May 19, 2008 • Vol. 13, No. 34
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From Hoyer press statement on the President's Iraq speech, November 30, 2005:
I believe that a precipitous withdrawal of American forces in Iraq could lead to disaster, spawning a civil war, fostering a haven for terrorists and damaging our nation's security and credibility.
Bush Attempts Hard Sell on Iraq Progress
By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer
Wed Nov 30, 1:57 PM ET
President Bush's depiction of Iraqi security forces as "helping to turn the tide" is difficult to square with persistent setbacks in handing control of the country back to its own people.
His suggestion that Americans are solidly behind the mission also understates opposition at home, and his hard sell on the rising quality of Iraqi forces overlooks complexities on the ground.
Bush on Wednesday declared the Iraqi army and police forces are "increasingly taking the lead in the fight against the terrorists," even as recruits patrol Iraq's most violent cities barely three months after learning how to use weapons and police forces struggle to get officers to come to work.
The president, in a major speech on Iraq war aims and in an accompanying strategy paper, acknowledged all has not gone as planned, speaking several times of a need for "adjustments" along the way.
Still, the White House paper cited a number of positive statistics on the recovery of the Iraq economy, asserting "our restore, reform, build strategy is achieving results."
The International Monetary Fund, in its latest World Economic Outlook, in September, issued a more sobering view.
"The new government faces daunting medium-term challenges, including advancing the reconstruction of the country's infrastructure, reducing macroeconomic instability and developing the institutions that can support a market-based economy," the survey stated.
The IMF staff cited a "volatile security situation" as one of the biggest challenges and said only "slow progress" had been made in restoring Iraq oil production to prewar levels.
Bush, making his remarks at the U.S. Naval Academy, spoke as if the debate about Iraq were limited to Washington and only politicians were questioning the mission.
"When you're risking your life to accomplish a mission, the last thing you want to hear is that mission being questioned in our nation's capital," he told cadets. "I want you to know that, while there may be a lot of heated rhetoric in Washington, D.C., one thing is not in dispute: The American people stand behind you."
Bush's public standing and support for the war have declined. In an AP-Ipsos poll taken in November, 62 percent said they disapproved of his Iraq policy,and his overall job approval rating dropped to 37 percent, the lowest level of his presidency.
The president spoke of "an increased focus on leadership training" to build a core of midlevel and higher ranking officers needed to guide and lead an Iraqi force that can operate on its own.
It takes years to develop a strong officer core, and the process has been a particular struggle in Iraq. The deficiency was highlighted recently when Iraqis put out a call for more former officers from Saddam Hussein's army to rejoin the armed forces. Bush did caution it would take "time and patience" to train enough Iraqi forces to carry the fight.
"As the Iraqi forces grow in number, they're helping to keep a better hold on the cities taken from the enemy," he said.
Indeed, large Shiite cities in the south now are largely controlled by Iraqi forces. But throughout central and northern Iraq, cities that are either Sunni Arab or ethnically or religiously mixed have proved more difficult to stabilize.
In Samarra, only 100 of the 700 police on the city payroll are showing up for work most days, even as U.S. soldiers prepare this week to turn over control of the inner city to Iraqi forces. The Americans tried twice before to do that in the city of 200,000 but failed when insurgents moved against police.
As he did before the invasion, Bush tied Iraq to terrorism, to make the case that a stable Iraq would make for a safer America.
He declared, "The terrorists have made it clear that Iraq is the central front in their war against humanity. And so we must recognize Iraq as the central front in the war on terror."
Iraq was not, however, the terrorists' chosen battlefield until Saddam was defeated and extremists poured across unsecured borders.
Associated Press writer Pauline Jelinek contributed to this story
"A U.S. withdrawal would likely lead to carnage on a scale that would dwarf what is now occurring in Iraq."
The House Minority Whip formed a group a few months back "to shape the Democratic strategy on national security issues and battle perceptions that the party is weak on defense," reported Roll Call in September.
The rollout of the defense blueprint by Hoyer and his team comes just as some of the Caucus’ left-leaning Democrats are becoming ever more vocal about their opposition to the war in Iraq and heightening their call to bring U.S. forces home. Some of those Members will participate in an ad hoc hearing today to discuss ways to end the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. A coalition of liberal groups, meanwhile, will hold a major rally advocating troop withdrawal just across town....
The No. 2 House Democrat, a moderate who supported U.S. involvement in Iraq, said he believes Democrats lost the “national election because of national security” and because of a “lack of confidence of the American public.” He added that many voters had doubts that Kerry and the Democrats were committed to defeating terrorism.
Do the other members of the Hoyer group agree with Pelosi?
Democratic Reps.
Adam Schiff (CA)
Jane Harman (CA)
Ike Skelton (MO)
John Spratt (SC)
Ellen Tauscher (CA)
Chet Edwards (TX)
Dennis Cardoza (CA)
Jim Cooper (TN)
Norm Dicks (WA)
Howard Berman (CA)
Solomon Ortiz (TX),
Silvestre Reyes (TX)
Robert Andrews (NJ)
From Roll Call moments ago:
Pelosi Backs Murtha Call for U.S. Withdrawal
By Erin P. Billings
Roll Call Staff
Wednesday, Nov. 30
In a move likely to cause a stir among members of her divided Democratic Caucus, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) on Wednesday endorsed fellow Democratic Rep. John Murtha’s (Pa.) recent call to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq as soon as possible....
“This announcement is going to divide the Caucus,” the staffer said. “It would have been more helpful to focus on where all Democrats agree that the president has made major mistakes and changes need to be made. Instead the focus is now going to be this division to the detriment of our vulnerable Members and candidates.”
