Megan McArdle (April 02, 2008) - An Unfalsifiable Foreign Policy

Okay dumbass, you ask why should opponents of the war--who were at the time mocked and belittled for opposing it, called naive, wimpy and branded as "anarchists"--why do these people have to come up with a bunch of "metrics" to tell you war supporters what we have to do to win a stupid war that should never have been fought in the first place?

Why don't you war supporters come up with metrics to tell us how the Iraq war can be won so we can send our troops (who you view as lambs for slaughter) home? Those who were (correctly) opposed to this stupid war owe no explanations to anyone, least of all morons like you.

The point is--asshole--we will never, ever "win" this war, regardless of what "metrics" you use.

You morons who advocated this war have blood on your hands. You need to shut up.

Posted by Blake | April 3, 2008 12:27 AM

If the argument is simply that "it will eventually succeed/fail if we continue/withdraw", then there will always be sufficient evidence to justify continued rationalizations.

This is especially true when, in so many cases, the "facts" are simply being made up. Cf the "disaster" in Iraq, where the overthrow of two hostile governments was achieved in a matter of weeks, where functioning governments are coming into action in less time than it took Japan and Germany after WWII, and where it's been done with an average of 800 fatalities a year, a score comparable to traffic accidents in the same population in peacetime. Oh, and many of the same people saying it's a "disaster" now, predicted "disaster" before and are now having to redefine disaster back farther and farther to preserve this little trope. Or now Basra, where the militias were a big failure, fighting to get rid of the militias was a failure within a day or two of the start, and the surrender by the militias of the whole town and the unilateral cease fire by Sadr is a disaster too.

Posted by Charlie (Colorado) | April 3, 2008 12:32 AM

It certainly would be nice if foreign policy involved clear and falsifiable predictions (not being sarcastic, but the failure is at least as much with the subject matter as with those making policy pronouncements. Frustratingly, foreign policy lacks two key incredients for a more "scientific" approach: (i) a sufficiently large sample size; and (ii) control groups. It is hard to make falsifiable predictions when everything is sui generis!

Posted by DWAnderson | April 3, 2008 12:34 AM

Gee, I wish I'd have seen this note by Blake; it so perfectly exemplifies what I was saying.

Blake, the easy and historically supportable answer is that the war (or, rather, the Iraqi Campaign) is won; the initial goal of removing an actively hostile government with which we were already at war and had been for eleven years, has been achieved. At an astonishingly small loss of life, far smaller than the doomsayers predicted before the fact. But then you give the game away anyway:

The point is--asshole--we will never, ever "win" this war, regardless of what "metrics" you use.

You're not drawing a conclusion here, Blake, you're stating an axiom. In your mind there is no winning this war, no matter what metrics you use. Which is fine as far as it goes, but it reduces your arguments to vacuous nullity.

I suspect that's why you feel the need to strengthen your argument with gratuitous abuse.

Posted by Charlie (Colorado) | April 3, 2008 12:40 AM

The measure of success will be when Iraq has a relatively stable, peaceful government that is not hostile to the United States. It will take a while.

In the short term, we want to eliminate those who are trying to kill our soldiers and destabilize Iraq. We also want to bring order to Iraq so that civilians can go about their business.

Any given policy can be measured against the above... but it's not an easy, objective measurement. The results will take time and will be hard to measure. Clearly, the previous strategies weren't working as violence wasn't decreasing (was increasing, in fact) and the country was not becoming more stable. We'll just have to watch the progress and see how things go.

The other problem with measuring success in Iraq is that it does not exist in a vacuum. Iran is actively trying to destabilize Iraq and Al Qaeda is importing terrorists to attack coalition forces and Iraq. Both of those will work against even an otherwise sound policy. We need to look at the entire region to really understand what's going on in Iraq.

As an aside, it's funny how your original post was not particularly pro or anti-war and yet the "liberal" responded with insults, profanity, and ad hominems. The Left clearly has a monopoly on class.

Posted by Earnest Iconoclast | April 3, 2008 12:48 AM

Stop screwing around, Charlie Colorado. Here are your exact words:

"Blake, the easy and historically supportable answer is that the war (or, rather, the Iraqi Campaign) is won;"

You say we already won the war. Then why for God's sake are we still there? If the war's won why don't our troops come home?

Otherwise--dumbass--if we still need to have troops in Iraq, that means we haven't won the war, that means there's some reason for US troops in Iraq. But remember we don't care about US troops--fuck them, they enlisted! Right?

Admit it it. You hate American servicemen and want to see them killed.

Posted by Blake | April 3, 2008 12:53 AM

Mr. Henke used to work for a racist who was named George Allen.

It's sad that he is allowed to post here.

But it is up to decent people to expose these sad facts.

Any person who works for a man who called a person of color a "macaca" should slink off into obscurity.

Mr. Henke obviously does not share that point of view.

Go back and watch the "macaca" video. If it does not make you sick to your stomach, you are not paying attention.

Posted by mkultra | April 3, 2008 1:04 AM

I am cancelling my suscription to the Atlantic. I will recommend that my friends do the same.

There is room for debate in America and differing points of view. But not about racism.

Mr. Henke worked for a racist by the name of George Allen.

I will no longer support a maganzine that allows supporters of racists to post on its site.

Goodbye Atlantic. And I will miss the insightful commetary in your magazine.

Posted by mkultra | April 3, 2008 1:12 AM

Chuckle. Libertarians are so cute when they think they're working the refs, and think that no one can spot their shenanigans. Just like my five-year-old was, once, when she thought she was clever enough to manipulate her unsuspecting parents.

But, uh, no. In fact, predictions have been made, falsifiable predictions, and guess which side has been found wanting? Yours. That's written into the record and that's not going to change.

Myself, _I_ predict that there's no good way out, there's only very bad and bad. Though at least with the latter option we can save American money and American lives.

If we should start a withdrawal sometime in 2009, look to partisans like Mr. Henke to milk the increased violence as 'proof' that this was a bad idea for all it's worth.

That's a falsifiable prediction too ;-)

Posted by ScentOfViolets | April 3, 2008 1:17 AM

Henke's a doorknob, no doubt. Maybe 1% smarter than Megan, which isn't saying much. But I must admit his diction is much, much better than Megan's crazy convoluted sentence (fragments) that she used to write before she got suspended.

Cheers!

Posted by Blane | April 3, 2008 1:18 AM

You say we already won the war. Then why for God's sake are we still there? If the war's won why don't our troops come home?

Did we also lose WW2? Our troops are still in Europe and Japan. Just curious.

Posted by Dick Eagleson | April 3, 2008 2:16 AM

Making some small effort to drag this back to civil conversation:

It's disingenuous to place the same burden of proof on the pro and anti war sides of the crowd. Given the cost in blood, treasure, and moral standing that obviously wouldn't have been spent by the U.S. if Iraq weren't invaded, it's incumbent on the pro side to articulate falsifiable standards for victory in order to justify those costs.

Anything else counts as failure. I don't mean that in a binary "not succeeded, then fail" way, I mean that if the basic standards for success are not met, then the cost/benefit analysis of the war says that it wasn't worth it, and the perpetrators and their supporters are culpable.

At this point, even if falsifiable standards could be articulated and generally accepted, I'm sceptical that it could be considered worthwhile in light of the costs and alternatives. It's still possible, but I'd be surprised to see even a minimally acceptable outcome considering everything.

