A decade later and the Iraq debate is still contaminated with myths (from 2013)

foreignpolicy.com ^ | 17 March, 2013 | Peter Feaver

[marktwain]

ere on the 10-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, I wonder how long it will be before we can discuss the war free from the contamination of myths. It may be sooner than many myth-purveyors expect. Just listen to this lecture by Mel Leffler, one of the leading historians of American diplomacy. He has been a harsh critic of Bush-era diplomacy and his speech does accept some of the conventional critique (specifically about the "hubris" of the Bush administration), but his analysis is far more balanced than the conventional wisdom on the topic. All in all, Leffler’s analysis is a promising example of myth-busting.

For my part, the myths that get thrown at me most often have to do with why the war happened in the first place. Here are five of the most pervasive myths:

1. The Bush administration went to war against Iraq because it thought (or claimed to think) Iraq had been behind the 9/11 attacks. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the Bush Administration did explore the possibility that Hussein might have collaborated with al Qaeda on the attacks. Vice President Dick Cheney (along with some officials in the secretary of defense’s office) in particular believed this hypothesis had some merit, and in the early months gave considerable weight to some tantalizing evidence that seemed to support it. However, by the fall of 2002 when the administration was in fact selling the policy of confronting Hussein, the question of a specific link to 9/11 was abandoned and Cheney instead emphasized the larger possibility of collaboration between Iraq and al Qaeda. We now know that those fears were reasonable and supported by the evidence captured in Iraq after the invasion.

[Alberta's Child]

There already was a Status of Forces agreement that lasted through the end of 2011. Obama's failure to secure a new Status of Forces agreement was one of the few "successes" of his presidency. The Obama administration was adamant that U.S. forces in Iraq would be immune from Iraqi prosecution for any crimes -- probably at the insistence of every lawyer who ever worked in the U.S. Justice Department, the U.S. State Department, and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Iraq would not accept those terms, so the continuing military presence was off the table.

I believe it was Colin Powell who warned President Bush in 2002-03 before the invasion of Iraq: "If you break it, you own it."

George W. Bush broke Iraq. He owns it.

[TigersEye]

1. Defending our forces from aggression. Not worth it.
2. Defying our postwar agreements. Not worth it.
3. Assassination attempt on a former POTUS. Not worth it.
4. Killing people the U.S. promised to protect. Not worth it.

No surprise to me that none of things has any meaning to you.
Your loyalty to the U.S. is exactly what I’ve always thought it was.

[marktwain]

Yes, Bush signed the agreement that he did not want: After the election of Obama and under intense pressure from the Establishment Media, which gave the Maliki government the ability to renege on what they had agreed to in August.

Remember how hard the Establishment Media pushed Bush as Evil? How hard they pushed to prevent a win in Iraq?

Obama had three years to get a better deal. The U.S. held all the cards, but President Obama wasn’t willing to play them.

This is from the leftwing FactCheck.org, hardly a Bush partisan.

“So, President Bush reluctantly agreed to a withdrawal deadline without leaving behind a residual force because of Maliki’s strong objections. Jeb Bush ignores those facts.

Still, Obama had three years to negotiate a new agreement prior to the Dec. 31, 2011, withdrawal date to keep some U.S. troops in Iraq. In fact, a day before Bush signed the agreement, Gen. Ray Odierno — the former commander of the U.S. troops in Iraq and current Army chief of staff — said the agreement might be renegotiated depending on conditions on the ground. “Three years is a very long time,” Odierno told the New York Times.”

http://www.factcheck.org/2015/08/bush-clinton-play-blame-game-in-iraq/

Things would have been much different if President Bush had the support of the media that Obama had. But Bush was a Republican.

[Alberta's Child]

1. Defending our forces from aggression. Our forces operating in the airspace of a sovereign nation? Who is the aggressor there?

2. Defying our postwar agreements.You mean from the 1990 war where the U.S. was on the wrong side?

3. Assassination attempt on a former POTUS. You're willing to piss away thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars over that? What is this -- a country run by a royal family?

4. Killing people the U.S. promised to protect. How are things working out for them over there now?

[Alberta's Child]

Your loyalty to the U.S. is exactly what I’ve always thought it was.

No need to question my loyalty to the U.S. Your loyalty to Iraq seems like the bigger issue here, no?

[marktwain]

Maybe we should find our own fuel.

---

If “we” is Western Civilization, “we” did. We negotiated a contract with the King of Saudi Arabia. We found oil and put in all the infrastructure for extraction and paid the agreed price in full and on time. Then the Saudi’s used the Soviets as leverage to break the contract, and the West was unwilling to risk nuclear war to enforce the contract.

