#2
this is worthy of the sleeping child on the toilet graphic.
Compared to this woman, I'd say I'm free. Am I "Free"? But I guess I don't need to worry about semantics or care about this woman. My life was preordained good, hers bad. According to this article, I needn't concern myself.
#5
Believe I will exercise my free will to go contemplate this weighty matter over a beer or two. Hopefully, I will get drunk before getting too far into this. As Fred says, I am not free but fairly cheap also.
#7
Even if you accept Borders' reductionist definition of humans as purely material, he ignores the insights from complexity theory re: how intelligence can emerge from the interactions of limited parts.
He's arguing about a century too late. Ironic that he thinks he's cutting edge.
#8
If it is a probability that that I click on the Comments link, then it is a certainty that you will read this. So much for your free will. Hahahahaha!
Posted by: john ||
12/14/2004 15:16 Comments ||
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#9
john - I think that deserved the full BWAHAHAHA, heh!
From Scientia Press, an article by Kenneth J. Dillon, president of Spectrum Bioscience, Inc., a medical research company, and the head of the nonprofit Center for Appropriate Technology, which works on nonproliferation and appropriate technology projects in Russia.
.... According to an August 27, 2004 article in Canada's National Post, Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, a 22-year old Canadian, told interrogators that he had heard from Abu Abdelrahman, who worked for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, that the November 12, 2001 crash of American Airlines Flight #587 in New York was the result of an al Qaeda shoe bomb. The bomber was "Farouk the Tunisian". Newspaper photographs showed him to be Abderraouf Jdey, a 36-year old Montreal-based Canadian of Tunisian origin.
Jdey is one of the seven al Qaeda terrorists listed in the FBI's plea for information from the public in May, 2004. He had emigrated to Canada in 1991, gained citizenship in 1995, and then travelled to Afghanistan where he trained as one of the ten substitutes for the 9/11 attackers. According to KSM, Jdey was slated for pilot training and was to be in the second wave of attacks. Jdey recorded a martyrdom statement in a video later found by American forces in Afghanistan. He returned to Montreal in summer 2001.
Al Qaeda had a history of interest in biological weapons. There is evidence that the 9/11 attackers had anthrax in their possession during the months preceding September 11, 2001. They were evidently seeking a way to use a cropduster to spread anthrax over an American city. A medical doctor who treated a future hijacker for a skin lesion has stated that the lesion he treated was consistent with one caused by anthrax. A pharmacist reported to FBI that Mohamed Atta, leader of the 9/11 attacks, had sought a remedy for skin irritation on his hands, which were red from the wrists down. An accompanying fellow terrorist sought a remedy for a cough.
If the 9/11 attackers possessed anthrax, they would have had to hand it off to another al Qaeda operative before September 11. Otherwise the precious vials of anthrax, the first and only weapon of mass destruction that al Qaeda had ever possessed, would have been wasted. But they wouldn't necessarily trust just any al Qaeda operative to safeguard and perform with the anthrax, and perhaps they knew very few of al Qaeda's sleepers in North America anyway. They would want to give the anthrax to an operative they knew and trusted, one who would use it to the best effect.
Abderraouf Jdey appears to have been exactly such a person. He stands out from the nine other 9/11 substitutes. He was older, from a different country of origin, with Canadian citizenship, with semi-sleeper status, and with a clear designation as part of the second wave. He had trained in Afghanistan simultaneously with Mohamed Atta. He was also well enough educated to have been slated for pilot training. So Jdey was the logical person for Atta to hand off the anthrax to. We can also identify the logical time and place for such a transfer to have occurred.
One of the unexplained anomalies in the hijackers' story has been why Atta and a fellow hijacker travelled from Boston to Portland, Maine on September 10. Taking a feeder flight from Portland to Boston on the morning of September 11 caused Atta nearly to miss his connection, and he and his companion had to pass through security questioning twice rather than once--at a significant added risk of detection. So Atta must have had some reason to go to Portland that outweighed such risks. The most obvious explanation would be that he had an important meeting on a subject that required face-to-face contact, not just a veiled telephone conversation. A transaction with someone coming from the North, arranged for outside of Boston to lessen the risk of surveillance. Clearly, Jdey would be a very likely "someone", and handing over the vials of anthrax would furnish a compelling reason for their otherwise risky meeting.
