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Thread: The Emerging "Neocon" Alibi on Iraq

  1. #61
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rank amateur View Post
    [URL="http://www.slate.com/id/2186850"]I'm going to agree with Ken:
    If you say so. I don't agree with Fred. Rarley do, he's a hack and you should cross check his stuff...
    When it turned out that the strategic analysis was laughably wrong the spin doctors came up with arguments that were good enough to win the election, which was the spin doctor's job, but which were - as Steve points out - strategically ridiculous.
    You might want to check your timing on what was said and when the election occurred. You might also contemplate how "laughably wrong" was the strategic analysis. Not Fred's version. He knows not one bit more than you or I do, perhaps less (seems that way sometimes). Rather on all the things that might have been analyzed.

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    Council Member SteveMetz's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
    I'm aware the Admin said what you cite for public consumption. Do you personally think that any great number of the decision makers really put any stock in that? Do you think that had any significant place at all in the heirarchy of reasons for the attack?
    Hard to tell. Ron Suskind, in The One Percent Doctrine, thinks they did. Personally I suspect that the President probably believed it. Some of his advisers may have been more coldly realistic, assuming that there was a political and psychological window of opportunity to remove a festering problem. I haven't been able to find any evidence, though, of a rigorous strategic assessment which weighed the potential risks and costs of military intervention against the expected utility.

    I was always one of those who considered Hussein deterrable. He was prone to miscalculation, but that can be overcome through clarity of intent. More than anything, he valued his own survival and power. So long as we could hold those things as risk, he could be deterred.

    The ONLY way the administration's argument held was if one or both of two things were true: 1) the costs and risks of removing Hussein by force were minimal; or 2) the future Saddam Hussein would be very different than the past Saddam Hussein and thus willing to risk his own survival and power in order to punish the United States.

    Even before the intervention, I didn't see any reason to believe either of those.

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    Quote Originally Posted by SteveMetz View Post
    You've illustrated the crux of the administration's flawed argument: that the Hussein regime would or could provide WMD to terrorists.
    Could is easy to answer. Within days of 19 March 2003, only knowledge and precursors could be disseminated. Within months of the collapse of sanctions, as it concerns actual weapons, then yes. A single nuclear device outside of IAEA scrutiny would take minimum five years or more from the collapse of sanctions to complete if Iraq started standing up P1 aluminum centrifuge cascades from day one.

    In other words, the argument pivoted on the probability of a regime which had never shown evidence of suicidal tendencies becoming suicidal.
    That begs the question of whether or not a state that delivers the means or even a finished product to terrorists who then go on to use it against the US or her allies is necessarily committing suicide--particularly with WMD other than nuclear.

    Cogent strategy entails assuming some degree of risk when the anticipated costs of addressing the threat are greater than the probability of the threat coming to pass, or of the damage if the threat did come to pass.
    And in a perfect world, you'd have two clearly separated means enveloped by narrow variances. The question is what do you do when the variance is extremely wide or even unknown and there's not much obvious time for you to dig up more intel to thin it?

    The administration skewed this logic by grossly overestimating the likelihood of a threat to the United States from Hussein, and grossly underestimating the expected costs of removing him by force.
    I'd agree with you except for the adjective "gross" and for two reasons:

    1. Iraq did not have expected stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons, but according to the Survey Group final report the will to reacquire its capability and the industry and know-how to do so in a matter of months. This might have translated into increased breathing room for the United States to build a coalition. It also may have translated into increased breathing room for Iraq to isolate the US through declarations of compliance by UNMOVIC and the IAEA in much the same manner Iran is doing by standing up centrifuge cascades while making hay out of last year's NIE. To date, I've seen no one stand up and try to calculate the likelihood of either scenario beyond mutual appeals to incredulity.

    2. A rogue state filling the vessel with fissile material traceable to its mines, breeders or known centrifuges, handing it to terrorists and sending them to the US to blow it up is definitely suicidal. It's also not the only means at her disposal.

