but I can tell you the article is for the most part, just one long series of wishful thinking assumptions and amateurish attempts at rewriting history.
First off this idea that Iraq/Saddam Hussein was a threat to the U.S. is a red herring:
- Saddam Hussein possessed a pathetic third world army with 70's and earlier vintage Soviet equipment. His rank and file, mostly conscript, military was under-trained and demoralized.
- There is no proof that Saddam Hussein ever attempted or planned an attack on the U.S. using WMDs.
- A common mistake in assessing his Pre-war threat status is that his possession of WMDs meant he was going to attack the U.S.. Wrong. Possession of a weapon does not mean intent to use it. Ask an American gun owner.
- If Saddam Hussein did have WMDs and the intent to use them, there is no evidence that he had the means to deliver them.
- In 2001 both Condi Rice and Powell declared that sanctions and no-fly zones were working and that Saddam Hussein had no WMDs.
The idea that ''everyone'' thought that Saddam had WMDs is demonstrably false. The CIA was by no means convinced or unanimous that Saddam had any WMDs.
Tyler Drumheller the CIA's top man in Europe, the head of covert operations there, until he retired a year ago has said that Bush ignored intelligence that contradicted his desire that Saddam have WMDs and that many CIA analysts were skeptical of the Iraq/WMD business.
Drumheller also states that a trusted high-level source inside Saddam's regime said that there was no WMD program.
Drumheller said the ''Policy was set''.
The policy was indeed set as the Downing street memos show
-Rolf Ekeus head of the U.N. inspection team that left Iraq in 2000 said ''There are no large quantities of weapons [in Iraq]''
-The DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
STUDY ON IRAQ'S CHEMICAL WEAPONS PROGRAM states:
''There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or where Iraq has -- or will -- establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities
-The Iraq-Niger-Uranium story has long since been laid to rest.
-The aluminum tubes were not proof of a nuclear program as anybody with knowledge of the subject could have seen.
-Bush/Cheney tried to claim that Saddam had fired up a nuclear weapons program. The claim was false as the IAEA report to UN Security Council ? 3/7/2003 makes clear:?The IAEA had found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq.''
-CIA reports up through 2002 showed no evidence of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program
-Richard Clarke, former top anti-terrorism adviser, has said President Bush ordered him to look for a link between Iraq and 911, despite being told there really wasn't one.
-Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary stated in 2003 that Blair knew Saddam had no WMDs
The article makes this claim:
>>>The Kurds would remain in perpetual danger<<<
They still are. The Turks are very nervous about the possibility of a Kurdish state being created and the enormous potential for a civil war in Turkey that would result. Only threats from the U.S. keep the Turks from invading the Kurdish region in Iraq.
- Under the no-fly zone regime the Kurds were in no danger from Saddam Hussein. Any time Saddam Hussein moved his troops into the Kurd region the U.S. and Brits were all over him. IN fact, under Saddam the Kurds enjoyed a good degree of autonomy as a result of the no-fly zones.
Regarding the welfare of the Shia, the article makes this claim:
>>>The Shiites would simply be harvested yearly, in quiet, by Saddam?s police state.<<<
Not exactly. According to the world Bank the pop. growth of Iraq was a robust 3.25% avg. over the course of the height of Saddam's tyranny. That means Shia may have been mistreated and abused but not murdered wholesale as we are often lead to believe. Unless of course someone is prepared to argue that the Iraq's pop. growth was only in the Sunni area that Saddam did not tyrannize. In which case you would have a much much larger Sunni population in Iraq than you do now.
- Many Shia were not affected adversely by Saddam Hussein. Many had cut sweet deals with Saddam Hussein, for example farming families. Many middle class Shia in fact supported Saddam Hussein because of his secular approach to government.
The author claims the U.S. invasion of Iraq led to good things in the region:
The article claims that Ghaddafi abandoned his missile and WMD projects because of the U.S. invasion of Iraq:
>>>Moammar Khaddafi would be starting up his centrifuges and adding to his chemical weapons depots<<<
Perhaps. It is reasonable to suggest that the U.S. cut a sweet deal with Khaddafi in exchange for his abandoning these programs. Neither the U.S. or the Libyans have ever said publicly what actually went into this arrangement. And make no mistake, Khadaffi is no friend of the U.S.
