Harvey,
This is clearly an extremely partisan, political, and emotional issue for you. Unfortunately, believing, as you apparently do, that all Republicans/conservatives, particularly Bush and his administration, are as evil as you think they are is just as counterproductive as what a lot of other individuals think about Democrats/liberals.
Would a Democratic administration have handled things differently after 9/11? Almost certainly. But after 9/11, our threshold for dealing with ongoing threats, particularly in the mideast was greatly reduced. This was not because Iraq was "responsible" for 9/11. It was because a policy threshold for dealing with the mideast in general changed dramatically.
Why were these "lies"? The US, UK, Germany, France, the UN proper, and Iraq itself believed Iraq to be in continuing possession of WMD after 1998. Why would this have changed with none of the required UN oversight between 1998 and 2003? There were hundreds of tons of WMD unaccounted for. Even if much of it was expected to become inert by such time, it was still unreported and unaccounted for, and Iraq was shown by the collective body of the UN Security Council to be in breach of numerous provisions of binding Chapter VII UN Security Council resolutions ? the only kind of resolution with the backing of military force ? notably 678 and 687, and the later 1441.
So, if there was no reason to believe that Iraq wasn't still in continuing possession of unaccounted-for WMD, why would asserting that Iraq had WMD, by all the remote intelligence capability and aging information we had, including informants from within Saddam's own regime, be a "lie"?
Besides which, WMD was only a putative reason for going into Iraq.
It was a broad, far reaching strategic intiative to change the political face of the mideast, and promote modernization, free pluralistic governments that would be Western friendly, support free markets and free presses and exchanges of information (thus stifling radicalism) and democratic ideals, while not upseting relationships with nations that are already official allies (like Saudi Arabia).
Even if due in part to Western foreign policy in the mideast, the threat of "Panislamic radicalism"/Wahabbism and radical Islam in general was a real and growing one, and the greatest threat AFTER 9/11 happened was another attack by like-minded individuals, possibly worse, and possibly via obtaining an NBC weapon from an official government sympathetic to their cause (e.g., Iraq).
While Iran and North Korea really didn't meet the muster in late 2001 and 2002, the wheels were already turning to affect political change. North Korea can be contained by China, Japan, and South Korea, and Iran was by all accounts moving toward a more Western-friendly ideal in the general populace. Iraq was a nation for which a compelling case could be made quickly, and since the intelligence capabilities of the US, UK, Germany, France, and the UN proper (and Iraq itself) all still believed Iraq to be in possession of WMD post-1998, and there was no reason to believe it had disposed of the unaccounted-for weapons or indeed hadn't revamped its capabilities between 1998 and 2003, and was a fairly secular nation that was devoid of hotbeds of radicalism in part because of Saddam's strongarm rule, Iraq was chosen as a point of entry, of sorts, for this broad strategy.
This would have the net effect of democratizing the mideast, slowly, and making it a better place for the people there while simultaneously continuing to secure stable and consistent access to a vital resource that the entire first world economy, and hundreds of millions of people and by extension billions of people in developing nations, depends on.
Some conventional weapons were mostly ignored, but NOT UN-banned conventional weapons. Almost 700,000 tons of non-WMD UN-banned weapons were secured. Entire squadrons of MiG fighters were found completely buried in the desert. Hundreds of SCUD missiles banned by UN mandate. It was clear Iraq was in violation of many of the tenets of the still-binding UNSEC resolutions.
Again, it's not as simple as some would like to think it is.
I wonder, were the lives of the families of the over four hundred thousand who died in World War II "shattered"? We are operating with an all-volunteer military, and the individuals involved the US Armed Forces have chosen a path of service. There may be wide gulfs between positions on US foreign policy, but it's a bit simplistic ? and actually quite offensive ? to take a position that this was a war of "lies" embarked upon only so a few elite could profit.
The fact of the matter is that all of the things people thought would happen, haven't:
? People said it was all-but-certain that President Bush was going to reinstate the draft to support his thirst for war. Of course, this was false, and it never happened.
