From March 1, 2003...it's interesting to go back and see how much still holds (except for the cost of war which is now estimated in the TRILLIONS, and the price of oil which is now ~$65/barrel)...
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It really suprises me that you would interpret the speech by Senator Byrd, one of our finest elder statesman, as "make-love-not war type stuff". That speech spoke directly to what it is at stake here, the threat posed by this administration to the world. [http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0212-07.htm]
I appreciate your efforts to share info you don't think is common knowledge among the "anti-war" crowd. I think you would be suprised, however, by exactly how much of this info is old news. The sorties, the diplomatic dealings, etc, are available - just have to know where to look. Despite what you may believe, and in spite of the efforts of US (not international) media to convince people otherwise, there are some very intelligent, very competent, and very well-respected people that are working on "putting the pieces together" here and abroad. You referenced Tom Clancy in your email; I think you have truly no idea just how far beyond Clancy this really is.
You talk of taking a step back from the inspectors to see the "big picture". I contend that we must take two steps back in order to see the "bigger picture".
First of all, you will not find disagreement anywhere on the point that Saddam is a cruel and evil dictator. He certainly is, which causes great consternation among the anti-war people. Of course, so is Kim Jong Il, though we're currently ignoring/negotiating with him depending on the phase of the moon. So are the leaders of most African nations, including Congo, Rwanda, Libya, Algeria, and Egypt.
Those opposed to invading Iraq (absolutely if unilateral, less so if part of a coalition) are starting to piece together the bigger picture, and it is not about Saddam Hussein or Iraq. It is about credibility. It is about principle. It is about empire.
Credibility
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I will not debate many of your points, since they are specific to the evil that Saddam is and yet are superfluous to the bigger picture. I will contend, however, the issue of his use of chemical weapons, which is particularly specious. Aside from the possibility that we may well not know whether it was Iran or Iraq [http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/31/opinion/31PELL.html], the fact remains that it occurred with the consent of and equipment supplied by us (Reagan/Bush). In addition, it happened almost 15 years ago, and has not happened since. If it had, then the more recent incidents would be trotted out as evidence. Given our past inaction regarding this incident, today it can no longer be used as a valid reason for unilateral war, at least not by itself.
Furthermore, Iraq has never been tied to any action against the US. Regarding the alledged assassination attempt on Bush I, that is still in dispute [http://newyorker.com/archive/content/?020930fr_archive02]. Regardless, it is circumstantial at best, and without substantiation cannot be grounds for invading a sovereign nation. We can certainly not claim "self defense" or even "preemptive self defense" in any case.
Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi Arabian, and yet we make no threats against or demands of them, at least not to the extent of those against Iraq. Those demands that we do make are often ignored. More Saudi money goes directly to al qaeda than Iraqi money goes to Palestinians, and yet we hear very little of that connection. Instead we are subjected to reports of that Saddam funds Palestinian suicide bombers. But it was neither Iraq nor Palestine that was involved in 9-11, and yet Iraq (and in other ways Palestine) are our targets. Why? I'll get to that shortly.
All of this raises troubling points about the administration's approach to justifying invasion - it knowingly fosters illusion as fact. Al-qaida links to Hussein are non-existent. Powell in his presentation to the UN failed to mention that the AQ camp in Iraq was really in the Kurdish territories outside of Hussein's control. We have cells in the US - does that mean Bush and AQ are linked?
There are many instances of recent administration claims that have turned out to be factually inaccurate (lies) and have removed any claim to credibility this administration may have had. Many of these were directly refuted by our own intelligence agencies.
One very troubling aspect of US policy is the idea that our own government might actually lie to us to achieve certain political ends (of course we know THAT would never happen). The Gulf of Tonkin is probably the most well-known incident. Less well known is something called "Operation Northwoods". [http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/] Simply the fact that such a plan exists reduces the government's credibility.
The Office of Total Information Awareness (TIA) further diminishes the credibility of this administration with regards to anything involving domestic and national security. This Orwellian office [http://www.cato.org/dailys/01-20-03.html, http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1129/p11s01-coop.html, http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14656] is to be headed by John Poindexter, a felon from the days of Iran-Contra. Have other nations taken this step in order to combat terrorism? The former Soviet Union and China come to mind. Big Brother is alive and well, only 18 years later.
Given these incidents, the intentions and motives of the government in general, and this administration in particular, must be called into question, even when the goals appear to be noble. Bottom line is without credibility, any actions and measures taken by Bush MUST be questioned (they should be anyway, but...).
