posted
Pixiest...are you saying you believe the Administration's version of things. They're claiming that Iran has secretly developed weapon's grade nuclear material (>90% pure) whereas the weapons inspectors have stated that Iran is barely able to achieve 5% purity. The gulf between those two levels of technology isn't just "cook it longer" or "spin it for awhile at the end of a string.
I believe Iran desires the capability to develop weapon's grade nuclear material, but if I had to bet on who was telling the truth in this case, I would not choose the Bush Administration. They have a poor track record on this sort of thing. In addition, I think I heard (once again) that our own intel assessments don't support what the Admin is actually saying. Deja vu all over again.
Bush keeps playing this terror card, each time over-stating the threat assessments. The Administration's credibility on this issue is practically nil.
The fact that UN inspectors were right about Iraq should also weigh into the decision of who to trust.
The bigger question is what do we do about it. Even at lower levels of technology, Iran has proven itself to be a dangerous and formidable foe. Taking them on militarily is not unthinkable for the US, but it wouldn't be very easy for us. Our forces are spread too thin as it is. We're actually retrenching in Iraq to concentrate on securing Baghdad, in the process de-prioritizing some of the most troublesome areas where the organized insurgency is most active. In short, our current policy is to let the insurgents have some parts of the country -- at least for now, we've pulled back. We've dropped the ball in Afghanistan (record opium crops are only one symptom of our having bungled that job). Where are we going to get the troops if we decide to fight Iran head on.
So...what exactly should we do about Iran. That's at least part of Blayne's question, I believe. Do we have a hope of working through diplomatic channels to secure the future of Iran as a non-nuclear power? Do we work like mad to develop our intel assets in that country in hopes of being able to destroy their weapons-making capability if it goes too far?
Honestly, what exactly IS the point of the current sabre rattling? The international community isn't biting. Those who followed us down the path in Iraq are less likely to join us this time. Even the British press is concentrating on how little credibility the Bush Administration has, rather than on the threat posed by Iran.
Seriously...President Bush has so bungled the job of his "war on terror" as to make it less likely that other countries will work with us, less likely that we'll be believed, and given our enemies more diplomatic "ammunition" than they have had in all the years of the Islamic state in Iran. I see nothing here but a giant train wreck looming on the horizon unless a radical shift in US foreign policy is implemented soon.
posted
O.K. Blayne's article actually goes into slightly more depth than Tres's article.
Here is my question: why would the Bush administration knowingly lie about this stuff? What's their goal? I just read an article on Slate which basically said that our military is scraping bottom in terms of supplies and manpower. I can't imagine the administration doesn't know this. There is really no way we can hope to invade Iran and keep the lid on Iraq. We're barely doing it now, and I think we all know how important Iraq is to the administration. Why would it knowingly try to provoke a war with Iran that it would almost certainly have to fight by itself?
I think another point that's being missed is that Iran hasn't been very forthcoming and honest with the international community and there is every reason to be cautious. Its reasons for wanting fuel grade nuclear fuel remain unclear, to say the least. Why, in a country awash in oil, does Iran need nuclear power plants, for instance? Why did Iran threaten to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty if it couldn't pursue nuclear fuel? Why has Iran been so obtuse as to bring the UN Security Council close to imposing sanctions on it? When the IAEA itself has admonished Iran in the past?
My point in all of this is that it's not at all clear that it's some paranoid pipe dream cooked up by the Bush administration and that we shouldn't rush to hasty conclusions.
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quote:Here is my question: why would the Bush administration knowingly lie about this stuff? What's their goal?
Mid-term elections.
I'm sorry to be so cynical, but it is a hypothesis that leaps to mind. Fear of terrorism is good for the Republicans. Ramping up that fear in the build-up to mid-term elections could help retain Republican majorities in House & Senate. That also keeps Bush from being as much of a lame duck.
Which brings me to reason #2. The Bush Administration IS fighting to secure his legacy on some level. They have a vested interest in ensuring that "the people" are behind the war effort, and that their message about the necessity of war permeates society. Otherwise, he looks like a lone mad-man trying for dictatorial powers.
