Goldberg Uncertainty Principle
Jeff Taylor | October 17, 2003, 10:11am
The Beltway's current parlor game is to try and find an instance in which George W. Bush said Iraq posed an "imminent" threat to the United States. The game works best in green rooms or yakking with on-air talent with half their critical faculties taken up with ear-pieces, but the home version is mildly amusing too.
Jonah Goldberg claims that it is "revisionist spin" to say that the Bush administration made Iraq out to be an imminent threat. Let's take a whack at the Pop-O-Matic and see what we get.
As Operation Iraqi Freedom got underway, the White House sent the following letter to Congress:
March 18, 2003
Dear Mr. Speaker:
Consistent with section 3(b) of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243), and based on information available to me, including that in the enclosed document, I determine that:
(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone will neither (A) adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq nor (B) likely lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and
(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.
It is tedious, but evidently necessary, to note that the national security threat posed by Iraq is described as not just imminent, but ongoing. Iraq will not just threaten us tomorrow it does so today; that is what "continuing" means. Now -- and in the future. Also note the 9/11 language thrown in to provide a powerful closer.
So it is that no serious person can deny that in word and in deed the Bush administration advanced the position that Iraq had to be invaded to forestall imminent attacks on the U.S., attacks as severe as, or worse than, 9/11.
But Goldberg is correct to note that it is leap to charge Bush with intentionally lying about Iraq. Bush may have believed what he seems to have said. Hence the principle, we may know either the meaning or the veracity of Bush's statements but never both.
JDM | October 17, 2003, 1:01am | #
"He may have pointed to Iraq and rattled off the dictionary definition of "imminent threat," but if he didn't actually utter the magic word, then you're a filthy liar!"
You're off your nut. There is no game here. Many of us were around at the time, paying attention and *never* honestly thought that Bush was saying that Iraq was going to invade us tomorrow, or saying that the threat was imminent, with or without using the actual word. Since we are not now burdened with your opposition to the war, we do not project our desire to get Bush back onto what we were thinking at the time. As I remember, everyone conceded that the threat was not imminent. That's why there was lot's of debate about "Why not wait?"
Surely some of you anti-war Reasonoids can provide links to the refutations of Bush's claims that the threat was imminent which you were making before the war. He was making such a big deal about the imminence of the threat that you must have debunked the myth somewhere, right? I'm not saying you can't, but I don't remember the immediacy of the threat being contended very much.
I can certainly provide some links where Bush and others in the administration concede that the threat is not imminent. And where writer's for and against the war simply concede its non-imminence.
Here's a one where the author simply concedes the non-imminence of the threat:
http://reason.com/cy/cy022603.shtml
Here's a debate where both sides simply assume the non-imminence:
http://reason.com/0301/fe.jm.should.shtml
The writers on the site those links are from tend to get a little flaky, so maybe it's not representative of the facts at the time, but at least it's something.
david f | October 17, 2003, 5:20am | #
all this is fine and good. those who don't believe the president won't, all that do, will. this is like the clinton matter. fine. it's probably as annoying listening to the people who said the "militia movement" wasn't a threat, was a threat, etc...
we ARE in iraq. the situation is difficult. what are courses of action, both for those who were for this war since feb 1998 (the date of the famous "neocon letter"), whether you're a post 9/11 bandwagoneer, or whether you're a dove type (either as an anti bushie, or just a dove), WHAT IS THE WAY TO ENSURE A US VICTORY THERE NOW?
given what the situation is, what are ways of getting the most favorable outcomes?
the clinton admin provided the bush admin. a great deal of the "intelligence" and "data" that was used. february 1998 was almost the day the shoe dropped. does anybody think that would have changed 9/11?
the cato institute published articles about the "threat" of WMD in iraq. there is plenty of blame to go around if you're on the dove side, there is plenty of materials from the previous administration to justify action, if you're a hawk.