Pelosi also released the following press statement:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 30, 2005
Pelosi: ‘The President Has Dug Us into a Deep Hole in Iraq; It Is Time for Him to Stop Digging’
Washington, D.C. – House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi held a news conference today in response to President Bush’s speech on Iraq. Her remarks are below:
"What we heard today was a commitment to the status quo – a status quo that is not working.
"The ‘Plan for Victory’ backdrop against which the President appeared at the Naval Academy today was no more accurate than the ‘Mission Accomplished’ backdrop he used over two and a half years ago on the USS Abraham Lincoln.
"The President did not have a plan for victory when he went into his war of choice in Iraq, and he did not have a plan for victory today.
"The American people expected that the President would do more today than just put a new cover and 35 pages of rhetoric on old sound bites. What the American people wanted from the President today was some evidence that he has heard their concerns.
"Clearly, the President fails to understand that a new course is needed in Iraq. The President has dug us into a deep hole in Iraq; it is time for him to stop digging.
"He offered a status quo plan that would not accelerate the training of Iraqi security forces, would not motivate Iraqis to assume security responsibilities more quickly and bring American troops home.
"Instead, he suggested that we send more troops and spend more money in Iraq. That is not what the American people want.
"The President says that the security situation in Iraq is getting better. But just because the President says it, does not make it so.
"226 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq in just the last three months. The Generals have told us that the presence of large numbers of U.S. forces in Iraq encourages the insurgents. The President provided no specifics on how, or when, the number of troops will be reduced.
"With more than 2,100 American soldiers killed, thousands more wounded grievously, and hundreds of billions of dollars spent, the President owes the American people more than he provided today.
"We should follow the lead of Congressman John Murtha, who has put forth a plan to make America safer, to make our military stronger, and to make Iraq more stable. That is what the American people and our troops deserve."
The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting piece on Chinese espionage methods inside the United States.
China has spent more than two decades creating a large and varied intelligence infrastructure in the United States, according to US counterintelligence documents. High-profile prosecutions in recent years related to alleged Chinese espionage may merely hint at the depth and breadth of China's collection efforts....
Recent cases involving the People's Republic of China (PRC) "are just the tip of the iceberg of an already-large and increasingly capable PRC intelligence effort," concludes a US government Intelligence Threat Handbook, an unclassified manual for security officers produced by an arm of the National Security Agency.
John Pike explains in today's Los Angeles Times.
The Defeatniks at Moveon.org may want to look at this before cutting a commercial on this.
It's easy to forget that Senator Ted Kennedy & Company tried their best to defeat the resolution authorizing force to kick Saddam out of Kuwait. It's easy to forget that Iraq had passed frequent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections designed to ensure its compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or that its Manhattan Project-sized nuclear program went undetected by US intelligence. It's also easy to forget just how skilled Saddam became at deception post-Osirak.
Some history --
Iraq ratified the NPT in 1969. Twelve year later, Israel bombed the Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad. According to the June 22, 1981 Newsweek,
[t]he Osirak reactor was theoretically only for research purposes—but Iraq twice refused a French offer to supply it with low-enriched uranium, insisting instead on weapons-grade, 93 per cent enriched fuel. Iraq was also operating an Italian-built “hot cell” lab for extracting plutonium, and had arranged to buy large quantities of uranium from Brazil, Portugal and Niger—all without any investment in a nuclear-energy program.
In his 2002 book, The Threatening Storm, Clinton NSC official Kenneth Pollack wrote that Osirak “was the key to Saddam’s nuclear weapons program and ... was due to go online within a matter of weeks.” The bombing set Iraq’s “nuclear bomb program back by several years,” but it also “taught the Iraqis an important lesson. Thereafter, Saddam ordered a redoubling of the Iraqi program...camouflaged against detection.” (Pollack would subsequently note this regarding Saddam's nuclear program.)
After the Osirak attack, Iraq would pursue a secret nuclear weapons program that had gone undetected by Western intelligence and the IAEA until after the 1991 Gulf War. As former U.N. inspector David Kay wrote in a 1995 Washington Quarterly piece, Iraq would pursue this program while maintaining “its status as a full member” of the NPT because it was “the desire of the military and security services not to attract any undue attention to Iraq’s developing nuclear program that would complicate procurement and development efforts.”
The fact that Hussein was able to conceal his nuclear program was even more remarkable given that: 1) as the Washington Post noted in October 1991, the “scope and sophistication” of its program “resembled the Manhattan Project, the American effort that produced the first atomic bomb”; and 2) Iraq had passed regular inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
On August 11, 1991, the Post reported that:
International inspectors...unearthed one of the most important—and disturbing—finds of the post-Cold War era: a huge assembly line for the covert manufacture of equipment to make an Iraqi bomb.
The location of the sophisticated, secret factory for manufacturing hundreds of uranium gas centrifuges was unknown to any foreign intelligence agency despite intense scrutiny and untouched by five weeks of severe aerial bombardment during the Gulf War that supposedly eviscerated the Iraqi nuclear project. As such, it is a monument to the world’s ignorance about what a determined bomb-builder such as Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein can do.
The factory was a key component in Iraq’s elaborate highly redundant and largely secret network of physics, chemistry and metallurgical laboratories, industrial mines, metalworking factories, electrical power generators, nuclear research reactors and radioactive waste processing sites—all aimed at swiftly putting a nuclear weapon in the hands of one of the world’s most ruthless leaders.
The Post also reported:
Despite repeated warnings and Saddam’s own public statements, Western experts consistently underestimated Iraq’s scientific and technical capabilities. Inspection officials now believe Iraq was only 12 to 18 months from producing its first bomb, not five to 10 years as previously thought.
