Historical Document: Holbrooke on Iraq, January 2001

I've written in the past in praise of the Clinton administration's focus on terrorism as it closed out its second term, and the misguided nature of the Bush administration's decision -- from Day 1 -- to refocus things on Iraq. Of course, not all Clinton administration officials were especially prescient on this score:

The effort to contain Iraq over the past 10 years, "while it is far from satisfactory," has been better than nothing, Holbrooke said. However, "the lack of sufficient solidarity among the enforcing nations and voting nations has undermined" the effort, he added.

The economic embargo imposed after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait remains in force until the UN certifies that Iraq has eliminated its weapons of mass destruction. But nations have violated the sanctions and three permanent members of the UN Security Council have been pressing for the certification. In the meantime, Iraq has refused to allow UN weapons inspectors into the country since December 1998. "Saddam Hussein's activities continue to be unacceptable and, in my view, dangerous to the region and, indeed, to the world," Holbrooke continued, "not only because he possesses the potential for weapons of mass destruction but because of the very nature of his regime.

"His willingness to be cruel internally is not unique in the world, but the combination of that and his willingness to export his problems makes him a clear and present danger at all times," he said.

The Bush administration "will have to deal with this problem, which we inherited from our predecessors and they now inherit from us," Holbrooke said.

Now the good news is that Holbrooke didn't follow that up with "so Bush should invade the country for no real reason." Then again, neither did Bush start saying we should invade Iraq for no real reason back in January 2001. But after 9/11, Bush saw a political opportunity to build support for an invasion of Iraq, and Holbrooke agreed with him since, after all, Saddam's "willingness to be cruel internally is not unique in the world, but the combination of that and his willingness to export his problems makes him a clear and present danger at all times" so an invasion seems like a good idea once it's politically possible.

I'm not very excited by the prospect of Hillary Clinton making him Secretary of State.

Comments

I'm sorry. This is goofy. Holbrooke merely points out that Iraq was a problem, and it was a problem. He did not advocate an invasion (as you concede). To take these comments as some evidence that he was on the wrong track then and would be a bad Secretary of State now strikes me as unsupportable. I'm for Obama and prefer his foreign policy advisors (for essentially the same reasons as you do), but come on let's keep it rational.

Posted by Chunche | November 19, 2007 1:53 PM

Fortunately, once he tries to get confirmed, video of him trying to sing on the Colbert Report will circle the internet. If his attempt at singing isn't grounds for a filibuster, I'm not sure what would be.

Posted by msmackle | November 19, 2007 2:09 PM

Then again, neither did Bush start saying we should invade Iraq for no real reason back in January 2001.

That's true, but I do recall a lot of emphasis on "rogue nations" before 9/11 that definitely seemed formulated toward ratcheting up tensions with Iraq. Absent 9/11, it would have been a hard sell, but I think they would have pitched the idea anyway.

Posted by Royko | November 19, 2007 2:30 PM

This is a textbook example of hindsight. The Clinton administration's experience with Saddam Hussein was shaped in considerable part by the revelations made by his sons in law about Iraq's bioweapons program. Having been caught by surprise once, they tended to fear the worst. So it shouldn't be surprising.

Posted by Tom | November 19, 2007 2:35 PM

I wish I could bet on HRC ending the Iraq war. I am convinced that she will reduce troop levels, but it won't end until she is out of office or the Iraqis resolve it all themselves.

There is no evidence that she strongly supports ending the war.

Posted by zozie | November 19, 2007 2:36 PM

I've written in the past in praise of the Clinton administration's focus on terrorism as it closed out its second term

Typo alert: Matthew appears to have inadvertantly left out the words "lack of" before "focus".

In any event, how is any of what Holbrooke wrote not "prescient"? Which of those quoted sentences turned out to be wrong? None that I can see. Holbrooke writes that Saddam is dangerous because "he possesses the potential for weapons of mass destruction" - which was exactly what the past-war review of Saddam's WMD activites found: that he retained the potential for WMD even if he didn't retain any stockpiles of WMD - and "because of the very nature of his regime" - which also remains true.