i am still unconvinced about the action. okay, i think "ulterior motives" when i listen to supporters. however, we are there, and we still need to figure out how to win this thing. we need to solve this so the equation world will actually show w/o SH > world w/ SH. we're not there yet. (think: iran and shah, for example)
in hopes of victory,
drf
John Hood | October 17, 2003, 11:18am | #
Clever turn of phrase on the Uncertainty Principle, JAT, but I can't go along with the analysis you offer. What seems to be missing here, and in much of the discussion about the so-called "imminent threat," is what the threat is or was. The "continuing threat" alluded to in Bush's letter could properly be understood as the threat that Saddam Hussein
could and was get his hands on truly dangerous weapons, biochem or nuclear, and then proliferate them or use them for blackmail purposes.
That threat was, indeed, a continuing one. The David Kay interim report corroborates it to the reasonable person's satisfaction. What it does not corroborate is that there was an
imminent threat of attack by Iraq or an
imminent risk of proliferation by Iraq, since Hussein has not yet revealed to have possessed or at least controlled an inventory of actual biochem weapons.
Perhaps the investigation will eventually reveal that this potentially imminent threat did not exist, or perhaps it will reveal that it did exist (there's still a big weapons stockpile to sort through).
It could well be that the intelligence regarding the stockpiles of VX, anthrax, nerve gas, etc. was faulty. That is, the intelligence suggested that there was no evidence these previously admitted Iraqi stockpiles had been disposed of. Perhaps that assessment was in error, or the result of a bluff by Saddam (an idiotic one, as it turned out). War proponents should be prepared to admit this possibility, and everyone should be prepared to offer a useful and constructive policy response if this turns out to be true (just about every intelligence service in the world had pegged things differently, not just ours).
But the continuing threat referred to was, in fact, a continuing threat based on Hussein's intentions and what Kay's team has already discovered. Where we disagree, really, is how serious the threat of his weapons acquisition should have been taken by the U.S. and others. Did Hussein really have any intention of proliferating? What was the extent of his regime's involvement with or well-wishing of the al Qaeda thugs? Was such a marriage of convenience possible or likely? Was the precedent set in 1993, in the first WTC attack, where some analysts have implicated the Iraqis as at least accessories after the fact?
That's the point. It's always been the point.
Rick Barton | October 18, 2003, 1:12am | #
"I would change my mind if 1) it turns out that the Bush administration did mislead the nation about Saddam Hussein's intentions and/or links to terrorists"
Time for a change of mind John:
A 90-page, top-secret report,that was drafted by the National Intelligence Council at Langley, included an executive summary for President Bush known as the "key judgments." It summed up the findings of the U.S. intelligence community regarding the threat posed by Iraq, findings the president says formed the foundation for his decision to preemptively invade Iraq without provocation. The report "was good, sound intelligence," Bush has remarked.
Most of it deals with alleged weapons of mass destruction.
But page 4 of the report, called the National Intelligence Estimate, deals with terrorism, and draws conclusions that would come as a shock to most Americans, judging from recent polls on Iraq. The CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and the other U.S. spy agencies unanimously agreed that Baghdad:
had not sponsored past terrorist attacks against America,
was not operating in concert with al-Qaida,
and was not a terrorist threat to America.
"We have no specific intelligence information that Saddam's regime has directed attacks against U.S. territory," the report stated.
However, it added, "Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as al-Qaida could perpetrate the type of terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct."
Sufficiently desperate? If he "feared an attack that threatened the survival of the regime," the report explained.
In other words, only if Saddam were provoked by U.S. attack would he even consider taking the "extreme step" of reaching out to al-Qaida, an organization with which he had no natural or preexisting relationship. He wasn't about to strike the U.S. or share his alleged weapons with al-Qaida – unless the U.S. struck him first and threatened the collapse of his regime.
Now turn to the next page of the same NIE report, which is considered the gold standard of intelligence reports. Page 5 ranks the key judgments by confidence level – high, moderate or low.
According to the consensus of Bush's intelligence services, there was "low confidence" before the war in the views that "Saddam would engage in clandestine attacks against the U.S. Homeland" or "share chemical or biological weapons with al-Qaida."