Now, through technology, “we” are on the path to not needing our stolen oil. We are not there yet.

The oil belonged to Saudi Arabia. We bought it, then they stole it from us.

[TigersEye]

I get it. You don’t believe in the things the U.S. stands for and no man should ever give his life for those things.

No need for lame sophistry about a “sovereign nation” not abiding by its post-war peace agreement.

Same for Japan, same for Germany, ... we had no business there

Your posting history is a litany of that kind of thinking.

[Alberta's Child]

I would take any discussions that were going on in the context of a political campaign with a huge grain of salt.

The article you cited there addresses Iraq in the context of a 2016 political campaign at a time when Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton were front-runners for their respective party nominations.

The U.S. voters had the final say on that matter, and they found both of those @ssholes seriously lacking ... Hillary Clinton because of her two-faced dealings on Iraq, and Jeb Bush because his brother was less popular than a child molester when he left office in 2009.

The U.S. held all the cards, but President Obama wasn’t willing to play them.

What cards did the U.S. hold? Barack Obama was president largely because Americans were sick and tired of the bullsh!t they were seeing in their own government -- which was pissing away thousands of lives and untold billions of dollars in a war in Iraq that resulted in a new government where Islam is established as the official state religion. No offense, but you'd have to be retarded to think that nonsense was remotely worth even a single American life.

[marktwain]

Frankly, the guy should be given the same place in the ash heap of history as an @sshole like Robert McNamara — because he knew damn well what the U.S. was getting into in 2003 but obviously didn’t give a sh!t.

---

Easy to Monday morning quarterback.

Fact - Saddam had plans to reinvigorate his WMD programs when the sanctions were lifted. The sanctions were falling apart when we invaded.

Fact - Saddam was negotiating with Al Queda before we invaded. They had not reached agreement yet. Then we invaded.

You assume that everything would be just wonderful if we had not invaded. But there are plenty of scenarios where things could have been much worse.

One thing President Bush did not anticipate - The incredible hostility of the Establishment Media, willing, and urging, an American defeat rather than allow a Republican president to win a war.

[Alberta's Child]

You don’t believe in the things the U.S. stands for and no man should ever give his life for those things.

Certainly not halfway around the world in a f#%&ing Islamic sh!t-hole.

Your posting history is a litany of that kind of thinking.

I'm kind of proud of that. This country was founded by people who probably thought a lot like me. I'll bet Thomas Jefferson and George Washington would have a lot of interest in my FR posting history. Personally, I think they'd be nauseated by what this country looked like by the time we got to 2008 ... a government hiring out American soldiers as mercenaries for Islamic royal families in the Middle East, while allowing a full-scale Latin American invasion across our own southern border here at home.

If that's what the U.S. stands for, then you can have it.

[TigersEye]

This guy is right up your alley!

Intercept Co-Founder Goes Off the Rails, Compares Dick Cheney to ‘Butcher’ Assad

[Alberta's Child]

Easy to Monday morning quarterback.

That's not Monday-morning quarterbacking. That's called reading a scouting report -- authored by former U.S. Secretary of Defense in the early 1990s when he explained that an invasion of Iraq would result in the exact same disastrous scenario that unfolded after the 2003 invasion.

Fact - Saddam had plans to reinvigorate his WMD programs when the sanctions were lifted. The sanctions were falling apart when we invaded.

Fact - Saddam was negotiating with Al Queda before we invaded. They had not reached agreement yet. Then we invaded.

I'd be curious to see your sources for these "facts."

One thing President Bush did not anticipate - The incredible hostility of the Establishment Media, willing, and urging, an American defeat rather than allow a Republican president to win a war.

If he didn't anticipate that, then he had no business running anything in his life more complicated than a lemonade stand. Blaming the "Establishment Media" for losing a war is like blaming misogyny or Russian hacking for Hillary Clinton's loss in 2016.

[TigersEye]

Sources for those facts were already posted on this thread.

• 5. Iraq's nuclear weapons program.
• 6. Iraq's biological weapons program.
• 7. Iraq's chemical weapons program.
• 8. Saddam's extensive cooperation with terrorists.

But why respond to that at all? You've already said they are meaningless to you.

[morphing libertarian]

Fact-Iran was a bigger supporter of terrorism than Iraq.

Fact-Iran was and is a bigger direct threat to us than Saddam, her was.

Fact-Iraq planned to kill W’s father in Kuwait.

[Alberta's Child]

First of all, I would not consider anything "factual" if it comes out of a U.S. intelligence report of any kind. It might be true, but after the events of the last few months it is no more credible than what you'd find in the New York Times or on CNN.

