Category Archives: War Planning

Millions march for peace

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About 100,000 peo­ple — more by some esti­mates — filled the east side of Man­hat­tan on a bit­terly cold Sat­ur­day after­noon to let Bush know that the coun­try is not united behind him in his drive to war. The crowd milled along mostly peace­fully, except for a few scat­tered inci­dents, one involv­ing horses. “Take your horses out of here, you c***suckers!” roared one bearded pro­test­ers after a pha­lanx of mounted police offi­cers crossed 2nd Ave. going east. The mood was upbeat and even play­ful, despite the weather and the grim mis­sion that brought so many out today.
Although the city denied the orga­niz­ers the right to march on the United Nations, the police had closed off all the streets, forc­ing us to walk up Lex­ing­ton, 3rd and 2nd avenues before hit­ting 69th St. and finally turn­ing east where we could walk down 1st Ave. This result­ing in three smaller marches uptown as pro­test­ers mainly ignored police warn­ings to stay on the side­walk and instead spilled out onto the streets. Many grum­bled that the cops were pre­vent­ing peo­ple from get­ting to the rally, hop­ing to dis­rupt it. If that was the case, they failed, as instead of sin­gle long pro­ces­sion and rally on 1st Ave., they got the smaller marches pre­vi­ously men­tioned, tan­gling the entire East Side.
[UPDATE: George over at War​blog​ging​.com has a nice entry on the protest, and he is more effu­sive than I. As I said, I’m not report­ing much on this as I was a par­tic­i­pant rather than act­ing as a jour­nal­ist. He saw a lot more police action than I did…]
I took pic­tures while I was there, but since I was there as a par­tic­i­pant instead of an objec­tive jour­nal­ist, I won’t say much about this protest, instead point­ing you to cov­er­age by the Times and the Wash­ing­ton Post.
After the rally, the ten­sion in the air that I’d been feel­ing — a sense of wait­ing for some­thing to hap­pen — seemed to have eased some­what. The act of march­ing, of gath­er­ing in huge num­bers against the pow­ers in Wash­ing­ton and in other cap­i­tals, was an effec­tive method of beat­ing back the anx­i­ety brought on by Orange Alerts and impend­ing war. And no, the protests prob­a­bly won’t halt the war, but they made us feel like we were doing some­thing. They gave us a feel­ing of fight­ing back — against war, against Bush, against fear. It’s a much bet­ter feel­ing than buy­ing plas­tic sheet­ing and duct tape and wait­ing for the boom.

It’s Saturday, do you know where your military is?

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John Pra­dos over at Tom​Paine​.com makes an inter­est­ing argu­ment that Team Bush will start a war sooner rather than later in order to sim­ply shuck off the diplo­matic restraints the U.N. Secu­rity Coun­cil has begun to draw tighter around the United States. And while Hans Blix’s mixed report to the Secu­rity Coun­cil today ral­lies mar­kets as the threat of war sup­pos­edly recedes, the White House must surely be gnash­ing its col­lec­tive teeth.
Let’s see about con­nect­ing the dots, as they like to say in the White House:

  1. Spe­cial forces are already oper­at­ing in Iraq and have been for some time.

  2. With the esca­la­tion of Threat­Con to “orange,” the pub­lic is “ready” for a retal­ia­tory attacks from ter­ror groups.
  3. With that in mind, it’s a long week­end, and many peo­ple have left cities for vaca­tion. (I know sev­eral of my friends have done so.) It’s also a slow news cycle on Sat­ur­day, so the White House might be able to get some trac­tion before CNN et al. get their game on.
  4. The Hajj, the Mus­lim pil­grim­age ended yesterday.
  5. Gen. Tommy Franks, the the­ater com­man­der, is en route to Qatar.

