For those who insist that the lack of an Al-Qaeda/Iraq link means Saddam should have been left to mass murder his own people unmolested, Melanie Philips has some measured words for you.
The excitement was over a preliminary assessment of evidence about al-Qa’eda by the US commission investigating September 11. The only problem was that the press coverage was untrue. The report does not rule out links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa’eda. On the contrary, as the commission’s chairman, Thomas Kean, confirmed: “There were contacts between Iraq and al-Qa’eda, a number of them, some of them a little shadowy. They were definitely there.” As so often in the coverage of Iraq, those who make the (illogical) claim that there was no such contact and therefore no cause for war saw in this report only what they wanted to see.
[…]
Bill Clinton’s administration was absolutely certain that Saddam was in cahoots with al-Qa’eda. It was a given. That is surely why, after September 11, Pentagon officials were obsessed with Iraq. Whether Saddam was personally involved in 9/11 was irrelevant; if he was aiding al-Qa’eda’s terror, he had to be stopped. But this has been obliterated from the collective memory in order to place the most malign interpretation possible on the motives of the Bush administration.
Nothing new and from my point of view, so what… that Saddam was a tyrant was enough of a reason for me… but seeing as how people keep repeating ‘there was no link’ (I was highly sceptical myself at first), continue to oppose the overthrow of the Ba’athist regime if you like but please find another approach because ‘that dawg don’t hunt no more’.
Shrubco was ‘obsessed’ w/ Saddam before 9/11, and used the “War on Terror” to justify an invasion they couldn’t get otherwise (distracting from the real WOT for those who give a damn). Support for Perry’s War seems to be making Perry give govt credit for honesty (Iraq/AQ ties) that he wouldn’t give them over, say, the EU or socialized medicine.
Give it up Perry, Saddam/AQ is going the way of WMD, more lies from the politicians you gladly support.
Nobody denies Saddam met w/ evil….
The next countries we can invade to make Perry feel moral and powerful:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_06/004184.php
For years, there have been unsubstantiated allegations that the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia intentionally ignored Bin Laden’s efforts in their countries or even cut deals with him, either out of sympathy with his efforts or to protect themselves from attack….Both governments have strenuously denied this, and did so again Saturday.
….”This whole notion of us buying off Bin Laden is nonsense,” said the Saudi official, who declined to be identified. “It’s nuts. Do you trust a thug and a murderer like Bin Laden? You can’t.”
But commission investigators have come to believe that these allegations are credible, based on their exhaustive review of all of the classified intelligence data known to the U.S. government. The commission’s 80 staffers also conducted thousands of interviews in the United States and abroad, and had access to the interrogations of Al Qaeda’s most senior operatives in U.S. custody, including accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
“There’s no question the Taliban was getting money from the Saudis…and there’s no question they got much more than that from the Pakistani government,” said former Sen. Bob Kerrey, one of the congressionally appointed commission’s 10 members. “Their motive is a secondary issue for us.”
Fine by me, Scott. Tyranny is tyranny. Bombs away. But just covering your eyes and repeting ‘there was no link, there was no link’ tends not to impress.
And by the way, how does Rumsfeld meeting with him prove anything other than clearly foreign policy has improved since those days?
Lots of people met with the Iraqis.
I realise the fact Sadr has been gutted is a set back Scott, but chin up, it aint over yet, something else will probably go wrong and keep hope alive for your side and your Islamist friends, so you may yet get your ‘Tet Offensive’ military win but political lose scenario to play out. But, yeah, it does look like your side is losing at the moment on all fronts.
Clinton defends successor’s push for war
So, this isn’t Shrubco’s war, this is Clinton’s war. Please, get your smears right. I’m absolutely convinced that if Clinton was in power still, Scott would be praising the liberation of Iraq in the name of human rights and democracy. After all, Clinton bombed and occupied Kosovo unilaterally and illegally and we loved him for it, no-one cared that international law was being ignored, that Serbia wasn’t a threat to us, that Serbia didn’t have WMD or links with Al-Qaeda, or that the the Kosovo war actually sped up the ethnic cleansing.
And while we’re showing off the Iraqi photo album, I thought I’d include a few of Saddam’s personal snaps.
Jacques & Saddam visiting a French tourist attraction – a nuclear reactor
Jacques & Saddam in Baghdad
Actually the bombing for Kosovo was worse than the war in Iraq in one sense. We were bombing people with a sense of humor.
