The Emerging "Neocon" Alibi on Iraq

[SteveMetz]

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.

[Ken White]

people of all ages and backgrounds and I can count on one hand the number of people who believed this:

...
...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...

[Presley Cannady]

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.

[SteveMetz]

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.

[Rank amateur]

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."

[Ron Humphrey]

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.

[Ken White]

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.

[Rank amateur]

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.)

[Ken White]

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.

[Presley Cannady]

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?

[Rex Brynen]

...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.

[Ski]

I also am residing in Dr. Metz's camp on this issue. Pass the bourbon and beans please.

[Presley Cannady]

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.