In fact, Holbrooke was quite careful with his whrasing and turned out to be 100% correct.

Posted by Al | November 19, 2007 2:47 PM

Holbrook is an arrogant opportunist, but worst of all he's already gearing up for war with Iran, listen to this.
carefully, espc. his last sentences. Sound familiar?

My theory: both Clinton and Holbrook coldly calculated that it would be a good thing for them, if Bush got rid of SH, no matter how badly he would fuck it up - they wouldn't be blamed too much themselves, could blame it on Bush and would have one problem less when they assume power.

Posted by novakant | November 19, 2007 3:01 PM

How about Al Gore on Iraq

Check out 6:30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDitSbkQKIs

Posted by Dave | November 19, 2007 3:34 PM

Matt,

How can this be? Everyone knows the neocons pressured the CIA and lied to the American public to start a needless war for Israel. Everyone knows that the State Department and the CIA knew, just knew, that Iraq was no threat whatsoever. I mean the only explanation is that Holbrooke must have been a neocon. But if he's a neocon, well what was he doing in the Clinton administration that was paying so much attention to the real threats to America? Maybe you and Matthew Duss could explain all this to.

Eli

Posted by Eli Lake | November 19, 2007 3:36 PM

We invaded Iraq "for no real reason"? This has to be the stupidest remark printed in The Atlantic in 150 years. Yglesias should stop posting until he's at least able to pass a Jr. High current events quiz.

Besides murdering God knows how many Iraqis with routine police-state methods, Iraq killed about a million people and created a world recession by invading Iran, using wmd's liberally (including to help kill about 250,000 Kurds), rocketing supertankers, etc in the process.

Hardly pausing for breath afterwards, Iraq then invaded, raped, and annexed Kuwait, a charter member of the UN and a US ally, killing about 300,000 of its citizens and dragging us into a war, firing missiles into Israel and Saudi Arabia, and torching the oilfields for good measure.

Given this history, and the fact that we discovered a nuclear program mere months away from producing a viable weapon, strict terms on this and other matters were included in the ceasefire agreement. It was comprehensively violated by Iraq, as were the subsequent 16 Chapter VII UNSC Resolutions. Further efforts to control Iraq's behavior made us complicit in the murder of hundreds of thousands of Shi'ia who rose up at our behest, the near-total destruction of the Marsh Arabs and the ecosystem that had sheltered them for millenia, and the deaths of perhaps a million of the most vulnerable Iraqis by means of sanctions. By 2003, we had an army of nearly half a million perched on the edge of the Arabian desert with summer coming, and Iraq still, according to Hans Blix, in blatant material breech of its obligations, leaving us with the choice of keeping our word about "serious consequences", or surrender. This amounts to "no real reason"?

You must be out of your mind.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 19, 2007 3:37 PM

Clinton will not continue the Bush foreign policy of irrational beligerance. Instead she will employ a rational interest based policy that will undo much of the damage Bush wrecked upon our nation.

Her attention however will, by needs, be focused more on domestic issues, particulary jobs, wages, and growth. We are according to many economists entering a recession and, as we all know, liberal economic policies are vital to lessening the sting of a recession and on pulling out of one.

Enrolling more people in Medicare (by reducing the eligibility age) will help jobs, as will higher taxes in order to reduce interest rates. If she could just get these two items done early in her administration we could probalby avoid the worst of any recession left to us by Bush.

Posted by ken | November 19, 2007 3:41 PM

Typo alert: Matthew appears to have inadvertantly left out the words "lack of" before "focus".

To quote our esteemed president, you've covered your a$$ now. Of course, we know the Clinton administration foiled an NYE attack on American soil.

Posted by Lynn | November 19, 2007 3:45 PM

A lot of people have become obsessive over Iraq. I think this is for two reasons: 1)Iraq has a lot of oil and has big ambitions on what to do with it, and 2) Israel cannot make peace with it's arab neighbors.