He wants to be seen as the President who restored the power and prestige of the Presidency. He needs an UP vote on his proposals to undermine the Geneva Convention protocols, and the warrantless wiretaps, and perhaps a few other things.
He gets those things when the people are more afraid of terrorism than they are of losing their rights as citizens.
My question back, Stormy, is why WOULDN'T he lie? The benefits to him of lying about this are large. The disbenefits are seamingly small (although he does damage America's reputation in the process). It's not as if he's demonstrated himself to be a man of strong faith and integrity -- he has claimed to be one, but it hasn't actually panned out that way.
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posted
Its not entirely clear where this report is from. I suspect we're talking about an internal committee report compiled by some legislative aides who thought teh intarwebs and gossip were an acceptable source of information.
Still a major problem, as congressional committees help shape policy based on such reports, but it would have nothing to do with the Bush administration.
Ah, yep, found another source:
quote:The 29-page report was authored by the staff of a panel subcommittee and was never discussed or voted on by the full 21-member House Intelligence Committee.
So just to be clear, the problems aren't US lies, they're incompetence in hiring by US elected officials.
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posted
Well...if you're looking for root causes...I would add incompetence in hiring by the American electorate.
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posted
One of my random thoughts has been that we should really pass a law making any spoken words to the public by an elected official count as being made under oath. That is, if you lie to the american public, as an elected official,you can be tried for perjury.
Chances of that law ever being passed? Zero.
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quote:Originally posted by Paul Goldner: One of my random thoughts has been that we should really pass a law making any spoken words to the public by an elected official count as being made under oath. That is, if you lie to the american public, as an elected official,you can be tried for perjury.
Chances of that law ever being passed? Zero.
Nice idea. Not only would it never be passed, it could it never be enforced. Words are slippery in the hands of slick politicians. They will say that they spoke of things to the best of their knowledge. It would quite difficult to prove they knowingly spoke a falsehood.
"I really thought Iraq had WMD's"
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This whole Iranian nuclear thingy SHOULD be a tempest in a teacup. On the face of it, Iran is trying to utilize its native uranium resources to power nu-q-lar power generators, so that it can sell more oil to overseas buyers rather than wasting it on their own power requirements.
Combine that with how many decades Iran has been "a couple of years away from having atomic bombs", and this whole Iran/uranium thing plays out as run-of-the-mill election-year fearmongering.
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posted
It could be that the entire Iranian program is a smokescreen to allow them to claim weapons grade plutonium purchased elsewhere is of native production. That process would require both refinement and a uranium pile somewhere that we could detect, so perhaps they mean to try for a uranium bomb after all.
There are plenty of anti Semitic forces in the old eastern bloc that would not weep over the death of Israel if it was untraceable to them.
The fact remains that the current administration has a realistic view that it needs to approach Iran's regime change in a less direct manner then that of Iraq. There is some promising internal dissension and more fear in Europe and more mistrust in the Middle East to exploit before provoking a direct invasion. I do not think the Bush administration expects the war with Iran to start without a massive provocation. However they do not want to be the ones who failed to predict the event after the fact. Being ready when Iran passes from rhetoric into action only makes sense.
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Palliard: Iran has every right to build lots of nuclear power plants, and they get good deals on all the nuclear material they need to run them, until recently, when they started trying to build the infrastructure to make that material, which isn't cost-effective until you're supplying dozens of reactors, or if you want to build bombs.
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quote:There is some promising internal dissension and more fear in Europe and more mistrust in the Middle East to exploit before provoking a direct invasion.
Wow. And here I thought I was cynical.
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The administration has been completely open about its goal of a new regime in Iran, it is naive to not look at the differences in this situation that work to our advantage. We have a pretty good hand of cards in a fight with Iran, including a military force that might stand and fight us too its destruction.
Lets face the truth, while our troops are ill equipped to act as police in Iraq (though they are doing an incredible job) they are very good at destroying other armies. What is not enough for a police force is enough to win a conventional war.
Iran wants WMD's so it can bully the region and hold China, Russia and the US hostage by controlling oil production and pricing. Its people have had their desire to participate more fully in the modern world thwarted by their leaderships cynical need to be a global power.
If we take the position that war is the political tool of last resort then we must accept that many of the other arrows in the political quiver are much less honest and more cynical then open war. There is a reason why old generals call battle clean compared to political manipulation.
