NYT: CIA bought, destroyed undeclared Iraqi chemical weapons demanded by UN « Hot Air

NYT: CIA bought, destroyed undeclared Iraqi chemical weapons demanded by UN « Hot Air

If the WMD existed in Iraq, what happened to it? Many suspected that it got transferred to Syria prior to the 2003 invasion, but the New York Times reports today that the CIA actually did find at least some of the suspected and undeclared caches of chemical weapons — and destroyed them:

The Central Intelligence Agency, working with American troops during the occupation of Iraq, repeatedly purchased nerve-agent rockets from a secretive Iraqi seller, part of a previously undisclosed effort to ensure that old chemical weapons remaining in Iraq did not fall into the hands of terrorists or militant groups, according to current and former American officials.

The extraordinary arms purchase plan, known as Operation Avarice, began in 2005 and continued into 2006, and the American military deemed it a nonproliferation success. It led to the United States’ acquiring and destroying at least 400 Borak rockets, one of the internationally condemned chemical weapons that Saddam Hussein’s Baathist government manufactured in the 1980s but that were not accounted for by United Nations inspections mandated after the 1991 Persian Gulf war. …

In confidential declarations in the 1990s to the United Nations, Iraq gave shifting production numbers, up to 18,500. It also claimed to have destroyed its remaining stock before international inspectors arrived after the Persian Gulf war. …

The handoffs varied in size, including one of more than 150 warheads. American ordnance disposal technicians promptly destroyed most of them by detonation, the officials said, but some were taken to Camp Slayer, by Baghdad’s airport, for further testing.

This is the first time that there has been any media reporting on finds specific to the disputed munitions that Hussein refused to acknowledge. It sounds as though there were a large quantity of Borak rockets eventually procured, too, not just a few leftovers that might have been innocently overlooked by the previous dictatorship in Iraq. C.J. Chivers and Eric Schmitt also report that these were not the kind of exhausted and expired chemical weapons that the UN had been storing, but still potent enough to alarm the US when they were discovered.

Why this was kept quiet was anyone’s guess, but the secret was tightly held. Perhaps the CIA and Pentagon wanted to keep it under wraps so that they could quietly buy as many of the weapons off the black market as they could, without tipping their hand to the insurgency. That might have been good strategy, but the Pentagon kept it so quiet that it never told veterans serving in Iraq or the VA physicians that treated them later about the possibility that they had contact with chemical weapons from any source. It seems unlikely that the insurgents didn’t get their hands on any of the Boraks — and it’s not entirely clear that the US got them all, either.

Iraq's WMD: The Shameless New York Times Moves the Goalposts - Larry Elder - Page full

Iraq's WMD: The Shameless New York Times Moves the Goalposts - Larry Elder - Page full

Contrary to the expectations of all 16 of our U.S. intelligence agencies, the "weapons hunters" sent to Iraq by President George W. Bush found no "stockpiles" of WMD.

Never mind that there was a 15-month run-up to the war, during which time Saddam was not combing his moustache. A former Iraqi general, Georges Sada, who met with members of Congress, has long claimed Saddam Hussein moved tons of WMD by land and air into Syria during the run-up to the 2003 invasion. James Clapper, the current Director of National Intelligence, has also said publicly that he, too, believes the WMD were there. But Bush's two weapons hunters found no stockpiles.

President George W. Bush looked like a fool.

Bush-hating critics chanted, "Bush lied, people died." About the prewar intelligence, Sen. Ted Kennedy said, "Before the war, week after week after week after week, we were told lie after lie after lie after lie." Critics said the lives of over 4,000 troops were wasted, in addition to the money supposedly squandered prosecuting the Iraq War.

Now comes the 10,000-word, eight-part story in The New York Times. The front-page story, called "The Secret Casualties Of Iraq's Abandoned Chemical Weapons," says WMD were in Iraq: "In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act."

Moreover, the soldiers were told to keep quiet about the WMD:

"Troops and officers were instructed to be silent or give deceptive accounts of what they had found. ?'Nothing of significance' is what I was ordered to say,' said Jarrod Lampier, a recently retired Army major who was present for the largest chemical weapons discovery of the war: more than 2,400 nerve-agent rockets unearthed in 2006 at a former Republican Guard compound.