Their message to the president was clear: Saddam wouldn't help al-Qaida unless we put his back against the wall, and even then it was a big maybe. If anything, the report was a flashing yellow light against attacking Iraq.
Bush saw the warning, yet completely ignored it and barreled ahead with the war plans he'd approved a month earlier (Aug. 29), telling a completely different version of the intelligence consensus to the American people. Less than a week after the NIE was published, he warned that "on any given day" – provoked by attack or not, sufficiently desperate or not – Saddam could team up with Osama and conduct a joint terrorist operation against America using weapons of mass destruction.
"Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists," Bush said Oct. 7 in his nationally televised Cincinnati speech. "Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving fingerprints." The terrorists he was referring to were "al-Qaida members."
By telling Americans that Saddam could "on any given day" slip unconventional weapons to al-Qaida if America didn't disarm him, the president misrepresented the conclusions of his own secret intelligence report, which warned that Saddam wouldn't even try to reach out to al-Qaida unless he were attacked and had nothing to lose – and might even find that hard to do since he had no history of conducting joint terrorist operations with al-Qaida, and certainly none against the U.S.
If that's not lying, I don't know what is.
What's worse, the inconvenient conclusions about Iraq and al-Qaida were withheld from the unclassified version of the secret NIE report that Bush authorized for public release the day before his Cincinnati speech, as part of the launch of the White House's campaign to sell the war. The 25-page white paper, posted on the CIA website, focused on alleged weapons of mass destruction, and conveniently left out the entire part about Saddam's reluctance to reach out to al-Qaida. Americans also didn't see the finding that Saddam had no hand in 9-11 or any other al-Qaida attack against American territory. That, too, was sanitized.
Over the following months, in speech after speech, Bush went right on lying with impunity about the Iraq-al-Qaida threat, all the while flouting the judgments of his own intelligence agencies.
Even after the war, Bush continued the lie. "We have removed an ally of al-Qaida," he said May 1 from the deck of the USS Lincoln. "No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime."
Read the whole thing:
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=34930
thoreau | October 18, 2003, 1:16am | #
John-
It's nice to have a discussion about the war where I disagree with somebody's conclusions but more or less agree on principles, and we both understand one another's positions. Our main difference seem to be how seriously we should judge certain threats. My threshold for when a situation becomes a serious threat is simply higher than yours. But it's really just a judgement call based on incomplete information. If we had crystal balls and could clearly see whether a situation would become a threat to the US in the future I don't think there's by any disagreement.
You make a good point about humanitarian objectives being desirable but insufficient. If we're going to invade a country to protect ourselves, we should try to ensure that when we leave the people of that country are living under a more liberal (in the sense of "classical liberal", not leftist) government, and are making strides toward greater prosperity, but that should not be our sole reason for invading.
Right now somebody is probably angry that I'd suggest we should improve a foreign country. The simple fact is that, however justified our invasion might be, when we came in we still destroyed infrastructure and killed people, some of them innocent civilians and others conscripts who weren't thrilled about fighting for their dictator. And we created a power vacuum. However awful a dictator is, most dictators have enemies who are even worse, and when a power vacuum exists there's the very dangerous possibility that an even worse person will take power. We have a moral obligation to make sure that our actions do not lead to worse tyranny.
But there are two very interesting arguments out there for humanitarian intervention:
The first comes from neocons and some other conservatives. By invading a messed-up region and trying to bring liberal values, market economics, and representative government, we are acting in our "enlightened self interest". We are undermining the fanatics and despots that fan the flames of terrorism.
The problem with this argument is that cultural, political, and economic transformations are incredibly difficult. In some sense, these are the oldest and only problems of mankind. There's no easy solution. Progress happens for lots of reasons, including luck. A military invasion by a country with a short attention span in a region with powerful forces adamantly opposed to social, economic, and political liberalization is not a very promising endeavor. To put it another way, LBJ sent armies of social workers into America's inner cities in the goal of fixing everything. Look how well that went. Soldiers are trained to handle security, not act as social workers. I'm not an optimist. (I'm not pessimistic about the average Iraqi citizen, who is no different from the average person elsewhere in the world. I'm pessimistic about the tools we're using to counteract the forces that have made life miserable for people like him for decades, even before Saddam.)