If we assume that Jdey indeed was the recipient of vials of anthrax, in Portland or by some other means, then subsequent events could have followed this course:
While the 9/11 hijackers had sought access to a cropduster to spread the anthrax over an American city, Jdey presumably saw that receiving training at an American flight school was not in the cards after 9/11. So he had to resort to another method of distributing the anthrax.
He decided to mail it. The first mailings took place in September immediately after the initial U.S. Air Force's first bombings in Afghanistan, presumably as a response to them. The second mailings, to Senators Daschle and Leahy, occurred in October and included ultrahigh-quality anthrax. Driving (or taking a train) hundreds of miles from Montreal to Trenton to mail the letters made sense because it perfectly disguised Jdey's Canadian base.
The anthrax letters do not show any obvious Gallicisms that would betray that they were from a fluent French-speaker, which Jdey presumably was. But they are consistent with a person who has acquired English as a second language, and there is nothing in them that is inconsistent with Jdey as author. In fact, Jdey is a very plausible author of the anthrax letters.
One of the main characteristics or anomalies of the Anthrax Mailer case has been how remarkably elusive the Mailer was both during his period of activity in autumn, 2001 and thereafter. Despite a massive FBI investigation backed by hundreds of thousands of tips from the American public, the Mailer has succeeded in hiding his tracks. Being based in Canada, contrary to every expectation, would nicely explain his elusiveness during his period of activity.
The recently leaked Canadian intelligence report from 2002 provides a plausible explanation for the lack of information about Jdey's whereabouts since then (as well as for the cessation of the anthrax mailings): Jdey committed suicide on Flight #587 on November 12, 2001. .....
If he was indeed the Anthrax Mailer, he was a hard-headed man of action. Instead of dreaming about impractical schemes of sowing the anthrax in the skies above a city, he realized that he had to use it before being captured. So he mailed it. Thus, too, in early November, 2001, he recognized that--as the Anthrax Mailer--he was likely to be arrested at any moment, so he would do well to act on his pledge of martyrdom by turning himself into a shoebomber. The first success of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, backed by the U.S. Air Force, could have triggered his decision to leave Canada in early November (the Canadian intelligence report has him leaving Canada in November, though the date is not provided). On November 12 he showed up at Kennedy International Airport and boarded Flight #587.
No Canadian passport holders are listed on the final passenger list of Flight #587. Possessor of many aliases, Jdey presumably had several other passports. A number of the passengers were plausibly francophones; perhaps one of them was Jdey. Jdey would presumably have handed whatever remained of the vials of anthrax to a fellow operative in Canada or the northeastern United States. The cessation of the mailings after October, 2001 after their initial success is a third anomaly neatly explained by this account. A fourth anomaly, of course, is that Flight #587 disintegrated and crashed.
The scenario sketched out above has the virtue of conforming to the evidence available in a logical manner. Three main perceptions support it: 1) it would powerfully explain Atta's mysterious Portland trip; 2) it would show why the Mailer has proven so elusive and why the mailings ceased; and 3) it fits very well the characteristics that caused Jdey to stand out among the substitute hijackers, and indeed that differentiated him from the actual hijackers as well.