"Jarrod L. Taylor, a former Army sergeant on hand for the destruction of mustard shells that burned two soldiers in his infantry company, joked of 'wounds that never happened' from 'that stuff that didn't exist.' The public, he said, was misled for a decade. 'I love it when I hear, 'Oh there weren't any chemical weapons in Iraq,' he said. 'There were plenty.'"

This is not new news to those who get news from publications other than the Times. Following a 2010 WikiLeaks leak, Wired magazine wrote: "By late 2003, even the Bush White House's staunchest defenders were starting to give up on the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction. But WikiLeaks' newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction (emphasis added). ... Chemical weapons, especially, did not vanish from the Iraqi battlefield. Remnants of Saddam's toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict -- and may have brewed up their own deadly agents."

But, rest assured, the Times emphatically insists, the discovered WMD "did not support the government's invasion rationale." It doesn't? Well, you see, according to the Times, Bush still misled Americans because the discovered WMD were "old" and "degraded," not part of an "active" weapons program. "Active?"

But only days before the bombshell Times piece, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow restated why she felt Bush "lied." Not once during her three-minute send-up about Bush "lies" and "wrong" intel, did Maddow ever use the word "active," let alone the term "active weapons program":

"There still exists -- on the right -- a sort of dead-ender fringe who believe thatactually Saddam Hussein really did have weapons of mass destruction. He must have. George Bush couldn't have been wrong about that. I say it's a dead-ender fringe because even ... George W. Bush had to admit he was wrong about weapons of mass destruction. Iraq did not have them. ...

"We are four weeks out from the elections this year. It is 10 years today since our own government officially admitted the whole WMDs thing about Iraq was a lie. It's not like an accusation that it was a lie. It's a lie. We've admitted it was a lie."

Maddow then handed the floor to colleague Lawrence O'Donnell, who promptly piled on. But again O'Donnell, like Maddow, said nothing about "active": "Rachel, I wish this wasn't true, but I do have a prediction for you -- and that is that you have not done your last segment about a Republican who believes that there were (starts laughing) weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

Now we know. WMD were, in fact, in Iraq.

The New York Times, Democrats and the doofi at MSNBC should apologize to President George W. Bush, an honorable man who attempted to do the right thing, only to be savaged by his critics. Fox's Charles Krauthammer has a term for this inability to acknowledge a scintilla of decency in our 43rd president -- "Bush Derangement Syndrome."

Saddam: What We Now Know - Jim Lacey - National Review Online

Saddam: What We Now Know - Jim Lacey - National Review Online

WikiLeaks memos the mainstream media doesn't want you to read (Wizbang)

WikiLeaks memos the mainstream media doesn't want you to read (Wizbang)
Lots of evidence of WMD.

Bush told the truth, people died anyway

From Clayton Cramer cites the Washington Post pointing out the "Bush Lied" meme is all wet
: Clayton Cramer's Blog: An Astonishing Source For This

...dive into Rockefeller's report, in search of where exactly President Bush lied about what his intelligence agencies were telling him about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, and you may be surprised by what you find.

On Iraq's nuclear weapons program? The president's statements "were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates."

On biological weapons, production capability and those infamous mobile laboratories? The president's statements "were substantiated by intelligence information."

On chemical weapons, then? "Substantiated by intelligence information."

On weapons of mass destruction overall (a separate section of the intelligence committee report)? "Generally substantiated by intelligence information." Delivery vehicles such as ballistic missiles? "Generally substantiated by available intelligence." Unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to deliver WMDs? "Generally substantiated by intelligence information."

Comprehensive Revised Report with Addendums on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (Duelfer Report)

Comprehensive Revised Report with Addendums on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (Duelfer Report)

Bush defended, in 3 UN Motions

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/11/defending_president_bush_in_th.html

This points out the UN authorized the invasion in 1990, and Iraq never abided by the terms of the cease-fire.  Thus, the Gulf War never officially ended.

 

With that in mind, remember these three steps.

 

 

1) Invasion!  UN Security Council Resolution 678 (1990)

 

In 1990, the world had its eyes on Iraq.  After Iraq's invasion of Kuwait (as condemned in UN Security Council resolution 660), a global consensus demanded that Iraq return to their own borders.  When Iraq failed to comply, coalition forces were granted the right by the UN to invade Iraq the first time.