The other case, which comes from the left, is actually more skeptical of self-interested invasions than selfless humanitarian invasions. Now, the Ann Coulters of the world interpret this as treason and some philosophical libertarians probably see it as communist, but the case is a little more subtle than that. Those who want to dismiss it need not read further, but please note that I disagree with the idea I'm about to present.
The argument is that many US foreign policies spur resentment abroad because self-interest has made us cozy with lots of unsavory people over time (the Shah of Iran, Pinochet, the House of Saud, Saddam Hussein at one point, etc. etc.). This resentment leads to terrorism (although the liberals making this case would agree that terrorism is immoral and unjustified, since murder is no better than tyranny). It is in our enlightened self-interest to debunk the perception of America as indifferent to tyranny by intervening in Haiti, Liberia, the Balkans (OK, some would say there's a strategic interest in the Balkans, but most people do not think so, rightly or wrongly), etc.
The problem is that if terrorism is indeed the direct result of anger by people suffering under one of the despots we've been cozy with (a claim not fully supported by evidence, but let's accept it for the sake of argument), undermining a despot elsewhere in the world won't help. No Al Qaeda recruit will say "Yeah, the House of Saud is a corrupt crony of the western devils, but the US just liberated Haiti, so maybe I'll drop out of my terrorism 101 class and immigrate to the US to join the military and defend democracy." The only thing that might change their minds is a humane intervention in the situations that we previously bungled, but our track record of competence in such matters suggests that we should listen to Hippocrates: "First, do no harm."
John Hood | October 18, 2003, 8:19am | #
Thoreau:
To clarify my point (1) a little bit more, I think that it would set the threshold too high to require that Hussein directly financed the al Qaeda leadership or actively participated in planning al Qaeda operations. I don't think this is necessary for America's security to be threatened by Hussein playing footsie with the terror thugs. Instead, I think it would be enough to establish that Iraq had been a source of expertise, materiel, or intelligence to al Qaeda operatives or affiliates. Another relationship that would be potentially actionable by us would be if Iraq had served as an enabler, a sanctuary, or otherwise an accomplice after the fact of an al Qaeda operation.
By the way, I believe there to be compelling evidence that one or more of these conditions did exist pre-war.
I would argue that the reason these actions, in some cases seeming to be not all that directly dangerous to the U.S., should trigger a legitimate military response is that state sponsorship in some form is probably necessary to a terrorist operation and is also its weakest link. We may not be able to locate terror cells or elusive leaders in Pathan hill country, but we can identify and take out foreign regimes that collaborate, thus deterring other fearful tyrants from offering similar aid in the future.
Your point about a low-level contact between Iraq and al Qaeda possibly blossoming in the future is an interesting one. There's a judgment call to be made here, obviously, involved costs and benefits. My inclination in this case, however, would be to treat almost any kind of relationship along the lines I outlined above, even one with little sign of going beyond an exploratory stage, as worthy of U.S. attention, possibly military in nature. The reason would be the level of danger posed by the terrorists. You have to chop off their means of support, and potential allies of the terrorists need to be very, very wary of getting on the wrong side.
As to your general point about the justification for war, I essentially agree. It is
not enough, as some neocons and Wilsonians suggest, that the Iraqi regime was tyrannical and bloodthirsty. I think that such a regime has yielded its sovereignty, mind you, but I don't believe that America or any other free state therefore has an obligation to intervene or that such an intervention would necessarily be in our interest. I do think that there should be a moral component when we use military force, so Wilsonian objectives can and should coexist with other, more self-interested ones. But Wilsonian justifications by themselves are insufficient, which is why interventions in places like Haiti have been unwise and unproductive.