Kay wrote that Iraq hid its program by keeping it “heavily compartmentalized” and employing a variety of deception techniques. For example, Iraq created a network of front companies to import nuclear-related materials “in quantities that were below the size that triggered controls.” Equipment was imported ostensibly for civilian purposes but was diverted to the nuclear program as well. (see here for UNMOVIC May 2003 report on Iraq's attempt to "conceal the extent of its import activities and to preserve its importing networks" for missiles, chems & bios)
The Iraqis, Kay continued, had an “accurate understanding of the limitations of U.S. technical collection systems...” and exploited these vulnerabilities through various methods, including:
construction of buildings within buildings...
hiding power and water feeds to mislead as to facility use...
diminishing value of a facility by apparent low security and lack of defenses...
moving critical pieces of equipment at night....
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero hosted a European-Mediterranean summit that ends "with a murmur." From the Los Angeles Times:
The desperation of the summit hosts to achieve agreement, any agreement, was revealed during a break in deliberations. A microphone had been left on near Zapatero, and a top aide complained to him that the Israelis were intractable and that the other members were "ready to throw in the towel."
Zapatero responded: "We must close this! Any way possible!"
Today's Wall Street Journal has an excellent piece, "Our Troops Must Stay," by Senator Lieberman who just returned from Iraq.
Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity. The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And yet here, too, there is progress....
Before going to Iraq last week, I visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Israel has been the only genuine democracy in the region, but it is now getting some welcome company from the Iraqis and Palestinians who are in the midst of robust national legislative election campaigns, the Lebanese who have risen up in proud self-determination after the Hariri assassination to eject their Syrian occupiers (the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah militias should be next), and the Kuwaitis, Egyptians and Saudis who have taken steps to open up their governments more broadly to their people. In my meeting with the thoughtful prime minister of Iraq, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, he declared with justifiable pride that his country now has the most open, democratic political system in the Arab world. He is right....
The question is whether the American people and enough of their representatives in Congress from both parties understand this. I am disappointed by Democrats who are more focused on how President Bush took America into the war in Iraq almost three years ago, and by Republicans who are more worried about whether the war will bring them down in next November's elections, than they are concerned about how we continue the progress in Iraq in the months and years ahead....
Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America's bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory....
And, at least one person (make that two) at the Democratic Leadership Council agrees with the Connecticut senator. Who knows about the rest.
The Director of the White House Office of Drug Control Policy, John Walters, delivered a “Progress Report on Anti-Drug Efforts in Colombia” here and here. According to Walters,
heroin purity has declined 22 percent between 2003 and 2004, with an increase of 30 percent in price.
Yet another indication that Plan Colombia and our balanced efforts against the international drug problem are making the problem smaller.
Yet another Murray Waas bombshell piece -- if you believe the leftwing blogs and liberal pundits -- on Iraq has appeared in the National Journal as a "news feature." The fact that the anti-Bush crowd loves what Waas has to write should come as no surprise. Over the years, he has written for the American Prospect and The Nation. Going back to the Reagan administration, the common thread of Waas' investigative journalism has been to go after Republicans. Spend just fifteen seconds on his blog and you'll learn Waas isn't a big fan of the current Bush administration. Of course, there's nothing wrong with criticizing or investigating the White House. But Waas' Iraq pieces always seem to fit nicely with the story line spun by Democratic Senators Rockefeller and Levin that the president and vice president lied us into war. Waas' work appears regularly in Frank Rich's weekly conspiracy columns in the New York Times, and Chris Matthews hypes his pieces on Hardball but makes sure his viewers know where it was published.
"The new piece tonight that ran in Washington's National Journal, a very respected, even-handed journal," is how Matthews characterized another Waas piece on Iraq pre-war intelligence that was far from "even-handed" -- see here. And Waas current piece isn't much better. More later.
Economist and Weekly Standard contributing editor Irwin Stelzer notes that the New York Times managed "to bury the good news about weekend sales (up 22 percent over last year) by reporting instead, on page 1 of the business section, that mall-based specialty stores are losing out to big stores like Wal-Mart that are based outside of malls."
All the negative Bush news that's fit to print continues.
Blackfive.net shares the bravery and courage of Javier’s Marine squad in Iraq.
National Review's Victor Davis Hanson has an insightful piece on the "complicated" anger of the Democratic establishment.
Despite acrimony at home, the politics of two national elections and a third on the horizon, and the slander of war crimes and incompetence, those on the battlefield of Iraq have almost pulled off the unthinkable — the restructuring of the politics of the Middle East in less than three years.
On Sunday, November 20, Democratic Senator Joe Biden peddled the "imminent threat" myth. Here's the exchange he had with Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace:
WALLACE: I don't think that the vice president ever said anything about an imminent threat. And actually, some Democrats did.
BIDEN: Oh, he did. No, no, he did. He did, and as did the administration. They talked about the threat being imminent. They talked about there's a -- remember mushroom clouds, remember the -- you know, look, the whole point about this was whether or not there was an imminent threat requiring us to go to war when we did. If there was no imminent threat, we had time to continue to try to isolate Saddam Hussein, continue to keep inspectors in there, try to make a deal with the international community to keep this pressure on.
In fact, the vice president never said Iraq was an "imminent threat," unlike Jay Rockefeller ("I do believe that Iraq poses an imminent threat...") and John Kerry's running mate ("I think Iraq is the most serious and imminent threat to our country... I think each of them have to be dealt with on their own merits. And they do, in my judgment, present different threats. And I think Iraq and Saddam Hussein present the most serious and most imminent threat.")
Here is what the president stated in his 2003 State of the Union address:
Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.