 

2) Ceasefire! UN Security Council Resolution 687 (1991)

 

After Iraq had been soundly defeated, the terms for a conditional, temporary ceasefire were drafted.   If Iraq failed to comply with the terms, the coalition could end the ceasefire and invade Iraq the second time. 

....

3)  Violation! UN Security Council Resolution 1441 (2002)

 

It's interesting to note the in 2000, before Bush was president and before 9/11, the Republican party's platform specifically mentioned Iraq's violations of international law, and sought to directly address the issue.   By 2002, in light of Saddam's mounting violations and American anger over terrorist attacks, the UN drafted resolution 1441, highlighting Saddam's violations of the UN's ceasefire terms. 

Wikileaks documents show WMDs found in Iraq « Hot Air

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air notes: Wikileaks documents show WMDs found in Iraq

Wikileaks’ new release from purloined files of the Department of Defense may help remind people that, contrary to popular opinion and media memes, the US did find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and in significant quantities. While the invasion of Iraq didn’t find huge stockpiles of new WMDs, it did uncover stockpiles that the UN had demanded destroyed as a condition of the 1991 truce that Saddam Hussein abrogated for twelve years...

Why Saddam Had to Be Removed

From Pajamas Media: Newly Declassified Iraqi Testimony Shows Why Saddam Had to Be Removed

Contradicting Saddam Hussein’s testimony where he claimed he actually wanted an alliance with the U.S. against Iran, Tariq Aziz describes Saddam as an “anti-American” who was “delighted” when al-Qaeda bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. The documents do not mention Saddam’s private reaction to 9/11, but we know that his public reaction was to be possibly the only leader to refuse to condemn the attacks, as well as the only leader to openly praise them. His sons and the state-controlled press did the same. This is a critical fact that is often forgotten: Saddam’s regime was the only one to publicly hail the 9/11 hijackers and not hide its desire to see such attacks happen again.

Aziz confirms that Saddam’s regime supported terrorists like Abu Abbas, the notorious mastermind of the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro, providing him with a farm for fundraising for Palestinian terrorists and for use as a training center. They even gave him the AK-47s he needed. We also know that Abu Ibrahim, called “the most dangerous bomb maker in the world bar none during my time as a CIA officer” by former CIA case officer Robert Baer, operated a network from his home in Baghdad. The Duelfer Report confirmed that Iraqi intelligence trained terrorists from around the Arab world, including at the Salman Pak facility known to house a Boeing airliner that defectors said was used to simulate hijackings. We don’t know if these terrorists were al-Qaeda members or not, but that doesn’t change the fact that Saddam not only praised 9/11 but trained jihadists in the tactics necessary to repeat it.
....
The Iraqi Perspectives Project, which reviewed over 600,000 Iraqi documents, did not find any evidence of operational collaboration between Iraq and al-Qaeda, but it did show that Saddam actively helped those seeking to carry out those attacks he was so “delighted” over. The study concluded that “the regime was willing to co-opt or support organization it knew to be a part of al-Qaeda as long as that organization’s near-term goals supported Saddam’s long-term ‘vision.’” The Project found that “Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al-Qaeda … or that generally shared al-Qaeda’s stated goals and objectives.”

What this means is that the debate over whether Iraq supported al-Qaeda or not before the invasion is flawed because of a misunderstanding of what al-Qaeda actually is. A direct link between Saddam and Bin Laden or his inner circle cannot be proven. However, a link to the regional groups that shared Bin Laden’s ideology and operated as affiliates of al-Qaeda can be established. Those that say no link has been proven either are unaware of these findings or define “al-Qaeda” so narrowly that it downplays the breath of the organization’s reach.
....
Thanks to Tariq Aziz’s testimony, we know that Saddam’s attitude towards terrorism against the U.S. was the same in private as it was in public. He may not have been willing to directly engineer a plot like 9/11, but he certainly was willing to help terrorists do it for themselves. And as I’ve previously written, it is now known that Saddam’s regime also had been working on plans to actualize three of the most horrifying scenarios that the West fears the most: the smuggling of chemical and biological weapons into the West, a dramatic attack against Israel that could spark a regional war, and the destabilization of the Saudi royal family, with one 2002 document indicating Saddam actually suggested working with Ayman al-Zawahiri towards this end.