Do these add up to war?
I’m inclined to say no. While there are a lot of forces in the region, they are not yet at full strength, despite the full deploy­ment the 3rd Infantry Divi­sion. The 101st is not yet there, with heli­copters and gun­ships still being loaded in Jack­sonville, Fla. (Granted, the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion pre-positioned a lot of equip­ment in the region through­out the 1990s to avoid a Desert Shield-style buildup, but there still remains a lot of heavy-lifting to do. An irony of this war is that for all the scorn heaped upon the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion by the Bushies, they will fight this war and win it with Clinton’s mil­i­tary, the one that was appar­ently neglected for 8 years.)
Also, the U.N. is still talk­ing. While Bush said he would not be bound by “unpro­duc­tive debate” (“The United States has agreed to dis­cuss any mate­r­ial breach with the Secu­rity Coun­cil, but with­out jeop­ar­diz­ing our free­dom of action to defend our coun­try,” Bush said in his Rose Gar­den com­ments on Nov. 8, 2002), I’m bet­ting this was more blus­ter than pol­icy. The United States, through its ham-fisted han­dling of the Secu­rity Coun­cil and NATO, has iso­lated itself in the world, with the excep­tion of Britain and the new NATO coun­tries. Per­haps my naïvité is show­ing, but I don’t think even the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz Axis of Incom­pe­tence is so mad as to launch a war while the Secu­rity Coun­cil hasn’t even begun debate on Blix’s report yet.
Will they?

Iraqi opposition goes for the heart

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Suleimaniya city cen­ter(® 2002 Christo­pher Allbritton)

Three mem­bers of the Iraqi oppo­si­tion move­ment showed up at Colum­bia University’s Polit­i­cal Union to make the case for war. They appealed to the hearts of the audi­ence — a mainly sym­pa­thetic one — but unfor­tu­nately not the minds.
The speak­ers were:

  • Dr. Ala Fa’ik, vice pres­i­dent for the Iraqi Forum for Democ­racy, for­merly of Bagh­dad and a mem­ber of the steer­ing com­mit­tee of the Inter­faith Coun­cil for Peace & Justice,
  • Qubad Tal­a­bany, the deputy U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the Patri­otic Union of Kur­dis­tan, who works closely as a liai­son with both the White House and Con­gress, and
  • Feisal al-Istrabadi, esq., a found­ing mem­ber of the Iraqi Forum for Democ­racy, who is an activist on var­i­ous human­i­tar­ian issues relat­ing to Iraq. Istra­badi is also a mem­ber of the plan­ning com­mit­tee for the State Department’s Future of Iraq Project, serv­ing on its Tran­si­tional Jus­tice and Demo­c­ra­tic Prin­ci­ples work­ing groups.

All three men told us that Sad­dam was wicked. All three gave a litany of evils that Sad­dam had inflicted on the peo­ple of Iraq. And all three made the case that Sad­dam should be removed because he’s a bad man. Jef­frey A. Klein, who writes for Kur​dish​Me​dia​.net, summed it up best: “Sad­dam Hus­sein is one of the great crim­i­nals of our era. He has taken Mesopotamia, the cra­dle of civ­i­liza­tion, and turned it into a giant con­cen­tra­tion camp.“
There is no doubt about that, but are the “human­i­tar­ian issues,” as Istra­badi claimed, the best rea­son for going into Iraq? “The human­i­tar­ian rea­sons are stronger than the rea­sons for going into Kosovo,” Istra­badi told one ques­tioner. “The United States missed an oppor­tu­nity by focus­ing on the weapons of mass destruc­tion instead.“