Posted by Justin JJ | April 3, 2008 2:20 AM

Did we also lose WW2? Our troops are still in Europe and Japan. Just curious.

This is a silly comparison. For a short time after WWII, allied troops were necessary to maintain and rebuild civil society. But within a couple years they were there for the strategic purposes of the U.S. and N.A.T.O., not to prevent the collapse of Japan and Germany into civil war or to suppress an insurgency long enough for a functioning government to emerge.

Do you know how many American soldiers were killed in Japan and Germany by an enemy, a saboteur, an insurgent following the surrender of those countries?

Zero.

Posted by Justin JJ | April 3, 2008 2:26 AM

Justin JJ

It wasn't quite zero. According to this it was at least 45, though I have yet to track down the original source. Other sources I could find agree there was little resistance, but provide no numbers except that there were no casualties reported from insurgent action after July, 1946.

One relevant difference between the situation of Iraq today and Germany and Japan in 1945 is that, in the latter cases, general destruction of national infrastructure was extensive and the populations of both had been subjected to heavy aerial bombardment for years. Most Iraqi civilians have had no comparable experiences due to Coalition action, though the various insurgencies have hardly been reticent about indiscriminate slaughter as a standard tactic.

At this point many of the worst actors have been killed, though grinding down the rest enough to render population-adjusted levels of Iraqi violence no worse than, say, Compton on a Saturday night may take awhile longer. The recent government offensive against the Jaish al Mahdi is an additional step in the long-term process of eliminating roving gangs of armed bandits as a standard feature of the Iraqi social landscape.

All of this will take time, but is unlikely to take large numbers of new Coalition casualties. Another year or two will probably see matters reasonably well squared away and the American presence thereafter will much more closely resemble our long-term missions in Germany, Japan and Korea.

We have stayed in these latter places because of long-term military threats posed by disagreeable regimes in the regions in question. If the current governments of Iran and Syria do not fall on their own or suffer destruction at our hands, then they will remain as disagreeable regimes in the region and the Iraqi government - and others in the area - will find it useful to keep us around.

I do not, however, anticipate that there will ever be a moment of victory in Iraq as definitive as the ceremony of Sept. 2, 1945 aboard U.S.S. Missouri. The Iraq conflict, not being a self-contained war on its own, but simplay a major theater of operations in a larger war against trans-national Islamic extremism, will have an "end" based on fuzzy, not binary, logic.

Posted by Dick Eagleson | April 3, 2008 3:29 AM

There's a certain amount of disingenuousness in saying that "For a short time after WWII, allied troops were necessary to maintain and rebuild civil society", since we actually ruled--as in our generals were the head of state--for four years until 1949. The formal occupation continued until 1955, and the formal occupation of Berlin ended in 1990.

Expecting this to take a few years, especially since we didn't wreck the country during the invasion, is folly.

Posted by CatCube | April 3, 2008 8:56 AM

Administration talking points involving the war seem to me to have been falsified very quickly. Remember when we were going to be greeted with candy and flowers, and the democratic government we imposed on Iraq was going to cause the democratic dominoes to fall all across the Middle East? Remember how Iraq was supposed to have huge stocks of WMDs waiting to be handed over to Al Qaida or launched against Israel? Was it Rumsfeld or Cheney who had advisors fired for producing low-but-realistic estimates of the dollar cost of the war and the number of troops needed to hold Iraq down? Those Administration statements were all falsifiable, and in fact were pretty quickly falsified.

What we're left with is this: We made a huge, expensive, bloody, godawful error in invading Iraq. But now, we are there, and we'd like to have some useful measure for whether we're recoving from the disaster or not. So we can track fatalities, attacks, stability of the government, etc., in an attempt to see if things are getting better or worse or staying the same. This is important, because we need to decide whether to just pull out and let Iraq go its own way, or whether to stay there and continue influencing things, at a pretty high cost.

It's a mistake to get these measures of current progress mixed up with the question of whether the war was a good idea or not. It's always possible to imagine some elaborate and complicated story that explains why any decision was a good idea. ("See, my serial gay affairs and drinking problem led me to be in that liquor store flirting with the clerk, the day I foiled the robbery and became a hero.") But it's damned hard for me to look at this war and see a lot of reasons to think it will end up worth the money, lives, and opportunity costs.

Posted by albatross | April 3, 2008 9:34 AM

albatross is exactly right. One could hardly imagine a more spectacular example of falsified claims than the US's occupation of Iraq. There were no WMDs, there was no link between Iraq and al-Qaeda, US troops were quickly seen as occupiers and dragged into a vicious guerrilla war against people who had no animus against the US prior to the invasion, the war did not pay for itself and in fact has cost at least an order of magnitude more than was forecast, Iraq has not become a democracy, other states in the Middle East have not become more democratic, the overthrow of Saddam has not weakened radical Islam but in fact has strengthened it, and on and on. One can always maintain non-falsifiability if one is willing to close one's eyes and refuse to see the evidence falsifying one's hypotheses.

Posted by brooksfoe | April 3, 2008 10:21 AM

Ya know, I'm not surprised that people who actually thought Megan's "debunking" of the Lancet studies in the Atlantic was good work would claim that the Iraq war caused "an astonishingly small loss of life." Well then, I guess for Chuck, 9/11 was just a drop in a bucket!

Posted by rickm | April 3, 2008 10:33 AM

Henke subscribes to the war-cheerleader dodge of "the actual war ended when GW stood on that aircraft carrier and declared major military action over." Everything after that was an "insurgency" and "terrorists" and "foreign fighters" that no one could have foreseen. So really, our marvelous military adventure was a complete and stunning success, to be studied in war colleges for generations to come, like Agincourt and Jackson's Valley Campaign.

In other words, he's cherry-picking. Yes, the initial invasion was a big success; but everything that came after was forseeable, and foreseen, and a probable (if not inevitable) consequence of that initial invasion.

What ticks me off is even those consequences could have been headed off or minimized, but instead they were not planned for and in fact it was denied that they even existed as possibilities. Now we have a pig in a poke that no one will help us fix because we've been arrogant jerks in how we've run the entire operation.

EI:

As an aside, it's funny how your original post was not particularly pro or anti-war and yet the "liberal" responded with insults, profanity, and ad hominems. The Left clearly has a monopoly on class.

Enough irony to build several bridges. I suppose if "Blake" had taken the exact opposite tack, and attacked Henke's patriotism and called him a terrorist sympathizer for not being sufficiently enthusiastic in his support for the Iraq operation and Our President, you'd have been equally as dismissive? Uh huh. Right.

The Right is not without its own shining exemplars of comity and collegiality, my friend. I've been on the receiving end, right here in River City.

Posted by liberalrob | April 3, 2008 11:44 AM

I see I typed Henke when I meant Charlie Colorado. See what happens when you get all worked up? Think one thing and type another.

Posted by liberalrob | April 3, 2008 11:48 AM

Blake says: "Okay, asshole..." ...I didn't read any further than that.

brooksfoe enumerates falsified claims about Iraq. No WMDs were found, true. Iraq - which is to say, Saddam - was not directly responsible for the 9/11 attacks, also true.

However, beyond that, I start to see holes in the theory.