“Gam ha’oyev oved beshabbat”

A nice piece from the Jerusalem Post: The Ground Zero mosque - what US could learn from Israel

Life in our region has taught us that the first necessary step to defending yourself is acknowledging that someone is out to destroy you.
....
I still recall being jarred, when we made aliya, by the matter-of-factness with which Israelis use the word “enemy.” But it wasn’t a judgment or an accusation. It was simply a fact: There are people out to destroy our state, who seek to kill us and our children. And as the intifada later amply demonstrated, they did not yearn for our understanding or our friendship. They wanted our demise.

YEARS AGO, we took our then teenage daughter to an evening sponsored by the army, at which religious parents could ask questions about what the army would be like for their daughters. Some of the parents were downright hostile, clearly opposed to the prospect of their daughters joining the IDF. At one point, an obviously angry father stood up, turned to the base commander and asked (or more accurately hissed), “Do you make the girls work on Shabbat?”

The room was perfectly silent, for everyone knew the answer. No one moved. Even the base rabbi said nothing. He stood at the podium, leaned into the mike and, lost in thought, played with his beard.

Suddenly, one of the three soldiers who’d been brought to address the parents, a young woman with her uniform shirt buttoned up to her chin, her sleeves extending to her wrists and her armyissued skirt down to her ankles, looked the father right in the eye, and without being called on, said to him, “Of course we work on Shabbat.” And then, after a second’s pause, she added, “Gam ha’oyev oved beshabbat” – the enemy also works on Shabbat.

It was a game changer. “What?” she essentially asked. “You think we do this for fun? There are people out there trying to destroy us. Either we’re as serious about this conflict as they are, or they’re going to win.”

I hadn’t thought of that young woman in years, but ever since the Cordoba Initiative controversy erupted, I’ve remembered her repeatedly. For Israelis do have something to teach Americans, and it’s very similar to what she said to that father. It goes something like this: It’s fine to say that “America is not at war with Islam,” to point out that most Muslims are not terrorists and that many American Muslims are moderates. That’s true, as far as it goes.

But it only goes so far. Because America is at war and its enemies are Muslims.

Bias in the Media

Another Karl at Patterico's Pontifications looks at "manufacturing dissent".

Why was the establishment media so slow to recognize the turnaround in the Iraq war? Why did they largely rush to judgment when the Duke lacrosse team members were accused of rape? Why did they get the Jena 6 case wrong? Why was the establishment media narrative about Hurricane Katrina built on myths, including grisly fables about violence and death in the Superdome? And why is the establishment media celebrating it?

These examples are but the tip of the establishment media's "faux news" iceberg. Folks on the far left probably have an entirely different list, but that is the point — the establishment media's center-left epistemic closure produces the same problems critics identify in the conservative media. That the critics are only concerned about closure in conservative media — and dismiss the theory that conservative media closure is partially caused by the establishment's marginalization of conservatives — suggests they are less interested in solutions than they are in further marginalizing the right.

As with the epistemic closure obsessives, don't hold your breath waiting for the center-left to consider that that their shrill stereotyping only adds to the problem. And as with the epistemic closure obsessives, the offense they give to everyone else is fueled in part by the double or triple standards at work. If you think the Ground Zero mosque is a bad idea (as I do), you are deemed a religious bigot, or are empowering religious bigots. In contrast, if you think Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptists protesting at military funerals (or Bill Keller setting up shop near Ground Zero) is a bad idea (as I do, for many of the same reasons), the center-left does not unleash the same gushing firehose of vitriol. When the passage of California's Proposition 8 caused people to engage in anti-Mormon protests and boycotts, and to practice the politics of personal destruction against Miss California, the center-left was not denouncing it as religious bigotry. And to bring it full circle, if the folks behind the Ground Zero mosque are not entirely gay-friendly, the center-left media ignores it.

About "GWB's War in Iraq"

From the New Republic:

 

Some nice historical perspective, from someone who does not approve of the war at all.

For those Americans still persuaded that everything changed the moment Obama entered the Oval Office, let's provide a little context. The event that historians will enshrine as the Iraq war actually began back in 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Iraq's unloved and unlovable neighbor. Through much of the previous decade, the United States had viewed Saddam as an ally of sorts, a secular bulwark against the looming threat of Islamic radicalism then seemingly centered in Tehran. Saddam's war of aggression against Iran, launched in 1980, did not much discomfit Washington, which offered the Iraqi dictator a helping hand when his legions faced apparent defeat. 