The anti US crowds in Belgrade were shouting “Bite Monica Bite!”
That beats anything I have ever heard from the Islamic mobs. Though come to think of it “Death to him who shaves!” comes close.
Scott gives the game away when he says “…distracting from the real WOT for those who give a damn“. [Emphasis mine.] Well, Scott, it may be small potatoes to you, but some of us do give a damn about terrorism. We do care that 3000 Americans were murdered by Islamist pigfuckers for the crime of going to work in the morning. We do think it’s inherently a good thing that a vicious, terror-supporting Iraqi dictatorship was toppled. Clearly the only thing you care about is scoring cheap points against your political opponents, whose mere existence drives you to spittle-flecked distraction.
Bugger off.
Well, there may have been some contacts btwn Saddam and Qaeda, though it seems highly unlikely that these were in any way meaningful. Certainly not meaningful enough to warrant going to war, IMO. Throw this together with the other justification, WMD, and one wonders why we did go to war. The only good thing to come out of this war so far has been the removal of a bloody dictator. If Iraq slides further into chaos, anarchy, and civil war, even the removal of Saddam may come to be seen as a mistake.
Our foreign policy has improved???? WHat in your opinion is better about it? What about US support for the dictators of Central Asia? What about US refusal to deal with Yasser Arafat and its warm and cozy relations with Israel? I could go on and on…
During the run up to the local and european elections the BNP tried to canvass me. I told them to clear off and not come back. A few days later they put a leaflet through my door which I threw away without reading.
Does this mean that I have links with the BNP?
So, MoulesfromBrussels, if you think the US not supporting Saddam Hussain is not an improvement… so what are we to make about your statement about the US supporting ‘central asian dictators’? Supporting them is bad, you think, regardles of the fact we needed their support to attack the Taliban, but no longer supporting Saddam is NOT an improvement? Riiiggght. Next case.
Perry, do you understand how totally dishonest it is to quote ‘evidence’ of WMD or AQ ties w/ the blurb “it doesn’t matter to me if this turns out to be false, but…”? When you try to cover yourself in case the latest ‘evidence’ craps out (you favor the war anyway, and you are just too intellectually sophisticated to put much trust in anything the govt says – unlike the cattle that argue your side in the comments section), you’re basically saying that “I don’t care if it’s true, and I don’t care if it’s a govt lie; I just care if you believing it convinces you to agree w/ my political views.”
That’s a level of honesty worthy of a govt official.
Iraq had nothing to do w/ that, and the racism behind “Islamic pigfuckers” simply opens you to being ‘led’ to attack anyone govt wants to, regardless of how little sense it makes. Try thinking w/ the big head and not the little one.
Billmon has already posted the entire passage from the 9/11 Commission’s latest staff statement dealing with Al Qaeda, Saddam and their non-existent relationship. But it’s short enough to merit reposting:
This cannot, under any rational reading of the English language, be intepreted as consistent with, or supportive of, the administration’s speculative theories about a secret terror pact between Saddam and al Qaeda. There is no “broad consensus,” save the wholly fictional one dreamed up by the Bush-Cheney PR team.
There is no question that significant ties excisted between Al Quada and Iraq throughout the nineties.
This has been documented by Stephen Hayes and recently endorsed by the 9/11 commission.
Was Iraq directly involved in the 9/11 attacks? Probably not, but then again, Bush NEVER claimed they were. The honest question is that we just don’t know. We can’t prove it, nor can we conclusively dismiss it.
Regardless, Iraq was a country critically important in the war on terror. It had ties with Al-Quada and a history of WMD usage.
There is no douby in my mind that invading Iraq was the absolutely right thing to do. Recent event has only made me surer of that.
Euro-Socialists and other irrelevant Bush-haters can whine all they wish, but I have a hunch history will be kinder to Bush than the appeasers of terror and tyranny.
Anyone who supported the unilateral attack/invasion of Iraq, a country that posed no apparent danger to the U.S., and who persists in calling himself a “Libertarian”, is, perforce, not a Libertarian.
Wannabe neocon Republican, perhaps, but not a Libertarian.
Go ahead, Perry, try the “Pre-emptive self-defense” argument in real life.