Firstly, I never believed Saddam was directly responsible for 9/11. I thought the point had been made pretty clearly that Al Qaeda was the culprit there. It is true that Cheney and others cited "a link" between AQ and Saddam, but I never for once saw that as anything beyond some play on metaphors that all politicians do, like Gore claiming he invented the Internet. If we're going to call Cheney on that, then the whole government's on thin ice. I'd rather look for more distinctive infractions.

Secondly, I wasn't that distressed to hear that WMDs weren't found. If anything, I was relieved to find that Americans were in much less danger as a result. (I suppose it's still possible that there's a cache here and there in the desert, or that they were smuggled into Syria - there's still a spike in border traffic recorded there that isn't explained - but I'll grant this as circumstantial.) In general, I considered (and still do) the war in Iraq to be that "swamp-draining" exercise some of you may have heard cited elsewhere. We went to Afghanistan in a direct response to 9/11; we went to Iraq to prevent future attacks on the US.

I also don't believe US troops were attacked by people who previously held no animus against the US, except in a law of averages sense. I think it more likely that terrorist organizations simply called in the reserves, and that our goals in Iraq were miscommunicated to the people. We knew we meant no harm to the people of Iraq at large; I doubt they did. Furthermore, after prolonged presence there, they DID get the message, and a lot of Iraqis like us just fine.

The cost argument holds up only in terms of known costs. We know how much we've spent on the war, yes. We know roughly how much we lost in terms of the stock market closing after 9/11, and flights being suspended, and revenue lost from the WTC. (Actually, just how comparable are the costs? "cost of 9/11" turns up interesting hits, but there are so many games being played with the numbers. I've seen $85bn cited for New York alone; $843bn US-wide in another place.) Meanwhile, we got rid of Saddam, and Libya is no longer a threat. What would be the cost if we had done nothing beyond Afghanistan, and some other terrorist movement somewhere else managed to pull off another attack? We can't know how likely that would have been anymore. If a bank spends more on security than was lost in a single robbery, was that security not worth it?

If the claim is that oil revenues would have paid for the war, I can't really speak to that. Honestly, I think if I'd heard that at the outset, I would have been quite skeptical, so there you are.

"Iraq not becoming a democracy" is true - so far. I think it's heading in that direction. I certainly think it was headed away while Saddam was in power. This can serve as an example of a falsiable claim, but nowhere near completely so. Other ME states haven't moved closer to democracy, but that was a straw grab to claim that without a plan. If they did, one could draw the same links between them and our efforts in Iraq that one could between Saddam and AQ - in other words, tenuous. Lebanon tried; Hezbollah got in the way. Palestine started to look better for a while, but that was more due to Arafat's passing. Iran and Syria appear to be same as always. It may be that the situation has improved, in that we took two more pieces off the board, even if two other pieces may now have stronger position. I think it's too early to tell.

If you want a falsifiable claim, I'll offer one: if a terrorist attack on US ground of the magnitude of the WTC bombing can be launched successfully from Iran or Syria or both, or even Iraq and Afghanistan, within the next two years, then unless I know more, I'd say terrorism enjoyed enough of a boost to be as strong as before; that our efforts did not have the desired effect. If not, then, again, unless I know more, I'd say we've reduced the threat, and we did accomplish what we wanted. (Lots of weasel words there, I know, but that's global commerce, folks; we all know we could argue over causes forever.)

In short, I - and others, for these are not points I have made alone - claim that the WMD claim was relatively irrelevant; that the Iraq-al-Qaeda link was definitely irrelevant; that our favorable reception from the Iraqi population was delayed, but gaining substantiation; that the war wasn't paid for by oil revenue, but may have paid for itself extraordinarily in terms of future incidents avoided; that Iraq's government has improved significantly, if not (yet) to the goal claimed; that other ME states' governments are indeed largely unchanged so far; that Saddam's removal has also removed a large safe haven for terrorists in terms of both land and financial support, whether it has affected radical Islam or not. This spectacular example of falsified claims does not strike me as being so spectacular.

Posted by Paul Brinkley | April 3, 2008 11:55 AM

Albatross said:
Administration talking points involving the war seem to me to have been falsified very quickly. Remember when we were going to be greeted with candy and flowers, and the democratic government we imposed on Iraq was going to cause the democratic dominoes to fall all across the Middle East? Remember how Iraq was supposed to have huge stocks of WMDs waiting to be handed over to Al Qaida or launched against Israel? Was it Rumsfeld or Cheney who had advisors fired for producing low-but-realistic estimates of the dollar cost of the war and the number of troops needed to hold Iraq down? Those Administration statements were all falsifiable, and in fact were pretty quickly falsified.

This bears repeating. The pro-war side had its falsfiable measures of success, and failed at all of them. Since then it's been almost nothing but goalpost-moving.

Why is the anti-war crowd now in the position of having to make falsifiable predictions when failure has been nearly constant since the occupation began?

Dick notices some more relevant differences between Iraq and Germany, mainly that Japan and Germany were phsyically destroyed and needed to be rebuilt from the ground up, while Iraq was largely intact. Dick sees this as a point in favor of a long occupation, insofar as postwar Germany and Japan were more easily subdued because the bad actors were already dead. I see it as a point against the Iraq occupation strategy insofar as we've already had a demonstration of what an effective occupation looks like--lots of troops, and a huge amount of effort put into actually governing the occupied territory--and Iraq is not following that plan.

That's really what gives me such little hope about Iraq. Rumsfeld's belief that regime change could be accomplished on the cheap led to a disastrously undermanned occupation that was never going to be able to suppress the insurgency and allow a new civil society to form. When Shinseki said the occupation would require at least three to four hundred thousand troops, he was citing the U.S. experience in Germany and Japan. For that he was fired.

Posted by Justin JJ | April 3, 2008 12:04 PM

"Did we also lose WW2? Our troops are still in Europe and Japan. Just curious."
Posted by Dick Eagleson

We stayed in Germany and Japan to prevent communist take-overs of their governments which would then become part of the Soviet bloc. We succeeded. Arguably, it would be sensible to try to prevent the take-over of a pro-Iranian governement in Iraq, but we are doing the exact opposite. Our efforts are geared toward empowering the most pro-Iranian faction there is in Iraq. Our policy is not just ineffective, it isn't just wasteful, it is counterproductive.

Posted by Njorl | April 3, 2008 12:25 PM

Our efforts are geared toward empowering the most pro-Iranian faction there is in Iraq.

So leaving the Sunni minority in charge would be more to your liking? Just look at what it took to keep the minority in charge, and why it's better to have representation from all parties involved...

Posted by Kevin in MN | April 3, 2008 12:39 PM

"So leaving the Sunni minority in charge would be more to your liking? Just look at what it took to keep the minority in charge, and why it's better to have representation from all parties involved..."

Not having a time machine, I am not bothering to advocate for that. I am merely advocating that we stop spending hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of lives per year to help Iran gain dominance over Iraq.

Posted by Njorl | April 3, 2008 12:58 PM

One big problem with the current Iraq policy is that it is pretty much unfalsifiable.

Can anyone suggest an Iraq policy that would be falsifiable?

Posted by ad | April 3, 2008 1:11 PM

One big problem with the current Iraq policy is that it is pretty much unfalsifiable. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't. The lack of clear metrics and falsifiable predictions blurs the line between "has not yet succeeded" and "has failed". It would be helpful if proponents and opponents of the war would make clear, falsifiable predictions we could use to evaluate their prescriptions.