Sen. Biden's other point about efforts "to try to isolate Saddam Hussein, continue to keep inspectors in there, try to make a deal with the international community to keep this pressure on" is worth some review. In "The Right War for the Right Reasons," William Kristol and Robert Kagan write:
By the time inspectors returned to Iraq in 2002, Saddam was ready to be a little more forthcoming, because he had rejiggered his program to withstand somewhat greater scrutiny. He had scaled back to a skeletal program, awaiting the moment when he could breathe life back into it. Nevertheless, even then he could not let the inspectors see everything. Undoubtedly he hoped that if he could get through that last round, he would be home free, eventually without sanctions or further inspections. We now know that in early 2003, Saddam assumed that the United States would once again launch a bombing campaign, but not a full scale invasion. So he figured he would survive, and, as Kay concluded, "They maintained programs and activities, and they certainly had the intentions at a point to resume their programs."
Was this a satisfactory outcome? If this much had been accomplished, if we had succeeded in getting Saddam to scale back his programs in the hope of eventually turning them on again, was that a reason not to go to war? Kay does not believe so. Nor do we. If the United States had pulled back last year, we would have placed ourselves in the trap that Berger had warned about five years earlier. We would have returned to the old pattern of "Iraqi defiance, followed by force mobilization on our part, followed by Iraqi capitulation," followed by a new round of Iraqi defiance--and the wearing down of both the international community and the United States.
There was an argument against going to war last year. But let's remember what that argument was. It had nothing to do with whether or not Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and WMD programs. Everyone from Howard Dean to the New York Times editorial board to Dominique de Villepin and Jacques Chirac assumed that he had both. Most of the arguments against the war concerned timing. The most frequent complaint was that Bush was rushing to war. Why not give Blix and his inspectors another three months or six months?
We now know, however, that giving Blix a few more months would not have made a difference. Last month Kay was asked what would have happened if Blix and his team had been allowed to continue their mission. Kay responded, "All I can say is that among an extensive body of Iraqi scientists who are talking to us, they have said: The U.N. interviewed us; we did not tell them the truth, we did not show them this equipment, we did not talk about these programs; we couldn't do it as long as Saddam was in power. I suspect regardless of how long they had stayed, that attitude would have been the same." Given the "terror regime of Saddam," Kay concluded, he and his team learned things after the war "that no U.N. inspector would have ever learned" while Saddam was still in power.
So it is very unlikely that, given another three months or six months, the Blix team would have come to any definitive conclusion one way or another. Nor, therefore, would there have been a much greater probability of winning a unanimous vote at the Security Council for war once those additional six months had passed. Whether the United States could have kept 200,000 troops on a permanent war footing in the Persian Gulf for another six months is even more doubtful.
To be continued.
The White House released this document on pre-war intelligence on November 15. Topics addressed include:
Foreign Governments That Opposed The Removal Of Saddam Hussein Judged That Iraq Had Weapons Of Mass Destruction (WMD).
The Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) Was Judged Not To Have Different Intelligence Than The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) Provided To Congress, Which Represented The Collective Opinion Of The Intelligence Community.
Former President Bill Clinton Warned After 9/11 That The United States Could Not Allow Saddam Hussein To Continue Defying Weapons Inspectors.
The Weapons Inspectors Concluded That Saddam Hussein Sought A Nuclear Capability.
The President Never Connected Iraq To The 9/11 Attacks While Other Politicians And Independent Commissions Judged That There Were Contacts Between Iraq, Al-Qaeda And Other Terrorist Groups.
Congressional And Independent Committees Have Repeatedly Found No Political Pressure To Change Intelligence.
1) "Document Date: Feb-02, Title: ...Training Manual from Al Qaida Chemical Plant regarding Chem Warfare, Description: Contains papers concerning Iraqi officials, prices of equipment, training plans, and actions...all concerning chemical warfare" -- Here
2) "Did Saddam Hussein Account for the VX known to have been Produced? No. How about the 600 Tons of VX Precursors UNSCOM believed Iraq had Imported? No. Did it Matter? Yes. Just Ask Clinton Defense Secretary William Cohen" -- Here
3) "Did Saddam Hussein Comply With the Provision of UN Resolution 687 Regarding Terrorism? No" -- Here
4) "Did Saddam Hussein Comply With the Provision of UN Resolution 687 Regarding Terrorism? No, Part II" -- Here
5) "With the apparent death of "Halabja" al-Douri, Let's Review Some Material from the Duelfer and UNMOVIC Reports that Won't Appear in a New York Times Editorial Anytime Soon" -- Here
6) "Trust in Saddam: What Hans Blix Doesn't Tell Audiences Nowadays" -- Here
7) "The Media Somehow Missed the Other News Powell Aide Made Yesterday" -- Here
8) "Who were Zawahiri's reported contacts in Iraq? Have members of the Iraqi Delegation that reportedly Traveled to Afghanistan to Meet the Taliban and Bin Ladin been Identified? Have Any Republicans Bothered to Ask?" -- Here
9) "Why did President Clinton Worry About a Terrorist Attack on the United States with Weapons Supplied by Iraq?" -- Here
10) "Why were U.S. Government Officials 'Deeply Worried' That Saddam Hussein Might Give 'Radical Islamist Groups' Biological Weapons to Attack the U.S. during the Clinton presidency?" -- Here
11) "Guess What Clinton's Assistant Secretary of State Had to Say about Saddam's Nuke Program in 2002?" -- Here
12) "What did U.S. intelligence tell the Clinton administration on the nuclear reconstitution issue?" -- Here
13) "Does the National Journal's 'Exclusive' Piece on Pre-War Intelligence Distort the Public Record?" -- Here
14) "More Distortion on Iraq & Niger" -- Here
15) "Another Media Distortion: Joe Wilson Didn't Uncover Forgeries and Didn't 'Debunk' Much of Anything" -- Here
16) "Another Washington Post Distortion" Here
17) "The Washington Post Continues the 'Imminent Threat' Myth" -- Here
18) "Paris v. The Wall Street Journal" -- Here13)
President Clinton told an audience two days ago that he had never "personally" seen any intel linking Iraq and Al-Qaeda and "no one I knew believed that was the case," reported the Westchester Journal-News. Well, the following quotes seem to indicate that the Clinton administration was "deeply worried" about terrorists getting their hands on wmd with Saddam as the possible supplier. If not al Qaeda, which terrorist groups were they referring to? Have any reporters bothered to ask President Clinton?