Principle
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The US, if it (we) is to lead the world and stand as an example to all nations of what is good and possible, must practice those moral and ethical principles that we exhort from the rest of the world. We decry unilateralism, except when it is supposedly in our own best interests. We hold other nations accountable for their actions, yet treat the world as our sandbox by supporting leaders and policies when it suits us (Hussein, bin Laden, Pinochet come to mind), but refusing to accept the consequences of our actions (or inactions).
You mentioned Afghanistan as an example of our success. I would consider it more of an example of our failure, of how we are simply not cut out for any long-term nation building. During the Soviet invasion we supported the Muhajadeen, yet once the Soviets were defeated, we abandoned the Afghanis to their fates. Rather than make an effort to bring the country into the 20th century, we enabled the Taliban to fill the power vacuum that remained. Our actions today demonstrate we have not learned from history, and are becoming bogged down just like the Soviets.
Other than the city of Kabul (where Karzai has to have bodyguards, which is a good indication of how "safe and secure" Afghanistan is) Afghanistan is back to where it was prior to 9/11. The countryside is again in disarray with all the different warlord factions fighting each other. Notice how all the US (we) is interested in is the line of bases that have been established along the proposed oil-pipeline construction route.
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8496-2003Feb26?language=printer,
http://www.justicewomen.com/ws_bush_plays.html,
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAW3BAURCD.html]
And I will also make note of the fact the budget recently submitted by Bush did not include any money for our efforts in Afghanistan. None. Zero. It took some lesser House Republican to do an "oh, by the way" move to add $300 million. Seems our dedication to nation building doesn't come with funding.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/21/opinion/21KRUG.html]
We have backed out of most every significant peace/arms control treaty unilaterally. We don't support the ICC, which calls into question the motives and fears of this administration should we invade a sovereign nation in the name of "preemptive self defense". The US has never maintained such a policy as this, and has always called into question countries attacking without provocation. Yet this is exactly the example we are setting for the entire world. How long before N Korea invades S Korea? Or China invades Taiwan? And then there's India and Pakistan, both of whom possess nuclear weapons, either of whom may use them in the name of preemptive self defense. This will be a precedent established by our unilateral invasion of Iraq. Having one or two or a few countries on our side does not change this fact, especially when we have to promise them billions of dollars in "bribe" money to join us - that only makes them mercenaries.
To make the India/Pakistan problem even more egregious is the fact that we have stepped back from our policy of no nuclear weapon use, yet we will expect every other nation possessing them to stand down and abide by a no first-use policy. How much more dangerous does this make the world? How many American lives are at risk because of these policies?
In conjunction with all of this, we as a nation are allowing the very rights granted us by the Founding Fathers through the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to be infringed upon and potentially eliminated, all in the name of security. This limiting of civil and Constitutional protections has been occuring since 9-11, when the Bush administration and the Justice Department began implementing legislation and rearranging agencies in the name of "homeland security."
The Patriot Act places restrictions on Amendments I, IV, V, VI, and VIII; the recently leaked Patriot Act II further increases the government's powers, infringing even more on Constitutional protections and our rights to privacy. All of this in the name of fighting terrorism.
[http://www.bordc.org/index.html,
http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=502&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0&L5=0,
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/ramasastry/20030217.html]. To quote Benjamin
Franklin, "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security."
These are the very things we decry in non-democratic nations; it was a rallying cry in our fight against the USSR and communism, and yet we are perpetrating them here at home. So much for "they hate us for our freedoms."
Finally, you of all people shoud know that the American military exists to defend the nation against enemies both foreign AND domestic; it was never intended to be a tool of aggressive political gain.
Empire
=========
We are witnessing a fundamental change in the philosophy of American foreign policy, leading to a new American Empire. Zbigniew Brzezinski touched on it in "The Grand Chessboard," and Wolfowitz, et al created a working model (based on a previous effort by then SecDef Dick Cheney) for it in their Project for a New American Century (PNAC) document "Rebuilding America's Defenses". [http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf] If you have not read either one I suggest you do.
Brzezinski writes:
"Moreover, they [the Central Asian Republics] are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely Russia, Turkey and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold." (pg 124)
"It follows that America's primary interest is to help ensure that no single power comes to control this geopolitical space and that the global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it." (pg 148)
"The most immediate task is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role." (pg 198)
The intent is evident: to make sure that no nation or group of nations arises to challenge our newfound economic and military dominance. The European Union is one such coalition, and our current efforts to divide them may well be part of this strategy.
The PNAC document is a blueprint for implementation and is being followed almost to the letter by this administration.
It should be noted who can be tied directly to this organization. Vice President Dick Cheney is a founding member of PNAC, along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is the ideological father of the group. Bruce Jackson, a PNAC director, served as a Pentagon official for Ronald Reagan before leaving government service to take a leading position with the weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.
