Jacob Levy is doing an admirable job (here, too) of trying to answer the question: Did the Administration veto plans to attack the terrorist Zarqawi, or his base in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, prior to the beginning of Gulf War II, because the presence of a genuine terrorist in Iraq was too useful for their case to give up?
It seemed too dark to believe at the time. If there’s any reason not to believe it, I’m sure that Levy will get to it. So far, he hasn’t.
{ 11 comments }
Sebastian Holsclaw 06.30.04 at 11:50 pm
Just want to take a preliminary poll. How many of those on this board who did not support the general invasion of Iraq but would have supported an unannounced limited invasion for the purpose of ridding that medium-sized town of the terrorist camp? Unannounced, because if there was a 3 month UN fight about it, it wouldn’t of been useful. Invasion, because unless you believe in firebombing civilians in towns to get the terrorists who also live there, you have to invade. Oh, did I mention this would be a U.S. invasion or are we going to pretend that NATO (the we can’t be involved in securing Afghanistan elections organization)would have been involved? Now be honest. How many of you believe that the screaming headline of the Guardian would not have been akin to: “Bush Rushes to War!” or “Bush Slaughters Innocents in ‘Terrorist Camp'”.
Luke Weiger 07.01.04 at 1:59 am
“Just want to take a preliminary poll. How many of those on this board who did not support the general invasion of Iraq but would have supported an unannounced limited invasion for the purpose of ridding that medium-sized town of the terrorist camp?”
The Kurds could’ve done it with air cover. And I would’ve supported such action.
Luke Weiger 07.01.04 at 2:00 am
“Just want to take a preliminary poll. How many of those on this board who did not support the general invasion of Iraq but would have supported an unannounced limited invasion for the purpose of ridding that medium-sized town of the terrorist camp? Unannounced, because if there was a 3 month UN fight about it, it wouldn’t of been useful. Invasion, because unless you believe in firebombing civilians in towns to get the terrorists who also live there, you have to invade.”
The Kurds could’ve done it with air cover. And I would’ve supported such action.
luke weiger 07.01.04 at 2:01 am
whoops.
RD 07.01.04 at 2:13 am
Just want to take a preliminary poll. How many of those on this board who did not support the general invasion of Iraq but would have supported anything contrary to whatever the current administration would’ve done at any level just to retaliate for Gore’s huge, incredibly embarrassing failure to handle the baton Clinton should’ve been able to easily hand off to him.
bob mcmanus 07.01.04 at 3:38 am
“The Kurds could’ve done it with air cover. And I would’ve supported such action.”
Sure. What irritates me about this is we are thinking we understand what “the Pentagon had drawn plans” actually means.
I give you Tora-Bora and the recent Pakistani offensive as reasons to believe although it may have been as simple as getting Atef in Yemen, it may also have been a very difficult and expensive operation. And possibly unsuccessful.
And with all due respect to the Kurds, I don’t see that they had sufficient reason to sacrifice a brigade for the sake of killing Zarqwahi.
I did support the Iraq war, but I would like to know a few more details before signing onto this.
ahem 07.01.04 at 3:46 am
That horse ain’t coming back to life, Sebastian, no matter how hard you flog it. It’s regrettable enough that your little pet theory is considered a ‘primary source’ for Jacob Levy.
mc 07.01.04 at 1:15 pm
Right, so now we learn from fair and balanced sources that the US did not bother with catching a terrorist on their most wanted list before he created more havoc because… there might have been people who would have protested and the Guardian, that incredibly powerful US lobby, might have published a headline that would have single-handedly castrated the CIA, the Pentagon and the White House.
It so makes sense. Especially in light of the fact that there were indeed tons of protests last year and many Guardian headlines and yet, how suprising, even these mighty forces could not restrain the hand of America!
Things that work as announced – the government in power is responsible for its own decisions and resolute and strong in the face of criticism and enemies alike.
Things that weren’t done/didn’t work as intended/are incomprehensible/result in screwups and bloodshed – the government in power had its hand tied by the _potential_ disapproval of a fraction of the public for an anti-terrorist intervention whose exact nature cannot even be defined because it never happened.
I bet even 9/11 happened as a result of failures that weren’t really failures but situations where the entire US government and intelligence and military, having handed over power to the Guardian in the early nineties as a gesture of friendship to the British left-wing elites, was incapable of acting. Damn leftists.
Sebastian Holsclaw 07.01.04 at 3:31 pm
Wow. This is thinking at its best. The very same people who complain about Bush’s lack of diplomatic sense also claim to wish that Bush had invaded a a portion of Iraq in August 2002, before the UN debate and without authorization from Congress. They wanted the US to do that right in the middle of negotiations with Turkey. They wanted the US to do it a time when it looked quite probable (though in hindsight wrong) that we could invade all of Iraq and rid the world of Saddam AND Zarqawi with a few-month delay instead of getting rid of only one and making it diplomatically impossible to get rid of the other. They wanted the U.S. to do this without public debate.
Right.
Maybe I should have a talk about economics now, while you are saying things that you clearly don’t really believe.
David Meyer 07.01.04 at 9:48 pm
I am referenced in the Levy post. I have a significant amount of material on the topic available on my blog, fugop.blogspot.com.
Extradite the Neocons 07.01.04 at 10:37 pm
The very same people who complain about Bush’s lack of diplomatic sense also claim to wish that Bush had invaded a a portion of Iraq in August 2002, before the UN debate and without authorization from Congress.
Gee, the US hadn’t done anything like that previously, so it’s unthinkable.
Strawman. Try again.
And why exactly did we need to “rid the world” of Saddam? He’d been a mostly good employee.
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