A November 24, 1997 Time magazine piece, "America the Vulnerable," stated that:
officials in Washington are deeply worried about what some of them call "strategic crime." By that they mean the merging of the output from a government’s arsenals, like Saddam’s biological weapons, with a group of semi-independent terrorists, like radical Islamist groups, who might slip such bioweapons into the U.S. and use them.
Who were these officials?
Intelligence community officials?
Clinton White House officials?
What intelligence did these officials base their "deep worry" on?
And did President Clinton base his November 15, 1997 remarks in Sacramento on the same intelligence that prompted government "officials" to be "deeply worried" about a Saddam-supplied bioterror attack on U.S. soil?
think about it [Iraq's disarmament] in terms of the innocent Japanese people that died in the subway when the sarin gas was released; and how important it is for every responsible government in the world to do everything that can possibly be done not to let big stores of chemical or biological weapons fall into the wrong hands, not to let irresponsible people develop the capacity to put them in warheads on missiles or put them in briefcases that could be exploded in small rooms. And I say this not to frighten you.
Other examples:
November 19, 1997, White House
The inspectors must be able to do so without interference. That's our top line; that's our bottom line. I want to achieve it diplomatically. But we're taking every step to make sure we are prepared to pursue whatever options are necessary. I do not want these children we are trying to put in stable homes to grow up into a world where they are threatened by terrorists with biological and chemical weapons. It is not right.
February 17, 1998, Pentagon
Saddam Hussein's Iraq reminds us of what we learned in the 20th century and warns us of what we must know about the 21st. In this century, we learned through harsh experience that the only answer to aggression and illegal behavior is firmness, determination and, when necessary, action. In the next century, the community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now--a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers or organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed.
May 22, 1998, US Naval Academy
Rather than invading our beaches or launching bombers, these adversaries may attempt cyber-attacks against our critical military systems and our economic base, or they may deploy compact and relatively cheap weapons of mass destruction, not just nuclear but also chemical or biological, to use disease as a weapon of war. Sometimes the terrorists and criminals act alone, but increasingly they are interconnected, and sometimes supported by hostile countries.
There are also many examples of Defense Secretary William Cohen suggesting Saddam's wmd could end up in the hands of terror groups. He spoke about Saddam's VX program.
One drop [of VX nerve agent] on your finger will produce death in a matter of just a few moments. Now the UN believes that Saddam may have produced as much as 200 tons of VX, and this would, of course, be theoretically enough to kill every man, woman and child on the face of the earth.
Cohen then recalled Iraq's use of poison gas and the sarin attack in Tokyo. He warned that “we face a clear and present danger today,” and reminded people that the “terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in New York had in mind the destruction and deaths of some 250,000 people that they were determined to kill.” Cohen had another national television appearance in which he held a bag of sugar and warned that the same amount of anthrax "would destroy at least half the population" of Washington, D.C.
There is also the issue of the Clinton administration's bombing of the al-Shifa chemical plant in Sudan -- explained here.
Newsmax.com's Jason Barnes has set up a web site -- www.whosaiditiraq.blogspot.com -- to compile as many quotes from Democrats on Iraq as possible. If you have any, send them along to whosaiditiraq@gmail.com
On Saturday, the New York Times published an editorial, "A Cold War China Policy," criticizing the president's approach to Beijing. Dan Blumenthal, former senior director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia in the Secretary of Defense's Office of International Security Affairs and current AEI fellow, responds:
The New York Times gets the order of events in Asia exactly backwards: the Bush Administration is generally continuing the policy of the Clinton Administration in its response to China's destabilizing military build-up -- an expansion characterized by annual double-digit increases in defense spending for over a decade. China now has the military capability to coerce and intimidate Taiwan into submission and make any U.S. intervention on Taiwan's behalf costly in lives and treasure.
The Bush Administration is seeking to transform the US-Japan alliance to make it more effective in countering China's military power. The same holds with US-India relations. Despite what the Times' editors may believe, there is a US government consensus that China's military build-up is serious and changing the balance of power in the region. Both conclusions are reflected in recent Pentagon reports, as well as the latest report of the bi-partisan U.S.-China Economic and Security Commission.
Too call the Japanese government "nationalistic," as the Times does, is simplistic and facile. After years of North Korean provocations and, in the last year, frequent Chinese naval incursions into its territorial waters, Japan has now taken small steps to strentghen its defense. The fact that Tokyo is a liberal democracy with a post-War pacifist tradition means that the public debate about such a defense reorientation has been slow, deliberate and responsible.
If anything, the Bush Administration has been overly cautious about countering Chinese power. It is quick to emphasize areas of shared cooperation but downplays areas of disagreement, such as China's support of regimes in Sudan, Zimbabwe and Iran.
A brief review of China's activities in the last year alone would have helped the editors of the New York Times convey what's really going on in East Asia to its readers.
Vice President Cheney delivered this speech today at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. Here are some highlights:
"All of us understood, as well, that for more than a decade, the U.N. Security Council had demanded that Saddam Hussein make a full accounting of his weapons programs. The burden of proof was entirely on the dictator of Iraq -- not on the U.N. or the United States or anyone else. And he repeatedly refused to comply throughout the course of the decade"
"In a post-9/11 world, the President and Congress of the United States declined to trust the word of a dictator who had a history of weapons of mass destruction programs, who actually used weapons of mass destruction against innocent civilians in his own country, who tried to assassinate a former President of the United States, who was routinely shooting at allied pilots trying to enforce no fly zones, who had excluded weapons inspectors, who had defied the demands of the international community, whose regime had been designated an official state sponsor of terror, and who had committed mass murder."