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quote:If we take the position that war is the political tool of last resort then we must accept that many of the other arrows in the political quiver are much less honest and more cynical then open war.
I think you've skipped a step in the logic here.
It seems to me that it is possible to view war as a tool of last resort (I don't exactly condone war as a political tool as you put it), and still avoid accepting that other "arrows in the quiver" are less honest and more cynical. I think you are being unnecessarily cynical. And I think the Administration is emphasizing fear over truth for reasons that suit the Administration, not the needs of America.
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I think the problem with the UN's track record is almost the opposite of the US.
Looking back at just Iraq, we were wrong about the intelligence, and we attacked. The UN thought the same thing as us and they did nothing. Many of the UN think that Iran (including France) is up to no good, but again seem unwilling to do anything about it. It doesn't matter if the US or the UN are right or wrong, regardless, the US will do what it wants, and invariably the UN will do NOTHING.
Hence the gulf between us. We don't trust them becuase they never seem inclined to do anything more than pass resolutions and wait it out, and they don't trust us because we're so quick to draw our guns. And I don't see a middle ground to reestablish trust.
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posted
Isn't that a little paranoid? If anything this administration has been remarkably predictable and true to its stated goals, the only ones that have a right to complain about Bush are fiscal conservatives and those on the right who have expected greater reform in courts (an end to legislation flowing from the bench) and an end to the massacre of the unborn. In the one case the cost of the war is overshadowing all else and the other the fight is ongoing.
There is the huge tendency to think George W Bush is on some endless power trip to dominate American life forever, when he really has two years to make a mark and then pass on the reigns to the next President, whoever he may be.
It is a case of crying wolf so much that the people who are doing it are actually fooling themselves into believing it. Somehow the hype has become dogma and that is the real danger.
As for war not being a so called political tool, it is strange that anybody would not know that war is a tool of politics, it is like being blind to history.
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posted
Brussels would be a good middle ground, let the UN move there and stop living off the hospitality of a nation it despises.
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Sanctions, investigators, diplomacy were all operating in Iraq's case. Reluctance to go further was justified in part because the alternative involves killing people and having our people be killed -- steps that SHOULD take a long time to reach consensus about because once you do them, there's no turning back (as we are finding, once again...)
The UN may be slow, but if I had to tally the costs of their delays versus our war, I think they still come out ahead in terms of lives that are now snuffed out.
We'll never really know if Iraq might've used more time under UN sanctions to develop a REAL WMD capability and then used it on US citizens, so I can see where some people might still feel that this war saves American lives, but they'd have an awfully hard time proving it. And, by their logic, we should kill children born into demographic categories that put them at higher probability to become murderers.
Heck, let's extend that logic even further (I know you aren't saying this, btw) and play the probabilities to the hilt. We'll just rank-order all the countries of the world by which ones are most likely to kill Americans in the future and then we can just knock them off (oh, sorry, practice regime-change on them) in order.
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posted
I think that your hyperbole is ignoring the rise in economic opportunity and growth, information dissemination, infrastructure improvement and educational opportunities in Iraq, as well as the end of massacres perpetrated by the former Iraqi regime and the end of the ongoing systematic corruption of our allies and the UN through the Oil for Food program. Saddam was well on his way to buying himself out of sanctions and into the big game again. We ended that threat forever. I have even seen advertisements for tours to Kurdistan in northern Iraq, imagine, tourism to Iraq! See the sight of ten WMD attacks against minorities in seven days!
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G.S.: If you think that war was the only way to solve those problems, then you are the one engaging in hyperbole, not me.
And...there's a huge difference (to me) of Saddam being a killer and our troops killing and being killed. There's also a huge difference to future generations of terrorist recruits.
I was all for "regime change" in Iraq. Saddam was a horrid person -- one our goverment helped over the years, I might add. The circuitous justice of taking out the monster we helped create is tempting, but still insufficient cause for war. And, let's be frank, the US did not urge the UN to take violent action in Iraq for humanitarian reasons. The right wing in this country was not wringing its hands over the fate of Turks in Northern Iraq. We didn't rush in to save them and we didn't use the plight of oppressed Iraqi citizens as a justification in front of the UN or the American people.