Of course, there are major gaps in the evidence. The putative Portland meeting may never have occurred. The cause of the crash of Flight #587 remains controversial. According to the official inquiry, there was no evidence of an explosion on board. Accounts of eyewitnesses from the ground, however, are highly consistent with a shoe bomb explosion. The explosion could have been small enough to be masked by wake turbulence from the preceding JAL aircraft. The co-pilot's frantic manipulation of the rudder would thus have been a hopeless attempt to rescue a doomed aircraft. We don't know when Jdey crossed the border. We have no proof that he ever was in Trenton. It is conceivable that he used messengers to meet with Atta and mail the letters. In short, we don't know a lot that we need to know. ....
http://www.scientiapress.com/findings/anthrax.htm
..... First, that the handwriting, linguistic, and putative psychological evidence in the anthrax letters shows them to be a fake seems quite a stretch. No observer has found a single piece of evidence that conclusively demonstrates that the anthrax letters are not what they seem to be. If they are a fake, they are a rather good one, done by someone who had carefully studied the subject and worked hard to develop a mastery of it. Such mastery is unlikely to have been the product of a few days of work between the September 11 terrorist attacks and the September 18 first anthrax letter mailings. This is not inconceivable, but it also isn't easy to believe.
If, however, the letters were written by an al Qaeda operative, the opening sentence (without a period)--"This is next"--is a marvelously suggestive and menacing one, the clear suggestion being that al Qaeda has an entire series of dirty weapons at its disposal. Putting this menace in the first sentence is very good literary style, which can make up for the supposedly significant deviation from starting with the traditional invocation of Allah. .....
While the first mailings on September 18 seem to have contained the ordinary Ames strain of anthrax of Fort Detrick, Maryland (U.S. Government) provenance, the second mailings on October 9--to Senators Daschle and Leahy--contained anthrax at a much higher level, reaching the stupendous level of one trillion spores per gram. .... the anthrax in the letters to the senators was clearly the product of an exceptional technical process, with each infinitesmal spore wrapped in its own coating of a special, undisclosed chemical and all of the spores exquisitely stacked. Evidently, in any case, the Mailer had access to more than one batch of anthrax.
Several aspects of all this deserve explanation. Why two leading Democratic senators, of all potential U.S. Government targets? A frequent explanation holds that this is a tipoff that the Mailer was a domestic terrorist with a rightwing agenda. Of course, it is hardly likely that the anthrax would have ever reached the senators themselves .....
Senator Leahy was of special interest to al Qaeda as the head of the appropriations panel in charge of aid to Egypt and Israel. In 1998 this panel formulated the "Leahy Law", which permitted the U.S. Government to continue appropriations to military and security units that conduct torture if there are "extraordinary circumstances". Under the Leahy Law, the U.S. has "rendered" Egyptian Islamic Jihad members to the Government of Egypt, a practice that drew the fierce condemnation of Dr. Ayman Zawahiri, leader of the EIJ and second only to Bin Laden in al Qaeda. So targeting Leahy with an anthrax letter must be considered highly characteristic of al Qaeda. .....
If the Mailer has such high-grade anthrax, why didn't he use it in the first mailings? A plausible explanation would be that he doesn't have much of it, that it is precious, in very short supply, that it would not be easy or cheap to come up with more of it. In turn, that suggests that the Mailer acquired this high-quality anthrax from someone else and does not have the capacity to produce it himself. ......
It has Team Effort written all over it. And not just any team. To reach the very demanding specifications of a perfected, ready-to-go high-technology product that these one trillion spores per gram represented required a "national program" with a team of at least a half-dozen highly skilled scientists and engineers working with advanced equipment and many millions of dollars over years of effort in an iterative fashion, with multiple frustrations and setbacks along the road. The scientific, engineering, and project management skills of such a team must have been at an exceptionally high level--suggesting that only a few advanced countries could have accomplished this feat. ....
So, which country's government was the perpetrator of this crime against humanity? For that is exactly what one trillion spores per gram of a deadly biowarfare agent are. Developed, of course, in the name of self-defense against a potential aggressor. And how did this superbly refined anthrax come into the hands of the Anthrax Mailer? .....
That leaves two prime suspects: Russia and the UK. The Russians may have obtained the Ames strain via espionage, then worked on it to bring it up to one trillion spores per gram. .... And the UK?