Personally I do not see how either one of these are so important to our interests that we risk going to war over them, but that is what the conseravative Bush administration did and we have been suffering the consequences ever since.

While we cannot go back to the situation prior to Bush's aggression we can just get the hell out of the area and let the people there figure out what to do about their differences. After they have settled things we can deal with the governments at that time. Or not. It doesn't really matter to us either way.

Posted by ken | November 19, 2007 4:10 PM

"Of course, we know the Clinton administration foiled an NYE attack on American soil."

The Clinton Administration, or an on-the-ball Customs agent based in Washington State? How does the Clinton Administration get credit for that?

Posted by Stevia | November 19, 2007 4:52 PM

Robert Powell,

Iraq did not kill 300,000 Kuwaitis - they killed something less than 5000.

Perhaps you should check facts before calling other peoples' columns "stupid".

Posted by Desider | November 19, 2007 5:15 PM

"Now the good news is that Holbrooke didn't follow that up with "so Bush should invade the country for no real reason."

No, and he did not advocate invading with almost no planning, followed up by an occupation without sufficient security forces and a reconstruction so corrupt as to be useless.

Matthew's position, which is, as I understand it, that the invasion was a bad idea, full stop, has the unintended side-effect of letting Bush off the hook for criminally bad policy execution.

The truth is that, in practice -- good practice -- policy choices and policy making are indistinguishable from the "policy process", the bureaucratic process of vetting a policy and planning its execution so that everyone with some responsibility for execution is consulted on the ways and means and everyone knows their role and objectives.

What went wrong in the Bush Administration was a total breakdown of the policy process.

The sense that something decisive should be done about Saddam Hussein, before the sanctions regime broke down entirely, was pervasive in 2001.

Bush responded by embarking on a policy, without a policy process -- something no President had done since Hoover.

I think Holbrooke and many other "old pros" were not quick to realize that it was happening. As long as Powell was at State, they just assumed that at least some of the traditional bureaucratic vetting was going on.

This is not to take a position on whether an invasion was a "good idea" so much as to make the observation that any policy driven from the top down with no respect for feedback or planning or quality of execution was doomed.

A good policy process would certainly have resulted in a different policy, better executed. I don't want to get distracted with counterfactuals about what that policy should have been -- whether it might be coup d'etat, a giant bribe, continued containment, etc., is beside the main point, which is that process of observation, feedback, thinking and analysis, debate, planning and evaluation, was short-circuited.

Posted by Bruce Wilder | November 19, 2007 6:58 PM

Robert Powell:

Yeah, yeah, but what had he done lately?

Posted by paul | November 19, 2007 8:30 PM

Then again, neither did Bush start saying we should invade Iraq for no real reason back in January 2001.

Yes he did, inside the administration. See Paul O'Neill's account of the very first National Security Council meeting in The Price of Loyalty.

They were always going to invade Iraq; Sept. 11 just dropped a big gift in their lap. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld had to be persuaded to tackle Afghanistan first, and they dropped it as quickly as they could once the big PR splash of taking Kabul was done.

It was and is about the bases. Holbrooke is going to advocate holding onto those bases, just as he supported the invasion.

Posted by Nell | November 19, 2007 9:10 PM

More Powell hallucination: "Iraq still, according to Hans Blix, in blatant material breech of its obligations..."

In early 2003, Iraq was in the process of being cleared of possessing any WMDs and then having a monitoring program put in that would have prevented Saddam from ever having WMDs.

Except Bush invaded first. Had Bush actually had no desire to invade Iraq and had waited some few more months, there would have been no war, no 3500-plus dead Americans, no over a million dead Iraqis, no displacement of four million Iraqis, no trillion-dollar bill dumped on the US taxpayer, etc., etc., ad nauseum.

