About Iraq.
This post, over at Lex’s place kind of set me off. Quoting from an article in the New York Post which summarizes Saddam’s mindset as related to what he thought the US would do in the lead up to the invasion.
Piro, a Lebanese-American and one of the few FBI agents who spoke Arabic, was assigned to debrief Saddam after his December 2003 capture. He ended up spending seven months in the interviews, winning the dictator’s confidence along the way.
When it became clear that the US military was about to come marching in, Saddam asked his generals if they could hold the coalition off for two weeks, “and at that point, it would go into what he called the secret war” – a reference to the insurgency.
Even then, the Butcher of Baghdad still wouldn’t admit that he had no WMDs.
“For him, it was critical that he was seen as still the strong and defiant Saddam,” said Piro. “He thought that [faking having the weapons] would prevent the Iranians from reinvading Iraq.”
The two countries fought a bitter war from 1980 to 1988 that took over 1 million lives.
And Piro tells CBS correspondent Scott Pelley that Saddam still had the resources and intentions to restart the weapons program.
“[Saddam] still had the engineers. The folks that he needed to reconstitute his program are still there,” said Piro. “He wanted to pursue all of WMD . . . to reconstitute his entire WMD program.”
According to Piro, the “entire program” included chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
There is a subtext here that just really bothers me, and as you read blogs that support the war in Iraq it always comes through with a thought like this: “See, we were right to go into Iraq. Even if Saddam had no WMD’s he wanted them and that was reason enough. Now that the surge is succeeding it makes it all right that we have been tied down Iraq for years and years. Victory will be ours!”
It bothers me for several reasons.
First, its clear Saddam was a bad guy. And that he badly fiddled with his country’s future. However he’s not the only such person in the world-he had plenty of company. And still does. So what was it that made him worthy of special consideration?
Here is where the WMD’s come in. He could not be allowed to have them. Even though, Iraq was a soverign nation, however badly misgoverned, and from an Iraqi standpoint it actually made a certain amount of sense-they were a deterent effect on Iraq’s two biggest enemies Iran and the United States.
Now comes the neo con doctrine of pre-emption. Basically, the United States appropriates unto itself the right to divine intention and if judged to have intentions that would threaten the US , then it gives the US the right to invade you first. OK fine-however why does it come as an open ended commitment?
Which, if you listen carefully to all the politicians on the Republican side is exactly what they are saying we have-year after year of American troops serving in that hell hole. What really makes me mad is hearing it compared to Korea or Japan. What a crock of U-know -what.
First, the Koreans and Japanese actually built countries that work. Second they pay a lot of the bill for our presence. Third they have women we can date and beer we can drink-and even at that- the US is trying to get both nations to take more responsibility for their own defense. Plus the total number of troops in all the other locations does not equal what we have committed to Iraq.
My position on Iraq comes down to one sentence: “Fuck the Iraqis!”.
Screw them and their worthless religion, their stupid tribalism, their wierd dirty clothing and all that goes with it. Its the 21st century-the US is in a competitive market now and it has to do what is right for itself. And no matter what amount of effort we expend-the Arabs are not, and will not be our friends. Ever. Their purpose and reason for existence is to sell the west oil and , was until the 1950’s, to be ruled by Europeans for their own protection.
When they abandon Islam and let women wear the mini-skirt come talk to me. Till then, I have very little hope for them.
Unlike Japan and Korea, there is no clear cut victory in Iraq. Even if Iraq settles down tomorrow, it has yet to show the wherewithal to exist as anything but another third world country. It should tell us all something that the most advanced nations in the region are monarchies.
And in the end we will have given them a modern army, with no guarantee that it will not be misused when another strongman will come to power-something I predict will occur in a few years.
So yea, I’m worried about the economy. However make no mistake about it-I’m going to think hard when I vote this year about who will get us out of this useless excuse of Arabia.
Saddam is gone, our work is done. If we want to stay in the middle east, we at least should have the decency to pay the bill-by making the Army 800,000 MEN. However you will notice John, I love the war McCain has not yet publically accepted that fact. He even denied it in the debate in S.C.
He said he knew of no generals who were saying the armed forces needed to be bigger.
Guess he does not listen to the Army Chief of Staff.
But Mc Cain has company in that neither does the President.
Here endeth the rant.