Topic: Iraq
Today's lesson in careful reasoning...
Follow the logic here.
Powell Says Invasion Justified by Iraqi 'Intent'
Tuesday Feb 3, 4:28 PM ET
Got the concept?WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Regardless of whether Iraq had stockpiles of banned weapons, Washington would probably have decided to invade Iraq anyway because of its "intent" and its weapons-making ability, Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Tuesday.
"I think it was clear that this was a regime with intent, capability and it was a risk the president felt strongly we could not take and it was something we all agreed to and would probably agree to it again under any other set of circumstances," Powell told reporters....
The Bush Doctrine, current release (3.0) summarized:
Preemptive invasion and occupation of nuclear-armed - oops, well not exactly - dangerously armed - oops, well, sort of - well then... pretty much unarmed third world countries that "would love to" attack the US immediately - oops, doesn't seem to be so - well... "soon" (user defined term) - with nuclear weapons, or with biological weapons, or with chemical weapons of mass destruction - if only they were armed.
As one blogger put it -
Logical? Maybe not.There you have it. It didn't matter whether Iraq posed a threat or not. Bush still would've invaded because Iraq wanted to be a threat.
So every classroom nerd deserves to be beaten by the bully, because those nerds all fantasize about besting the bully. (I know. I was a classroom nerd.)
Well, folks buy it. The swarthy folks scare them - which may sound racist, or more charitably, ethnocentric - but nine-eleven changed everything. And most folks know logic is something odd used by east coast Jewish liberal intellectuals to make George Bush look bad - when he's really a good guy who is selflessly protecting us all.
Consider Iraq. No weapons of mass destruction and no connection to al-Qaeda and nine-eleven. But they probably wanted to be a threat. What would you do, logically? Whoop their sorry asses. Of course.
Sigh.
But the most curious logic has to do with Bush finally giving in and agreeing to form a commission to investigate "intelligence failures." He wants to get the facts. After he told us he had the facts. And war was the only choice - given the facts.
We knew the weapons of mass destruction were there. We proved that to the UN - with visual aids and everything - way back when. Uncle Colin said we knew the facts. And the damned French said let the inspections continue, Iraq is contained. In spite of the facts!
Today Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld testified to Congress, and explained that David Kay, the weapons expert handpicked by the president to spend months in Iraq along with a team of fellow weapons experts searching for weapons of mass destruction, got it wrong. There WERE weapons of mass destruction. And according to Rumsfeld, the weapons were probably transferred to another country or else destroyed before the war.
How does he know this? Why would Kay and his team have gotten it wrong? If Saddam had weapons, why didn't he use them? Donald doesn't know. But he's sure they were there. Kay was wrong. Powell was being silly.
He's not following the script! He's still using the beta release of the Bush Doctrine!
He needs to remember that it doesn't MATTER if they were there, only that Saddam Hussein WANTED them to be there.
Whatever.
But no one has found them. And he said we would. He said we KNEW where they were.
An unfortunate choice of words, but innocent. I see.Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and other Democrats on the committee reminded Rumsfeld that in September 2002 he said "we know" where weapons of mass destruction are stored in Iraq.
Explaining that remark, Rumsfeld told the panel that he was referring to suspected weapons sites, but he acknowledged that he had made it sound like he was talking about actual weapons.
The remark "probably turned out not to be what one would have preferred, in retrospect," he said.
Explain that loose wording to the five hundred twenty-three dead soldiers, Donald. No, they're dead. Explain that loose wording to their families. Explain that loose wording to their friends.
Oops, getting a little bitter there... One should be generous.
It might occur to someone ungenerous that the gap between "we know where weapons of mass destruction are stored" and "we know where we suspect weapons of mass destruction are stored" is rather large.
But does it matter? Powell explained the new line of reasoning - Saddam "wished he had" the weapons. Good enough. Good enough for some perhaps.
Let's see ...
If you were an ungenerous person you might consider that making it sounds like you were talking about weapons when you were not, in fact, talking about weapons comes awfully close to lying to congress.
But one should trust one's leaders, and they wouldn't lie to congress, or to us.
Okay. Enough sarcasm.
We'll see how this plays out.
Posted by Alan at 17:06 PST
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