    I find the assertion that Feith "was allowed to muck around in" post-regime planning bizarre. If OSD wasn't who was? Do you seriously intend to make an argument that State somehow messed it up?
    I'm speaking of the post-war itself, and pointing out that even Bremer characterizes Feith and his clique lost the argument on whether the US should assume the mantle of the occupying authority. It might've been a stupid position for him to take, but it disqualifies him as the father of what followed. This isn't to say that Feith, Policy and OSD don't bear responsibility. No one's out and out said it yet, but the more I read into the bickering and recriminations between ex-OSD and State officials, the more it jives with all the data and reporting on CPA's problems in staffing and budget accountability. Despite having its own line item in the supplementals, historians would do better to start with this question: "was CPA an interagency orphan?"

    I don't know the answer to that question. I'm hoping you might.
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    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default Thanks for the response. It certainly is hard.

    So much jabber and spin that it was and is very hard to sort.

    I'm inclined to think that Saddam as threat was on the list but was down around number 12 or even lower. I think Bush was convinced that a message needed to be sent to the ME (not to Islam and not to Afghanistan; different things) and that Iraq was selected as being geographically central, relatively easy militarily, least likely to disrupt world oil supplies, having a despised dictator and thus likely to arouse the least angst in the rest of the world. I think the timing was mostly predicated on the fear that, if he, Bush, did not get a second term, his successor might not do what he thought needed to be done.

    Thus, I think deterring Hussein was no more than a passing thought and removing him was not a significantly higher priority; it was merely a synergistic benefit. MBAs always look for synergies...

    That and the Saudis probably saying "Look, if you Americans will get out of here, we'll go after our local bad guys and turn some things around." Plus the USAF really wanted to get rid of the Northern and Southern Watches...

    I do agree with you on this aspect:
    I haven't been able to find any evidence, though, of a rigorous strategic assessment which weighed the potential risks and costs of military intervention against the expected utility.
    I suspect (hope???) an effort was made by the J3 and / or CentCom but that it got short shrift from the Administration who imposed their views on the cost / benefit based on flawed logic hubris and optimism as opposed to a rational assessment. However, it is possible if not probable that a better assessment was made in some measure and Bush decided to go anyway. I guess we'll find out in 2033.

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    Council Member SteveMetz's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Presley Cannady View Post
    Could is easy to answer. Within days of 19 March 2003, only knowledge and precursors could be disseminated. Within months of the collapse of sanctions, as it concerns actual weapons, then yes. A single nuclear device outside of IAEA scrutiny would take minimum five years or more from the collapse of sanctions to complete if Iraq started standing up P1 aluminum centrifuge cascades from day one.



    That begs the question of whether or not a state that delivers the means or even a finished product to terrorists who then go on to use it against the US or her allies is necessarily committing suicide--particularly with WMD other than nuclear.



    And in a perfect world, you'd have two clearly separated means enveloped by narrow variances. The question is what do you do when the variance is extremely wide or even unknown and there's not much obvious time for you to dig up more intel to thin it?



    I'd agree with you except for the adjective "gross" and for two reasons:

    1. Iraq did not have expected stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons, but according to the Survey Group final report the will to reacquire its capability and the industry and know-how to do so in a matter of months. This might have translated into increased breathing room for the United States to build a coalition. It also may have translated into increased breathing room for Iraq to isolate the US through declarations of compliance by UNMOVIC and the IAEA in much the same manner Iran is doing by standing up centrifuge cascades while making hay out of last year's NIE. To date, I've seen no one stand up and try to calculate the likelihood of either scenario beyond mutual appeals to incredulity.

    2. A rogue state filling the vessel with fissile material traceable to its mines, breeders or known centrifuges, handing it to terrorists and sending them to the US to blow it up is definitely suicidal. It's also not the only means at her disposal.



    I'm speaking of the post-war itself, and pointing out that even Bremer characterizes Feith and his clique lost the argument on whether the US should assume the mantle of the occupying authority. It might've been a stupid position for him to take, but it disqualifies him as the father of what followed. This isn't to say that Feith, Policy and OSD don't bear responsibility. No one's out and out said it yet, but the more I read into the bickering and recriminations between ex-OSD and State officials, the more it jives with all the data and reporting on CPA's problems in staffing and budget accountability. Despite having its own line item in the supplementals, historians would do better to start with this question: "was CPA an interagency orphan?"