In a clearcut violation of the Convention, which states explicitly that no country is to provide biowarfare agents or knowhow to any other country "whatsoever", the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland gave its British counterpart, the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment at Porton Down, the Ames strain in the late 1980s. The reason offered was to permit the British to develop their own defensive measures against the anthrax. The British certainly have the scientific expertise to achieve such an engineering feat. Porton Down is not too far from Oxford University, a leading center of physical chemistry. The justification of developing ultrahigh-quality anthrax in order to test defensive measures could always be applied. A spirit of rivalry with the Americans may have been involved: "We can do better than the Yanks did." And there may have been the motive of seeking a surprise weapon that would strengthen the UK's military posture.
How might the various versions of this British anthrax find their way to al Qaeda? Two routes suggest themselves:
First, .... If a British scientist in Russian pay had provided small amounts of the original American and successively higher grades of British anthrax to his Russian liaison in the period following the collapse of the Soviet Union, moreover, the chances of diversion would have been very good. ..... A plausible scenario: at a price of perhaps $10 million, a network like that of Victor Bout, ex-Russian officer who became an arms salesman to UN-embargoed countries, would have sold to al Qaeda several vials containing a few grams each of the American strain and the ultrahigh-quality strain of British anthrax. The pattern of small amounts of several grades of anthrax in the letters is very consistent with a situation in which a scientist would have surreptitiously sequestered a few grams each of various batches of anthrax as it was being iteratively upgraded. It is also suggestive of a constraint that would have led the ultimate attacker to decide to disperse the anthrax via mail rather than into the air above a city: that the perpetrator only had a few grams of each type at his disposal.
Second, the 1993 partial privatization of the civilian Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research (CAMR) associated with the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment at Porton Down included the transfer of all British Government anthrax vaccine to Porton Products Ltd. Through a series of holding companies, Porton Products is owned in part by the Lebanese-origin Fuad El-Hibri, who had worked for Citibank in Saudi Arabia arranging investments for rich Saudis. El-Hibri subsequently acquired the Michigan Biological Products Institute, thereby forming BioPort, Inc., the sole supplier of anthrax vaccine in the U.S. and UK (see the commentary "FBI Overlooks Foreign Sources of Anthrax" by Edward Jay Epstein in the Wall Street Journal, December 24, 2001).
With part of El-Hibri's rationale apparently being to protect Saudi Arabia against Iraqi anthrax, the company managed to acquire at least one virulent Ames strain for testing on animals. What else transpired in the obscure relationships between and among the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment, the civilian CAMR, and Porton Products Ltd is not clear; but surely the opportunities for surreptitious appropriation of a few grams of various grades of anthrax were considerable. The Saudi connection alone makes this route of transmission of the anthrax to al Qaeda very plausible. .....
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
12/14/2004 11:37:33 PM ||
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#1
Aris (if you happen to see this) this same author has an interesting theory about the Trojans and Etruscans.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
12/14/2004 23:49 Comments ||
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#2
Interesting, BH - you probably answered a question I had:
Which came first, this Euro-pandering / think-tankish wankoff or the The Crisis of Legitimacy: America and the World, lecture - delivered at The Grand Hyatt, Melbourne, Tuesday 9 November 2004 and posted on RB a few weeks ago.
Quite a different slant on the same facts, no? Must be a writer's lament that the audience often demands a rewrite for spin's sake. So, I wonder, what does Bobby really think?
#3
Hmm, I don't think I would describe OPaP as "Euro-pandering". His main argument seems to be that the European socialist "paradise" is an artificial construct which is possible only because of the existence of US power, and that the US cannot itself enter the paradise because, well, somebody has to man the walls. He doesn't come off as openly antagonistic to the Eutopians, but he realizes what side their bread is buttered on.