"American soldiers and Marines serving in Iraq go out every day into some of the most dangerous and unpredictable conditions. Meanwhile, back in the United States, a few politicians are suggesting these brave Americans were sent into battle for a deliberate falsehood. This is revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety. It has no place anywhere in American politics, much less in the United States Senate."
"What is not legitimate -- and what I will again say is dishonest and reprehensible -- is the suggestion by some U. S. senators that the President of the United States or any member of his administration purposely misled the American people on pre-war intelligence."
"The flaws in the intelligence are plain enough in hindsight, but any suggestion that prewar information was distorted, hyped, or fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false. Senator John McCain put it best: 'It is a lie to say that the President lied to the American people.'"
"Some have suggested that by liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein, we simply stirred up a hornet's nest. They overlook a fundamental fact: We were not in Iraq on September 11th, 2001 -- and the terrorists hit us anyway. The reality is that terrorists were at war with our country long before the liberation of Iraq, and long before the attacks of 9/11. And for many years, they were the ones on the offensive. They grew bolder in the belief that if they killed Americans, they could change American policy. In Beirut in 1983, terrorists killed 241 of our service men. Thereafter, the United States withdrew from Beirut. In Mogadishu in 1993, terrorists killed 19 American soldiers. Thereafter, the U.S. withdrew its forces from Somalia. Over time, the terrorists concluded that they could strike America without paying a price, because they did, repeatedly: the bombing at the World Trade Center in 1993, the murders at the Saudi National Guard Training Center in Riyadh in 1995, the Khobar Towers in 1996, the simultaneous bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and, of course, the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.
"Believing they could strike us with impunity and that they could change U.S. policy, they attacked us on 9/11 here in the homeland, killing 3,000 people. Now they are making a stand in Iraq -- testing our resolve, trying to intimidate the United States into abandoning our friends and permitting the overthrow of this new Middle Eastern democracy. Recently we obtained a message from the number-two man in al Qaeda, Mr. Zawahiri, that he sent to his chief deputy in Iraq, the terrorist Zarqawi. The letter makes clear that Iraq is part of a larger plan of imposing Islamic radicalism across the broader Middle East -- making Iraq a terrorist haven and a staging ground for attacks against other nations. Zawahiri also expresses the view that America can be made to run again."
"In light of the commitments our country has made, and given the stated intentions of the enemy, those who advocate a sudden withdrawal from Iraq should answer a few simple questions: Would the United States and other free nations be better off, or worse off, with Zarqawi, bin Laden, and Zawahiri in control of Iraq? Would we be safer, or less safe, with Iraq ruled by men intent on the destruction of our country?
"It is a dangerous illusion to suppose that another retreat by the civilized world would satisfy the appetite of the terrorists and get them to leave us alone. In fact such a retreat would convince the terrorists that free nations will change our policies, forsake our friends, abandon our interests whenever we are confronted with murder and blackmail. A precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would be a victory for the terrorists, an invitation to further violence against free nations, and a terrible blow to the future security of the United States of America."
"The terrorists lack any capacity to inspire the hearts of good men and women. And their only chance for victory is for us to walk away from the fight."
The New York Post's Ralph Peters on "How to Lose a War."
From Time Magazine, November 20, 2005:
In contrast to the Pentagon's stock answer that there are enough troops on the ground in Iraq, the commanders said that they not only needed more manpower but also had repeatedly asked for it. Indeed, military sources told TIME that as recently as August 2005, a senior military official requested more troops but got turned down flat.
There are about 160,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq, a number U.S. commanders in the region plan to maintain at least through the Iraqi national assembly elections on Dec. 15. But the battalion commanders, according to sources close to last week's meeting, said that because there are not enough troops, they have to "leapfrog" around Iraq to keep insurgents from returning to towns that have been cleared out. The officers also stressed that the lack of manpower--rather than of protective armor or signal jammers--posed one of the biggest obstacles in dealing with roadside bombs, which have caused the majority of U.S. casualties in Iraq. The commanders, according to the meeting sources, said there are simply "never enough" explosives experts on the ground. So far, no officer has been willing to go on record to complain about the need for more troops. But there is one positive sign: the Army recently decided to double the number of explosives experts to 2,500 over the next few years.
In the current Weekly Standard, Stephen F. Hayes has a piece on the enormous volume of documents captured in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.
Hayes writes:
There are many such documents in a U.S. intelligence database known as HARMONY. One example: Document number ICSQ-2003-00025586 was captured by the U.S. military during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Here is the synopsis of that document that appears in the database:
Category: Al Qaida
Title: Letters, logbook, training manual from Al Qaida Chemical Plant regarding Chem Warfare
Short Description: Contains papers concerning Iraqi officials, prices of equipment, training plans, and actions by high level officers all concerning chemical warfare
Agency: DIA
Document Date: Feb-02
Document #: ICSQ-2003-00025586
What does it mean? I'm not sure. On the one hand, any document under the heading "Al Qaida" that mentions "chem warfare" and "Iraqi officials" is inherently interesting. On the other, we don't know what the document tells us. Just as it is possible that the document reveals Iraqi complicity in al Qaeda's efforts to secure WMD, it is conceivable that the "papers concerning Iraqi officials" include indications that Iraqis rejected al Qaeda overtures for assistance on chemical warfare. Although some HARMONY documents are flagged as being of suspect authenticity, this one is not flagged. Still, it is possible that it is a fabrication and was entered into the database without an assessment of its authenticity.
I can't answer these questions. Someone probably can.
Iraq admitted in 1995 that it had produced nearly four tons of VX, but UN inspectors believed Saddam had imported 600 tons of VX precursors -- enough to produce 200 tons of the nerve agent.
