Month: October 2004

Maybe they don’t all go for the challenger, after all. (Hat tip: Mickey.)

More evidence of a war-plan gone dangerously awry:

[T]he Al Qaqaa case may only be the tip of the iceberg. As many as 10,000 other conventional-arms dumps dotted around Iraq are believed to have been looted after the U.S. invasion, the officials say. In addition, as many as 30 out of 90 of Saddam’s known nuclear research facilities were also stripped down-some to the ground-by looters.
While much of the material taken from the nuclear sites is believed to have been “dual use” manufacturing equipment largely useless to terrorists, the looting of conventional-arms depots means that Zarqawi and the ex-Baathists are not unlikely to run out of weapons any time soon-and that the insurgency may have a long way to go before it runs out of steam.

My point entirely.

There’s new evidence that Syria has been testing chemical weapons in Darfur.

The reason the story of missing munitions at al Qa Qaa is an important one is not that, in and of itself, it’s a huge deal. As Bill Kristol points out in one of the weakest defenses of the administration yet, the NYT story “didn’t put it into context how important 380 tons are when there are tens of thousands of explosives in the country.” Yes, that’s right. Compared to all the other munitions sites that were looted during and after the invasion, al Qa Qaa is not that devastating. But what about all the other sites? What about the fact that a war begun as a means to restrain Saddam’s weaponry actually helped disperse it? That’s the real issue. And as the facts emerge, I’ve become convinced of one astounding thing: the Bush administration didn’t care very much about the dangers from Saddam’s alleged WMDs, or conventional munitions. Safeguarding those sites, keeping those weapons out of the hands of terrorists, was not a major priority. Here’s a section from the AP story on al Qa Qaa:

As the rest of Perkins’ brigade moved on, the 3rd Battalion spent two days in the area, sweeping for other Iraqi forces, Perkins said. The troops didn’t specifically search for any high explosives, although they were aware that Al-Qaqaa was an important site for what was believed to be Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs.

(My emphasis.) The more you think about it, the more extraordinary that is.

THE WIDER PROBLEM: Check out this piece by Peter Galbraith, a supporter of the war who was appalled by what he saw in the invasion’s aftermath. He reported back to Paul Wolfowitz:

I also described two particularly disturbing incidents — one I had witnessed and the other I had heard about. On April 16, 2003, a mob attacked and looted the Iraqi equivalent of the Centers for Disease Control, taking live HIV and black fever virus among other potentially lethal materials. US troops were stationed across the street but did not intervene because they didn’t know the building was important.
When he found out, the young American lieutenant was devastated. He shook his head and said, “I hope I am not responsible for Armageddon.” About the same time, looters entered the warehouses at Iraq’s sprawling nuclear facilities at Tuwaitha on Baghdad’s outskirts. They took barrels of yellowcake (raw uranium), apparently dumping the uranium and using the barrels to hold water. US troops were at Tuwaitha but did not interfere… It appears that troops did not receive relevant intelligence about Iraq’s WMD facilities, nor was there any plan to secure them. Even after my briefing, the Pentagon leaders did nothing to safeguard Iraq’s nuclear sites.

Yes, as Hitchens has put it, this is near-impeachable negligence. We are less safe as a result. How can anyone say that Bush is our best bet in the war on terrorism when his own conduct has put this country at grave danger from the very weapons he was supposed to defend us from? And when his campaign then comes out and says that this kind of criticism is smearing the troops, they have told us all we need to know. They have no real answers. So they smear their critics.

Another conservative endorsement of Kerry. The editor, Bill Emmott, put it this way: “It was a difficult call, given that we endorsed George Bush in 2000 and supported the war in Iraq. But in the end we felt he has been too incompetent to deserve re-election.” Ouch. I’m glad they focused on Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, two huge blows to America’s reputation as a guarantor of human rights, and two issues largely missing from the debates:

The biggest mistake, though, was one that will haunt America for years to come. It lay in dealing with prisoners-of-war by sending hundreds of them to the American base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, putting them in a legal limbo, outside the Geneva conventions and outside America’s own legal system. That act reflected a genuinely difficult problem: that of having captured people of unknown status but many of whom probably did want to kill Americans, at a time when to set them free would have been politically controversial, to say the least. That difficulty cannot neutralise the damage caused by this decision, however. Today, Guantánamo Bay offers constant evidence of America’s hypocrisy, evidence that is disturbing for those who sympathise with it, cause-affirming for those who hate it. This administration, which claims to be fighting for justice, the rule of law and liberty, is incarcerating hundreds of people, whether innocent or guilty, without trial or access to legal representation. The White House’s proposed remedy, namely military tribunals, merely compounds the problem.

If they get re-elected, they need to fix this. Or Kerry has to do the job.

