, a much better route would have been to support the US during the UN Security Council debates and become part of the coalition of the willing. At every turn, Russia has taken positions vis a vis the Iraq war that have made things harder for the US to accomplish its objectives. Many of us have advanced the argument that those Russian positions have been adopted more from economic self interest than any moral imperative. My mind has now been set a-spinning by your assertion that all of a sudden Russia’s economic best interest is the polar opposite as before and that Russia is economically self-served by Putins statement regarding sharing intelligence.
[/QUOTE]
It's undeniable that Russia's economic self-interests motivated its preference for maintaining the Baath party as the ruling power in Iraq - so much so that it fought Bush's Administration tooth and nail on the issue. If elections were held in January 2003, I am sure that Putin would be sitting at his desk hoping for an anti-Iraq war candidate to win so that Russia could continue profiteering from the Baathists. Of course, during that Iraq war, there was no particularly viable alternative to Bush, so little incentive for Russia to support Bush against a non-existent oppponent.
On the other hand, the situation has changed considerably now - for Russia, Iraq is no longer an issue because it will be a cold day in hell before the Baathists can ever take power again. The key thing for Russia may well now be to hope for an administration so keen on prosecuting the so-called "War on Terror" that it's willing to keep relatively quiet on the horrific human rights abuses that Russia in inflicting on the people of the Caucuses, where allegedly "Al-Qaeda linked" militants are operating.
There is a risk to Russia that a more liberal Kerry led administration might actually place greater emphasis on the sanctity of human rights across the world, from the middle east to Russia. Russia places a great deal of importance on being able to do whatever it likes in Chechnya, fearing a separate Chechnya to be the beginning of the end for the Russian Federation. If Putin fears that a Kerry administration would no longer gives him carte blanche in Chechnya, then he has a pretty strong motivation to resume his lies and back Bush.
Spoon:
The latest poll has come out which is relevant to our discussion.
"Amid rising disenchantment with the war in Iraq, the poll said 52 percent of those surveyed said the war was not worth fighting, and seven in 10 called U.S. casualties there “unacceptable.” "
As people come to believe the war was not worth fighting, the more likely they are to believe the number of casualties are unacceptable. The same number of casualties can be “acceptable” if those people believe the war was worth fighting. Thus, the WHY becomes extremely important to Bush.
We can’t find WMD, so that WHY has sort of disappeared on Bush.
No flowers in the streets, so that WHY is sort of gone too.
Planned terrorist attacks on US soil by Saddam is a pretty important WHY at this point in time.
Mad_S:
Over the last 2+ years I've come to respect an awful lot of the analysis you have contributed to GS. Please step back for a moment and think about your answer to the questions I'm proposing here.
Do you really believe that Putin has lost one minute of sleep worrying that John Kerry will, as President of the US, set our country on a course of any active or passive engagement at all that will in any way, shape or form interfere with Putin's ability to slaughter as many Muslim Chechens as he wants?
Can you show me one foreign policy speech that Kerry has given that could possibly be interpreted as forecasting a "get tough with Russia on Chechnya" policy being the cornerstone of a Kerry administration's foreign policy?
If anything, Kerry has advanced the policy of not engaging in foreign conflicts absent unanimous international consensus evidenced by a united UN Security Council. You can't possibly believe that Kerry would challenge Russia when he wouldn't challenge some tin-horn despotic ruler of some third world country.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by myvoice: *
Can you show me one foreign policy speech that Kerry has given that could possibly be interpreted as forecasting a "get tough with Russia on Chechnya" policy being the cornerstone of a Kerry administration's foreign policy?
[/QUOTE]
On the other hand, to a Russian nationalist the issue of territorial integrity would be of utmost, if not paranoid, importance. Better the devil Putin knows rather than the one he doesn't.
Putin knows that Bush has a long history of silence on Russian abuses in Chechnya, particularly in the aftermath of 9/11. Not having pressure from the world's superpower is a pretty useful thing for Putin's Chechnya policy.
Sure, Kerry hasn't mentioned anything on Chechnya, but his views are not known. By contrast, Bush's silence in known and this would, arguably, make his a preferred option for Putin's administration should they place priority on the issue.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by myvoice: *
What Spoon and I have been discussing is how the debate about Iraq will play out in the American election and how disclosures like those made by Putin will impact that debate.
[/QUOTE]
50,000 Innocent Iraqi people are dead in Iraq and you lot are worried about elections in America?
Does it matter who wins or loses?... America only has 2 political parties for some funny democratc reason. Regardless who you vote, they'll still follow the decades old policies of divide and conquer.