Who the hell even cares that Saddam invaded Kuwait? Who do you know over there? Saddam had good reasons to be pissed at the Kuwaitis - they were slant-drilling his oil. Not to mention that the US gave him the green light to do so. Not to mention that the US supported him in attacking Iran as well.

Powell must be out of his mind.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | November 19, 2007 10:55 PM

Eli Lake makes a valid point. While we tend to focus our anger at the Bush Adminisration & the neocons for deceiving us about the WMD's, the contribution made by the Clinton Administration in misleading the nation about the threat Iraq posed can't be ignored. Seth Ackerman had an excellent article in Mother Jones about how the the Clinton Adminstration's helped lay the groundwork for war.

Especially interesting is Ackerman's discussion of Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law, whose defection was continually cited by both Bush & Clinton, but who actually told USNCOM that Saddam had destroyed all its chemical & biological weapons in 1991 :

"In other words, the defector who had been cited time after time, over eight years, by two presidents and their cabinets, as the source that proved Saddam was still hiding a deadly arsenal of chemical and biological weapons -- that defector had actually said the opposite: Not only did the weapons not exist, they had been destroyed before Clinton was even elected."

Posted by Peter H | November 19, 2007 11:17 PM

The sense that something decisive should be done about Saddam Hussein, before the sanctions regime broke down entirely, was pervasive in 2001.

This sense had nothing to do with reality. Your bribe, or coup, or whatever to stop the growing menace of an out of control, dangerous, Iraq would have been a waste because *nothing* was there!

I wanted to say "The administration has been out of office for near a decade now, you can quit making excuses for them." . Then I realized, that for purposes of the Clinton primary everyone *isn't* done making excuses for them and I'll have to listen to this sort of foolishness possibly for years.

Posted by Ed Marshall | November 19, 2007 11:17 PM

We were allies of Saddam, supporting him in the Iran/Iraq War he started, and supplying him with components with which to gas the Kurds who were siding with Iran. Then after giving him what he considered to be a green light to invade Kuwait, we massacred his retreating army by air as it was helplessly stranded in the desert. Next we encouraged the Shiites to rise up against Saddam, and watched as he retaliated, creating the mass graves which we later dug up. Saddam was never a threat to the US, but Israel's US neocons wanted him gone because he supported the Palestinians.

Posted by Sabine Wales | November 19, 2007 11:30 PM

Robert Powell,

I'm sure you're aware that Saddam's internal repression, invasion of Iran, & gassing of Kurds (and Iran) had absolutely no effect on US support for Iraq in the 1980's. Also, if violating UN Security Council resolutions is grounds for war, then we better starts making plan for invading Turkey (whose invasion & occupation of Cyrpus was as brutal as Saddam's invasion of Kuwait), Israel, & Morocco.

Posted by Peter H | November 19, 2007 11:34 PM

Such consistently piss poor analysis from Matt Y begs the question - how the hell did this guy get a job with the Atlantic ?? how exactly did this guy become a reputed blogger ?

this is not the first time that i ve read his opinion and gone "you have got to be kidding me."

Just reading the following quote "Now the good news is that Holbrooke didn't follow that up with "so Bush should invade the country for no real reason." Then again, neither did Bush start saying we should invade Iraq for no real reason back in January 2001.

Somebody tell this guy that Tom Daschle, John Kerry, Pat Leahy, Chris Dodd, Chuck Hagel co sponsored a resolution in 1998 " calling on "the president to take all necessary and appropriate actions to respond to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." When Bill Clinton was Prez, a good thre years before the biggest terror attack on the American homeland.!!!

Go, FIGURE !!

Posted by Nagarajan Sivakumar | November 19, 2007 11:34 PM

Nagarajan,

The missing point is that by the time we invaded in 2003, we had grudging acceptance of UN inspectors on the ground in Iraq, and they had already disproved many of our worst fears.

The phrase "for no real reason" is a bit excessive - post-9/11 there were a number of real reasons to re-evaluate the situation in the Middle East, including whether we would tolerate the danger and continuing unknowns of Hussein's regime in light of our heightened concerns about terror.