VX was clearly important to the regime. According to UNMOVIC’s March 6, 2003 report,
[i]n a top secret letter, written in 1987 by the Director-General of Al Muthanna [a large chemical weapons production and storage facility near Baghdad] to senior government officials, the importance of the agent to Iraq was recognized. In the letter, VX was compared to a nuclear weapon: “two tons carried by an aircraft compare with a medium nuclear bomb of 20 kilotons.” The letter continued that its possession “…ushers us into the [field] of armament of advanced countries.”
Post-Gulf War, Iraq failed to disclose its VX program to UN inspectors. Then, Iraqi officials denied they had successfully weaponized the nerve agent for military use. But UNSCOM's October 1998 report on Iraq’s VX program declared:
The existence of VX degradation products conflicts with Iraq's declarations that the unilaterally destroyed special warheads had never been filled with any chemical warfare agents. The findings by all three laboratories of chemicals known to be degradation products of decontamination compounds also do not support Iraq's declarations that those warhead containers had only been in contact with alcohols.
Chief UN inspector Hans Blix told to the Security Council in January 2003 that there were “indications that the [VX] agent was weaponised.” He stated:
Iraq has declared that it only produced VX on a pilot scale, just a few tonnes and that the quality was poor and the product unstable. Consequently, it was said that the agent was never weaponised. Iraq said that the small quantity of agent remaining after the Gulf War was unilaterally destroyed in the summer of 1991.
UNMOVIC, however, has information that conflicts with this account. There are indications that Iraq had worked on the problem of purity and stabilization and that more had been achieved than has been declared….There are also indications that the agent was weaponised.
And the September 2004 Duelfer report concluded:
Iraq had not adequately addressed VX production and weaponization activities—a point on which Iraq’s denials were contradicted by UNSCOM findings. ISG investigations into Iraq’s work with VX reveals that Iraq did weaponize VX in 1988, and dropped 3 aerial bombs filled with VX on Iran. The bombs, originally declared to be part of a storage stability trial, were in fact dropped on an undisclosed Iranian location in 1988.
In February 2003, Iraq made a proposal that it claimed would prove it had unilaterally destroyed its VX in 1991. But UNMOVIC's May 30, 2003 report stated that Iraq's proposal “would not address all of the unresolved issues” regarding VX.
UNMOVIC pointed out to Iraq that the primary concern with regard to VX was not simply the quantity unilaterally destroyed in 1991 but rather the retention of precursors, know-how and the extent of the development of the program in 1990. Therefore, Iraq’s sampling and quantification effort, even if successful, would not address all of the unresolved issues identified by UNMOVIC.
But why would the unaccounted for VX precursors matter? What's the big deal?
UNMOVIC's March 6, 2003 report judged that:
Iraq’s VX programme included extensive efforts in a number of areas such as synthetic routes, stabilizers, and binary munitions. Given Iraq’s history of concealment with respect to its VX programme it cannot be excluded that it has retained some capability with regard to VX....
The major remaining issue relating to Iraq’s production capability is the fact that there are significant discrepancies in the accounting for all the key precursors... required to produce VX. A few other chemicals are required to produce VX... these are however readily available [to Iraq].
According to the September 2002 International Institute for Strategic Studies report,
Iraq could have retained stable precursors for a few hundred tonnes of sarin and cyclosarin and a similar amount of VX. Weaponisation of any retained material would not pose a significant obstacle.
Assessing the production of new CW agent and precursors depends on determining the degree to which Iraq will have chosen to mobilise its civilian chemical industry to produce these capabilities. Without inspectors present, Iraq would not find it difficult to build on pre 1991 stocks and produce and weaponise fresh agent....
Our net assessment of the current situation is that:
Iraq has probably retained a few hundred tonnes of mustard and precursors for a few hundred tonnes of sarin/cyclosarin and perhaps similar amounts of VX from pre-1991 stocks.
It is capable of resuming CW production on short notice (months) from existing civilian facilities. It could have produced hundreds of tonnes of agent (mustard and nerve agents) since 1998. In these circumstances, it is not possible accurately to estimate present stocks.
Evidently, Clinton Defense Secretary William Cohen was very worried about Saddam's VX program.
One drop [of VX nerve agent] on your finger will produce death in a matter of just a few moments. Now the UN believes that Saddam may have produced as much as 200 tons of VX, and this would, of course, be theoretically enough to kill every man, woman and child on the face of the earth.
Cohen then recalled Iraq's use of poison gas and the sarin attack in Tokyo. He warned that “we face a clear and present danger today,” and reminded people that the “terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in New York had in mind the destruction and deaths of some 250,000 people that they were determined to kill.” A week before these comments Cohen said on ABC's This Week that Saddam may have enough VX to kill "millions, millions, if it were properly dispersed and through aerosol mechanisms."
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman released the following statement today:
Intelligence Chairs Calls for Declassification of Documents Seized in Global War on Terrorism
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Nov. 18, 2005
Intelligence Chairs Call for Declassification of Documents Seized in Global War on Terrorism
WASHINGTON, D.C. - House Intelligence Chairman Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., today called on the administration to declassify millions of pages of documents captured during the global war on terrorism to enable their analysis by the public.
"The reality is there is no way the U.S. government can possibly translate and assess all the documents it has obtained in the global war on terrorism," Hoekstra said. "I would like to get these documents into the public domain in hopes that academics, journalists, bloggers and other interested people can help clear this backlog. In the end, I think the government, and the public, will benefit from having all these documents translated."
In a letter to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence signed by Hoekstra and Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., they request a process be developed to release the documents publicly. They ask that the process ensure document integrity and protection of sources and methods as well as involve our allies, who are in control of some of the documents.