The article claims>>>Syria would still be in Lebanon<<< if the U.S. had not invaded Iraq.
This one's just wrong. The Syrians left Lebanon in 2005 after mass demonstrations in Beirut (and elsewhere) and intense unrelenting pressure from the international community in the wake of the Feb. 14 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri for which the Syrians were (IMO unfairly) blamed.
The other problem with arguing that the U.S. achieved any foreign policy successes as a result of its invasion of Iraq is that it assumes the U.S. military is a credible threat to countries in the region. It is not a credible threat to any country in the region.
The U.S. military is in over its head in Iraq. The U.S. military controls the ground under its feet in Iraq and that's it. In fact, I (and others) would argue that the U.S. is not so much an occupying force in Iraq but rather just one of the players in Iraq.
It has no answer to the insurgency in Iraq, an insurgency the US military describes as increasingly deadly and sophisticated. It can not stop the simmering civil war there. It can not stop the militias or the banditry. It can not secure the Iraqi borders. It can not secure vast areas of Iraq. By all accounts the U.S. is short some 50,000 to 200,000 troops at least in Iraq. Any military historian will tell you that trying to occupy a hostile country the size of Iraq in a hostile region requires at least 3-400,000 troops.
To top it all off, Baghdad itself, the county's capital city for god's sake, is and is repeatedly cut off from the rest of the country by insurgents. Quite often the only way in or out of Baghdad is by air transport.
The idea that there was ever a terrorist connection somewhere in Iraq is wrong. The article claims:>>>Moreover, the American military took the war against radical Islam right to its heart in the ancient caliphate<<<
This is pure historical and cultural ignorance. Iraq has never been the heart of radical Islam. There is no evidence of this. Iraqi Islam was and is largely moderate. The Iraqi people never harbored any terrorists. There is no proof of this. Saddam had nothing to do with 911. Bush himself said so. Anybody that studies this issue knows that the ''hotbeds'' of terrorism in the region are Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and Syria with its huge arsenal of WMDs which is why so many of us were shaking our head when the U.S. invaded Iraq.
The idea that Al-Qaeda is so inept and disorganized that it couldn't simultaneously cause trouble in Iraq and continue to target the U.S. is false. According to various U.S. officials and reports Al-Qaeda is well led, has a global reach and possesses large quantities of cash, materiel, and manpower. For the invasion of Iraq to be justified on the grounds that it was a terror threat, Iraq should have been the major player in the terror game. It wasn't; not even close.
Spare me the sanctimony of the ''how great we are for getting rid of Saddam'' argument.
The U.S. created Saddam. The U.S. funded Saddam. The U.S. coddled Saddam all through the 70's and 80's. The U.S. betrayed Saddam when it gave him the go-ahead to invade Kuwait in 1990-91 and then turned around and attacked him.
Spare me the ''wonders'' of this new government in Iraq. They still, after all this time, can't even decide on a Defence Minister or a Minister of the Interior. This new government is a recipe for civil war not civil order. The Shia and the Sunni and the Kurds hate each other.
What has this government got to do with the violent chaos on the ground? Hello? Iraq is violent chaos. It is nowhere near a democracy of any kind not even a nascent democracy. What has the creation of this ''government'' changed on the ground? What has the creation of this ''government'' got to do with the reality on the ground? Waht has this governemnt got to rule over? Answer? Nothing.
Car bombs, roadside bombs, IEDs, banditry, gangs, gang lands, militias, militias with their own prisons and courts, death squads acting 'within the structures' of the interior ministry, a burgeoning civil war, unguarded open borders with hostile and otherwise unfriendly nations, broken down hospitals and health care in general, 1-4 hours of power a day if you're lucky, a corrupt and incompetent '' reconstruction'' program, vast swathes of the country contaminated and irradiated by depleted uranium and god knows what else, a decreasing rate of population growth, a corrupt and inadequate police and military, and an all too often hostile occupying U.S. force whose soldiers fire in all directions into civilians whenever a bomb goes off or they are attacked. I assure you Haditha is not an isolated case. These are the realities of Iraq. Not some pie in the sky newly formed incomplete government.
- Let's not forget the minimum figure of 100,00 dead Iraqis at the hands of the U.S. either directly through gunfire and bombs or through other violence related to the occupation. The U.S. as the occupying power is solely responsible for the well being of the citizens of Iraq. There's no passing the buck on this one.
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