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Autor: calimero902@yahoo.de (Calimero) (2003-06-27 11:40:34)
Ein sehr instruktiver Artikel aus "Weekly Standard", der die
Schizophrenie der Bush-Kritiker in den USA, aber letztlich natürlich
auch im Alten Europa mit unnachsichtiger Schärfe offenlegt.
The War Against Bush
From the June 30, 2003 issue: They were split over Saddam, but Dems
are united against the president.
by Stephen F. Hayes
Weekly Standard
06/30/2003, Volume 008, Issue 41
GIVE JOHN KERRY CREDIT. It takes guts to accuse someone of lying when
that someone has said essentially what you have been saying for a
decade. Which is what John Kerry did last week when he told a
gathering of antiwar Democrats in New Hampshire that President George
W. Bush "misled every one of us" in making the case for war in Iraq.
Kerry called for a full investigation--a rather peculiar request from
someone who sounds so certain about its outcome.
Kerry isnt alone. More and more Democrats are going the way of the
French. Or, to put it differently, theyre following in the footsteps
of Rep. Jim McDermott. Visiting Baghdad last fall, the Seattle
Democrat urged the world to "take the Iraqis on their face value" but
gave no such benefit of the doubt to President Bush: "The president of
the United States will lie to the American people in order to get us
into this war." This was extreme at the time. Eight months later, its
virtually the mainstream Democratic view.
Kerry of course supported regime change in Iraq for years, articulated
the seriousness of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein on numerous
occasions, and voted for the resolution on Iraq last fall. He even
sponsored a 1998 resolution authorizing the president to "take all
necessary and appropriate actions to respond to the threat posed by
Iraqs refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." But
that was President Clinton.
Kerrys opportunistic move to the left coincides with a reversal on
the part of the previously hawkish New Republic, which features on the
cover of its current issue an article by Spencer Ackerman and John B.
Judis, "The First Casualty: the Selling of the Iraq War."
"Three months after the invasion," they write,
the United States may yet discover the chemical and biological weapons
that various governments and the United Nations have long believed
Iraq possessed. But it is unlikely to find, as the Bush administration
had repeatedly predicted, a reconstituted nuclear weapons program or
evidence of joint exercises with Al Qaeda--the two most compelling
security arguments for war. Whatever is found, what matters as far as
American democracy is concerned is whether the administration gave
Americans an honest and accurate account of what it knew. The evidence
to date is that it did not, and the cost to U.S. democracy could be
felt for years to come.
Dishonest and inaccurate, they argue, and thats just for starters.
President Bush "has engaged in a pattern of deception concerning the
most fundamental decisions a government must make. The United States
may have been justified in going to war in Iraq--there were, after
all, other rationales for doing so--but it was not justified in doing
so on the national security grounds that President Bush put forth."
Lets take those charges--the "two most compelling security arguments
for war"--one at a time. First, "evidence of joint exercises"
with al
Qaeda--a novel formulation that raises the bar well above the "links"
or evidence of cooperation that top Bush administration officials
usually cited. But that aside, Ackerman and Judis focus their analysis
of the Saddam-al Qaeda relationship on the alleged meeting between
Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in April 2001. They
write: "None of the intelligence agencies could place Atta in Prague
on that date. (Indeed, receipts and other travel documents placed him
in the United States.) An investigation by Czech officials dismissed
the claim, which was based on a single unreliable witness."
But there are times Atta may have been abroad that are not accounted
for in these documents and receipts. And assessments of the
reliability of the witness vary, with some high-ranking Czech
officials insisting to this day that the meeting took place. Its fair
to say the alleged Atta meeting was disputed, but its hardly accurate
to imply that officials were unanimous in their belief that it didnt
happen.
In addition to the Atta story, Ackerman and Judis write, "the CIA was
also receiving other information that rebutted a link between Iraq and
Al Qaeda." The evidence? Captured al Qaeda terrorists told them there
was no connection.
The authors and the administration critics they interviewed are also
troubled by the fact that Vice President Cheney traveled several times
to the CIA to review data himself, and by the establishment of a
Pentagon-based intelligence team to review old intel about Iraq-al
Qaeda connections.