And this makes it different from every other government policy how, exactly?

Posted by Dave | April 3, 2008 1:14 PM

ad-

No. No one can. Henke doesn't know what falsifiable means, or he does know, but is using it indiscriminately. An action cannot be falsifiable, because an action doesn't contain a predictive or positive judgment. Henke probably learned how to abuse a thesaurus from Megan.

Posted by rickm | April 3, 2008 1:17 PM

that Saddam's removal has also removed a large safe haven for terrorists in terms of both land and financial support - paul brinkley

It really is startling how widespread this complete misunderstanding is. There was not a single "terrorist" organization present in Saddam's Iraq apart from Ansar al-Islam, which was an anti-Iranian terrorist organization supported by the US. Saddam's Iraq never financed any terrorist groups. It was a totalitarian dictatorship. Totalitarian dictatorships do not permit alternative armed forces on their territory; weak, failed states (such as Afghanistan and Somalia) do. Today, terrorist groups are widespread throughout Iraq, because the US destroyed the country's government and security forces, creating a failed state. Saddam's removal created a safe haven for terrorists, in terms of both land and financial support. Is this clear?

Posted by brooksfoe | April 3, 2008 2:49 PM

brooksfoe, you are just wrong. Saddam was harboring members of Al Qaeda. He was definitely subsidizing Palestinian suicide bombers by paying their families $25,000. He was not involved in 9/11, but he was in contact with Al Qaeda and might have worked with them more against the US, given time.

* There were no WMDs

Well, technically, there were. We have found chemical weapons and warheads designed to deliver them. He also had the elements of more extensive WMD programs (including nuclear) ready to activate when the sanctions were lifted (which was coming). The War in Iraq also caused Qaddafi to give up his WMDs and helped expose the AQ Khan network that might have helped Saddam develop nuclear weapons after France and Russia managed to get the sanctions dropped.

* there was no link between Iraq and al-Qaeda

It may not have been a strong or close link, but there were links between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

* US troops were quickly seen as occupiers and dragged into a vicious guerrilla war against people who had no animus against the US prior to the invasion

Most of the people who we've been fighting are ex-Baathists or Iranian imports or others who were imported or turned by Iranians (or others). Most of those folks already hated the US.

* the war did not pay for itself and in fact has cost at least an order of magnitude more than was forecast

It happens.

* Iraq has not become a democracy

Um... actually, it has. They've had a number of elections. It may not be running as "smoothly" as a Western democracy, but they've just started and are still learning and are in the middle of a massive guerilla invasion by neighboring countries.

* other states in the Middle East have not become more democratic

Not yet, but how long did you think that would take? Hopefully the Middle East will move into the modern age, but it will take a while. I always suspected that things would need to get a lot worse before they got better. The status quo wasn't good and change can be difficult.

* the overthrow of Saddam has not weakened radical Islam but in fact has strengthened it

Maybe, maybe not. A lot of terrorists are dead or captured, including a lot of higher ups in various organizations.

Maybe this would have gone more smoothly if we'd done a WWII style bombing campaign followed by a massive WWII style invasion. That would have killed a lot more people and required a draft, given that Clinton had gutted the military during the 90's.

Posted by Earnest Iconoclast | April 3, 2008 5:35 PM

"Swamp draining exercise"?

Why on earth would you need two wars for that?

What's wrong with Afghanistan alone as a magnet for terrorists? Sorry but the sad truth is that Iraq has become the opposite of what you state: a swamp filling exercise. Enraged people come from Muslim communities across the whole world to fight what they see as an unjust occupation. There have been over 1200 suicide bombings so far in Iraq. It's completely unprecedented in scale and intensity in the Middle East. It's made suicide bombing an everyday weapon in the extremist's arsenal.

No, if we wanted a "swamp draining exercise" then Afghanistan would have worked well enough. Even in the Muslim world people could understand why Americans fought the Talebans. The only ones who would strap on a belt of explosives in Afghanistan would have been the hardcore nutbars. Instead Bush has provoked thousands of enraged Muslims to take up arms in Iraq, most of whom would never have thought of doing the same in Afghanistan.

The Iraq war is generating extremism, not decreasing it. It's our fortune that most of the insurgents think in terms of ending an occupation, rather than in terms of inflicting wholesale carnage on the Western World in revenge.

Posted by Jonny | April 3, 2008 7:22 PM

The only ones who would strap on a belt of explosives in Afghanistan would have been the hardcore nutbars. Instead Bush has provoked thousands of enraged Muslims to take up arms in Iraq, most of whom would never have thought of doing the same in Afghanistan.

You say that like it's a bad thing, to me it sounds like a good strategy; make it easy for your enemy to find you so you can kill him. From recent reports it sounds to me like it's working well. Iraqis are coming onboard, former hotspots like Fallujah and Mosul are quieting down. There seems to be a real disconnect between what the doom and gloomers are spreading here, and reports from journalists on the ground.

Posted by Kevin in MN | April 3, 2008 8:47 PM

In short, I - and others, for these are not points I have made alone - claim that the WMD claim was relatively irrelevant; that the Iraq-al-Qaeda link was definitely irrelevant; that our favorable reception from the Iraqi population was delayed, but gaining substantiation; that the war wasn't paid for by oil revenue, but may have paid for itself extraordinarily in terms of future incidents avoided; that Iraq's government has improved significantly, if not (yet) to the goal claimed; that other ME states' governments are indeed largely unchanged so far; that Saddam's removal has also removed a large safe haven for terrorists in terms of both land and financial support, whether it has affected radical Islam or not. This spectacular example of falsified claims does not strike me as being so spectacular.

Given that we invaded Iraq because Saddam supposedly possessed WMD, and that the signing of the AUMF was predicated on the belief that he had them . . . no.

This was an in-you-face error, just about as spectacular as it gets. No WMD, no war, no waste of a trillion (trillion!) dollars, no deaths of U.S. servicemen.

You can claim that this is a trifle, of course, but I don't think very many people agree with you (it also begs the question of what is 'spectacular'; brain-eating invaders from Alpha Centauri?)

* There were no WMDs

Well, technically, there were.

No, there wasn't. This has been cited just on this blog alone too many times for you to miss:

Since it's 'well-known' that these[WMD's] were found, it should be easy to find cites for, right? Cites like this maybe? Perhaps you were thinking of this? Or how about this?

Or, maybe, just maybe . . . do I here it? Maybe a teeny tiny admission that you were wrong?

Or is this where you don't respond, again so you can pretend that you've never seen this?

Posted by ScentOfViolets | April 3, 2008 9:34 PM

Afghanistan alone would probably have served as a magnet for terrorists, I suppose, but I'm not saying we needed a magnet, so much as we needed to kill off the sources. Which means killing off the funding, in part, which meant doing something about Saddam.

Posted by Paul Brinkley | April 4, 2008 12:13 AM

As I understood it, the Bush administration actually had a three-point case to bring against Saddam - WMDs, repeated violations of UN resolutions, and abuses of human rights. For some reason, they chose to truncate their case to just one thing, which turned out to not pan out. (The other two were pretty much dead on, of course.)