But Bush fudged the data and used scare tactics instead of real reasons to justify himself, blew the planning and goal for the invasion, and has kept himself and the Republicans deluded about it ever since. Considering what we knew about Hussein and his programs in March/2003, it should have altered the approach, but the "grownups" were obsessed with their preferred solution.

Posted by Desider | November 20, 2007 1:35 AM

People claiming to be scandalized by "Bush lies" should check their own facts.

1) In the aftermath of the hostage crisis, we were not broken-hearted that Iraq attacked Khomeini's Iran. The policy was perhaps best stated by George Schultz: "It's a shame they can't both lose."

However, claims of significant "US support for Saddam" are risible, and a sure marker for disregarding those making the claims. Anyone who knows anything at all about such matters knows that Iraq was a client state of the Soviet Union, and had a nearly exclusively Warsaw Pact model military with tens of billions of dollars worth of gear from small arms, missiles, tanks, and radar to the latest Mig fighter/bombers. At one point when it looked like Iran might win, we supplied some spare parts, ammunition, and satellite photos of Iranian positions, but the total aid from us amounted to less than 1% of the military support Iraq received. We also sent Hawk anti-aircraft missiles to Iran during the same period. The Reagan administration went to court to block sales of some potentially "dual use" items like trucks-it's on the record.

2) The Kuwaiti casualty figures come from the UN, and include those massacred during the occupation and those "disappeared", the accounting for whom was one of the ceasefire terms violated by Iraq. Of course, since Kuwait is a distant country about which we know little, we should not have been concerned about its destruction as far as neo-Chamberlains are concerned. Ditto for all the rest of the mayhem.

3) The terms of the ceasefire required Iraq to disarm "pro-actively and transparently". Blix was unequivocal in his last report that they had not. Those who don't care about such details may imagine that it was up to us to play hide-and-seek with an oil-rich totalitarian police state the size of Texas on this matter, but those responsible knew better in both Clinton and Bush Administrations.

4) Violating CHAPTER VII SC Resolutions (please note the difference from Chapter VI Resolutions) is grounds for war. See Korea, which took one (1) such Resolution to justify combat that killed 35,000 GI's. No other state in history comes close to Iraq's record of violations in this regard.

The points about the Bush administration's failure to apply competent policy process are well-taken. I have no stake in defending it--I voted for Gore, for Christ's sake. Bush's ineptitude has set back the cause of liberal internationalism for a generation. But I do have a stake in getting the historical facts right, and it is simple nonsense to assert that we went to war in Iraq "for no good reason", or because of lies.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 20, 2007 2:35 AM

Robert Powell, why are you so emotionally invested in pushing bullcrap? Blix wasn't as unequivocal as you claim. We were the ones that pulled UN inspectors out of Iraq in 2003 so that we wouldn't be fighting them in the Iraqi July heat. The decision to go to war was made at latest in February of that year. We could have finished the job in Afghanistan instead of taking our eye off the ball. By your analysis, we should be invading Burma, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Equitoreal Guinea, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Uzbekistan, Laos, Vietnam, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Libya, Algeria, Central African Republic and a few other nations pretty much for being bad regimes that oppress their people. We never had the troops for victory in Iraq. We barely had the troops for long-term victory in Afghanistan and even there we were offered a stronger presence from our NATO allies that we turned down. If means and ends aren't connected, you get a pile of crap. Oh, and when the footnotes in classified reports to Congress are deleted because they contain caveats that show dissent from within the CIA, the data, at the very least, has been massaged.

Posted by Reality Man | November 20, 2007 3:25 AM

Eli at 3:36PM asks the right question. The answer is that the Clinton Administration had its neocons too, and Holbrooke was first among them.

Those who think that Holbrooke's thinking is any different from Kristol's should read his February 23 2003 WaPo article written when Bush, against the advice of his neocons, had gone to the UN to ask for a second resolution authorizong force.