Yet when Saddam subsequently turned on Kuwait, he overstepped. President George H.W. Bush drew a line in the sand, likened the Iraqi dictator to Hitler, and dispatched 500,000 American troops to the Persian Gulf. The plan was to give Saddam a good spanking, make sure all concerned knew who was boss, and go home. 

Operation Desert Storm didn't turn out that way. An ostensibly great victory gave way to even greater complications. Although, in evicting the Iraqi army from Kuwait, U.S. and coalition forces did what they had been sent to do, Washington became seized with the notion merely turning back aggression wasn't enough: In Baghdad, Bush's nemesis survived and remained defiant. So what began as a war to liberate Kuwait morphed into an obsession with deposing Saddam himself. In the form of air strikes and missile attacks, feints and demonstrations, CIA plots and crushing sanctions, America's war against Iraq persisted throughout the 1990s, finally reaching a climax with George W. Bush's decision after September 11, 2001, to put Saddam ahead of Osama bin Laden in the line of evildoers requiring elimination. 

The U.S.-led assault on Baghdad in 2003 finally finished the work left undone in 1991—so it appeared at least. Here was decisive victory, sealed by the capture of Saddam Hussein himself in December 2003. "Ladies and gentlemen," announced L. Paul Bremer, the beaming American viceroy to Baghdad, "we got him." 

....

Which brings us to the present. After seven-plus years, Operation Iraqi Freedom has concluded. Operation New Dawn, its name suggesting a skin cream or dishwashing liquid, now begins. (What ever happened to the practice of using terms like Torch or Overlord or Dragoon to describe military campaigns?) Although something like 50,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq, their mission is not to fight, but simply to advise and assist their Iraqi counterparts. In another year, if all goes well, even this last remnant of an American military presence will disappear. 

So the Americans are bowing out, having achieved few of the ambitious goals articulated in the heady aftermath of Baghdad's fall. The surge, now remembered as an epic feat of arms, functions chiefly as a smokescreen, obscuring a vast panorama of recklessness, miscalculation, and waste that politicians, generals, and sundry warmongers are keen to forget. 

Back in Iraq, meanwhile, nothing has been resolved and nothing settled. Round one of the Iraq war produced a great upheaval that round two served only to exacerbate. As the convoys of U.S. armored vehicles trundle south toward Kuwait and then home, they leave the stage set for round three. 

Call this the War of Iraqi Self-Determination (2010–?). As the United States removes itself from the scene, Iraqis will avail themselves of the opportunity to decide their own fate, a process almost certain to be rife with ethnic, sectarian, and tribal bloodletting. What the outcome will be, no one can say with certainty, but it won't be pretty.

 

The cause of the deficit

Randall Hoven at American Thinker writes: Iraq: The War That Broke Us -- Not

Hoven looks at the costs of the Iraq War and the tax cuts. Were they what drove the deficit up so high? How much did that war cost?

The correct answer to my question, according to the Congressional Budget Office, is $709 billion. The Iraq War cost $709 billion. Why Carville, Bilmes, and Nobel-winning economist Stiglitz thought the answer was $3 trillion is anybody's guess. But what's a 323% error among friends?

The CBO breaks that cost down over the eight calendar years of 2003-2010. Below is a picture of federal deficits over those years with and without Iraq War spending.



Sources: CBO and U.S. Statistical Abstract (see below).

Just for grins, use the above chart to dissect Christopher Hayes' statement that our current and future deficits are caused by "three things: the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush tax cuts and the recession."

Two of those three things -- the wars and tax cuts -- were in effect from 2003 through 2007. Do you see alarming deficits or trends from 2003 through 2007 in the above chart? No. In fact, the trend through 2007 is shrinking deficits. What you see is a significant upward tick in 2008, and then an explosion in 2009. Now, what might have happened between 2007 and 2008, and then 2009?

Democrats taking over both houses of Congress, and then the presidency, was what happened.

The Democrats' 'Bush lied' lie

A lie is when someone knows something is false and utters it anyway. Everyone and his dog  thought Saddam was sitting on stockpiles of WMD.
 

The Democrats' 'Bush lied' lie

via PrairiePundit by Merv on 7/14/10

Karl Rove:

Seven years ago today, in a speech on the Iraq war, Sen. Ted Kennedy fired the first shot in an all-out assault on President George W. Bush's integrity. "All the evidence points to the conclusion," Kennedy said, that the Bush administration "put a spin on the intelligence and a spin on the truth." Later that day Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle told reporters Mr. Bush needed "to be forthcoming" about the absence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Thus began a shameful episode in our political life whose poisonous fruits are still with us.