WAS LINCOLN GAY? This is going to become a major controversy. Due out early next year, scholar C.A. Tripp’s painstakingly researched book on “The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln” (Free Press) contains too much information to be dismissed. Did you know that Lincoln wrote a teenage poem about gay marriage? That he slept in the same bed as men for much of his life? Doug Ireland sets the stage for the coming debate.

Of course someone has put up a blog mocking the NYT’s wedding announcements. Of course it’s hilarious. Of course you need another reason to procrastinate …

GOP TURNOUT DRIVE: The Onion has the goods.

Reihan Salam details the bloodletting that will ensue among Republicans if Bush loses.

Kerry will win a landslide. That’s the opinion of Republican pollsters Fabrizio/McLaughlin. Check out their latest Battleground Ballot press release.

THE IRAQIS SPEAK: More bad news for the Bush campaign:

Mohammed al-Sharaa, who heads the [Iraqi] science ministry’s site monitoring department and worked with UN weapons inspectors under Saddam, said “it is impossible that these materials could have been taken from this site before the regime’s fall.” He said he and other officials had been ordered a month earlier to insure that “not even a shred of paper left the sites.” “The officials that were inside this facility (Al-Qaqaa) beforehand confirm that not even a shred of paper left it before the fall and I spoke to them about it and they even issued certified statements to this effect which the US-led coalition was aware of.”

This, of course, is just one case. But we know of many others as well. Even if this one doesn’t pan out (which is highly unlikely), we know that the invasion force didn’t secure many, many critical sites because they didn’t have enough manpower. We also know that the alleged purpose of the invasion was to secure loose weaponry, especially WMD material, and prevent it being transferred to terrorists. Hence the obvious question, raised in this blog before: Is it not clear by now that the invasion actually facilitated the transfer of such weapons? And isn’t that damning enough, whatever happened at al Qa Qaa?

A New York pol faces down the teachers’ unions.

Here’s an email that’s harsher than I would be, but it does get to something problematic about the otherwise admirable James Lileks:

You wrote about Lileks bleat today, “One other thing: there is nothing in his piece about Bush’s record.” Until recently I read his column frequently and I have never, not once, seen a single criticism of Bush or any other Republican for that matter. Lileks is as partisan as Ed Gillespie. I haven’t read his column since his hateful piece essentially calling gay people a bunch of whiny complainers for being offended by the hatemongering in the Republican party. He had the audacity to compare the privacy of his preschool daughter to that of Mary Cheney. Comparing the hard slog in WWII in the Pacific to Bush’s ineptitude in Iraq is absurd and shows just how he’s lost his grip on reality. Lileks is a Democrat turned Republican. My theory is that he’s lot like every Catholic convert I’ve ever met. When they’re around you can’t tell a pope joke without getting a scornful look. Converts of all kinds are the most radical and dogmatic.

Of course, we’re all products of our own environments. As basically a conservative, I’m much madder at Bush than I’d be if I were a Democrat. My beef is with my own side. Similarly, some of, say Marty Peretz’s or Ron Radosh’s support for Bush is vested in their own valiant struggles against peacenik see-no-evil Democrats. That’s where their passion is. Lileks is similar. But if he had made sensible criticism of the shambles in Iraq, or even acknowledged it in anything but dismissive terms, I’d be more persuaded.

BUT NONE OF THAT MATTERS: On the other hand, here’s a typical email in defense of Bush:

I agree with you that Lileks could have written that piece a year ago, and that he essentially ignores Bush’s record. However, it seems to me that Bush’s mistakes — and there are many — do not matter, so long as one doubts that Kerry will prosecute the war aggressively. If you’re not sure — and many of us are not — that he fundamentally “gets it,” then you cannot possibly vote for him. The question of Bush’s mistakes is a second-order question. First, you must ask if someone will fight; then, you ask if he will fight well. You jump to the second question, say Bush will not fight well, thus Kerry must be elected, QED. I’m not saying you can’t vote for Kerry — but you can only vote for Kerry if you think that he will fight. Personally, I don’t. Neither does Lileks. This is why, fundamentally, their relative competences are not relevant to us. Bush might not be the best wartime leader imaginable, or even available, but he is by definition preferable to someone we’re not sure will actually fight a war.

But the competence of the current leader cannot be completely irrelevant. If his incompetence means we actually lose the war, then surely some kind of reassessment is due. So the question becomes: how incompetent is he? And that’s a matter of degree not kind. You also have to unpack the notion of “fighting a war.” What does that exactly mean? Invading Iran? Or North Korea? Those are not viable options. We’ve already invaded two countries in three years. And much of this war is indeed police work and law enforcement and this president understands that as well. It’s a blend of strategies; and the blend will shift with the circumstances. This hyperventilating about who “gets it” only gets us so far. And what disappoints me about Bush supporters is their apparent inability to give specifics about where their candidate differs or would differ from Kerry. I’m listening. And I hear little but rhetoric.