“Well, m’lud, that swarthy fellow looked as if he was about to mug me for my wallet and my copy of of ‘On Liberty’ by John Stuart Mill, so that’s why I had to wallop him with my cricket bat. Pre-Emptive Self-Defense, don’t you know. As used by the Government of the United States of America against Iraq.”
Sure Chris, that is why I rarely call myself a libertarian anymore as I need to make it clear I do not make common cause with folks who think it is just fine to leave people to be murdered, just so long as they are out of sight somewhere far off. Likewise, I find the logic of pre-emptive self defence just fine when the facts justify it.
“Well m’lud, the swarthy fellow was putting posters around the neighbourhood saying ‘death to Perry’, had a history of violence against his neighbours and was pointing weapons in my direction, so rather than wait to see if he was going to pull the trigger, I shot him first”
I really have no problem with that. If you do, then I have no problem not being viewed as a fellow traveller. That paleo-libertarians see no irony in the fact they so often find themselves supporting the rights of the likes of Slobodan Milosovic and Saddam Hussain to be left in peace to murder people has left me with little regret that some people think I am ‘not a libertarian’. If that is what being a libertarian means, no thanks, I will just stick to ‘social individualist’.
Perry is once again saying that anyone who opposes his war is responsible for what may or may not have happened in Iraq otherwise, but still refuses to take responsibility for any negative consequences of his war (i.e. if we wind up opening the door for another Iraqi tyrant, Perry refuses to acknowledge he’s responsible for that because it’s his war). Perry cannot see the irony, or his responsibility, concerning things like this:
Iraqi officials ponder use of harsh Saddam-era laws
BAGHDAD — Iraq’s interim government yesterday said it was considering reviving emergency martial law powers from the Saddam Hussein era to combat a wave of violence that has killed nearly 200 people and paralyzed oil exports.
Malik Dohan al-Hassan, justice minister in the caretaker Iraqi government, said authorities may resort to “exceptional” laws imposed by the former dictator after it takes power on June 30. …
…Given the country’s mounting security woes, Col. Rasool said he would recommend closing the nation’s borders and giving police and soldiers a much freer hand to deal with wrongdoers on the street.
If Iraqi leaders follow through with the martial law idea, he just might get his way.
“Right now we can only open fire on people if they threaten us,” the burly commander of 1,300 soldiers said in an interview. “We should have more freedom to act. We must have more brutal laws. The American laws are weak laws.” …
…Col. Rasool, a no-nonsense military leader who was an officer during Saddam’s rule, said he was looking forward to the day when he can set up checkpoints and dispatch patrols without coordinating with American troops or abiding by the Americans’ rules of engagement. …
Your specific points have been asked and answered dozens of time here in a dozen comment threads by many people, including myself. And the point made again and again is that whilst you want other to take responsibility for the consequences of who they support politically, you decline to take similar responsibility yourself. If you just keep repeating yourself as if no one has actually replied fulsomely before, then you are just trolling.
I do not mind that you take an opposing position, I welcome it in fact, and you are by no means alone in taking such views… but all you are doing now is endlessly restating the same thing again and again, which makes attempts at conversation pointless.
Do it again and I will ban you. Take this as an ex cathedra statement from the site proprietor which I will not debate.
Comment deleted
Editor’s note: Scott, as you are not willing to actually converse, as opposed to just repete yourself as if no one had answered you in the past many times, you are not welcome here any more. Get lost.
And there is none more classy that someone who tries to suck band-width by posting gifs in a comments section.
Perry and others, knobs like Scott and that other genius would not believe a link if Saddam and OSB did a side by side 60 Minutes interview stating that it did in fact happen.
After all Scott obviously can’t count. Unilateral uses the prefix uni meaning one. The US did not go it alone, besides the help of the UK, it had Italy, Poland etc etc…
There were links between Iraq’s secret service and Al Queda that is a fact that even the partisan 9/11 commission admits. They didn’t discuss 9/11 per se, so bloody what? They discussed terrorist operations against the West. And what was 9/11?
And to show you what a ‘classy guy’ Scott is, I just e-mailed him to tell him that he was no longer welcome here, to which he replied:
With enemies like Scott, who needs friends? He is banned not for his political views (lots of commenters here opposed the war) but rather he is banned for being a jerk, which his letter just demonstrates beyond all reasonable doubt.