The Cheney trips, according to Ackerman and Judis, "were understood
within the agency as an attempt to pressure the low-level specialists
interpreting the raw intelligence. That would freak people out, says
one former CIA official. It is supposed to be an ivory tower."
Really? Here as elsewhere Ackerman and Judis betray limitless
credulousness in the face of claims by "former CIA officials" who
agree with them on policy. They refuse to entertain the possibility
that the vice president of a country about to embark on war might want
to be as thoroughly briefed as possible. Similarly, why would a
special task force to review al Qaeda-Iraq links be such a bad idea?
Can it really be the position of the administrations critics that the
executive branch is to defer uncritically to CIA analysis?
And thats it. A still-disputed Mohammed Atta meeting, denials from
terrorists, trips to the CIA, and a special intelligence review
team--with that, Ackerman and Judis accuse the Bush administration of
deception, of "constructing castles out of sand." And though George
Tenet, a Clinton administration holdover and veteran Democratic
staffer with the Senate intelligence committee, wrote of "solid
reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going
back a decade," Ackerman and Judis dismiss this as "a sop to the
administration."
THERE IS NO QUESTION that some CIA analysts--perhaps even most CIA
analysts--were skeptical about connections between Saddam Hussein and
al Qaeda. But other intelligence experts disagreed, and events and
findings since the wars end would seem to make those links at least
an open question. But not to the critics--they know better.
There are several interesting reports of Iraq-al Qaeda links that the
critics ignore. Farouk Hijazi, former Iraqi ambassador to Turkey and
Tunisia, long believed to be the liaison between Iraq and al Qaeda,
was captured a month ago. Administration officials told Newsweek that
Hijazi admitted meeting with Osama bin Laden in Sudan in the
mid-1990s, confirming previous intelligence reports. So terrorists who
deny links with Iraq are more believable than Hijazi?
A mid-level associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an al Qaeda leader
specializing in biological and chemical weapons, was captured in
Baghdad shortly after the war. Al-Zarqawi, who also has ties to an al
Qaeda splinter group, Ansar al-Islam, which operated in
Kurdish-controlled Iraq, fled to Baghdad and received medical
treatment after he was wounded fighting in Afghanistan. Colin Powell,
in his presentation to the U.N. Security Council on February 5, 2003,
spoke of al-Zarqawi and intelligence that he was operating a small
cell from Baghdad. U.S. intelligence officials believe he remained in
Baghdad as the war in Iraq began in mid-March, and may have fled to
Iran following the conflict. On June 11, 2003, Knight-Ridder reporters
revealed that U.S. troops in Baghdad captured "several suspected
associates of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi" and "suspected members of Ansar
al-Islam, a Kurdish Islamic extremist group."
Ackerman and Judis also focus on the administrations case on nukes,
which they argue was at least hyped, and perhaps dishonest. The
"misinformation and exaggeration" culminated in a speech President
Bush gave in Cincinnati, Ohio, on October 7. Said Bush: "The evidence
indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program." He
further asserted, "Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength
aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which
are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."
Studies conducted by both the CIA and DIA (Defense Intelligence
Agency) provided the basis for this assertion. Both agencies stand by
that analysis today. But Ackerman and Judis point to studies of the
tubes conducted by teams at the Department of Energy and the State
Departments Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Those studies
concluded that such tubes are not a good fit for gas centrifuges. So
there was not unanimity. Why administration critics who are eager to
defer to the CIAs skepticism about Saddams al Qaeda links would
rather not believe the CIA about the aluminum tubes is not explained.
Whats more, at least one foreign intelligence service has conducted
its own tests on the tubes, and concluded that they are compatible
with use in gas centrifuges.
Ackerman and Judis are also indignant that Bush warned in Cincinnati
that Iraq was developing a fleet of manned and unmanned aerial
vehicles (UAVs) that could disperse chemical or biological weapons,
adding that the administration was "concerned that Iraq is exploring
ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States."
Ackerman and Judis assert: "This claim represented the height of
absurdity. Iraqs UAVs had ranges of, at most, 300 miles. They could
not make the flight from Baghdad to Tel Aviv, let alone to New York."
