War

Given the usual approach of the Bush regime to anyone who questions it, that could be their expected response to this report.

The Iraq invasion was “an unnecessary preventive war of choice” that has robbed resources and attention from the more critical fight against al Qaeda in a hopeless U.S. quest for absolute security, according to a study recently published by the U.S. Army War College.

The 56-page document written by Jeffrey Record, a veteran defense expert who serves as a visiting research professor at the Strategic Studies Institute of the Army War College, represents a blistering assessment of what President Bush calls the U.S. global war on terrorism.

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Record urged U.S. leaders to refocus Bush’s broad war to target Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network, blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America, and its allies. Record said the Iraq war was a detour from real anti-terrorism efforts.

Record criticized the Bush administration for lumping together al Qaeda and President Saddam Hussein’s Iraq “as a single, undifferentiated terrorist threat.”

“This was a strategic error of the first order because it ignored critical differences between the two in character, threat level and susceptibility to U.S. deterrence and military action,” Record wrote.

“The result has been an unnecessary preventive war of choice against a deterred Iraq that has created a new front in the Middle East for Islamic terrorism and diverted attention and resources away from securing the American homeland against further assault by an undeterrable al Qaeda,” Record wrote.

This also seems like a good time to point out a story that most people seemed to have missed, since very few other news organizations picked it up after the NY Times reported it: U.S. Withdraws a Team of Weapons Hunters From Iraq.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 — The Bush administration has quietly withdrawn from Iraq a 400-member military team whose job was to scour the country for military equipment, according to senior government officials.

The step was described by some military officials as a sign that the administration might have lowered its sights and no longer expected to uncover the caches of chemical and biological weapons that the White House cited as a principal reason for going to war last March.

A separate military team that specializes in disposing of chemical and biological weapons remains part of the 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group, which has been searching Iraq for more that seven months at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. But that team is “still waiting for something to dispose of,” said a survey group member.

Here is one of the scary drawings that Bush-backers claim was part of Iraq’s WMD program:

As you’ve probably noticed, I’m not posting much political stuff lately. It’s all too absurd to write about. I just want to laugh or hide my head under a pillow.

Spread the word. I’m concerned that Thomas Kean, the Bush-chosen head of the 9/11 commission, can say these things and only one major network (CBS) has mentioned it so far.

For the first time, the chairman of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is saying publicly that 9/11 could have and should have been prevented, reports CBS News Correspondent Randall Pinkston.

“This is a very, very important part of history and we’ve got to tell it right,” said Thomas Kean.

“As you read the report, you’re going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn’t done and what should have been done,” he said. “This was not something that had to happen.”

Appointed by the Bush administration, Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, is now pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame.

“There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in at that time because they failed. They simply failed,” Kean said.

…

Asked whether we should at least know if people sitting in the decision-making spots on that critical day are still in those positions, Kean said, “Yes, the answer is yes. And we will.”

Kean promises major revelations in public testimony beginning next month from top officials in the FBI, CIA, Defense Department, National Security Agency and, maybe, President Bush and former President Clinton.

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Plus, a couple of statistics:

Amount spent on Whitewater investigation: $100 million
Amount spent on 9/11 investigation to date: $3 million

I will be interested to see how this affects the resistance to the US occupation of Iraq. Some will probably argue that this will make things easier for the US, but I think the opposite may happen. Many articles have cited the fact that some people fear driving the US out of Iraq because that would allow Saddam Hussein to return to power.

Now that he is captured, are those people more likely to attack the US to get it out? Maybe their fear of Saddam Hussein was the only thing keeping the lid on a lot of the hostility.

This isn’t to say I’m not glad he was captured, and certainly that he was captured rather than killed. He was an evil man, even if I don’t think that justified an unprovoked attack by our country. I can’t imagine how our government can allow a real public trial for him. Are they going to allow his defense to bring up things like the fact we provided satellite intelligence to him when he was gassing Iranians and others during the Iraq/Iraq war, or that Rumsfeld was happy to meet with him during that time? I doubt it.

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For a more in-depth take on this, see Whiskey Bar’s post.

The new one is out. Here is a sample:

Eschaton provides some context.

I have a comment on an older post from an Iraqi woman who speaks English and is hoping to find work with one of the international groups or companies working in Iraq.

I’m not in a position to help, really, but I’m hoping someone who reads me, or their readers, might know someone.

Let’s just call it the Bush junta. Arguing before an appeals court that the government should be able to hold José Padilla indefinitely in a military brig without acccess to a lawyer, Bush’s lawyers said that the entire United States is a battlefield and thus operates under “military justice.”

On Sept. 11, 2001, “al-Qaida made the battlefield the United States and the evidence indicates that they’re trying to make it the battlefield again,” said Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement. And if it’s a “battlefield” arrest, Bush can detain anyone alleged to be in league with terrorists, including citizens, for as long as it takes to gather intelligence and deter future attacks. “This is the way it’s been done for 200 years in military justice,” Clement said.

Is this what a democracy looks like? I have to rely on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show or an op-ed in the Washington Post to learn that the $87 billion Iraq package was approved by a voice vote with SIX SENATORS PRESENT.

The fact that this is barely in the news almost as awful as the cowards in both parties who won’t own up to the Iraq mess. The vote was 5-1. The one against was Senator Robert Byrd. His speech is online.

David Brooks has got to go. In yesterday’s New York Times, he wrote that Americans need to be prepared for the atrocities that are likely to happen in Iraq if we’re going to really win.

It’s not that we can’t accept casualties. History shows that Americans are willing to make sacrifices. The real doubts come when we see ourselves inflicting them. What will happen to the national mood when the news programs start broadcasting images of the brutal measures our own troops will have to adopt? Inevitably, there will be atrocities that will cause many good-hearted people to defect from the cause. They will be tempted to have us retreat into the paradise of our own innocence.

Somehow, over the next six months, until the Iraqis are capable of their own defense, the Bush administration is going to have to remind us again and again that Iraq is the Battle of Midway in the war on terror, the crucial turning point where either we will crush the terrorists’ spirit or they will crush ours.

The president will have to remind us that we live in a fallen world, that we have to take morally hazardous action if we are to defeat the killers who confront us. It is our responsibility to not walk away. It is our responsibility to recognize the dark realities of human nature, while still preserving our idealistic faith in a better Middle East.

So the Times is now printing columnists who say we’re going to have to live with these “morally hazardous” actions. I think that’s an outrage, and make a mockery of what Americans (and the Times) supposedly stand for. There is no history of terrorizing civilians as an effective long-term tactic, as even the Israeli military is now saying.

The letter to the editor page is here, for those who want to contact the Times.

For a much better write-up than mine on the topic, check out slacktivist.

That’s my image that made it into a new book on the global demonstrations against war in Iraq called 2/15: The Day the World Said No to War. I went to a reception tonight at the Goethe Institute to celebrate the release of the book. The web site for the project is here.