The next morning, Democratic presidential candidates John Kerry and John Edwards joined in. Sen. Kerry said, "It is time for a president who will face the truth and tell the truth." Mr. Edwards chimed in, "The administration has a problem with the truth."

The battering would continue, and it was a monument to hypocrisy and cynicism. All these Democrats had said, like Mr. Bush did, that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD. Of the 110 House and Senate Democrats who voted in October 2002 to authorize the use of force against his regime, 67 said in congressional debate that Saddam had these weapons. This didn't keep Democrats from later alleging something they knew was false—that the president had lied America into war.

Senate Intelligence Chairman Bob Graham organized a bipartisan letter in December 2001 warning Mr. Bush that Saddam's "biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs . . . may be back to pre-Gulf War status," and enhanced by "longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies." Yet two years later, he called for Mr. Bush's impeachment for having said Saddam had WMD.

On July 9, 2004, Mr. Graham's fellow Democrat on Senate Intelligence, Jay Rockefeller, charged that the Bush administration "at all levels . . . used bad information to bolster the case for war." But in his remarks on Oct. 10, 2002, supporting the war resolution, he said that "Saddam's existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose real threats to America."

Even Kennedy, who opposed the war resolution, nonetheless said the month before the vote that Saddam's "pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated." But he warned if force were employed, the Iraqi dictator "may decide he has nothing to lose by using weapons of mass destruction himself or by sharing them with terrorists."

Then there was Al Gore, who charged on June 24, 2004, that Mr. Bush spent "prodigious amounts of energy convincing people of lies" and accused him of treason, bellowing that Mr. Bush "betrayed his country." Yet just a month before the war resolution debate, the former vice president said, "We know that [Saddam] has stored away secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."

Top Democrats led their party in making the "Bush lied, people died" charge because they wanted to defeat him in 2004. That didn't happen. Several bipartisan commissions would later catalogue the serious errors in the intelligence on which Mr. Bush and Democrats relied. But these commissions, particularly the Silberman-Robb report of March 31, 2005, found that the "Bush lied" charge was false. Still, the attacks hurt: When they began, less than a third of Americans believed the charge. Two years later, polls showed that just over half did.

...

While the false charges did hurt Bush politically in this country, they also hurt US foreign policy as others outside the US decided it was OK to be disrespectful to the President and accuse him of being a liar too.

By allowing the President to be a stoic punching bag, it hurt his presidency for the remainder of his term. It later morphed into the Democrats actively seeking our defeat in Iraq, and people like Harry Reid declaring that the surge was a failure before all the troops were in the country. It was one of the most shameful partisan shows in recent history.

It is good that Rove is reminding people of the Democrats bad faith. It is something they should remember as they vote this fall.

Wehner vs. Corn on Bush and the Iraq War

Peter Wehner takes on David Corn on the charge that Bush Lied. Round 4: Wehner vs. Corn on Bush and the Iraq War -- Politics Daily

Round three appears to be this piece: Iraq War Debate: Surge Success, Intelligence Mistakes, Civilian Casualties.

Round one: The Iraq War: Suddenly, It's Not So Bad After All.

Responses by David Corn: Iraq War Triumphalism Ignores a Key Matter: Dead Civilians, Can the 'Bush Lied' Deniers Handle the Truth?

Christopher Hitchens on Bush's legacy

Christopher Hitchens writes in Slate Magazine that he's not sorry Bush beat Gore and Kerry.

In Oliver Stone's not very good but surprisingly well-received film W., there is an unnoticed omission, or rather there is an event that does not occur on-screen. The crashing of two airliners into two large skyscrapers isn't shown (and is only once and very indirectly referred to). This cannot be because it wouldn't have been of any help in making Bush look bad; it's pretty generally agreed that he acted erratically that day and made the worst speech of his presidency in the evening, and why would Stone miss the chance of restaging My Pet Goat?

....