    I don't know the answer to that question. I'm hoping you might.
    This is more of the same. Hussein "could have" done bad things without any cogent explanation of why he would have. The UK and France could launch a nuclear attack on the United States today, but we're not doing regime change there. Hussein did not use chemical weapons in 1991 because the costs of doing so were clearly communicated to him. The valued his own survival above all.

    On CPA, it worked for OSD. Maybe not for Feith personally, but his attempts to blame State and CIA are pathetic. OSD, with Feith in the fore, lobbied to control the "post conflict" phase and then failed to prepare for it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by SteveMetz View Post
    This is more of the same. Hussein "could have" done bad things without any cogent explanation of why he would have.
    Why he would've is even easier. Because he's an evil bastard who hated America enough to inflict great harm on her: provided he could get away with it. And that's the only question: could he act in such a way that he believed put the US--for whatever reason--in a piss poor position to retaliate. I'm not prepared to argue that Hussein reached that conclusion--not in this thread. I'm just pointing out that the neoconservatives did issue--right or wrong, reasonable or paranoid--a full strategic argument.

    The UK and France could launch a nuclear attack on the United States today, but we're not doing regime change there. Hussein did not use chemical weapons in 1991 because the costs of doing so were clearly communicated to him. The valued his own survival above all.
    If Feith, Kagan, Perle or any of the other usual suspects was terribly worried about Hussein using WMD on the battlefield, they've kept their concerns pretty well hidden. On the other hand, there was a great deal of talk about Hussein arming terrorists. And I don't know a single neocon who's ever been so sophomoric as to argue that capability alone matters; more importantly, I've never even seen a critical coworker of the Vulcans leak a single off-handed comment that even came close to suggesting they might.

    On CPA, it worked for OSD. Maybe not for Feith personally, but his attempts to blame State and CIA are pathetic. OSD, with Feith in the fore, lobbied to control the "post conflict" phase and then failed to prepare for it.
    I'm still having trouble with the company chart here. The White House appoints Bremer as a special envoy to Iraq with authority over all diplomatic and humanitarian operations, then OSD taps Bremer as administrator for reconstruction activities the following week. CPA gets its own line in the supplemental, but I'm guessing those accounts are owned by DoD. And Bremer reports to Secretary Rumsfeld, but can't actually be fired by the guy? All this following the strangling of Rumsfeld and Feith's baby, ORHA, after the looting spectacle.

    And State and CIA had nothing to do with this? That just doesn't add up. For that story to hold any water, Rumsfeld would've either had to have lost confidence in Feith by May 2003--which backs up Feith's story--or Bremer is seriously understating Feith's complicity in a piece aimed at defending himself from Feith's attacks. I'm not saying OSD didn't have anything to do CPA's failures; as you pointed out Bremer did own a hat nominally subordinate to Rumsfeld. On the other hand, it seems a far more likely story is that CPA was an interagency compromise acceding to State and CIA conservatism on political reconstruction. That's why I asked if CPA was an orphan, abandoned by an OSD who didn't want the responsibility of managing an occupation and by a State Department that for any number of reasons couldn't or wouldn't staff it with civil affairs professionals.

    As a matter of fact, who was responsible for CPA hiring?
    Last edited by Presley Cannady; 03-28-2008 at 10:20 PM.
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    Council Member SteveMetz's Avatar
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    OSD staffed ORHA and, to an extent, CPA. The "blame on State" line is pure ideological pap. Most of State's staff was rejected for ORHA. It didn't have the people to staff CPA at the level it needed to be.

    You are right that the org chart was confused. Rumsfeld believed Bremer worked for him while Bremer believed he worked directly for the President. All of his resources, though, were coming through DoD.

    On the argument on Hussein, you have simply asserted that he would do anything in his power to harm the United States. The problem is, there is not one whit of evidence for that. He was prone to miscalculation when American intentions were not clear, but not when they were. There is neither logic nor evidence to support the assertion that he hated the United States so much that he would have undertaken the great risk of providing WMD to terrorists. After all, he had WMD for decades and had NOT done so. So the crux of the administration's argument was that in his 60s, Saddam Hussein was suddenly going to change his behavior and undertake immense risk out of hatred for the United States. Believe what you want, but I find that ridiculous.