Secondly, there's an interesting item in the last link that directly contradicts any claim of cooperation between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

And last of all ... One of the claims made in that last link is that Saddam Hussein had drafted a plan to overthrow the Saudi royal family in 2001. Was there a downside to this?

[Alberta's Child]

Well, he ain’t “up my alley,” but he’s sure entertaining. LOL.

[Keb]

Reply to: “If you have to debunk “war conspiracy theories” ten years after the fact, then you can be sure that the military campaign in question was a complete ‘effing disaster.”

---

In the real world, the fastest blitzkrieg in the history of the human race was militarily a spectacular triumph, by any serious standards. There have been many criticisms of it. President Bush sent forces in too quickly, and should have given the inspectors more time to search. Not only that, but President Bush sent forces too late, and allowed much of Sadam’s chemical arsenal to be evacuated to Syria. President Bush sent too small a force, and could not control the country. And besides that, President Bush sent too large a force, and this offended the Iraqis. We went to war to seize Iraq’s oil, and we shouldn’t have. Also, we didn’t go to seize Iraq’s oil, and we should have. President Bush relied too heavily on local allies, and they fumbled. In addition, President Bush didn’t make enough use of local allies, and put too much of the load on US forces. President Bush is too short. And besides that, he’s too tall.

(OK, I made up the last two. The rest are criticism actually leveled at President Bush’s handling of the Iraq war.) The mere fact that the criticisms of the war point in all directions, is a clue to the fact that there was no clear-cut flaw in the campaign.

Also, if you mean to talks seriously about it, you do need to acknowledge that President Bush inherited the Iraq war from President Clinton. President Clinton bombed Iraq more or less day-in, day-out, for his entire term in office. He was losing, but he did fire a lot of missiles, and drop a lot of bombs (and dropped a lot of concrete blocks). By the time the younger President Bush took office, the question was not whether to fight the war we had been fighting for the last decade, but rather how to fight it.

It does seem that, when President Bush proposed to win the war we had been fighting for the last ten years (we went to war with Iraq at the beginning of 1991, and never stopped until President Bush won it), all the newspaper editors in the United States suffered simultaneous psychotic breaks, and completely forgot that the war they had been reporting on for the last ten years, had ever existed. The campaign to win the war we had been fighting for the last decade was known as “Preemptive War”. The war he inherited from President Clinton was call “George Bush’s War of Choice”. The strike by the third largest alliance in the history of the human race was “Acting Unilaterally”. Referring to the fastest blitzkrieg in history as “Being Bogged Down in a Quagmire”, was trivial by comparison.

I’m tempted to say “You can’t make this stuff up.” Obviously, I would be wrong, because someone did make this stuff up, and that’s the ultimate proof of feasibility. But anyone who fell for any of this, should take it as a warning. The lies don’t get more obvious. Anyone who fell for any of them, can be sure that the same liars have fooled him about other things, too.

[marktwain]

One thing President Bush did not anticipate - The incredible hostility of the Establishment Media, willing, and urging, an American defeat rather than allow a Republican president to win a war.

“If he didn’t anticipate that, then he had no business running anything in his life more complicated than a lemonade stand. Blaming the “Establishment Media” for losing a war is like blaming misogyny or Russian hacking for Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016.”

---

Hard to believe you are serious about that. The Establishment Media has been perhaps the biggest power in American Politics for 60 years.

Russian hacking? Missogyny? A joke.

Many serious people did not anticipate the willingness of the Establishment Media to push for a U.S. loss. 82 of 208 Democrats voted to authorize the war. The total vote was 297 to 133.

The Left, and Establishment Media (but I repeat myself) lurched into unknown territory since W. Bush was elected in 2000.

[Alberta's Child]

I don't really dispute anything you've posted there. Nothing I've ever said in opposition to the invasion of Iraq was ever based on media reports like the idiotic criticisms you've referenced there.

The only error in your thinking is the way you present the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a continuum dating back to the first Gulf War in 1990-91. You are correct in describing it this way, but that doesn't necessarily make it justifiable. In fact, when the Saudi influence in radical Islam started getting some scrutiny after 9/11, a lot of people began to wonder about something I've contended since 1990 -- that perhaps the U.S. was on the wrong side in Desert Storm.

[TigersEye]

First of all, I would not consider anything "factual" if it comes out of a U.S. intelligence report of any kind.

You have a very convenient way of believing in things.

You won’t get an argument from me on that. I’m no late-comer to the game, either. I’ve been saying the Iraq invasion was a disaster since the very beginning.

You're an expert when you need to be an expert.

I don't know what Obama did to turn Iraq into a dysfunctional mess.

You're completely ignorant when you need to be ignorant.