Of course, Bush nowhere suggested that these UAVs would be launched
from Iraqi soil. In addition, terrorist groups are known to have
investigated the potential of UAVs, which could be moved offshore, or
into the United States, for that matter.
Ackerman and Judis also go after Vice President Cheneys assertion, in
a March 16, 2003, appearance on "Meet the Press," that Saddam Hussein
"has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." Indeed, the New
Republic authors say that Bush administration officials made that
claim "repeatedly." Here, it seems likely that Cheney misspoke. He
presumably meant to echo President Bush, who had said that there was
evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. At least three
other times in the same interview--never cited in the New Republic
piece--Cheney was clear the worry about nuclear weapons was in the
future. Said Cheney: "Theres no question about who is going to
prevail if there is military action. And theres no question but what
is going to be cheaper and less costly to do it now than it will be to
wait a year or two years or three years until hes developed even more
deadly weapons, perhaps nuclear weapons." Some deception.
The most serious allegation, and also the murkiest, involves the
erroneous assertion in the presidents State of the Union address that
Iraq had tried to buy uranium from sources in Niger. The claim was
based on forged documents. Whats not clear is whether anyone in the
know about the forgery also had a hand in the speech. Obviously if
this was the case someone should be fired.
The bottom line for Ackerman, Judis, and other administration critics:
"There was no consensus within the American intelligence community
that Saddam represented such a grave and imminent threat."
But intelligence is an art, of course, not a science. It often yields
different interpretations, and the country depends on experienced
policymakers like Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld to
choose among those interpretations. Sometimes a CIA analysis might
seem particularly persuasive, other times CIA analyses might seem thin
or overwrought. But choosing a mistaken intelligence read or relying
on bad intelligence--and its far too early to determine if that
happened in Iraq--is not the same as lying.
Whats more, the intelligence community "consensus" on Iraq has often
been deeply flawed.
There was consensus within the American intelligence community that
Saddam Hussein would not start a war with Iran in 1980. He did. There
was consensus within the American intelligence community ten years
later that Saddam Hussein would not invade Kuwait. He did. There was a
consensus that Saddam Hussein would not have a nuclear weapon for
several years. We learned after the Gulf War ended that he had been
just a year away from acquiring one. There was a consensus within the
American intelligence community that Saddam Hussein, having been
"contained" by U.N. weapons inspectors, would not attempt to avenge
his humiliating 1991 defeat. He did, with the attempted assassination
of former President Bush 18 months later. There was consensus within
the American intelligence community that a secular Saddam would never
reach out to Islamic fundamentalists. He did.
In sum: Emphasizing alarming evidence, considering the most dangerous
possibilities, outlining the most terrifying threats--all of this is
quite different from lying to get the nation to go to war. After
September 11, it might better be described as prudent. As in any
preventive war, the imminence of Saddam Husseins threat was always
going to be a matter of some uncertainty. But in a world where
Americans are killed by terrorists crashing airplanes into buildings
and anthrax comes in the mail and bombs come in shoes--ignoring grave
threats because we cannot be sure they are absolutely imminent would
seem to be a risky course of action. Yet it also seems to be the
position the Democratic party is moving to embrace.
So ist es nun einmal in Präventivkriegen des Freien Westens im 21.
Jahrhundert. Man kann nie *beweisen*, daß die konkrete Gefahr durch
Terroristen oder Schurkenstaaten sich realisiert hätte. Aber soll man
warten? Soll man warten, bis Kim Yong Il (oder wie das Weigelt-Idol
aus Nordkorea heißt) Atomraketen nach Amerika schicken kann?
Natürlich nicht!
Also gilt es jetzt, diesen Staat zu beenden.
Das gleiche ist hoffentlich mit der Mullah-Diktatur in Teheran nicht
nötig. Dort existiert eine hoffnungsvolle Jugend, für die die USA der
Leuchtturm der Freiheit ist.
Dem Syrer geht der Arsch sowieso schon auf Grundeis.
Demnächst wird sich der Freie Westen auch auf den Halbmond Israel,
Syrien, Irak, Iran und Afghanistan erstrecken.
Max Eberl
--
"There are more important things than peace - things which we
Americans must be willing to fight for." (Alexander Haig)