You know, come to think of it, we can't be the world's policeman.
thoreau | October 18, 2003, 12:27pm | #
John Hood-
Thanks for the answer. You lay out points that we can actually discuss, unlike so much war-related commentary (and I'm not just referring to this forum). I understand your reasons numbered 2 and 3. I think it's pretty obvious that major regional conflicts involving Turkey and/or Iran could be very, very, bad. And I'm not eager to see Iraq turn into France only with lower unemployment.
I'd like clarification on the first one:
if 1) it turns out that the Bush administration did mislead the nation about Saddam Hussein's intentions and/or links to terrorists
It's my understanding that Iraq, like almost every other government in the region, has given assistance to terrorists in Israel. Are these the terrorist ties you're referring to, or are you thinking about terrorist groups that might threaten America?
Also, there are varying degrees of terrorist ties, ranging from outright patronage to benign neglect. Funding Al Qaeda would be a clear cause for war (you'd get no argument from me if that were estabished). A more passive relationship that might blossom in the future is more difficult. It's hard to prove a negative. For all we know, if Hussein ever got a nuke he'd contact some terrorists and give it to them so they could destroy DC. It would be hard to prove that that wasn't the case.
Then again, for all we know, some Taliban sympathizers in Pakistan's intelligence service, people who aren't exactly loyal to Musharraf, are waiting for a moment of Soviet-style record-keeping so they can make a nuclear warhead disappear from the inventory (with nobody the wiser) and then reappear in Chicago. It would be hard to prove otherwise.
So what would your threshold be concerning Hussein's alleged plans and terrorist ties? Would you want to prove a negative, or do you have a lower threshold?
Finally, I'd like to point out to everyone that this in this discussion John and I are both talking about the same principles (war in response to threats against the US), but since we have incomplete information on the actual situation we might reach different conclusions on how to apply those principles. There's no need for any bashing, as so often happens in these discussions.
John Hood | October 19, 2003, 12:54pm | #
Thoreau:
Your Kevin Bacon theory of terror linkage is well founded, if distressingly labeled. Must the ubiquitous Antichrist be allowed to intrude even further into our public discourse?
There does need to be a materiality test here. But the allegations regarding Iraq are not trivial ones. They involve providing funding, training, materiel, and sanctuary to a number of different groups of thugs, including the perpetrators of the first WTC attack and al Qaeda-linked groups. Just yesterday, I read a fascinating piece from the
Christian Science Monitor that helped put the Ansar group in Iraqi Kurdistan into sharper relief. Both Iraq and Iran were sporadically providing weapons and other support -- wait, I thought Sunnis and Shias never cooperated! -- with Gulf shieiks supplying the funds. The relationships were troubled and complex. For example, Iran and Iraq would each play a game where they would offer supplies for a while, then cut them off, and then offer to reinstate them after Ansar/al Qaeda leaders agreed to some condition or another.
A significant element of my case for war was to uproot these Islamofascist scum and disrupt their activities, something that the secularist Hussein would never have done or allowed because they served his interests, at least with regard to the Kurds. This task was essentially accomplished, though the
Monitor piece suggests that the final destination of some of the Ansar/al Qaeda operatives seems unclear. Many of the lower-level folks have been captured either by the Iranians, the Free Iraqis, or the Kurds. Others have left for elsewhere in the Middle East or Europe. Some leaders appear to remain in Iran in some gray area, either with tacit approval to hide out there or undercover.
Keeping them running and off-balance is a reasonable strategy. I also think it is a justifiable strategy for us for the reasons previously alluded to. Would it have justified the Iraqi campaign by itself? No, I don't think so. But combined with the intelligence about Iraqi weapons programs, the ongoing impact of the preexisting blockade of Iraq on their own civilians and our troops and allies, the deterrence value of taking out a regime that enabled or aided the terrorists, and, yes, the prospect of introducing a more sane and liberal regime into the heart of the Middle East, the rationale begins IMHO to be compelling. Each by itself falls short or is at least a questionable causus belli. Together, I think they created a scenario where the potential benefits significantly outweighed the potential costs.
We'll see if this calculation proves to be true.