PNAC is staffed by men who previously served with groups like Friends of the Democratic Center in Central America, which supported America's bloody gamesmanship in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and with groups like The Committee for the Present Danger, which spent years advocating that a nuclear war with the Soviet Union was "winnable."
[http://truthout.org/docs_02/022203A.htm,
http://www.amconmag.com/02_24_03/cover.html,
http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/opinion/0902/29bookman.html]
Do not misunderstand me - I thoroughly believe that the US (we) need to maintain a position of strength, both economically and militarily, in the world. However, lessons from history show that empires do not last, eventually collapsing under the strains of maintaining the empire. In addition, the US is not alone in this world, and acting in our own perceived best interests without regard for the rest of the world only hinders our ability to strengthen and grow, consequently (and ironically) going AGAINST our best interests.
Current world opinion reflects this; however it is not anti-American but anti-Bush in nature. Bush has squandered all the goodwill we had following 9-11 in his rush to implement Pax Americana mentioned in the PNAC document.
Examining these documents explains much; it does not, however, answer the questions "Why Iraq?" and "Why now?" For these we need to dig a little deeper.
Oil
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This is the obvious first choice. Iraq has the second largest reserves in the world, and given our current dependence, along with the fact that world supply and production have likely peaked [http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert], a secure oil supply is a necessity. Also, given the connections to big oil that this administration has (Bush, Cheney, Rice), anything that benefits the oil industry (such as US oil companies moving into Iraq) benefits them (a serious conflict of interest and ethical violation).
It bears mentioning that other nations have worse human rights violations (most every African nation, N Korea, and Pakistan to name a few), and links to Al-qaeda (Pakistan). None of these nations, though, have oil reserves of any mention, and are more in a position to put up a fight should we decide they are next.
Saudi Arabia has definite links to al-qaeda, and the largest oil reserves in the world. Why not them? One, they are our public allies, and it would be bad PR, and not good for oil prices, if we were to turn on them.
One thing this certainly is NOT about is securing the price of oil (if anything it is about breaking the back of OPEC). A simple check over the past couple of decades shows that oil prices spiked during ME crises, and that ever since the end of the Gulf War prices have been stable at or below their 50 year average, and often near all-time lows. [http://www.wtrg.com/prices.htm] Now we are facing close to $40 a barrel, and not because of actions taken by Iraq. They have done nothing different in the last two years to cause prices to spike; that has been our doing. And one might consider who is profiting from this rise in prices.
Post War Reconstruction
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As a friend of mine is very fond of saying, "What's the bottom line? Money." You mentioned that the US stands to lose billions of dollars in the conduct of war and the subsequent occupation/reconstruction. You are partially correct with one significant difference. In fact, it is the US TAXPAYERS that stand to lose hundreds of billions (let's not understate and make it seem cheap), so that American companies can reap that amount (or more) in construction and support contracts. Which companies may be the recipients of this taxpayer funded largess? Let's start with the Carlyle Group (with Bush Sr as a senior advisor, as well as former GB PM John Major), which profits immensely from defense industry contracts.
Then there's Halliburton (former CEO Dick Cheney), which would profit tremendously from both construction and support contracts post war. I must point out that during the 90's, when companies were not permitted to do business with Iraq as a result of sanctions, Halliburton (under Cheney) profited greatly from contracts with Iraq; and as VP Cheney actually considered the possibility of lifting sanctions against Iran, Libya, and Iraq. Conflicts of interest? Most definitely.
[http://truthout.org/docs_03/022803A.shtml,
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/sanction/iraq1/oilforfood/2001/0627chen.htm]
And lest we not forget the oil companies: ChevronTexaco (Condi Rice), Unocal (Hamid Karzi), any connections between Bush the oil man; it goes on and on.
What does all this have to do with Iraq? Iraq provides a situation where these interests can benefit.
Other Issues
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There are other issues here, including liberating Iraq, bringing them democracy, ridding the world of weapons of mass destruction, all of which are better addressed in "The Coming War With Iraq: Deciphering the Bush Administration's Motives":
[http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0301warreasons.html]
Just to excerpt from it:
Eliminating weapons of mass destruction: The reason most often given by the administration for going to war with Iraq is to reduce the risk of a WMD attack on the United States. To be sure, a significant WMD attack on the United States would be a terrible disaster, and it is appropriate for the President of the United States to take effective and vigorous action to prevent this from happening. If this is, in fact, Bush's primary concern, then one would imagine that he would pay the greatest attention to the greatest threat of WMD usage against the United States, and deploy available U.S. resources--troops, dollars, and diplomacy--accordingly. But is this what Bush is actually doing? The answer is no. Anyone who takes the trouble to examine the global WMD proliferation threat closely and to gauge the relative likelihood of various WMD scenarios would have to conclude that the greatest threat of WMD usage against the United States at the present time comes from North Korea and Pakistan, not Iraq.