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    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default You know,, I know and talk to a fair amount of

    people of all ages and backgrounds and I can count on one hand the number of people who believed this:
    Quote Originally Posted by SteveMetz View Post
    ...
    ...So the crux of the administration's argument was that in his 60s, Saddam Hussein was suddenly going to change his behavior and undertake immense risk out of hatred for the United States. Believe what you want, but I find that ridiculous.
    was then or is now a real issue or had much to do with attacking Iraq...

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    Quote Originally Posted by SteveMetz View Post
    OSD staffed ORHA and, to an extent, CPA. The "blame on State" line is pure ideological pap.
    So where did the pressure to close the curtains on ORHA come from?

    On the argument on Hussein, you have simply asserted that he would do anything in his power to harm the United States. The problem is, there is not one whit of evidence for that. He was prone to miscalculation when American intentions were not clear, but not when they were. There is neither logic nor evidence to support the assertion that he hated the United States so much that he would have undertaken the great risk of providing WMD to terrorists. After all, he had WMD for decades and had NOT done so. So the crux of the administration's argument was that in his 60s, Saddam Hussein was suddenly going to change his behavior and undertake immense risk out of hatred for the United States. Believe what you want, but I find that ridiculous.
    Just to be clear, I'm not arguing that Hussein hated the United States so much that he'd clearly risk his life and regime attacking it. I'm also not arguing that Hussein in the 1980s had any intentions of biting the hand that fed him. I also don't argue that Hussein felt he had the freedom to use what little capability UNSCOM hadn't destroyed to attack the US. On the other hand, is it so ridiculous neocons worried about the yet to be quantified odds that Baathist Iraq, sitting on a post-sanction stockpile of chemical and biological weapons with maybe a few nukes to enhance his sense of self-inevitability, might find away to strike back at the guys who'd checked her ambitions for a decade and change.
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    Council Member SteveMetz's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Presley Cannady View Post
    So where did the pressure to close the curtains on ORHA come from?



    Just to be clear, I'm not arguing that Hussein hated the United States so much that he'd clearly risk his life and regime attacking it. I'm also not arguing that Hussein in the 1980s had any intentions of biting the hand that fed him. I also don't argue that Hussein felt he had the freedom to use what little capability UNSCOM hadn't destroyed to attack the US. On the other hand, is it so ridiculous neocons worried about the yet to be quantified odds that Baathist Iraq, sitting on a post-sanction stockpile of chemical and biological weapons with maybe a few nukes to enhance his sense of self-inevitability, might find away to strike back at the guys who'd checked her ambitions for a decade and change.
    I think I'm not making myself clear. Any action in strategy must weigh expected benefits against expects costs and risks. Everything in Hussein's behavior indicated that the chances of him providing WMD was exceptionally small. It would have entailed immense risk and almost no benefit. Unlike, say, al Qaeda, he's never shown any inclination to undertake high risk/low benefit action. Therefore the chances of him doing it were slim.

    Under the normal logic of strategy, that would have meant that the United States states should only have removed him for that reason IF the expected risks and costs of doing so were low. In other words, the magnitude of the threat should have determined the costs and risks we were willing to bear in order to address the threat.

    The administration simply assumed away the costs and risks. If they ever did any serious, rigorous analysis of them, I haven't seen any indication of it. And they amplified the threat, mostly by the clever psychological ploy of intermingling discussions of 9/11 with discussions of Saddam Hussein. Normally--but not always--they didn't draw a direct connection. But over and over, they would mix the two topics in speeches and statements until, to much of the public, there was a connection.

    In terms of ORHA becoming CPA, I don't know who approved the name change but it seems far fetched that State did given that DoD had been designated as the agency in charge of the process. DoD remained the lead agency until it was shifted to the NSC. State was never the lead agency from February 2003 until July 2005.

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    Quote Originally Posted by SteveMetz View Post
    Any action in strategy must weigh expected benefits against expects costs and risks.
    The two main costs are alienated allies and billions of dollars. It could be argued that the administration placed zero value on allies and believed that "Reagan proved deficits didn't matter."
    Quote Originally Posted by SteveMetz View Post
    Sometimes it takes someone without deep experience to think creatively.