#4
Okay, I follow you - but not forgiving him on the spin thingy, however - that first paragraph did a fair job of teaching me how to seethe properly... The tone of they are so enlightened and moving onto a higher plane of existence while Americans are still mired in the past practicing man's inhumanity to man shit didn't sit well with me. Go figure, huh? Lol! :-)
#6
.com, I understand how you reached that conclusion. It sounds like the same garbage we get from the Euros all the time, but if you read it again you will note that he is not expressing any moral judgement on us or them. He is not suggesting that the Euros are evolving, or even right, just that they are turning into a "self-contained world of laws and rules, etc." Which is all well and good, until the world outside decides to make problems. That's where the US comes in.
"Mired in history, exercising power in the anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws and rules are unreliable and where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might."
That's the outside world. We are in it, keeping the Euros safe and warm in their beds. We have to be, because we are defending ourselves first and foremost, but the Euros have taken advantage of this to divert funds from their own defense to their socialist programs. One could argue that it makes us look bad, still knocking heads among the barbarians. One could also argue that it makes the Euros look worse by retreating inward and leaving the task of defending them to others who can't reap the benefits of their "enlightened" policies.
#7
You're bang-on - and I "got it" - I just recalled a much different piece from more recently and realized the facts and points were basically the same, yet this one is assembled and spun to a different POV / audience. I'll give Kagen credit for being an excellent writer, absolutely so, and whack him about the head when he appears to give "legitimacy" to "phantasy", heh. I recall giving less quarter to my daughter, who I love more than my life, when she strayed into phantasy - why on Earth would I give Kagen such leeway, lol? Points taken, and believe me I got it - I was comparing the two articles before I wrote a word.
#9
No, no - don't take me wrong... You're right, he does make the points you identified. I'm merely saying he was definitely more subtle here than in the other piece and this article is undated -- I incorrectly assumed that it was more recent than the 11/9/04 article. Your analysis is deadly accurate, as usual!
#12
The Kagan piece on legitimacy was a speech he gave a month ago in Australia (I posted it on Rantburg). Kagan is dedicated to interpreting the US and Bush admin to the Europeans (he works in Belgium) and to a lesser extent helping us understand the Euros. I think that's a worthy endeavor. Chirac and Schroeder's day has passed, and the next wave of European leaders will not be so obnoxious.
#15
Go for it Jackal! It's never been done thrice! If you get lucky .com will send you a 50 DVD collection of pictures you just knew were there somewhere.
hASALA MO ALIKUM THE READERS....I once posted an article here some months ago i.e"waziristan paradise for alqaeda and taliban fighters" and a stupid given a comment in which he call the Alqaeda wrriors dogs....
That's a insult to dogs
In general. I dunno if it's an insult to Shih Tzus, though...
...I wonder with his stupidity that...but then I thought that as these coward Englishmen were afraid from Adolf Hitler during the world war..
Yeah, pack of cowards, I remember the surrender ceremony in Buckingham Palace..oh wait...
same is the case in present days....that Usama,s name made them frightened in there dreams.....and in confusion and under the feelings of defeat they use teh language like this.....
Well, if anyone is a expert on confused language, it would be you.
I wonder there Boss Bush on one side says that we have started the war against terrorism and to bestow the humanity with freedom...
That's the plan, yes....
But on other side what is going in iraq with the innocents and prisoners of Abi gharib......that is shameful for them...and on this every muslim hates them.
We don't like it much either, that's why they are being tried. Still, bad as they were, they didn't lop anyones head off.
I wonder on the cowardness and slavery of our Muslim leaders who obey them like God Almighty...just to save The State...
The State, their necks, your neck
...but if tomorrow these soldiers of BUSH who are also giving the name Crusades to this war...
No, we've avoided that term, run away from it in fact. It's your side that keeps insisting it's a Crusade. When we decide it's a Crusade, you'll be the first to know
By the way, Clem, a "jihad" is a Crusade without a cross — both are "holy wars."
....say that we have to attack the Kaba Thullah...rather Musharaf Rascal will support them....on behalf of Pakistan.....and to save their state.
If there are bad guys in your "Kaba Thullah", you get first crack at cleaning them out. You won't like it if we have to come in there.