In addressing this matter (combating terrorism), moreover, it is necessary to keep the Israeli-Palestinian struggle in mind. For most Arab Muslims, whatever their views of Saddam Hussein, the United States is a hypocritical power because it tolerates (or even supports) the use of state terror by Israel against the Palestinians while making war against Baghdad for the same sort of behavior. It is this perception that is fueling the anti-American current now running through the Muslim world. An American invasion of Iraq will not quiet that current, but excite it. It is thus exceedingly difficult to see how a U.S. invasion of Iraq will produce a stunning victory in the war against terrorism; if anything, it will trigger a new round of anti-American violence. Hence, it is very difficult to conclude that the administration is motivated by anti-terrorism in seeking to topple Hussein.
There is another reason to be skeptical about the Bush administration's commitment to democracy in this part of the world, and that is the fact that the administration has developed close relationships with a number of other dictatorial or authoritarian regimes in the area. Most notably, the United States had developed close ties with the post-Soviet dictatorships in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan [the Eurasian Balkans mentioned by Brzezinski]. Each of these countries is ruled by a Stalinist dictator who once served as a loyal agent of the Soviet empire: Heydar Aliyev in Azerbaijan, Nursultan Nazarbaev of Kazakhstan, and Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan. Only slightly less odious than Saddam Hussein, these tyrants have been welcomed to the White House and showered with American aid and support. And there certainly is nothing even remotely democratic about Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, two of America's other close allies in the region. So it is hard to believe that the Bush administration is motivated by a love of democracy, when it has been so quick to embrace patently undemocratic regimes that have agreed to do its bidding.
In addition to these issues is the question of a currency war. Will the dollar remain king, or will the euro replace it? An excerpt from "The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War With Iraq: A Macroeconomic and Geostrategic Analysis of the Unspoken Truth"
[http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/RRiraqWar.html]
"Big Picture Perspective: Everything else aside from the reserve currency and the Saudi/Iran oil issues (i.e. domestic political issues and international criticism) is peripheral and of marginal consequence to this administration. Further, the dollar-euro threat is powerful enough that they will rather risk much of the economic backlash in the short-term to stave off the long-term dollar crash of an OPEC transaction standard change from dollars to euros. All of this fits into the broader Great Game that encompasses Russia, India, China."
This relates directly to "The Grand Chessboard". Furthermore,
"The Federal Reserve's greatest nightmare is that OPEC will switch its international transactions from a dollar standard to a euro standard. Iraq actually made this switch in Nov. 2000 (when the euro was worth around 82 cents), and has actually made off like a bandit considering the dollar's steady depreciation against the euro. (Note: the dollar declined 17% against the euro in 2002.)"
Does all of this sound a little naive? On the surface perhaps. But it goes straight to the heart of what it means to be an American. America is not a philosophy of empire. America does not impose our will on other nations. America does not invade sovereign nations unilaterally and without justification (like Nazi Germany). America does not use weapons of mass destruction against other nations (OK, maybe once, no twice). America does not withdraw from treaties meant to ensure global security. America does not restrict the freedoms of our own citizens (Jose Padilla). Instead, America stands for freedom, compassion, and the rule of law.
Instead of destablizing the global situation, wasting billions and billions of dollars, and placing American soldiers and civilians lives at risk, we should focus our immense resources on providing for those here at home who are suffering (during one of the greatest economic downturns ever), and eliminating the religious and economic situations and environments that breed and support terrorism. We should reduce our dependence on the foreign oil that provides the funding for terrorists. We should seek resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem, even if it means placing some pressure on Israel to achieve it. And we should strive to enact UN reforms that would enable it to deal with international situations such as Al-qaeda and Iraq, while at the same time eliminating the potential for any single country to control its agenda and decisions. I agree that it is BS that Libya and Sudan are on the UNHRC, but it is pure hypocrisy on our parts to believe that we are any more fit to be on it. A simple walk through history demonstrates that the US has traded its integrity many times over supporting the very dictators that we now decry. And I am NOT bashing the US - I am only pointing out that we have many things to answer for, and perhaps now the global community is finally standing up and telling us to stop.
Only when we recognize that our way is not always the right way can we guarantee our security in the global community. And only then can we hope to secure the freedoms and liberties assured us by the Founding Fathers. Then perhaps you can spend more time with your wife and daughter.
And BTW - French aircraft carrier heads home
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2773381.stm]
And don't forget - it was France who helped us win the American Revolution, France who gifted us with the Statue of Liberty, and France who should know better than anybody the costs of empire, and the consequences of being invaded.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/23/opinion/23DEBR.html]