But again, you can't just pick at the one claim that didn't work, and ignore all the benefits. You can contest the benefits - but I tried pretty hard above to make a case that they exist.

Earnest - just in case you posted them before, and people came later and missed them, if you have cites of WMDs found, even "technically", I'd like to see them too. If not, I can't take the claim as truth, either.

Posted by Paul Brinkley | April 4, 2008 12:28 AM

Are you aware that nothing you said had anything to do with my point?

Posted by ScentOfViolets | April 4, 2008 12:31 AM

Just before I read this post, I happened to see this article (nb. that's page 2 of a 2 page article), setting out the progress made on legislative and security benchmarks demanded by democrats.

Benchmarks were all the rage when it wasn't clear they could be met. Is this a sign they are falling out of favour because they can be met?

Posted by Mike | April 4, 2008 12:47 AM

I did a google search for "wmd found in iraq" and found a bunch of stories. The fact that he had leftover chemical weapons from before the first Gulf War is a direct violation of the UN resolutions and the terms of his surrender. He was to have destroyed ALL of his WMD stockpiles and he was to have allowed the inspectors access to proof that they were destroyed.

He did neither. We found the weapons he was hiding. Yeah, they were useless, but they wouldn't have been had we not been parked on his doorstep engaged in a running battle with his SAM batteries, risking our pilots' lives while the UN kleptocrats and Saddam enriched themselves via the "Food for Oil" program. How long were we supposed to spend money and lives helping these thieves scam the rest of us while the Iraq citizens suffered from the sanctions? According to the anti-war crowd, the sanctions were killing Iraqi babies by the hundreds of thousands.

I guess their solution would have been to walk away and let him get back to working on developing more better weapons. That would have been really smart. Or maybe we should have let the UN or the French do some diplomatic jibber-jabber to convince Saddam to be a good boy. I'm SURE that would have worked.

According to the AUMF, the war was declared for a number of reasons, including Iraq's continued violation of UN resolutions, his refusal to cooperate with inspectors, his continued human rights abuses, his continued attacks on US forces in the region, and his continued support for terrorists (including paying Palestinian terrorists $25,000 per martyr). Yes, we were wrong about his WMD programs being pursued... at least we probably were... we still don't know what was in the trucks that crossed into Syra during the beginning of the invasion. We failed to secure a number of sites during the war that could have had WMD-related programs.

So poop on all you haters.

Posted by Earnest Iconoclast | April 4, 2008 12:56 AM

Do you realize just how small you sound? And how incoherent: "We found the weapons he was hiding. Yeah, they were useless, but they wouldn't have been . . ." If they're useless (as in decades-old broken down gas), then they're not weapons.

And, excuse me,but what part of CIA Official Report: No WMD's Found don't you get?

You. Were. Wrong. In error. Mistaken. Incorrect. Not right.

There is no waffling, ducking, weaving, weaseling, spinning or flat-out lying that's going to change this.

But waffling, ducking, weaving, weaseling, spinning, etc., what you've been doing, is more than enough to render any opinion you might have simply not to be sought after or seriously considered.

And this is why people don't much care for your sort, in fact, are contemptuous of them: because you're big on people accepting the consequences of their actions, on taking responsibility - unless that person happens to be you.

No, you just can't bring yourself to admit that you made a rather significant mistake. What we get from you is the usual pablum, that even though you were wrong, you were really right.

Feh. My thirteen-year-old daughter is more mature than you. You and your kind want some respect, bud? Practice what you preach for a change.

Posted by ScentOfViolets | April 4, 2008 1:18 AM

Well, I don't know about a CIA report, but I've spoken to people I trust who've seen gas shells in Iraq with their own eyes. I know that they were in bad condition. We didn't find them in stockpiles, but there were some here and there.

Posted by CatCube | April 4, 2008 2:40 AM

SOV, thanks for the interesting links. Let me extract some quotes from them:

The addenda conclude that Saddam’s programs created a pool of experts now available to develop and produce weapons and many will be seeking work. While most will probably turn to the “benign civil sector,” the danger remains that “hostile foreign governments, terrorists or insurgents may seek Iraqi expertise.”

Nah...not an issue because there were no WMDs.

“Because a single individual can advance certain WMD activities, it remains an important concern,” one addendum said.

Nah...wouldn't be an issue because there were no WMDs.

Another addendum also noted that military forces in Iraq may continue to find small numbers of degraded chemical weapons — most likely misplaced or improperly destroyed before the 1991 Gulf War. In an insurgent’s hands, “the use of a single even ineffectual chemical weapon would likely cause more terror than deadlier conventional explosives,” another addendum said.

Nah...not an issue because there were no WMDs.

The Iraq Survey Group believes “it was unlikely that an official transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria took place. However, ISG was unable to rule out unofficial movement of limited WMD-related materials.”

So what...there were no WMDs.

In May this year, an artillery shell apparently filled with sarin exploded at a roadside near Baghdad but caused no serious injury.

It's just silly to be concerned...none of their stuff works.

Besides...there were no WMDs.

Posted by TakeFlight | April 4, 2008 10:17 AM

One big problem with the current Iraq policy is that it is pretty much unfalsifiable. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't. The lack of clear metrics and falsifiable predictions blurs the line between "has not yet succeeded" and "has failed". It would be helpful if proponents and opponents of the war would make clear, falsifiable predictions we could use to evaluate their prescriptions.

Call me an old fashioned conservative if you want, but asking for "clear falsifiable predictions" from opponents of a policy which involves spending lots of money and killing lots of people is misplacing the burden of justification. If one wishes to engage in and continue such a policy, the burden is on them to demonstrate how killing lots of people and spending lots of money results in an outcome which positively offsets the corpses and the debt.

Posted by jayinbmore | April 4, 2008 11:51 AM

SoV, I would like to note for the record that you spend a lot of time discussing the qualities of other people. My posts have generally been about the issues, not about YOU.

And, excuse me,but what part of CIA Official Report: No WMD's Found don't you get?

So the CIA is denying the existence of the chemical weapon shells that have been found? I'm confused. There are official government reports detailing the existence of chemical weapon shells that should have been destroyed a long time ago.

Also, the fact that we found no WMDs during the inspections wasn't definitive. Saddam was acting like he was hiding something. And with his resources and in a country the size of Iraq, he could have been hiding quite a lot. Given his history of using WMDs against civilians and Iran, it would have been foolish to assume that he didn't have any even if we found no evidence of any. We weren't exactly getting a comprehensive look at his facilities. For example, aside from the countless square miles of desert and underground bunkers, he had a number of large Presidential Palaces that were declared off-limits to inspections.

Also, if you read the AUMF and Bush's major speech about why we were going to war, there were a number of other reasons aside from the WMD and those reasons are still valid.

Also, for the record, I am not involved in any way with the government nor do I have any influence with the President or Congress. I was not privy to the intelligence available on Iraq so I did not make any kind of evaluation of whether or not there were WMDs in Iraq. I did not make the decision to go to war. I agreed with it, though, and not because I believed that Saddam had nuclear missiles aimed at us.

My reasons are still valid and while the implementation has not gone smoothly and some very bad decisions were made in the execution, I still believe we are doing the right thing and I'm glad to see that the war is going better and showing signs of definite progress.