Tal­a­bany agreed: “Weapons of mass destruc­tion and the ter­ror ties are excel­lent rea­sons for oth­erthrow­ing the Sad­dam regime,” he said, “But there are other rea­sons. Most impor­tant is the desire of my peo­ple to sow the seeds of democ­racy in the soil of the tyrant. The time has come to bring peace to Iraq. The time has come to lib­er­ate Iraq.“
As to argu­ments from anti-war activists that the loom­ing Iraq war is “all about oil,” he said: “I do not believe the US and the coali­tion of the will­ing will go to war for oil. I do believe there are eas­ier ways for these gov­ern­ments to get oil than to go to war. But Iraqis in Basra, Bagh­dad and Suleimanya don’t care why the U.S. wants to lib­er­ate them. If it’s oil, then so be it.“
Fa’ik, as a peace activist, called for a restora­tion of the “one­ness” of Iraq, and claimed that through­out all its his­tory, Iraq had been an open, tol­er­ant soci­ety. “I stud­ied my his­tory very well,” he said. “You walk into the museum and go into the Mesopotamian exhibit and you will see my face there. I am Sumer­ian, I am Chaldean, I am Assyr­ian, I am Arab, I am Mus­lim. Iraq is an open soci­ety.
“We have to bring back that one­ness of Iraq. We have to bring back what’s been bro­ken by that regime.“
Of the three speak­ers, Fa’ik was the least cred­i­ble, if only because of his rosy-eyed view of the his­tory of Iraq. Iraq was ruled for cen­turies by the Ottomans, with tribal dif­fer­ences held in place by a com­bi­na­tion of enlight­ened provin­cial rule and Turk­ish scim­i­tars. After the British con­quered it in 1915, it was a colo­nial state until 1958 when a coup brought Col. Qasim to power. Fa’ik’s vision of a peace­ful, open Iraq is dis­cred­ited even as recently as 1995 when the Kurds in the north fought a vicious civil war.
In essence, the speak­ers were beg­ging the United States for lib­er­a­tion. The mood among the speak­ers and the audi­ence, which was heavy with Arab and Iraqi stu­dents, was dark when the sub­ject of France and Ger­many arose. The speak­ers also sought to reas­sure the audi­ence that Amer­i­can troops would be wel­comed.
“Rest assured that Iraqis will wel­come an Amer­i­can mil­i­tary pres­ence because they will be seen as lib­er­a­tors, not as occu­piers,” said Tal­a­bany. “If there is any anti-American sen­ti­ment it will be because we felt you let us down in 1991.“
The occu­pa­tion, he said, will be more like Italy after World War II rather than Ger­many or Japan — pre­sum­ably, short and sweet. Now we know who the White House has been lis­ten­ing to as it makes its occu­pa­tion plans.
“Overnight, Iraq will not trans­form into a func­tional democ­racy,” said Tal­a­bany. “But we have shown in the north that will proper resources you can give power to the peo­ple. And a free Iraq will be a major player in the Mid­dle East and a reli­able Amer­i­can ally. We will work to have an Iraq that will not be anti-Israel. We hope to have an Iraq that can play a con­struc­tive role in the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity. Upon lib­er­a­tion there will be an end to the war that the Ba’ath party has been wag­ing on the peo­ple of Iraq.“
Istra­badi was per­haps the most dog­matic of the speak­ers. Lay­ing out his points in his lawyerly way, he opened his part of the pro­gram with this:

  1. “There will be mil­i­tary action soon, by which I think by the first of March. With­out it, there is no point in talk­ing about democracy.”

  2. “If this regime sur­vives, then the Kurds will not accept rein­te­gra­tion and they should not. If you believe in the ter­ri­to­r­ial integrity of Iraq, you should act now.“
  3. “This war will tar­get ter­ror infra­struc­ture of the regime, not the civil­ian one as in 1991.”

He then attempted to dis­pel the ideas that Iraq is the “Arab Yugoslavia,” liable to fall apart into war­ring tribes the moment Sad­dam is removed, an idea pro­moted by Peter W. Gal­braith which he called “non­sense.“
“You have had too fre­quently in Iraq geno­cide and eth­nic cleans­ing,” Istra­badi said. “But with one excep­tion, there is not an exam­ple in the mod­ern his­tory of Iraq in which the Kurds rose to mas­sacre the Arabs of a vil­lage or vice versa.“
What geno­cide had gone on had been com­mit­ted by the cen­tral gov­ern­ment against eth­nic groups it believed were in revolt, he said. “This says Iraqis have a high sense of cohe­sive­ness. Left to their own, they will be able to rebuild their coun­try.“
His fur­ther made his case to act now and not wait for a coup or a change of Saddam’s heart by rip­ping apart Fa’ik’s vision of Iraq as one big happy fam­ily. “One of the rea­sons I feel it is nec­es­sary for the United States to inter­vene, is if there is a coup, blood will run in the streets of Bagh­dad as peo­ple take vengeance,” he said. “There is much vengeance to be had in Iraq after 35 years.“
Only the United States mil­i­tary can pre­vent that, he said. (On this he’s prob­a­bly right.)
He went on to detail his vision of a tran­si­tional gov­ern­ment. It would last two to three years at most, must pro­vide imme­di­ate ben­e­fits to the peo­ple of Iraq, would hold munic­i­pal elec­tions within six months and regional elec­tions within another six months after that and begin imme­di­ate crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions. The other duties must be to ful­fill oblig­a­tions to the U.N. regard­ing weapons of mass destruc­tion, he said, and human rights agree­ments must be adhered to. “It’s crit­i­cal to me that the tran­si­tional period not be seen as a final sta­tus,” he said. “I don’t think the tran­si­tional gov­ern­ment should be the gov­ern­ment that signs a peace treaty with Israel. That should be the per­ma­nent gov­ern­ment.“
And most impor­tant, he said, the United Nations should not lift the sanc­tions. Instead they should be sus­pended so that the tran­si­tional gov­ern­ment doesn’t gain con­trol of the country’s trea­sury and the per­ma­nent lift­ing of sanc­tions is an incen­tive to democ­ra­tize.
“If you want to ensure the tran­si­tional fig­ures do not become tran­si­tional in the Iraqi sense of the word — by that I mean last­ing 40 years — you can­not hand over the purse strings of Iraq,” he said. “Sad­dam did not imme­di­ately rule by fear. He co-opted the elite dur­ing the 1960s and ‘70s by drown­ing them in cash.“
The gen­eral con­sen­sus was that if pro­test­ers are anti-war, they are pro-Saddam, even if the pro­test­ers do not con­sider them­selves so. One Saudi woman asked if the United States shouldn’t take the Arab street into account, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing that inno­cent Iraqis will die. Istra­badi said, as an Iraqi, he didn’t care what “some guy in Cairo” thought. Tal­a­bany said that peo­ple danced in the streets in Afghanistan when the Amer­i­cans came. Fa’ik fully admit­ted to hav­ing a nar­row view on the sub­ject and only cared about Iraq.
Istra­badi deplored “col­lat­eral dam­age,” as he put it, but said it was a weak argu­ment to say, “Inno­cent peo­ple will be die because of Amer­i­can bombs, so it is immoral to bomb.“
“Peo­ple are dying now!” he replied.
Istra­badi and the oth­ers missed a key point, how­ever. Through­out this evening, I heard them say sev­eral times, “The Iraqi peo­ple are all that mat­ter.” Well, actu­ally, the Amer­i­can peo­ple mat­ter, too, since the Iraqi oppo­si­tion is ask­ing our sol­diers — and pos­si­bly our civil­ians — to die for them. It mat­ters very much what “some guy in Cairo” thinks because if he teaches his sons that the infi­dels came into Iraq and con­quered it — and there will be peo­ple who think that regard­less of how well it goes — those sons could come to New York and kill peo­ple here. Maybe with a sub­way bomb. Maybe with some­thing worse. The “col­lat­eral dam­age” might not be lim­ited to Bagh­dad, and blood will flow in the streets of New York, Wash­ing­ton, Chicago…
There are only two really valid rea­sons for Amer­ica to take mil­i­tary action against another coun­try and that is to pro­tect the national inter­ests of the United States and to pro­tect the lives of Amer­i­can cit­i­zens. One can argue that invad­ing Iraq will do both. One can also argue it will do nei­ther. I fall into the lat­ter camp and believe Fa’ik, Tal­a­bany and Istra­badi, as well-meaning as they are, as ask­ing the United States to place its own cit­i­zens in dan­ger from ret­ribu­tive ter­ror attacks so that they can free them­selves from Sad­dam. Lib­erty and democ­racy are wor­thy goals, and the United States should pro­mote them, but at the expense of lives here at home? I’m not sure if I could sup­port that.
But per­haps I could. As I wrote once before,

This cuts to the heart of my own ambiva­lence on the mat­ter of Iraq. I don’t trust the Bush admin­is­tra­tion to act in any but the most venal, self-serving man­ner. I don’t believe in going to war and killing inno­cent peo­ple if there’s no greater goal than access to oil and some slip­pery geopo­lit­i­cal goal of “benign” hege­mony that no one will admit to on the record. But if there were a real com­mit­ment to democ­racy and a free Iraq that was truly lib­er­ated not just from Saddam’s thug­gery but from the United States’ ambi­tions as well, then I might just con­sider that some­thing worth fight­ing for.

I have a great affec­tion for the Kurds. I hope they find their inde­pen­dence and free­dom. I really do. But like large swaths of the Amer­i­can pub­lic, I’m not con­vinced that the Bush White House is com­mit­ted to a demo­c­ra­tic Iraq. It is sell­ing out the Kurds, has shut down pro-democracy radio sta­tions and told Kuwaitis not to worry about a Shi’ite state.
Moti­va­tions mat­ter when a coun­try goes to war. Moti­va­tions — whether lib­er­a­tion or plun­der — deter­mine how the day after the war goes. What hap­pens if Iraqis, hun­gry for lib­er­a­tion, find them­selves under a petit-Saddam or a new Hashemite king backed up by Amer­i­cans troops based in their coun­try for decades?
Are we pre­pared to find out?