Hoekstra said he would like to see the documents posted online, where people would be able to access copies and offer translations and interpretations of the material. He envisions it working like Wikipedia or open-source code on the Internet, where people are able to take original information and review and analyze it. In much the same way, he said the government could then draw from the public review to determine which documents contained important information and which were trivial.
Hoekstra said he became concerned about this issue when he learned that tens-of-thousands of documents dating back to operation Desert Storm still had not been translated.
"From the collective effort of people across the world, we can learn what is in these documents and gain insight into the thinking of Saddam and his government," Hoekstra said. "I believe this is a far better plan than the continued slow translation of documents, which may leave many of these documents unread for decades."
Texas Sen. John Cornyn released the following press statement today:
WHO’S PLAYING POLITICS ON IRAQ?
While the Minority Leader Complains on the Senate Floor, Democrats Attack
The Senate Minority Leader took to the Senate floor this afternoon to accuse the White House of playing politics.
[T]he President and Vice President shamelessly decided to play politics…The American people and our brave soldiers deserve better. It seems the President and Vice President have decided to treat the war like it’s a political campaign.
- U.S. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Senate floor, November 17, 2005, 12:43 p.m.
But mere hours before the Minority Leader took to the floor, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (an organization dedicated raising funds for Democrat Senate candidates) sent an email to supporters under the signature of Sen. Reid’s colleague, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), on the same issue.
Our leaders must be held accountable to ALL Americans. Please forward this message to your friends and family and ask them to stand with us Senate Democrats and demand the truth about how we were lead to war in Iraq.
- U.S. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), DSCC email, November 17, 2005
The Minority Leader also complained about “smear” tactics…
The White House continues to dodge and to duck the questions of America and to smear their opponents. That’s not leadership and our troops and the American people deserve better.
- U.S. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Senate floor, November 17, 2005, 12:43 p.m.
...Mere hours after the DSCC attacked the administration with a discredited smear.
[T]he Bush Administration exaggerated and distorted intelligence before the war in Iraq…
- U.S. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), DSCC email, November 17, 2005
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, made the following statement regarding the politicization of the war in Iraq:
I regret that this war in which we are engaged, the global war on terror, with its central front being in Iraq today, has become such a political football. Unfortunately, we see it is just too tempting a target to partisans, some partisans, to try to engage in revisionist history in order to score political points.
This should not be about whether Republicans have scored points or whether Democrats have scored points. Rather, this should be about our military strategy on the ground in Iraq that is being implemented as we speak to restore Iraq to a self-governing democracy.
The media is all over the comments made by House Democrat John Murtha of Pennsylvania today. But will the same media cover Sen. McCain's remarks made here?
We have told insurgents that their violence does grind us down, that their horrific acts might be successful. But these are precisely the wrong messages. Our exit strategy in Iraq is not the withdrawal of our troops, it is victory.
Americans may not have been of one mind when it came to the decision to topple Saddam Hussein. But, though some disagreed, I believe that nearly all now wish us to prevail.
Because the stakes there are so high — higher even than those in Vietnam — our friends and our enemies need to hear one message: America is committed to success, and we will win this war.
Don't hold your breath.
Weekly Standard contributor and German Marshall Fund fellow Daniel Twining on the incompatibility of restricting free speech in a globalized information age:
Freedom of the press is under attack in much of Asia -- in countries that should know better, like Thailand and Singapore, and perhaps most importantly in China. China's leaders apparently believe their country can continue to flourish in a globalized world economy increasingly dependent on free flows of information, even as they restrict free speech at home. But as Victor Mallet points out in this Financial Times piece (sub. req'd), "Asian authoritarians are repeating their mistake of a decade ago, seeing the free flow of information as a preventable evil promoted by misguided western liberals. In fact, it is an inevitable adjunct of global modernisation."
Democratic South Korea and Taiwan, once dictatorships themselves, demonstrate that economies dependent on information and services -- rather than manufacturing, which sometimes rewards organization and hierarchy -- require freedom of speech. That's a lesson other Asian leaders should heed, if not for the sake of their people's rights than for the continued growth of their economies, in an age when businesses everywhere profit from free flows of information and lack of government interference. Mallet is right: "Repression and censorship will put awkward people in jail and keep awkward news off the state television channels, but they will not stop the sharing of information.... Authoritarians typically accept the need for free speech on economic matters, but not in their own sphere of politics. Yet business and politics are intertwined. Freedom of information is indivisible." The Asian economic miracle may increasingly depend on a new level of openness in controlled societies.
In typical Clinton fashion (and with Bush's poll numbers down), he now says going into Iraq was a "big mistake," but he's glad Saddam Hussein is no longer in power. His remarks remind me of his clever answer to a question on how Gov. Clinton would have voted on the first Gulf War resolution had he been in Congress at the time. "I guess I would have voted with the majority if it was a close vote. But I agree with the argument the minority made," Clinton said in 1991. But does the former president have an opinion on his "big mistake"?
Here's an interview PBS' Frontline conducted with Richard Clarke in March 2002.
Some also say that due to the Lewinsky scandal, more action perhaps was never undertaken. In your eyes?
The interagency group on which I sat and John O'Neill sat -- we never asked for a particular action to be authorized and were refused. We were never refused. Any time we took a proposal to higher authority, with one or two exceptions, it was approved....
But didn't you push for military action after the Cole?
Yes, that's one of the exceptions.
How important is that exception?
I believe that, had we destroyed the terrorist camps in Afghanistan earlier, that the conveyor belt that was producing terrorists sending them out around the world would have been destroyed. So many, many trained and indoctrinated Al Qaeda terrorists, which now we have to hunt down country by country, many of them would not be trained and would not be indoctrinated, because there wouldn't have been a safe place to do it if we had destroyed the camps earlier.
Reuel Marc Gerecht also | | | |