We are never invited to ask ourselves what would have happened if the Democrats had been in power that fall. But it might be worth speculating for a second. The Effective Death Penalty and Anti-Terrorism Act, rushed through both Houses by Bill Clinton after the relative pin prick of the Oklahoma City bombing, was correctly described by the American Civil Liberties Union as the worst possible setback for the cause of citizens' rights. Given that precedent and multiplying it for the sake of proportion, I think we can be pretty sure that wiretapping and water-boarding would have become household words, perhaps even more quickly than they did, and that we might even have heard a few more liberal defenses of the practice. I don't know if Gore-Lieberman would have thought of using Guantanamo Bay, but that, of course, raises the interesting question—now to be faced by a new administration—of where exactly you do keep such actually or potentially dangerous customers, especially since you are not supposed to "rendition" them. There would have been a nasty prison somewhere or a lot of prisoners un-taken on the battlefield, you can depend on that.

We might have avoided the Iraq war, even though both Bill Clinton and Al Gore had repeatedly and publicly said that another and conclusive round with Saddam Hussein was, given his flagrant defiance of all the relevant U.N. resolutions, unavoidably in our future. And the inconvenient downside to avoiding the Iraq intervention is that a choke point of the world economy would still be controlled by a psychopathic crime family that kept a staff of WMD experts on hand and that paid for jihadist suicide bombers around the region. In his farewell interviews, President Bush hasn't been able to find much to say for himself on this point, but I think it's a certainty that historians will not conclude that the removal of Saddam Hussein was something that the international community ought to have postponed any further. (Indeed, if there is a disgrace, it is that previous administrations left the responsibility undischarged.)

Bush's legacy

Bruce Anderson at The Independent:

It is not difficult to make the case against George Bush. There have been mistakes. But in their abuse of him, many of his liberal critics demonstrate their own weak hold on reality. In trying to belittle him, they merely reveal their own littleness. George Bush is a much more considerable figure than the caricature version. As he has set great events in motion, it will be impossible to judge his Presidency for many years. It is not impossible that history will offer a partial vindication.

The outgoing President did have one problem, especially in Europe. He may have finished off his father's war against Saddam Hussein. He was not able to avenge his father's defeat at the hands of the English language. Although some of George Bush junior's speeches will rank high in the annals of political oratory, once he was without a text, he often went adrift. But this was not due to lack of ability.

Early on, a friend of mine on the National Security Council went to a Bush Cabinet meeting. He had heard the reports that George Bush was a constitutional monarch with Dick Cheney as his prime minister, so he was interested to see what would happen. He watched as Mr Bush ran proceedings like a strong chief executive, while Mr Cheney did not say a word.

But it all comes back to the Iraq War, which was a tragedy, for a reason worthy of a great tragedian. It was fought in a spirit of excessive idealism. After 11 September, the US Administration asked itself one repeated and agonised question. Why do these people hate us? The Bush team came up with their answer: because they live in failed states, which offer their young no hope in this world and thus leave them open to the temptations of fanaticism and a better deal in another world.

Baghdad was one of the foremost cities in the Muslim world. Iraq was a rich country with a large educated middle class. Yet it had become a police state and many of its ablest people had fled into exile. Moreover, Saddam had been trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. We could not be certain that his quest had failed. So should we wait until the certainty of a mushroom cloud? It seemed that all the routes to progress in the Middle East and safety in the West led to Iraq.

....

And of course the comments are revealing.

Bush

raffred wrote:

Monday, 19 January 2009 at 03:50 am (UTC)

No doubt, Mr Bush has served some, as they say you can't please all and so on., twisting Mr Bush in to something good is impossible! Alas there will be two truths availible, fact will remain unimportant. But only the true profiteer can know the true fact of his leadership.

Is Bruce Anderson Delusional?!?

sheikjabooti wrote:

Monday, 19 January 2009 at 04:18 am (UTC)

Looks like Bruce is trying to rewrite history. So many mistakes Bruce you should be ashamed.
Frist "Saddam had been trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. We could not be certain that his quest had failed". If I recall weapons inspectors had been in Iraq for some years, turning the place upside down. As we all know from the Iran, North Korean and Syrian experiences, WMD, in particular nuclear weapons cannot be manufactured without common knowledge. It was quite clear the country had no significant WMD capability.
Secondly, Powell the only reasonable member of the Bush administration was the only one who had a clue about Iraq. He knew that any invasion and occupation would take in excess of 400k men. The fact that Bush sidelined him displays unequivocally what a poor leader he was.
Bush blundered his way through 8 years of poor policy and wayward leadership. Like several billion other people I will be glad when he finally retires to ponder the death and destruction he brought to the world.

tonysmyth wrote:

Monday, 19 January 2009 at 10:17 am (UTC)

'Iraq - It was fought in a spirit of excessive idealism'?? No Bruce, it was fought for control Iraq's oil and to dominate the Middle East.
'one unfortunate side effect of the war on terror: Guantanamo'. One!! Bruce go and write fore the Telegraph, or maybe a some National Front publication. You'd be right at home there. Your articles get worse as each week passes.

