LA Times, October 22:
"A top U.S. official for aid to Iraq has accused the Bush administration of rushing unprepared into the 2003 invasion because of pressures from President Bush's approaching reelection campaign.
"Robin Raphel, the State Department's coordinator for Iraq assistance, said that the invasion's timing was driven by 'clear political pressure,' as well as by the need to quickly deploy the U.S. troops that had been amassed by the Iraq border.
Soon after the invasion, Raphel said, it became clear that U.S. officials 'could not run a country we did not understand. It was very much amateur hour.'"
From an Australian perspective, many questions remain, namely the real reason Prime Minister John Howard committed to the Iraq invasion and what he hoped our country would get out of it.
"A top U.S. official for aid to Iraq has accused the Bush administration of rushing unprepared into the 2003 invasion because of pressures from President Bush's approaching reelection campaign.
"Robin Raphel, the State Department's coordinator for Iraq assistance, said that the invasion's timing was driven by 'clear political pressure,' as well as by the need to quickly deploy the U.S. troops that had been amassed by the Iraq border.
Soon after the invasion, Raphel said, it became clear that U.S. officials 'could not run a country we did not understand. It was very much amateur hour.'"
From an Australian perspective, many questions remain, namely the real reason Prime Minister John Howard committed to the Iraq invasion and what he hoped our country would get out of it.
9 Comments:
Ritter is a hero...and therefore trashed by the usual suspects. He's hardly a leftie, in fact, he's a real US patriot.
Indeed, his insights into Australian Richard Butler are largely ignored in Australia.
Check out his new book, much on Butler. He's said some of this before, but not in such detail.
Butler, when heading UN group to 'disarm' Iraq, was essentially doing the US govt bidding.
Havn't read anything about taking out Saddam, though Butler's role, allowing US spies, assisting the US in setting up 'acceptable reasons' for invasion etc, should be more widely known. Whenever I read his work, I wonder how he sleeps at night....
There's a new book co-written by Lance Collins with another retired intelligence officer, Australia's answer to Scott Ritter. That's probably the best, most current resource on that very serious problem. Details here: http://www.harpercollins.com.au/global_scripts/product_catalog/book_xml.asp?isbn=0732281644
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The wheels are only really falling off this blog. Found any more amusing racist cartoons, Ant?
Regarding Ritter, how does his present sentiments square with his 1999 book Endgame - Solving the Iraq Problem Once and For All? Here's an excerpt from that book:
I have grown convinced that there has been a total breakdown in the willingness of the international community to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein is well on the road to getting his sanctions lifted and keeping his weapons in the bargain. A resurgent Iraq, reinvigorated economically and politically by standing up successfully to the United States and the United Nations, will be a very dangerous Iraq -- one that sooner or later will have to be confronted by American military might.
That was what he was saying after returning from Iraq in 1998. I lifted that quote from a Tim Blair post. Now I know you all don't like him much, but you gotta hand it to the guy - he makes a pretty convincing case against Ritter, using the man's own words. TB's post also pulls another quote from Ritter's 1999 book -
[TB] Ritter’s resignation led to an appearance before a combined session of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees, where his hawkish attitude was ridiculed by Senator Joe Biden (again, this extract from Endgame):
[SR] Biden was relentless, suggesting that the question of taking the nation to war was a responsibility “slightly beyond [Ritter’s] pay grade” ... the use of force was the kind of decision that people like Colin Powell and George Bush made, said the senator from Delaware.
How times have changed. He never returned to Iraq in the capacity of weapons inspector, but that didn't stop him radically altering his view on Iraq's WMDs. Why the shift? Most likely the guy has found a new - diametrically opposed but more lucrative (maybe not enough hawks bought his 1999 book?) - angle and is working it for all it's worth. I cannot understand why the left gives such an obviously tainted figure the time of day, let alone hero status. A final quote Blair digs up to hammer the last nail into Ritter's coffin :
No matter how difficult stopping Saddam Hussein is today, it will become more and more difficult, and extract a higher and higher price, the longer he is left to rebuild his arsenal.