If it was a "Crusade," you can bet that the Kaba Thullah would be glassed over at least six inches deep by now.
I wonder that Musharaf and His Deciple is always declaring that The war in Waziristan is only against The foreigners...
We wonder about that as well
...since the locals seem to be in love with the idea of having foreigners in their midst. I guess it's because they're so used to submitting to foreign rule. Long for the old days, do they?
....but...they are so mean that on just one day before Eid ul Fitr i.e on 13th Nov,2004....one of our cadet Javid Iqbal wazir as shot dead by Pakistani army to avenge the remote mine blast...whether he was a terrorist.....???he was there in Wana bazar on that evening to celeberate Eid vacations...and was a student of 2nd year class....in cadet college razmak(north waziristan)...
Ah yes, the Fighting Razmak's
...The army was awre that the blast was remote controlled but rather to hide their stupidity in anger they opened fire on the near civilians who were shopping for Eid day...
Just opened fire on peaceful shoppers, boy, that's never happened in Waziristan before
...and Javid became the victim....which was the edlder son of his father.....WAS he A terrorist????
If he was going to school in Waziristan, I'd say the odds are pretty good
I've no idea if he was a terrorist. In civilized countries, though, things don't explode without a reason. When they do, the authorities hunt down the people responsible and either kill them or arrest them, depending on the amount of explosives they're carrying. Really, this is something you've got to expect when you go setting off bombs. If I was you, I'd think about not setting them off, in which case people just standing around minding their own business, as Javid presumably was, wouldn't be bumped off.
REGARDS>>>>>>ZAHEER ABBAS MAHSOOD
GOVT COLLEGE LAHORE E>MAIL:razmian_maseedgul@yahoo.com
Posted by: Zaheer Abbas Mahsood Ex-Razmian ||
12/14/2004 8:17:58 AM ||
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#5
further - it may well be that the Paki soldiers killed the wrong guy. I can assure you Zaheer, that US troops are better trained, and that if US troops were in Waziristan, thered be far less collateral damage, and, in all likelihood, the whole mess, both in NWFP and in Afhanistan, would be over and done with a lot quicker. However folks like yourself have made it very clear you dont want US troops in Pakistan, and that you would be quick to lead a revolution against the STATE in that instance. Ergo, there is no choice but to use Paki troops instead, despite their problems - problems which YOU must live with. Should you decide that you dont want the Paki troops up there, and you decide to overthrow the Paki State, despite its having kept US troops out of Pakland, you can be assured that the US will NOT be pleased. You can also be assured that the US WILL in that instance take sides in what would certainly be a Paki civil war, and that the results will NOT be pretty. You can also be assured that in such circumstances we would certainly reevaluate our balanced position between India and Pakistan. Dont expect the Indian army troops to be kinder and gentler to folks like you than the Paki soldiers.
#3
The standard explanation for this lack of preparedness among most defense and foreign policy specialists, and the U.S. military as well, is that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and much of the rest of the Bush administration insisted on fighting the war with too few troops and too Polyannaish a view of what would happen inside Iraq once Saddam was overthrown. This explanation is largely right.
Oh? How about that the Umited States military was designed to win conflicts involving defending countries, not conquering them. Perhaps the question we should be asking ourselves is whether we should be in the business of occupying enemy countries before we utterly destroy them. It seems to me the subjugation of Germany and Japan made the subsequent occupation and rehabilitation of those countries run more smoothly than Iraq. We should anounce now that if we go to war again, we will engage in total warfare and achieve the utter destruction of our enemy. Anything less will lead to quagmires like Iraq.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
12/14/2004 10:06 Comments ||
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#4
The satisfaction of quality remains, long after the pain of price is forgotten
History will treat authors like these in much the same way that it treats those who whined about the details in our war with Hitler. It will provide their works with a prominent place in the rubbish bin.
BTW, loser, another mass grave was found in Iraq today.