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    Post One would think

    Quote Originally Posted by Rank amateur View Post
    The two main costs are alienated allies and billions of dollars. It could be argued that the administration placed zero value on allies and believed that "Reagan proved deficits didn't matter."
    What Reagan did was bring out the fact that who your allies are is not necessarily as important a consideration as why they are your allies.

    On a Strategic scale intent would sometimes seem to be a more important factor than capability due to the fact that great enough intent historically tends to find some way to fulfill itself.
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    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default What allies? Which allies were and are alienated?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rank amateur View Post
    The two main costs are alienated allies and billions of dollars. It could be argued that the administration placed zero value on allies and believed that "Reagan proved deficits didn't matter."
    The belief that the US has friends and allies is, in quite large measure, a myth of epic proportions. Dumb myth, at that, IMO.

    The billions of dollars are small change -- unfortunately -- to this nation.

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    Steve:

    Ken's a smart guy. It's not an issue of strategy. It's an issue of values. (If everyone had the same values, there would be no war.)
    Quote Originally Posted by SteveMetz View Post
    Sometimes it takes someone without deep experience to think creatively.

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    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default That seems to sort of egregious...

    Quote Originally Posted by Rank amateur View Post
    Steve:

    Ken's a smart guy. It's not an issue of strategy. It's an issue of values. (If everyone had the same values, there would be no war.)
    Wrong again, you're not doing too well tonight on reading my mind.

    It is an issue of strategy and values enter into it -- but the values that do are national values and not anyone's personal values; personal values do not translate into national because personal values are essentially morally based and nation don't have morals.

    This is probably a good thing because some very moral people aren't very bright. Then, too some very dumb people aren't too moral...

    It is highly unlikely everyone will ever approach having the same values, ergo war's going to be around so you need to accept that fact. But then, you knew that...

    Correction: Subject line should read "That seems to be sort of egregious..." or maybe "That seems sort of egregious..." Take your pick, either is appropriate.
    Last edited by Ken White; 03-30-2008 at 12:43 AM. Reason: Correction

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    Quote Originally Posted by SteveMetz View Post
    I think I'm not making myself clear. Any action in strategy must weigh expected benefits against expects costs and risks. Everything in Hussein's behavior indicated that the chances of him providing WMD was exceptionally small. It would have entailed immense risk and almost no benefit. Unlike, say, al Qaeda, he's never shown any inclination to undertake high risk/low benefit action. Therefore the chances of him doing it were slim.
    I'm probably not making myself clear either. I'm not arguing that Hussein accepts high risk for low reward, and I doubt we can name one neoconservative who believes he would have. Neocons have argued that under regulation rules, the risk reward ratio improves as forensic evidence necessarily tying a regime to heinous attack goes down, and that this is the case in a world where the precursors for chemical weapons, cultures for biological weapons, and even fissile fuel and enrichment, materials and equipment for nuclear weapons are increasingly available on the open market.

    "Providing WMD" covers everything from offering training or making available scientists and engineers, supplying precursors, raw materials and equipment to full-fledged weapons; the risk of tracing the end product back to the source runs from a virtual certainty--fingerprinting uranium that could be accounted as missing from al Tuwaitha--to some considerably lower threshold, say standing up a secret shop in Ansar al-Islam's territory and delivering small but operationally useful quantities of binary toxins or even renting the space out to interested private parties.

    Under the normal logic of strategy, that would have meant that the United States states should only have removed him for that reason IF the expected risks and costs of doing so were low. In other words, the magnitude of the threat should have determined the costs and risks we were willing to bear in order to address the threat.
    Once again, who out there is arguing to the contrary?

    The administration simply assumed away the costs and risks. If they ever did any serious, rigorous analysis of them, I haven't seen any indication of it.
    This is a fair enough criticism; I've never seen any such analysis myself. Matter of fact, I've never seen any such analysis by any Administration and even more importantly none in the open literature. Like I said before, I suspect there was (nor presently is) too little intelligence to narrow the variance around the expected risk of a specific threat of this class such that range of expected costs for action and inaction don't prohibitively alias one another. At that point, you have two choices. Bide your time and hope you can make a more informed decision before the crap hits the fan, or act.