You don't really know me. You have no idea what I'm like. You only read the crap I write on the Internet when I'm indulging in my hobby of arguing anonymously with total strangers on message boards. This is hardly my whole life. So keep your insults to yourself, please.

Posted by Earnest Iconoclast | April 4, 2008 11:59 AM

Sigh. Those aren't insults. The fact of the matter is, if you want to claim to be 'responsible' and 'realistic' you had best be . . . responsible and realistic.

You made a mistake. A big mistake. The responsible thing to do, the realistic thing is to say, "I was wrong. I made a mistake. I don't blame anyone else, it's all on me. Not on anyone else 'tricking' me into thinking otherwise, nor for any other reason."

You don't do this. You refuse to do this.

That's not an insult. That's a simple observation.

And because you don't do this, apparently can't do this(I'm not wrong - everyone else is, including the CIA), well, I don't take you seriously. In fact, think you're quite the hypocrite - responsibility for me, but not for thee? That's not a formula that's going to win a lot of converts.

I will say that your behavior, however unappealling it is, does at least lend credence to the thesis that libertarianism isn't a philosophy; it's a mental health issue.

Posted by ScentOfViolets | April 4, 2008 2:20 PM

Your whole response is a comment on me not on my statements. It's hard to have a discussion when you spend so much time discussing my personality. I'm flattered, I guess. But it's not very useful and contributes nothing.

Feh. My thirteen-year-old daughter is more mature than you. You and your kind want some respect, bud? Practice what you preach for a change.

That is an insult. You are attacking me, not my arguments.

I will say that your behavior, however unappealling it is, does at least lend credence to the thesis that libertarianism isn't a philosophy; it's a mental health issue.

that is another insult.

I don't really care if you insult me, it's just not very interesting. Given how many words you devoted to complaining that you were being picked on in previous threads, I'd have expected you to refrain from personal attacks.

Since you missed it, I'll repeat:

And, excuse me,but what part of CIA Official Report: No WMD's Found don't you get?

So the CIA is denying the existence of the chemical weapon shells that have been found? I'm confused. There are official government reports detailing the existence of chemical weapon shells that should have been destroyed a long time ago.

Posted by Earnest Iconoclast | April 4, 2008 2:32 PM

Call me an old fashioned conservative if you want, but asking for "clear falsifiable predictions" from opponents of a policy which involves spending lots of money and killing lots of people is misplacing the burden of justification. If one wishes to engage in and continue such a policy, the burden is on them to demonstrate how killing lots of people and spending lots of money results in an outcome which positively offsets the corpses and the debt.
I've made this argument countless times, though I make it as a pragmatic moderate. I've even pitched it as me being in the role of an investor and the war proponents as businessmen wanting me to fund their start-up.

In real life, if some guy or guys pitched to me, and I started asking questions about patents, do they have them, how much funding do they have of their own in the game, what other investors have they approached, why do they think there is a market in this particular demographic, in short, real-life, reasonable, standard questions, the questions anyone is going to ask who's concerned about ROI, and I get the brush-off, the bland reassurances, active withholding of information, in short, the attitude that says "We don't have to prove that we're right, you have to prove we're wrong", well. All I can say is that the odds are very, very low that this consortium would be getting any of my money.

Sounds reasonable, right?

Wrong. If I use this approach about going to war, I'm not an old-fashioned conservative. I'm not even a pragmatic middle-of-the-road moderate. No, for the purposes of that discussion, the presumption is that I'm a pot-smoking hippie addicted to Birkenstocks, clove cigarettes, and patchouli.

Needless to say, I find such characterizations . . . offensive.

Posted by ScentOfViolets | April 4, 2008 2:56 PM

Given that we invaded Iraq because Saddam supposedly possessed WMD [....] No WMD, no war, no waste of a trillion (trillion!) dollars, no deaths of U.S. servicemen.

There are many reasons for the invasion in the AUMF that don't include "Saddam has 100 mission-ready 10-megaton bombs on a shelf in a warehouse with UPS labels addressed to Washington DC stuck on them" or whatever your threshold for acceptable WMD risk is. For reference, you can find them here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021002-2.html

Yes, Bush said he expected to find them. No, the entire war did not and does not hinge on the presence of WMDs in Iraq's arsenal. It's sad that all discussions about Iraq somehow need to devolve into that. And then further into what really constitutes a WMD.

And I also note that (contrary to popular belief and some press reporting) the Bush administration never referred to Saddam or Iraq as an “imminent threat” to the United States. This assertion comes with an open invitation to disprove it, which would require a direct quote of an administration official before Congress authorized the war.

I've even pitched it as me being in the role of an investor and the war proponents as businessmen wanting me to fund their start-up.
In real life, if some guy or guys pitched to me, and I started asking questions about patents, do they have them, how much funding do they have of their own in the game, what other investors have they approached, why do they think there is a market in this particular demographic, in short, real-life, reasonable, standard questions, the questions anyone is going to ask who's concerned about ROI [....] Sounds reasonable, right?

Yes, it does.

But similarly, two investors may disagree about about the proposed ROI or the risk or the benefits of a particular venture or stock purchase. It doesn't make either of them "wrong" in an absolute sense. If I bought Apple stock in 1999, in 2000 you would have said I was right. In 2001, you would have said I was wrong. In 2004, I was right again.

I don't skydive because I don't think the risks are worth it. If you do, it doesn't make you "wrong". Even if you end up dying while doing it. Even if I want to say "I told you so." Especially in things that are not easily accomplished or contain lots of ambiguity, like war and trying to build real peace and security in a tough region.

Sov & jayinbmore, I actually agree that the proponents of the war (the administration & congress) bear the burden to demonstrate its "ROI." But I & others think they have done this to a reasonable-enough degree, and that it would have been too risky to just sit and play poker with Saddam after 9/11.

Only time will tell if it was really worth the cost, and we may find ourselves at a point where the future investment required is too much (and I'm sure there will be disagreement on when/where that point is). Everything up to then will be a sunk cost, but that outcome doesn't mean it was "wrong" to try or that the original idea could never have been accomplished.

Posted by TakeFlight | April 4, 2008 5:12 PM

There are many reasons for the invasion in the AUMF that don't include "Saddam has 100 mission-ready 10-megaton bombs on a shelf in a warehouse with UPS labels addressed to Washington DC stuck on them" or whatever your threshold for acceptable WMD risk is.

What has this got to do with what I said? Look at my posting of 4/3/08 at 9:34 p.m.

Sov & jayinbmore, I actually agree that the proponents of the war (the administration & congress) bear the burden to demonstrate its "ROI."

I take it then that you also agree that I don't have to prove bupkas, that in fact, demanding that I do so is completely backwards?

Posted by ScentOfViolets | April 4, 2008 6:32 PM

Your whole response is a comment on me not on my statements.

You don't seem to get it: you were wrong. Not a little bit wrong, not justifiably wrong, not well, something like WMD's were found wrong.

No. The official report says no WMD's found. The aministration says the same thing. And when you see "Last night, intelligence officials reaffirmed that the shells were old and were not the suspected weapons of mass destruction sought in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.", that would pretty much clinch it for most people. So everyone but you and a few kooks say so.

So when you try to say otherwise, when you act as if I've got to make you say that you were wrong, otherwise you 'win', well, that's an entirely legitimate topic of discussion.