#5
MD: Perhaps the question we should be asking ourselves is whether we should be in the business of occupying enemy countries before we utterly destroy them. It seems to me the subjugation of Germany and Japan made the subsequent occupation and rehabilitation of those countries run more smoothly than Iraq.
This is the one thing that the experts opponents on strategic bombing never write about. The shibboleth of the day is that killing large numbers of enemy civilians is supposed to make them stronger. But the evidence on the ground is quite different. Everywhere that such attacks have happened, the population has been thoroughly cowed, in most cases for generations.
#6
Perhaps the question we should be asking ourselves is whether we should be in the business of occupying enemy countries before we utterly destroy them. It seems to me the subjugation of Germany and Japan made the subsequent occupation and rehabilitation of those countries run more smoothly than Iraq.
The old "we shoulda spotted them Guderian and 20 panzer divisions strategy". Look, Rummy KNEW that wasnt gonna be what happened. It was his job to plan for Iraq, not WW2. He also knew what army we had (and indeed, hes opposed developing a force for nation building). He should have planned accordingly. If he thought we were still going to have this on our hands 20 months post invasion, and that it was worth doing anyway, he should have given more sense of what we were up against (though in all fairness, most of the polyanash comments came from Cheney, and Rummy sometimes gets tarred with Cheneys misstatements)
#7
im currently reading Churchills history of WW2. Churchill certainly whined when somebody screwed up the details. When somebody screwed up enough, he fired them.
That's a bit of a cop out. I'd wager that it's not easy to find a qualified individual willing to make the tough decisions and who is willing to endure the constant public harping, polticial backstabbing and personal threats to saftery.
What exactly do you hope to gain by going over what went wrong? I don't understand why you think that is so helpful, especially if you don't have any idea who could do/have done it better.
#11
Ok, i'll bite (but i DONT have time for an extended discussion)
1. I have long thought that the WOT needed broader political support, and should not be run exclusively by Bush loyalists. That would lead to a Dem, like Lieberman, or to a McCain. BUT - the issue here is technical competence, specifically on planning. While an argument can be made that you fire someone for gross incompetence even if you dont know the successor will be better (at least the successor now knows you hold people accountable) not all agree with that, and i wont make it. I also realize that it sounds self serving (since im a dem) and so i will limit myself to admin loyalists
2. One would like to think theres SOMEONE in DoD whos BOTH Bush loyal, and NOT implicated in the planning screwup, as both Feith and Rummy seem to be. Wolfie? I very much admire the man, and hope against hope that he spoke out for better planning and more troops - but not being privy to inside communications, I dont know that. So I will limit my list to people not currently in the DoD.
3. On the other hand it needs to be someone with nat security expertise, and capable of handling an org like DoD (clearly condi was better pick for State, than DoD) So, a bush loyalist, with nat. security creds, not now at DoD. Who does that leave? Two names come up - A. John Bolton B. Jim Baker Im not sure what role Bolton had in Iraqi planning, but i assume hes not implicated in the mistakes. Baker, for all that i personally dislike him (for his role wrt Israel in the elder Bush admin, and his role in Florida 2000) might be the right person for DoD.
So I have some idea - but i cant vouch that they would have done better - in particular i dont know what they were saying to Bush in private, prewar.
I really dont have time to discuss this matter further. It is wholly academic, as theres no indication that the admin is thinking of replacing Rummy.
There is another reason why its important to over this, aside from holding individuals, and the admin in general, accountable. There are many individuals, who are not going to blame this on poor planning, but are going to judge that ANY US intervention of this kind is doomed to the same problems, and who will use that argument when future interventions are debated, whether in Iran, North Korea, or elsewhere. It is essential, when we judge policy in those cases, that we recognize to what extent our problems in Iraq were intrinsic to this kind of intervention, and to what extent they could have been avoided with better planning.
It is also essential, to the extent that we have encountered problems because of limits on the force we had availbale, that we take that into account in what we do with our future force structure.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