Split in NATO, U.S. anger and Franco-German proposals

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The United Nations Secu­rity Coun­cil faces some tough choices

Ger­many has con­firmed it would work with France to intro­duce a new Secu­rity Coun­cil res­o­lu­tion aimed at dis­arm­ing Iraq with­out war by strength­en­ing the inspec­tions regime and back­ing it up with United Nations peace­keep­ers. While Rus­sia expressed cau­tious sup­port for the Franco-German ini­tia­tive, the United States, pre­dictably, threw a hissy fit. Mean­while, Bel­gium and pos­si­bly France will block the United States’ request to NATO to shore up Turkey’s defenses when war breaks out with Iraq.
“Damn those Eurow­imps!” Rums­feld was heard to exclaim when Ger­many admit­ted to work­ing on the res­o­lu­tion. (Ok, he didn’t really say that.) The plan calls for France and Ger­many to put its euro where its mouth is by tripling the num­ber of inspec­tors, declar­ing all of Iraq a no-fly zone and back­ing it all up with thou­sands of U.N. peace­keep­ers. Ger­man Defense Min­is­ter Peter Struck said Ger­man “could well take part” in the peace­keep­ing force if the pro­posal is adopted.
But let’s be hon­est. The United States, which reacted angrily to France and Ger­many act­ing like sov­er­eign nations with national inter­ests of their own, will veto any such res­o­lu­tion. Which brings us to an inter­est­ing game of chicken on the Secu­rity Coun­cil. Britain is set to intro­duce a res­o­lu­tion autho­riz­ing force against Iraq in the next week or so. Ger­many is set to intro­duce the peace­keep­ing ini­tia­tive Feb. 14, the day of U.N. weapons inspec­tor Hans Blix’s likely final report. France and Rus­sia could veto the British res­o­lu­tion while the United States could veto the Franco-German one. What’s a super­power to do?
The snit is get­ting increas­ingly per­sonal, too, with the French and Ger­man offi­cials clash­ing with their Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts. As the Guardian reported:

Mr. Rums­feld, a lead­ing US hawk, said it was not sur­pris­ing if pub­lic opin­ion in Ger­many and France was opposed to war in Iraq if their gov­ern­ments were.
[Ger­man Defense Min­is­ter Joschka] Fis­cher lashed back: “You have to make the case in a democ­racy. Excuse me, I’m not convinced.”

The United States will be under enor­mous pres­sure to go along with the strength­ened inspec­tions, since world opin­ion is firmly on the side of giv­ing inspec­tors more time. (Plus, it allows the lil­liputians of the world to throw at least a few sym­bolic ties around the Amer­i­can Gul­liver.) This lat­est pro­posal by the French and Ger­mans is a gam­ble, a gaunt­let tossed at the feet of the United States by mul­ti­lat­er­al­ists who say, “If you walk out that door alone, don’t expect to come back.” If the United States per­sists in warn­ing the United Nations that it is threat­ened with irrel­e­vancy if it doesn’t enforce its res­o­lu­tions, then France and Ger­many are chal­leng­ing Amer­ica to walk out on the U.N., as it did the League of Nations, bet­ting, of course, the Bush White House is unwill­ing to take that dras­tic a step to get its way on Iraq.
(By the way, Kos has a lively debate on this in the com­ments sec­tion of his site, Daily Kos.)
At the same time, Bel­gium is plan­ning to block a U.S. request for war materiel for Turkey to defend itself for when the war breaks out in early March. Turkey responded by say­ing it was “strongly likely” to invoke Arti­cle 4 of the NATO treaty for the first time in his­tory. The arti­cle, which says, “The Par­ties will con­sult together when­ever, in the opin­ion of any of them, the ter­ri­to­r­ial integrity, polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence or secu­rity of any of the Par­ties is threat­ened,” allows a mem­ber coun­try to claim the alliance’s atten­tion if it is threat­ened. Belgium’s for­eign min­is­ter, Louis Michel, said deploy­ment under a NATO umbrella would be tan­ta­mount to endors­ing a war with Iraq. (How­ever, Ger­many and the Nether­lands have gone ahead and dis­patched Patriot mis­sile sys­tems to Turkey by the end of next week, with or with­out NATO’s help. Strat­for muses that the bold­ness of the Dutch was a sig­nal that it stands with the United States, after declin­ing to sign on that open let­ter cir­cu­lated last week, itself a fur­ther sign of the deep divi­sions within Europe.)
In my opin­ion, Bel­gium has stepped over the line on this one. Regard­less of why Turkey is threat­ened, NATO mem­bers have a treaty oblig­a­tion and should step up to the plate. Lend­ing aid in defense of a ally is not the same as pro­vid­ing assis­tance in an aggres­sive war. What prin­ci­ple is served if an Iraqi gas attack kills thou­sands of inno­cent Turk­ish civil­ians and the Turks were unable to defend against it because they didn’t have the proper equip­ment? Michel and oth­ers may argue that such attacks won’t hap­pen if Amer­ica would quiet its war drums, but the fact of the mat­ter is those peo­ple will still be dead — and they likely would have been opposed to the war, if Turk­ish opin­ion polls are to be believed.
All of this points to the shape of the world after war with Iraq. The Atlantic Alliance could be shat­tered, the Mid­dle East trans­formed in ways unforseen, the Euro­pean Union revealed as a deeply fis­sured beast and a reor­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can mil­i­tary power in Europe. Sure seems like a lot of change to dis­arm Iraq, no? Espe­cially when you con­sider that Libya and Iran — the lat­ter admit­ted today to hav­ing ura­nium — both have sim­i­lar weapons of mass destruc­tion pro­grams and a longer and more vio­lent his­tory of ter­ror­ism and sup­port of trans-national ter­ror groups. But, as I’ve stated before, WMD are only the pub­lic rea­son the Bush White House is call­ing for Saddam’s head. The real rea­sons, which I’ll detail later Mon­day, are based in hard-nosed geostrate­gic inia­tives that are breath­tak­ing in scope.