Deaths in Iraq

Baron Von Ottomatic at Wizbang looks at the latest report on civilian deaths in Iraq.

The UN/World Health Organization and Iraq have released the results of a new study estimating the number of excess (by violence) deaths in Iraq between March 2003 and June 2006. Folks who oppose the Iraq war, despise Bush/Cheney, and generally look for anything through which they can feel morally superior to people who supports the US mission in Iraq often bandy about the number one million Iraqi deaths as a result of the invasion. That number is erroneous and vastly inflated:

 

Limiting the study to the time since the invasion in March 2003, and extrapolating results to the whole country, researchers arrived at the 151,000 estimate. The study authors say they are 95 percent certain that the true number is between 104,000 and 223,000. Iraq's population is roughly 26 million.

....

How would Iraqi mortality have differed if there had been no invasion? It is impossible to predict what Saddam may or may not have done, but it was widely reported that sanctions imposed in 1990 were killing thousands of Iraqis a month:

 

"The sanctions, the toughest in history, are killing up to 6,000 Iraqis a month", according to Denis Halliday, a former UN coordinator of humanitarian aid to Iraq.

Six-thousand deaths a month over thirty-six months equals 216,000 dead Iraqis - a number that would place any three years between 1990 and 1999 at the high end of the 2003-2006 study results. Needless to say, there was significant momentum toward ending the sanctions. The Oil for Food program proved to be a giant slush fund through which Saddam plundered billions and bribed sympathetic voices in the UN.

....

The invasion of Iraq has saved tens of thousands of Iraqi lives.

Bush's victory in Iraq

Nile Gardiner writes at the London Telegraph:

Some of the criticism of Bush's foreign policy is fair. The early stages of the occupation of Iraq were poorly handled and there was a distinct lack of post-war planning. America's public diplomacy efforts have been poor or even non-existent, with little serious attempt to combat the stunning rise of anti-Americanism. More recently, Washington's failure to stand up more aggressively to Moscow after its invasion of Georgia projected weakness and indecision.

Much of the condemnation of his policies though is driven by a venomous hatred of Bush's personality and leadership style, rather than an objective assessment of his achievements. Ten or twenty years from now, historians will view Bush's actions on the world stage in a more favourable light. America's 43rd president did after all directly liberate more people (over 60 million) from tyranny than any leader since Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Widely seen as his biggest foreign policy error, the decision to invade Iraq could ultimately prove to have been a masterstroke. Today the world is witnessing the birth of the first truly democratic state in the Middle East outside of Israel. Over eight million voted in Iraq's parliamentary elections in 2005, and the region's first free Muslim society may become a reality. Iraq might not be Turkey, but it is a powerful demonstration that freedom can flourish in the embers of the most brutal and barbaric of dictatorships.

The success of the surge in Iraq will go down in history as a turning point in the war against al-Qaeda. The stunning defeat of the insurgency was a major blow both militarily and psychologically for the terror network. The West's most feared enemy suffered thousands of losses in Iraq, including many of their most senior commanders, such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Abu Qaswarah. It was the most successful counter-insurgency operation anywhere in the world since the British victory in Malaya in 1960.

Myths and facts about the Bush years

This piece at Real Clear Politics looks at five myths about the Bush years, and addresses each one. The five "most egregious" myths are:

1. Myth 1: The last eight years were awful for most Americans economically and President Bush's deregulatory policies caused the current financial crisis.
2. Myth 2: President Bush's tax cuts only benefitted the wealthy and were paid for by sacrificing investments in health care and education.
3. Myth 3: The President's "go it alone" foreign policy ruined America's standing in the world.
4. Myth 4: The war in Iraq caused us to "take our eye off the ball" in Afghanistan and with al Qaeda.
5. Myth 5: This Administration has been bad for the environment and ignored the problem of global warming.