“Anyone who supported the unilateral attack/invasion of Iraq, a country that posed no apparent danger to the U.S., and who persists in calling himself a “Libertarian”, is, perforce, not a Libertarian.”
Bullshit.
Who the hell made you the ultimate authority on whether someone is a Libertatian or not?!
This naive mindset is exactly why Libertarian Party membership in the US has stagnated badly post 9/11.
I am a Libertarian.
I fully support the war in Iraq.
I actually consider anyone who opposes the war to have questionable Libertarian principles.
And I know I am not alone.
as islam is a religion, not a race, calling islamists ‘pigfuckers’ can hardly be racist. very insulting, for sure, but not racist. is calling a catholic a ‘papist’ or a ‘red sock’ racist? no, it is just anti-catholic and insulting, but being catholic is not a race.
it is usualy a safe bet that when someone plays the race card in a debate like this, it is a clear sign they see the sewer hole approching in front of them at great speed, so they throw up a smoke screen by screaming ‘racist! racist!’ and hope no one sees their ideas vanish down the watery hole.
I am a Libertarian, and I fully support the annihilation of the former Afghan and Iraqi regimes, and the use of my tax dollars to do so.
I pay approximately $11,000 per year in Federal income taxes (and $6,000 in Social Security/Medicare tax, well over $3,000 in state income taxes, and several hundred dollars in local earnings tax). Nothing the Federal government of the United States has done since the Apollo program has made me as proud as its destruction of these theocratic and fascist dictatorships.
The net number of lives saved in Afghanistan since late 2001 is approaching one million, thanks to a combination of immunization programs and emergency food aid which could not be properly carried out under the Taliban.
The net number of lives saved in Iraq will accumulate at a rate of approximately 200,000 per year for each year that Saddam would have remained in power had we not gotten rid of him.
The mischief already prevented around the world, and especially in the United States, by ending the risks posed by terrorism sponsored by these regimes, is undoubtedly greater than what we experienced on 9/11/01.
I fully support measures to end Saudi sponsorship of terroristic ideologies and to secure the Pakistani nuclear arsenal, up to and including the removal of those governments, as well.
I have been a Libertarian since 1978 and active in the Libertarian Party in the US with only minor interruptions since 1981. This activity has included attendance at 5 national conventions, service on the national Platform Committee, and the chairmanship of two state parties. The responsibilities associated with those activities entailed frequent travel and considerable personal expense.
I have also run for public office three times as a Libertarian, and organized most of the protests in Dallas and Waco during the Branch Davidian standoff in 1993. I have continually encouraged Libertarians to take their responsibilities seriously and address the LP’s severe internal difficulties, once organizing (and paying for most of) a nationwide conference of state-level activists to facilitate this, near D/FW airport in 1997.
I am presently assisting Libertarian candidates and volunteers in Jackson County, Missouri, plus several surrounding counties, in organizing outreach efforts and publicity for the current campaign season.
I may not be a Libertarian on Planet Tucker, but I am one on Earth.
I fear, reading this thread, that it sadly sums up everything that the “mainstream” dislikes and fears about neo-libertarian thought.
Jay, while I like your blog hugely, I simply cannot agree with a statement like; “The mischief already prevented around the world, and especially in the United States, by ending the risks posed by terrorism sponsored by these regimes, is undoubtedly greater than what we experienced on 9/11/01.
Not even your own government figures support this.
Afganistan should have been done without 9-11, Iraq also, Iraq, however, should have waited – there are and were other more important strategic points to make.
It all makes me sadly think of the commercial enviroment. Few people seem to actually be able to distingusih between stragegy and doing a normal days business.
This is potentially grim when you are in business and a disaster when you are world leaders…
My statement was speculative but reasonable. It also pushed the envelope in the sense that my only real point is that Chris Tucker’s assertion that someone like me cannot be a Libertarian is ridiculous.
There are nontrivial issues of prioritization and resource allocation. Not every idea we’ve heard, or that the US government has acted on, since 9/11/01 has been a good one. “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.” But the only truly failed project is the one you don’t learn from.
And “noninterventionism,” at least in the sense of the word as we have all used it over the years, is dead. Every American (and every Jew) in the world is a target now, and the terrorists are demanding, not the removal of Western militaries, but of all non-Muslim persons, from the Arabian Peninsula. Oh, yeah, and they want Spain back. “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none” protects us no longer.