    On the other hand, your story might be true as well. Maybe no one in the national security establishment did anything remotely like a cost-benefit analysis before going to war. Or maybe someone did and it never disseminated far enough to do any good. If the former, I have to ask what the hell am I getting for my tax dollars. If the latter, I'm amazed that such a report would be about the only thing damaging to the Administration's reputation that hasn't leaked yet.

    And they amplified the threat, mostly by the clever psychological ploy of intermingling discussions of 9/11 with discussions of Saddam Hussein. Normally--but not always--they didn't draw a direct connection. But over and over, they would mix the two topics in speeches and statements until, to much of the public, there was a connection.
    This reads a bit like recrimination after the fact, especially since the post-war has contributed nothing to the debate over whether Hussein had a working relationship with al Qaeda. Every criticism raised since May 2003 was as logically strong before hand as it is today. So this begs the question, exactly when did the neoconservative argument for presuming guilt become so patently offensive?

    In terms of ORHA becoming CPA, I don't know who approved the name change but it seems far fetched that State did given that DoD had been designated as the agency in charge of the process. DoD remained the lead agency until it was shifted to the NSC. State was never the lead agency from February 2003 until July 2005.
    When did CPA shift to NSC, and who were the key DC principals tasked with overseeing her operations?
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    Default Around 2002...

    ...my daughter used to comment on almost every unlikely occurrence with a standard two-word response:"its possible."

    "Well, your bed isn't going to make itself."
    "Its possible!"

    "You won't do well on your test if you don't study."
    "Its possible!"

    "We'll never make it on time if we don't leave now."
    "Its possible!"

    "No, I don't think aliens took the last piece of cake."
    "Its possible!"

    I sometimes suspect that she had a job moonlighting in Feith's Office of Special Plans, since those who made the argument for a major and imminent national security posed by Saddam's unlikely connection to al-Qa'ida, his unlikely nuclear programme, and the unlikely use of whatever residual CW stockpiles we thought he might have in a really scary way did much the same. It relied heavily on cherry-picked intelligence, a series of worst case assumptions about unknowns, and improbable assessments of motives, calculations, and intentions. And it was all backed by a crusading zeal about the improbably domino effects of a fantasy democratization that discouraged any rational assessment of costs and benefits.

    In short, I'm entirely with Steve on this one.

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    I also am residing in Dr. Metz's camp on this issue. Pass the bourbon and beans please.
    "Speak English! said the Eaglet. "I don't know the meaning of half those long words, and what's more, I don't believe you do either!"

    The Eaglet from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland

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    Then again, for every child who falls back on the "it's possible" line, there's a "skeptic" convinced special and general relativity must be wrong simply because it is obvious, in his frame of reference, that time is absolute. What makes the crackpot and the kid's claims stand out is there's such an abundance of evidence to the contrary that it's absurd to treat them seriously.

    If that were the case here, you'd expect to see four numbers--at least from one camp--given how passionately both sides claim to be right. Two for the expected risk and variance, and two for the expected cost and variance. We've seen agreement on neither. Ever. From any perspective. In any form. Period.

    If there is another way to determine whether or not a threat warrants an adventure, please share.
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    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default Well, that's what I thought...

    ...What makes the crackpot and the kid's claims stand out is there's such an abundance of evidence to the contrary that it's absurd to treat them seriously.
    but apparently I'm supposed to take the word of various politicians on why something was / is a good idea instead of looking at all the facts I can gather and making an independent judgment.

    If one presumed all the blather about Saddam, threat and WMD was accurate -- and it quite obviously was not at the time to anyone who paid attention -- then some of the arguments here would make sense. If, OTOH, one did not believe that blather (and I didn't know very many who did but obviously I lead a sheltered life or have weird relatives, friends and acquaintances...) then one would do a quite different cost-benefit analysis based on quite different parameters compared to the person who believed a politician or political appointee -- or a pundit...
    We've seen agreement on neither. Ever. From any perspective. In any form. Period.

    If there is another way to determine whether or not a threat warrants an adventure, please share.
    Just so...

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