[Rhodes22-list] Political:Off to Iraq

[DCLewis1 at aol.com]

Brad,
 
To respond to your response: I have to plead ignorance regarding Murtha’s  
ideas for redeploying.  I’ve been largely out of touch for the past 2+  weeks 
and I likely missed your post (and Murtha’s notion).  I  apologize.  My initial 
thought is that it’s a long way from Okinawa to the  Middle East and I don’t 
get the connection - except that it gets us out of  Iraq.  
 
Regarding the Clinton letter: I again say what you are trying is a huge  
stretch not likely to be accepted by anyone on this board, or the electorate in  
general.  I recall, recognize and accept all the frustration Clinton and  Bush 
had with Saddam Hussein; but it’s one thing for Clinton to authorize an air  
strike on Iraq and have an adversarial policy towards it, it’s quite another  
thing for Bush to “pull the trigger”, to use your phrase in your post, and  
authorize more than 3,000 air strikes and a ground invasion.  The 2  different 
responses are quantitatively and qualitatively hugely different.   Trying to 
tie the current Iraq morass back to Clinton is a losing gambit.
 
What were some pre-invasion alternatives?
Alternative 1: Skip it.   It has always seemed patently obvious to me that if 
the nations most affected by  a rogue Iraq really didn’t give a damn that 
there was no reason to pursue the  matter.  I think Mr Bush should have 
identified this option in a  nanosecond.  Not going to war should always be Option A.  
OR if he  really thought there was reason for a  pre-emptive war, he should 
have  directed every component of the Intelligence Community to sit down with 
their  foreign counterpart and cooperatively sort out the issues - note: I did 
not say  sell them on the US position, I said sort out the intelligence data 
and input  and reach a joint supportable conclusion with the real possibility 
that his  going in assessment was wrong.  This is not Mon morning 
quarterbacking, to  me this is common sense.  You want to count on and use your allies - so 
use  your allies intelligence services.  Somewhere I’ve read we had 3  
intelligence agents in Iraq prior to the invasion - clearly a limited capability  - 
the validity of our intelligence estimate prior to the invasion would seem to  
support that limited capability.  I’d bet Turkey had hundreds of agents  
(given their Kurd problem).  Turkey is a good ally, ask Turkey for their  best 
estimate and data.  Get Turkey’s cooperation, or even better,  cooperate with 
Turkey (i.e. Turkish troops in the line of fire, not  ours).   Seems to me that if 
the most affected nations, the nations at  greatest risk,  will not support 
our operations, and worse publically and  privately oppose it, a reasonable 
approach would be to skip the whole thing -  that’s Alternative 1.
 
Alternative 2: Get your allies on board up front.  Going back to the  intell 
meetings I recommended above, it’s possible that allies might come on  board.  
But do that up front, before the invasion.  Don’t have a  Division of troops 
afloat in the Med with nowhere to go when the invasion  starts, your Generals 
need to understand what assets they have and where they  are.  You need to 
know who’s with you and who’s against you.  Sort it  out up front - that’s 
Alternative 2.
 
Alternative 3: It has always seemed to me that if the most distinguished  and 
most competent military presence in the Cabinet, Collin Powell, said “Mr  
President you really ought to think about this”  the President should  reasonably 
and immediately bring the entire process to Full Stop until it was  sorted 
out and Secy Powell was completely satisfied.  I understand that  Secy Powell 
ran the State Dept and that Secy Rumsfeld ran the Defense Dept, but  Secy Powell 
is also Gen Powell and he knows a helluva lot more about running a  war, a 
campaign,  the uniformed DoD, etc,  than Mr Rumsfeld.   What happened is just 
inexcusable.  I think Secy Powell understood the lack  of post invasion 
planning.  I also think Rumsfeld, in the best MBA  tradition,  nickle & dimed the 
uniformed military at every turn so that  the result was the minimum force needed 
to effect the invasion, as opposed to  the maximum force needed to win the war 
(this includes post-invasion).  Alternative 3 was to stop the process until 
competent authority (Collin Powell)  felt we had it right based on his unique 
knowledge and experience in the  Cabinet.
 
Personally, I have always felt the case for pre-emptive war with Iraq was  
weak.  We all know that in retrospect, many of us knew that prospectively.  The 
basis for my conclusion is that Iraq was never presumed to have delivery  
systems (MRBMs, ICBMs) with the accuracy to be a threat to anyone but Israel -  
and I’m positive Israel can, and will, take care of itself.  You can hide  WMD 
development so that it’s tough to track (ask Philip), but you can’t hide the  
development of delivery systems - the systems have to be tested on ranges, and 
 we can track those tests.   No one has ever claimed Iraq had adequate  
delivery systems to put the US at risk.  My point here is not to claim  
self-righteous brilliance, my point only claims common sense.
 
>From a political perspective many of us were opposed to the Iraq war from  
the start, but I think the majority of the electorate decided to trust the  
President’s judgement - and now, not surprisingly, they feel let down.  The  
electorates disenchantment with Bush’s judgement is the political heat you see  in 
the newspaper everyday.  The 3 alternatives above were clearly available  to 
the President and he chose not to use them.  He rushed to judgement when  he 
should have been a lot more skeptical, and a lot better prepared.
 
Again, I don’t think what I’ve outlined above is Mon morning  
quarterbacking, I think the alternatives outlined above are just common sense,  they amount 
to due diligence.
 
Just my opinion.
 
Dave