The UN's sanctions were not the cause of Iraq's body count and those deaths aren't to be laid at their feet. Upon starting a pre-emptive war, the deaths of innocent Iraqis and US soldiers are, at least in part, the moral responsibility of the American people.
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"There can be no doubt that our overwhelming force brought to bear saved lives in Iraq."
Except that, apparently more people have died in iraq since we invaded then would have died had saddam remained in power.
Posts: 4112 | Registered: May 2001
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quote:Originally posted by General Sax: The most expensive state in terms of human life in a conflict is a stalmate, 1.1 million Iraqi's and Iranians died in a prolonged "even" fight.
Hmm...interesting observation in light of our recent de-emphasis of areas in Iraq other than Bhagdad. So, basically, we're involved in a prolonged fight against insurgents and they have managed to make that fight so diffuse throughout Iraq that they are forcing us to decide which areas to continue to defend and which to basically hand over to the insurgents.
I would call Iraq a success if the initial incursion had actually been the end of the fighting, rather than the prelude to what looks more and more like a stalemate.
posted
I dont think you can say because more people died than if Saddam had remained in power Iraq was a bad idea. This is not a math equation.
I am sure more people died in the revolutionary war than deaths the British were responsible for pre-revolution. But the American revolution was still a good thing.
The action in Iraq is a promise of something better for people in the future.
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Sanctions, investigators, diplomacy were all operating in Iraq's case. Reluctance to go further was justified in part because the alternative involves killing people and having our people be killed -- steps that SHOULD take a long time to reach consensus about because once you do them, there's no turning back (as we are finding, once again...)
The UN may be slow, but if I had to tally the costs of their delays versus our war, I think they still come out ahead in terms of lives that are now snuffed out.
We'll never really know if Iraq might've used more time under UN sanctions to develop a REAL WMD capability and then used it on US citizens, so I can see where some people might still feel that this war saves American lives, but they'd have an awfully hard time proving it. And, by their logic, we should kill children born into demographic categories that put them at higher probability to become murderers.
When Iraq kicked out the first set of weapons inspectors the UN did nothing. When Saddam gassed Kurds, the UN did nothing. The US forced Saddam back to the table on weapons inspectors, the US created no fly zones to protects the Kurds, and afterwards they enjoyed an immense degree of freedom, autonomy, and safety from Saddam.
We never gave the UN a chance to work this time around. We let their inspectors in for like a week and a half, declared them ineffective and left. Ridiculous. We should have argued that the inspectors bs greatly increased in number and then given time to do their job. Between satellite surveillance and other intel assets we would have known is Saddam moved anything overland between or before inspections. They were never given time to do what they were sent there to do.
That's part of why I think the UN is right not to trust us. We pretended to play their game in order to gain world support, but we didn't even play it long enough for it to appear that our interest was genuine, we brushed them aside and rushed into war. Saddam could have been contained, and if necessary, removed surgically. When going after a tumor, you surgically remove it, you don't evicerate the entire body in an attempt to get at it.
I guess I'm arguing both sides. The UN has a history of letting wrongs go uncorrected, specifically a record of doing so in Iraq. The US has a history of stepping in when the UN won't, regardless of the trouble it causes them, but that also includes creating bigger messes than were there before they arrived.
So when the IAEA calls the US liars, they are believed, given the history of the issue. When the US calls the UN a "do nothing" organization, and Bush says Americans are "frustrated" with them, it's also correct, given the history. Neither side is without guilt I believe.
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posted
The UN does an immense amount of good around the world.
The only place it really fails is, ironically, world diplomacy, laregely. But when it comes to a host of other issues, the UN functions very well. But the fact that it can't enforce any decision it makes heavily limits the amount of good it can do, or the amount of damage it can do to the US.
The UN needs to be empowered, and broadened, not eliminated. But that will never happen, as the rise of UN power means the decline of US power, or at least the appearance of same, which to us might be just as bad.
I might also add Stan, that what you're saying equates to "The UN doesn't serve our interests, so let's axe it." It's an incredibly Ameri-centric thing to say. Sure it might not serve OUR needs, but what about the rest of the world?
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