I promise that I haven't checked the link yet - so here's my guess...it's not Bob Brown, eh? I remember he was quite the hawk over Iraq mk 1.
Checking link now....
Correct! Award myself a gold star.
Ritter and Brown must have triple jointed backs to achieve these feats of flippery.
In a debating tournament, the only aim is to isolate your opponent's arguments with an apparent contradiction. A useful technique is that little morsel of information which apparently contradicts your opponent's argument. The exception that makes the rule. Of course the problem with debates is they rarely provide any insight into the truth.
So let's look at the truth. Let's even assume that the Ritter quote is accurate. Was the Iraq of 1998 an economic, political or military menace? No, it was completely crippled thanks to the first Gulf War. Should we thank America for weakening Iraq in that war so that the threat posed by Iraq was diminished? I don't think so. An easier way would've been to immediately end or drastically reduce military aid to the region, something which the US provides in many billions per year (foremost to Israel, but in fact to all the Arab regimes, even, sometimes, to Iran). People (such as States Parties of the UN) have continuously submitted proposals for doing this, and there are countless resolutions calling for a nuclear and arms free Middle East. Most or all of these resolutions have been opposed by the US and its major client Israel. So, in the absence of any genuine attempt to stop the arms race, something which cannot even begin without US support because it is the US that provides the vast majority of arms to the regimes there, Iraq, like all the regimes in the Middle East could and can be expected to arm itself and develop more advanced weaponry.
That brings us to another question. Was Iraq under Saddam the greatest threat to the region? Almost definitely not, unless we accept the racist assumption that Arabs, who happened to be armed by Western nations, are intrinsically more dangerous and war-mongering than Jews or Turks or Indonesians or whoever else, who happen also to be armed by Western nations. Even a cursory study of Saddam's regime reveals that it was unlikely to take steps which would jeopordize its own power. When Saddam invaded Kuwait, he actually told April Glasby, the US Ambassador to Iraq and she did not oppose it. He must have interpreted this as a green light for the invasion, after all the US had tolerated, indeed supported his murderous war with Iran and his genocidal treatment of minorities within Iraq. Also, it is worth bearing in mind that Kuwait was artificially created by the British after the end of WWI, with the stated purpose of dividing 'Babylon'. Like Germany, what is now known as modern-day Iraq was considered a regional power centre and the British were eager to dilute this power. Saddam would obviously have known about this history, and would have likely felt that his invasion was a liberation rather than an expansionist exercise. Of course, this doesn't justify what he did. Far from it, but it does suggest that there were reasons behind it. Indeed Saddam doesn't have a history of nihilistic world domination. No, he's quite a calculative person.
It was only later, although not much later, that a policy decision was made in Washington to make an example of Iraq - if you mess with the status quo in the Middle East, there have to be consequences, lest other regimes favour their own geopolitical machinations independent of Washington. It's important to remember that prior to the invasion of Kuwait, when Saddam was at his strongest, he was not considered a threat by the US.
As for the Bob Brown quote - thanks for the trivia. Your google search skills must be very good. I guess now we should forget the misery of present day Iraq, thanks to the invasion 'mark 2', and look out for that feisty Bob Brown. Brandis had it right, he's looking more like that little Austrian guy every day.
We've got to clear about what is meant by intervention. These are complex matters. For example back in 1991 after Saddam was smashed in the first Gulf War, there was an opportunity for regime change. Only this regime change didn't need Western troops in Iraq. All it required was military and logistical support for the ethnic groups and regular troops who were rebeling against Saddam. They actually pleaded for assistance but close to none was given (the Kurdish sectors to the north were a notable, limited exception... stress exception).
As ever, the West has the enviable privilege of being judge, jury and prosecutor. Imagine the howls from Washington or London if the Iraqis demanded compensation for the role played by the US and the UK in the disintegration of that country.
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