And I can say it as many times as you reply: you were wrong, you refuse to admit it, and yet you want people to think you are 'responsible' and 'serious'. That's not an insult. That's just the facts.

Just as it's an observation - and not an insult - to say that when you're in the position you're in, behaving as you are now, well, let's just say that most people are going to be a little, shall we say, derisive.

What's really wierd here is that you know that you were wrong, that all you have to do is admit that you were wrong, that admitting you were wrong would actually place you in a stronger position than you are now.

But knowing all this . . . you still can't do it. If you were a simian of a different color, I'd say that you're behaving just like a monkey who's trapped because he won't let go of the banana, and that all he has to do to escape is to let go of the banana.

But I credit you with more self-awareness than that, and I've got to wonder just why you can't do this simple little adult thing. Honestly - and again this is _not_ an insult, but this inability to admit that you're wrong when it's blatantly obvious that you are is, well, pathological.

Posted by ScentOfViolets | April 4, 2008 6:49 PM

Your whole response is a comment on me not on my statements.

You don't seem to get it: you were wrong. Not a little bit wrong, not justifiably wrong, not well, something like WMD's were found wrong. Of course my response is a comment on your statements. Trouble is, because of the way you're behaving, it can't help but be a comment on you as well.

No. The official report says no WMD's found. The aministration says the same thing. And when you see "Last night, intelligence officials reaffirmed that the shells were old and were not the suspected weapons of mass destruction sought in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.", that would pretty much clinch it for most people. Everyone but you and a few kooks say so.

So when you try to say otherwise, when you act as if I've got to make you say that you were wrong, otherwise you 'win', well, that's an entirely legitimate topic of discussion.

And I can say it as many times as you reply: you were wrong, you refuse to admit it, and yet you want people to think you are 'responsible' and 'serious'. That's not an insult. That's just the facts.

Just as it's an observation - and not an insult - to say that when you're in the position you're in, behaving as you are now, well, let's just say that most people are going to be a little, shall we say, derisive.

What's really wierd here is that you know that you were wrong, that all you have to do is admit that you were wrong, that admitting you were wrong would actually place you in a stronger position than you are now.

But knowing all this . . . you still can't do it. If you were a simian of a different color, I'd say that you're behaving just like a monkey who's trapped because he won't let go of the banana, and that all he has to do to escape is to let go of the banana.

But I credit you with more self-awareness than that, and I've got to wonder just why you can't do this simple little adult thing. Honestly - and again this is _not_ an insult - but this inability to admit that you're wrong when it's blatantly obvious that you are is, well, pathological.

Posted by ScentOfViolets | April 4, 2008 6:52 PM

What has this got to do with what I said? Look at my posting of 4/3/08 at 9:34 p.m.

Then let me try to make it more plain. You said:

Given that we invaded Iraq because Saddam supposedly possessed WMD, and that the signing of the AUMF was predicated on the belief that he had them

You (and others) are and arguing as if the whole rationale for the war depended on Iraq having a current stock of usable WMDs. And since you apparently thought that a current stock of usable WMDs didn't ever exist - and we didn't find any - you hold that out as proof that the whole thing was a terrible idea and that the whole rationale colapses. Never mind the other reasons for going. Never mind the other risks & dangers of what we did find or what Saddam might have done - indeed what he intended to do - had we just allowed him to kick out the inspectors and looked the other way.

This just isn't accurate. We invaded for many reasons, among which finding WMD was but one.

You also hold out that CIA report that "says no WMD's found" as further proof, but have you actually read the report? Let me pull out two quotes from it, from pages 47-48, titled Cooperating With UNSCOM While Preserving WMD:

Iraq attempted to balance competing desires to appear to cooperate with the UN and have sanctions lifted, and to preserve the ability to eventually reconstitute its weapons of mass destruction.

Initially, the Iraqi Regime’s deception strategy responded only to the movement and actions of the UN inspectors. From 1991 to 1995, the Iraqis modified their tactics to continue the concealment of proscribed materials. During the early phases of the inspections in 1991, UNSCOM inspectors often gave notice of inspection sites 24 hours in advance of movements. This gave Iraqi officials a day to remove materials, if required. The materials could then be returned when the inspection was complete.

My point, and the point I was trying to make with my admittedly sarcastic post at 4/4 10:17am, was that - far from calling the war into question - it actually confirms the suspicions about how dangerous it would have been to ignore Iraq. But of course, the media summarizes it simply as "no WMD found." No need to read on, MSNBC did our thinking for us.

Please don't tell me you're being misunderstood again...?

I take it then that you also agree that I don't have to prove bupkas, that in fact, demanding that I do so is completely backwards?

No, you don't have to prove anything. Except any assertions you make.

well, let's just say that most people are going to be a little, shall we say, derisive

Speak for yourself, as in fact you are. I think we can dispute and disagree without it.

Posted by TakeFlight | April 4, 2008 8:15 PM

You (and others) are and arguing as if the whole rationale for the war depended on Iraq having a current stock of usable WMDs.

No, I am not. I am saying, quite clearly, quite plainly, that there would not have been a war if people had known Saddam had no WMD's. That's the only reason the AUMF passed, and the folks who voted for it then are on record as saying so (or some variant of this, like they believed Bush would invade only if there was imminent danger of Saddam using WMD's.)

Now, if you want to say that they're not being entirely candid, that they were being opportunists of the most craven kind, that even if they knew that Saddam had no WMD's they still would have voted for the resolution, despite what they say now, fine.

But I rather think the burden of proof is on you to prove otherwise.

That being the case, until you can prove otherwise, I'm going with the assumption that the AUMF would have been voted down.

Posted by ScentOfViolets | April 4, 2008 8:50 PM

I'd also suggest, since you obviously didn't understand what I was saying, that in the future you ask for a clarification.

Posted by ScentOfViolets | April 4, 2008 9:03 PM

I'd also suggest, since you obviously didn't understand what I was saying, that in the future you ask for a clarification.

That's what we're working out. But since you asked...

You: "there would not have been a war if people had known Saddam had no WMD's"

Me re: you: "the whole rationale for the war depended on Iraq having a current stock of usable WMDs"

Please clarify how these are so obviously !=

the only reason the AUMF passed, and the folks who voted for it then are on record as saying so (or some variant of this, like they believed Bush would invade only if there was imminent danger of Saddam using WMD's.)

Oh, so you're saying that you don't believe the AUMF either? That Congress just played along and invented phony reasons because Bush said we were in "imminent danger" of being nuked by an Iraqi bomb?

Could you be so kind as to point me to a quote or two? From before the vote? This is, after all, your assertion, no?

Now, if you want to say that they're not being entirely candid, that they were being opportunists of the most craven kind, that even if they knew that Saddam had no WMD's they still would have voted for the resolution, despite what they say now, fine.

That's exactly what I think, and anyone who follows our politics at all has plenty of reason to not doubt it very much. Especially as they try everything in their power to distance themselves from a now-unpopular decision, and claiming that their decision was predicated on something that we didn't after all find is...well...convenient.

But I rather think the burden of proof is on you to prove otherwise.

When I have finished deposing Congress, I'll get back to you. ;)

Posted by TakeFlight | April 5, 2008 2:15 PM

Uh-huh. Not only do I say this, I tell you exactly where and when the post is so you can read it again, and you missed this:

Given that we invaded Iraq because Saddam supposedly possessed WMD, and that the signing of the AUMF was predicated on the belief that he had them . . . no.