Holbrooke takes the side of the neocons, and criticizes Bush for delaying the invasion and endangering it by going to the UN. He says that the UN was likely to refuse a second resolution -- which would have made the invasion much harder to undertake; Holbrooke describes this possibility as a "train wreck" for American policy.

And he goes further. In pushing his point that Bush should have started the invasion without going to the UN, Holbrooke then points out that Clinton (with him on the side) bombed Serbia for 77 days without asking the UN.

Meet Hillary's secretary of state. What's not neocon about this guy?

Posted by JS | November 20, 2007 4:20 AM

Reality Man, why are you so invested in obscuring historical facts with adolescent boorishness? Perhaps you're one of those who thinks rudeness is a mark of political committment. It's not. Please match the objectionable dictatorships you list with the numbers of US allies they've invaded, the number of outstanding Chapter VII Security Council Resolutions they're defying, the number of people they've killed with wmd's, and their geopolitical relevance in comparison to Iraq. Reality, indeed.

Hans Blix was absolutely unequivocal on Iraq's non-compliance, in fact its obstructionism. His final report is just a Google away-you should read more and post less. Blix liked the idea of carrying on inspections indefinately, but then he wasn't responsible for all those kids sitting in tents in the Arabia desert either. Timing is very important in military operations, and having an army poised in such a position is terribly dangerous, especially since everyone thought they might be facing chemical and/or biological weapons. We had already had Marines killed by terrorists in January. Since you weren't there, perhaps you didn't notice that our troops went into battle burdened with "chem suits" in the awful heat.

Leaving all that aside, we could have spent an eternity inspecting Iraq without any confidence in the results minus the mandated cooperation of the regime. On the other hand, Saddam could have pulled the plug on the invasion up to the last minute by simply doing what he was required to do. He didn't because he'd been assured by his collaborators that they would block any further UN Resolution. Holbrooke was right.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 20, 2007 5:31 AM

Sabine, you are correct. Saddam was no threat to the US. Ultra-Zionist neocons fixed the intelligence to make a case for war to benefit Israel. Their 1996 "Clean Break" strategy paper for Israel (see James Bamford's book "A Pretext for War") was their blueprint. Currently the Israel Lobby is pushing us to war with Iran, again to benefit Israel. The idea is to remove all impediments, so that Israel can keep its stolen Palestinian land. This is why Israel refuses to even discuss substantive issues in Annapolis. Yet it is America which is being destroyed by being dragged into unnecessary wars with Israel's enemies, ie the so-called war on terror.

Posted by Eleanor Lambertson | November 20, 2007 10:39 AM

Timing is very important in military operations, and having an army poised in such a position is terribly dangerous, especially since everyone thought they might be facing chemical and/or biological weapons.

Wait -- the invasion & occupation of Iraq was necessary, just, and effective because we had already assembled an invasion and occupation force and placed them in an invasion-ready position?

Wow, talking about carts and horses.

Posted by El Cid | November 20, 2007 10:46 AM

The idea was to pressure Iraq into complying with its ceasefire and UNSC Resolutions obligations. If they had done so, there would have been no invasion. Since they didn't, we were presented with a choice of invasion or surrender. Two bad choices, but the least bad was selected.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 20, 2007 11:41 AM

No, that is in fact not an accurate description of the situation, although that is somewhat of the public relations re-write of the reality.

In reality, the invasion force was placed there precisely to make the invasion and occupation an inevitability, it had absolutely zero to do with public proclamations that the US government was either nervous about a weapons threat nor frustrated with UN non-compliance, and nothing short of the country's dictator's complete surrender of the nation to U.S. forces would have averted the administration's march to war.

I admire your efforts, though, to keep desperately trying to hawk the PR line to a dwindling subset of believers. At least you'll always have Niger.

Posted by El Cid | November 20, 2007 11:49 AM

How lame. I suppose that you had better evidence back in 2001, Matt?