Regional diplomats pulled from Gulf; Blix continues to talk

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While chief United Nations arms inspec­tors Hans Blix and Mohammed El Baradei jour­neyed to Bagh­dad to for “very sub­stan­tial” talks, the United states pulled out all but its most senior diplo­mats from the Per­sian Gulf region . At the same time, U.S. Sec­re­tary of Defense Don­ald Rums­feld said Sat­ur­day that France and Germany’s attempts to give inspec­tors more time were actu­ally increas­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of war rather than avert­ing it.
“There are those who coun­sel that we should delay prepa­ra­tions” for war against Iraq. “Iron­i­cally, that approach could well make war more likely, not less, because delay­ing prepa­ra­tions sends a sig­nal of uncer­tainty,” Rums­feld said in the open­ing address at an inter­na­tional con­fer­ence on secu­rity pol­icy.
We live in a topsy-turvy world. As Iraq makes con­ces­sion after con­ces­sion — Blix has man­aged to wring more doc­u­ments, pri­vate inter­views with sci­en­tists and pos­si­bly U-2 spy plane flights — Lon­don and Wash­ing­ton keep say­ing that Iraq is miss­ing its chance to com­ply. With the 101st and a fifth car­rier group dis­patched to the region, and the removal of diplo­mats, it seems that war is, indeed, inevitable and Iraq has no rea­son to com­ply as Pres­i­dent Bush has said, “The United States, along with a grow­ing coali­tion of nations, will take what­ever action is nec­es­sary to defend our­selves and dis­arm the Iraqi regime.“
By the way, this part of Bush’s radio address — “We also know that Iraq is har­bor­ing a ter­ror­ist net­work headed by a senior al Qaeda ter­ror­ist plan­ner. This net­work runs a poi­son and explo­sive train­ing camp in north­east Iraq, and many of its lead­ers are known to be in Baghdad” — is mostly a lie. As I’ve pointed out sev­eral times, Iraq is not har­bor­ing Ansar al-Islam; that group has taken refuge in the Kur­dish area on the Iran­ian bor­der that’s under the pro­tec­tion of the RAF and the Amer­i­can Air Force. And if it runs a poi­son and explo­sive train­ing camp, why doesn’t the United States bomb it as the PUK has requested on numer­ous occa­sions?
I real­ize I’ve become a bro­ken record on this sub­ject, but so has the White House. It has never strayed from its deter­mi­na­tion to invade and con­quer Iraq since 1999 when then-Gov. Bush signed on to the idea. What have changed are the ever-shifting rea­sons for invad­ing Iraq that Bush has trot­ted out. But as Thomas Fried­man pointed out his col­umn (reg­is­tra­tion required) not a sin­gle audi­ence of Amer­i­cans he talked to are ready to fight this war. “I under­stand what the Afghan war was about and would have vol­un­teered with a pitch­fork,” he quotes an every­man as say­ing. “But I just don’t get this war.“
Just wait a few weeks, Every­man. You’ll get this war — whether you want it or not.