? People said that President Bush was going to institute martial law under the Insurrection Act to seize power and hold it after the end of his second term. It never happened.
? People said that there was to be a flood of pardons for all manner of crooked individuals, even preemptive pardons for members of his administration. It never happened.
I could go on like this, but it's not really a political issue, it's more of an observation: many people are so hopelessly polarized that they can no longer see reality. The news and information they choose to consume ceaselessly supports the mindset they already have, further ingraining a one-sided thought process. Worse, any misdeeds on the part of their own "side" are quickly dismissed, even if it's the same act that would have elicited outrage from the other "side".
This kind of partisan hackery and willful ignorance serves no one. No meaningful discussion can come. And it's unfortunate.
President Obama said in his inaugural address, "Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. [...] We will not apologize for our way of life nor will we waver in its defense. And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that, 'Our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken. You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.'"
If President Bush had said that in an address, it would have been summarily dismissed as war-mongering jingoism. But when President Obama says it...do you see the dichotomy, and the hypocrisy? Individuals of all political stripes are guilty of this, and I see it in these forums, too. It's everywhere, and it doesn't engender any kind of debate that can lead to thought, which in turn can lead to solutions.
I will close with an interview segment of the just-departed DNI Mike McConnell on PBS' Charlie Rose, which begins on Iran and touches on Iraq:
CHARLIE ROSE: Talk about specific big worries that you have. Iran and the nuclear capability. It is their capacity to enrich uranium and have a missile that could deliver a nuclear weapon.
DIRECTOR McCONNELL: They do have a missile. They are enriching. There was a lot of focus about a year ago, November/December of 2008* about a National Intelligence Estimate that we wrote on this subject. A big lesson learned for me in writing that estimate is we wrote it for a sophisticated audience. We did not tell the whole story in our key judgments. We just talked about the changes. And then we found ourselves in a position where we had to make that unclassified.
The lesson learned for us is in the future, even when we intend to keep it classified, we will write our key judgments as the whole story. Here was the problem with that estimate. What we said in that estimate is the Iranians did two things. They terminated a covert military sponsored enrichment program and they stopped work on the design of a nuclear warhead. Think of it as an implosion device. Those were the two facts.
One would surmise that they?re doing something illegal, something they?ve agreed not to do consistent with the treaties they had signed, and the United States and the coalition are going into Iraq so they made a decision to terminate this implosion design work. They did not stop work on missiles that can deliver nuclear warheads, and they did not stop enrichment of uranium. Here?s a way to think about it. You can get to fissile material two paths. You can have a plutonium reactor the way the North Koreans have chosen to go down that path, or you can just spin a centrifuge to enrich the uranium.
Low enriched uranium is only enriched to about three or four percent, but that?s 70 percent of the work. To go to fissile material that would be suitable for a nuclear weapon you have to be about 90 percent of enrichment, but that?s only 30 percent of the work. So our worry is while they claim it?s peaceful and they have this place Natanz where they?re spinning centrifuges and --
CHARLIE ROSE: How may centrifuges do they have now? Three thousand?
DIRECTOR McCONNELL: Probably close to six thousand. The reason we know this is the IAEA, the inspection organization, has physical access, so they actually do an inventory once a year. They monitor records and they get reports from the Iranians for most of the year, but they get physical access once a year. They just had that access in November. What they found was the continuation of fissile material enrichment and increasing success with the centrifuge technology.
CHARLIE ROSE: Is there a consensus among intelligence organizations around the world A, about where, about Iran?s intentions and where they are?
DIRECTOR McCONNELL: There is a consensus within a range about Iran. That includes the allies that we have relationships with and partnerships with that you just mentioned. There is a range.
Interestingly, I went back to review what we in the United States Intelligence Community have said about Iran going back all the way to 2001. So we?ve done three National Intelligence Estimates since 2001. Ironically, they all say exactly the same thing. What they said was the Iranians are enriching uranium for fissile material; they have the ability at earliest to have enough fissile material for a nuclear device by 2009, the end of 2009. Unlikely, but they could.
The range of time that we specified that they will have enough fissile material for a nuclear device is 2010 to 2015.