Posted by elrapido | November 20, 2007 1:21 PM

Cid, are you seriously trying to say that if Saddam had provided Hans Blix with even a fig leaf's worth of cooperation, his Final Report wouldn't have short-circuited the invasion? Surely Blix preferred that rather than having to document Iraq's non-compliance as he did. Of course, it would have changed the whole equation. That's why all the real gung-ho types were batshit over Colin Powell's insistence on going the UN route in the first place, as also significantly advocated by Tony Blair. It made it easy for Saddam to get off the hook.

In the end Blair, Powell, and the rest of the true supporters of the UN idea, were stabbed in the back by Chirac's perfidy. As Bernard Kouchner has pointed out, the only way for a peaceful solution in 2003 was in absolute international solidarity insisting on Iraqi compliance with the Resolutions. We had it with Resolution 1441, but lost it when Chirac, to the bemused delight of Russia and China, vowed that France wouldn't keep its word come what may.

There were ample legal grounds for unilaterally enforcing the ceasefire agreement for years. Clinton had no problem initiating a rather severe bombing campaign back in '98. By 2003 time had run out for equivocation and half measures. This, friend, IS reality.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 20, 2007 4:50 PM

The idea was to pressure Iraq into complying with its ceasefire and UNSC Resolutions obligations. If they had done so, there would have been no invasion.

That's just not true. Nowhere did the Bush Administration say that they would have pulled the plug on an invasion if Saddam fully complied with weapons inspections, Read Bush's speech in October 2002. It outlines a set of conditions Saddam must meet aside from disarmament - end perseuction of civilians, stop support for terrorism, end illicit oil smuggling, account for all Gulf War personnel, compensate Kuwait for war damages - after which:

"By taking these steps, and by only taking these steps, the Iraqi regime has an opportunity to avoid conflict. Taking these steps would also change the nature of the Iraqi regime itself. America hopes the regime will make that choice. Unfortunately, at least so far, we have little reason to expect it. And that's why two administrations -- mine and President Clinton's -- have stated that regime change in Iraq is the only certain means of removing a great danger to our nation."

Re: France. I disagree with many of Jacques Chirac' policies, but he was absolutely correct about Iraq and the exaggerated nature of the threat it posed. The world would be much better off today had we followed his advice.

Posted by Peter H | November 20, 2007 5:21 PM

Also, I disagree with you about the United States not backing Saddam in the 1980's. There is plenty of documentation establishing the US tilt toward Saddam under the Reagan Administration. (BTW, you're also incorrect about Iraq being a loyal ally of the SovietUnion of the Soviet Union; there was actually plenty of suspicion between Iraq & the USSR).

You might have a better argument that the US support for Saddam in the 1980's did not in and of itself preclude us from overthrowing Saddam if such a move was in our interests and the interests of world peace.

Posted by Peter H | November 20, 2007 5:30 PM

I think Robert Powell's analysis is completely conventional and completely embarrassing.

The US invaded Iraq because Bush & Cheney wanted to invade & occupy Iraq. If Blix had come out with one more report, or 50 more reports, or a live televised song & dance number broadcast from Baghdad complete with an impassioned plea of Iraq's innocence at the end, this too would all have been ignored as far as decision-making went, and a quick end-run by the PR core would have painted Hans Blix and the UN as dangerous anti-American cowardly traitors if necessary.

Colin Powell was 'stabbed in the back' by his own administration, not by Hans Blix, not by Britain, not by French perfidy, none of this.

The entire "crisis" atmosphere was created by the U.S. administration, not imposed upon it by any complicated foreign policy calculus by wise sages moving pieces on a hallowed board.

The only reason a peaceful solution was "unavoidable" in 2003 was because the US wanted a war. That's it. That's all it was. It was because the President and everyone around him who counted for decision-making (and Powell would soon realize his utility to Bush Jr. was in PR, not decision-making) wanted to invade Iraq.