As I say, uh-huh.

Could you be so kind as to point me to a quote or two? From before the vote? This is, after all, your assertion, no?

Stacking the deck a little? No, my assertion is that this was what was said after the invasion. You may disbelieve this, but it's on you to prove to me that this is so. I think we've already agreed upon that :-)

So, to go back to my original posting, after all of this go-around, no, the lack of WMD's was not 'irrelevant',(i.e., 'an even when I'm wrong, I'm still right' Hail Mary from the Usual Suspects.) If it had been known how little evidence there was for Saddam possessing WMD's, and how much there was that he didn't, it's quite possible that the AUMF wouldn't have passed, or would have passed with some of the more stringent riders attached, e.g., Bush would have to explicitly get the approval of Congress before commencing hostilities. And we would have saved over a trillion dollars and the lives of thousands of U.S. servicemen.

So no, hardly 'irrelevant'.

Posted by ScentOfViolets | April 5, 2008 2:37 PM

Am I the only one who remembers Colin Powel's testimony in front of the UN, regarding Iraq's weapons programs? Doesn't this seem kinda a little bit relevant to our decision?

Look, it's always possible that the Administration had some deeper understanding of their reasons for invading Iraq, which they didn't share. In fact, I hope to God there are a lot of people working in the White House and State Department who have deep, carefully reasoned models of the world that leads them to foreign policy decisions that I would simply not understand, since it's not something I've spent my life studying. But all we have to go on is public statements during the lead in to the war with Iraq, in which invasion was justified most strongly on the grounds of a threat to the US, based on alleged availability of WMDs and ties to Al Qaida. Those basically didn't pan out in terms of a threat, as far as anyone can tell today. And those are falsifiable statements that appear to have been falsified, modulo the possibility that we've somehow missed some large and dangerous WMD arsenal during the last several years of occupying Iraq, or that the weapons were all smuggled into Syria, or whatever.

Similarly, the war was sold on the idea that it would not be very difficult--we had massive public support from the Iraqis, we could occupy and reform the place with a fairly small troop presence, we'd be able to run the occupation and reform of Iraq largely on Iraqi oil revenue. Again, those didn't pan out. (It's a genuine tragedy for the Iraqis, and a much smaller one for us, that they didn't pan out. But they didn't.) The Administration fired people for making estimates of the total cost of the war that turned out to be way too low. Rumsfeld threatened to fire people who complained that we weren't sending in enough troops to do the occupation properly.

Now, maybe the war has truly been for the best. We don't have a time machine that lets me check alternative histories, so I can't find out for sure, and neither can anyone else. But what we can find out is whether the official factual claims used to justify the war were correct, and whether the official predictions of how the war would affect the world panned out. Some of them did (the initial invasion was about as easy as we all expected, some parts of Iraq really did greet our troops with candy and flowers, Libya giving up their nuclear program was a very good outcome), most did not (the occupation has been expensive for us and bloody and nasty for Iraq, the Iranian brand of Islamic fundamentalism has become more powerful in the region as a result of what we did, increased democracy in Lebanon hasn't made it more stable, increased democracy for the Palestinians has made a godawful situation even worse, and antidemocratic crackdowns in Saudi Arabia and Egypt are probably keeping two of our more important allies in the area more-or-less on our side.

Posted by albatross | April 5, 2008 3:45 PM

Stacking the deck a little?

It wasn't intended to, but if it does then that only furthers my suspicions. If congress is claiming that they only supported the war because Bush cried "imminent WMD danger", then shouldn't there be ample evidence of this from the time? Wouldn't they have included that in their AUMF? It is, after all, about the absolute best reason to go to war. Why is it only now, after the war has become less popular, that they are claiming this imminent-danger defense? Yes, I call BS.

No, my assertion is that this was what was said after the invasion. You may disbelieve this, but it's on you to prove to me that this is so. I think we've already agreed upon that :-)

Remind me again why your assertion that the AUMF wouldn't have passed is assumed to be true and needs no support, while my response requires proof? Don't worry about it. I concede that we both know that it is impossible for me to prove their actual thoughts at the time, but there certainly is enough evidence to call reasonable doubt on what they're saying now.

Posted by TakeFlight | April 7, 2008 8:58 AM

Sorry, I mangled those last sentences. What I meant to say was that these claims were made well after the invasion (and it's not hard to find them for most representatives), but that if you disbelieve these representatives, it's up to you to show that they're not being honest, not to me to show that they are.

My sense is that back then,if even so much as a single of cannister of gas was found - perhaps due to an inventory cock-up rather than any deliberate intent to decieve - and nothing else, it would have been cited as 'proof' that Saddam had WMD's. And this would have been the message blasted out 24/7 by the MSM.

Don't believe me? Look at the spear-carriers, even now, even after the official report has come out, trying to make the claim that there 'really' were WMD's.

So the people voting on the AUMF, even if they wer e pretty sure that the evidence was untenable at best, were put in a bind: not only did Saddam have to have complied, he had to have complied with 100% no errors. We can't do that tracking uranium here in our own country; how could we expect not-terribly-competant strong-man like Hussein to do better?

Was there opportunism, blatant political calculation, cowardly manueverings as opposed to principled stands? Oh, yes, most probably. But there are some 'principled stands' you can afford to make, and some you can't. At that time, this wasn't one of them.

Posted by ScentOfViolets | April 7, 2008 2:27 PM

I agree that there were no actively dangerous WMDs that Iraq had available for use when we invaded. I also suspect that you are correct that many people who supported the war believed that there were actively available WMDs. However, if you read the long speech that Bush gave before the war and if you read the AUMF, then you will see that there were many reasons for going to war with Iraq that had nothing to do with actively available WMDs.

I am not sympathetic for politicians who claim they were fooled into believing that Iraq had nuclear missiles aimed at Washington, D.C. and that that was the only reason to go to war given the wealth of information out there.

According to the terms of the surrender and the sanctions/resolutions passed by the UN after the first Gulf War, Iraq was to destroy all WMDs and allow the UN to document the destruction. The fact that we found old, pre-war chemical weapon delivery systems shows that Iraq, in fact, failed to live up to this obligation. In addition, Iraq was actively blocking the inspectors from doing their jobs and was doing so in a way that left a potential for quite a bit more stuff to be hidden.

Iraq was also actively shooting at our planes that were enforcing the no-fly zone.

Iraq was actively subverting the Oil for Food program with the help of the UN and other countries to generate funds and buy proscribed equipment.

Iraq had ties to Al Qaeda. The ties were not strong, but they were there and had the potential to strengthen.

Saddam had demonstrated a willingness to use chemical and biological weapons on his own people and on his enemies.

Part of the problem here is that I understood all of the reasons for going to war, including other reasons, such as that something had to be done about the Middle East and invading Iraq would provide us with a base of operations in the middle of the Middle East, would surround Iran with US forces able to attack from two directions, shake up the status quo, etc...

I guess that some of the people that are so anti-war and so angry about it were confused about the reasons and thought that we were going in to stop Saddam from launching Anthrax bombs at the East Coast.

Posted by Earnest Iconoclast | April 8, 2008 12:10 PM

An Unfalsifiable Foreign Policy

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