Now if you ask me to pin that date down best guess -- now I?m guessing because we don?t have the evidence -- I would say 2013.
CHARLIE ROSE: I would assume the President has asked you that very question.
DIRECTOR McCONNELL: He has asked me that very question. And what I?m very careful on how I give my answers to the President. Mr. President, I will offer you my opinion, but I always separate my opinion from what I could prove with facts. That?s where we got into trouble with the National Intelligence Estimate on Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.
We knew for a fact that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction. He used them on his own people. He killed with gas, nerve gas, over 100,000 people. We had the Gulf War, Desert Shield/Desert Storm. We destroyed a lot of that material. So we had a predisposition mindset. He had them, he must still, and we convinced ourselves that he still had them. We were wrong.
Later, remember, we captured him. We interrogated him. And we asked him. Why did you cause your own people to believe you had nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction? He said you don?t understand. I have Iran on my border. I had to convince the Iranians that I had that capability. The way to do that is to make my own generals believe. They believed. So what is it we collect? What is it we do in the intelligence business? We get access to people who know something, or we listen to their communications, or we take photographs. So we had the predisposition of knowing what was in the past. We were listening to generals and colonels talk about things, or watching behavior, and Saddam was playing a game. He was trying to convince those around that he had them. He in fact had gone away from them.
CHARLIE ROSE: So the lesson of Iraq is what? In terms of intelligence, which the President of the United States said it?s one of the most disappointing things of his administration.
DIRECTOR McCONNELL: One of the reasons that the Congress in its wisdom, and the President agreed to sign a bill creating the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was to integrate and elevate a collaborative community that is disciplined with the appropriate rigor and the appropriate tradecraft so we would never make that mistake again. And to the credit of those who have come before me, and I?ve had the opportunity and the pleasure of serving with them now. What comes out of our analytical process today is very different from what it was --
CHARLIE ROSE: Are you saying that if in fact the processes and the people in place today would have known that Saddam had no Weapons of Mass destruction?
DIRECTOR McCONNELL: I think we would have known it, and just as importantly, we would have had the courage to say it.
We are --
CHARLIE ROSE: Say it publicly or to the President?
DIRECTOR McCONNELL: To the President. Now our work, by the nature of the work, has to be done in secrecy because we?re always balancing sources and methods and we?re searching for ground truth, but I am often not welcome into the circles into which I go. I?m the bad news guy. And if you have a point of view or you?re trying to get a policy accepted or you?re trying to rationalize a decision, I?m the guy that keeps showing up saying this is what the evidence says. So it?s often that the conversation is a little, I won?t say heated, but at a minimum it?s a little unpleasant because I?m the ground truth guy. That?s what we?re asked to do and that?s our responsibility.
CHARLIE ROSE: I just want to make sure I understand with respect to Iran and nuclear weapons. Or Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Do you believe they want to build a weapon or they want to have the capability to build a weapon?
DIRECTOR McCONNELL: Charlie, I believe Iran wants to build a nuclear weapon. That?s what I believe. I cannot prove that. I know they have the missiles. I know they are spinning centrifuges for fissile material.
CHARLIE ROSE: And they continue to enrich.
DIRECTOR McCONNELL: That?s the enrichment process, they are enriching. And they had a program for weapons design and covert enrichment previously. So with the facts that I have I can say it would lead one to conclude that, but as a lesson learned from 2003 I have to have positive proof that they?re in fact doing that. We?ve disciplined ourselves in a way that we always find the evidence, and almost like a court case. We separate the evidence from our assessment. We always want the decisionmaker, the policymaker, to understand what is the weight of the evidence.
I?ve actually had conversations at the most senior levels about Mike, don?t you believe Iran is in pursuit of nuclear weapons? My answer is well, while I may believe that personally, it would be irresponsible of me to claim that in a document from this community. And uniformly at the highest level the answer is Mike, you?re doing the right thing.
In short: it's not that simple, and as much as it may be easy to degenerate into immature name-calling, I'm not sure how that adds anything to a discussion.