Another President would not have done so, and you and others could have screamed for decades about what cowardly treachery they had committed, and yet we, the Iraqis, and the region would all be better off -- even given the murderous brutality of Saddam Hussein.

If you want to keep publicly fantasizing that objective, external factors 'drove' a political administration of the United States into a stupid and reckless war which nonetheless they wanted, keep doing so. But stop demanding other people analyze international affairs like children in civics classes.

Posted by El Cid | November 20, 2007 5:35 PM

Peter--Bush's speech outlines the terms of the ceasefire and the UNSC Resolutions Iraq was obligated to comply with. And whether you agree or not, the actual evidence shows that while the Soviet Union supplied tens of billions of dollars worth of war material, we supplied less that 1%, and even that of little real military significance. Saddam and the Soviets didn't trust each other, or anyone else. So what?

El Cid--my analysis is "conventional" because its based on documented facts. Yours is "cool" because its based on political fashion and your incredible ability to read the minds of world leaders while ignoring the evidence.

What's "embarassing" is that so many Americans are willing to go to bat for a genocidal totalitarian regime that started multiple wars of aggression, killed millions of people, undermined the accepted international norms of conduct, and would still be doing so today if you had your way. I can only hope that you have the opportunity to live under such a regime some day instead of freeloading on the sacrifices of others. The world is a much better place, including in Iraq, without Saddam Hussein.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 21, 2007 12:09 AM

Robert Powell: What is most glaringly wrong with your statement is that it is not in the least based in documented facts.

It is true that there are many, many government officials who loudly pronounce that they were simply driven by objective and external factors into the invasion and occupation of Iraq. But this is evidence for nothing, except for a study of the themes of propaganda campaigns, and people who aren't children understand this.

You can feel free to continue to gullibly take all of the war's promoters' completely unsupported words, but don't require actual adults to agree with your childish nonsense.

You can also feel free to re-write any mad war which leads to misery and chaos for the people you claim to be helping as "going to bat" for dictatorship. Again, the dwellers of 24%-ville agree with you, and few else.

The world is not a much better place, particularly not in Iraq, with the stateless chaos fools like you have left them. Unfortunately in this world there are more choices than tyranny or freedom. There is actually a real world result which is more than "not Saddam", and that result is currently worse.

Maybe I should have been advocating that the Soviets bomb, invade, and otherwise destroy every functioning governing and infrastructural institution of Pinochet's Chile or the genocidalists' Guatemala, in order to 'liberate' those people from their miserable and murderous tyrants. But I didn't, because it would have been stupid, and it would have made all of our lives worse, theirs included. As impossible as it seemed, their people liberated themselves, with the help of age and forms of resistance not equivalent to blowing the place up.

To acknowledge these simple truths does not make one a coward or tyrants' boot licker, but an adult who lives on Earth and yields to more facts and documentation than flimsy PR campaigns by government agents.

Posted by El Cid | November 21, 2007 8:06 AM

The facts of Saddam's misrule are pretty easy to come by, and anyone who thinks he was about the same as Pinochet, or that Iraqis could dream of access to the kinds of choices available to Chileans, needs to learn them. "Republic of Fear" by the universally acclaimed Iraqi hero Kanan Makiya would be a good start.

You also need to read up on the statements about Iraq of solid Democrats during the Clinton years and especially during the '04 presidential race, the language of Resolutions like the two Authorizations for Use of Force and the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (written by Bob Kerry and signed by Clinton), the relevant UNSC Resolutions, and the finding for Parliament of Lord Goldsmith, all easily available on the web.

The final report of Hans Blix, the Hutton Commission report, and the Duelfer report are also must reading. A lot of my information about Iraq has come from Iraqis, most living in Europe with families still at home, but some in the region. I don't expect you'll work at it that hard, but the reading I've suggested is non-partisan, authoritative (or original source material), and a good start. Since you're an Atlantic reader and presumably of reasonable intelligence, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt--that you write like a tyrants' boot licker out of ignorance rather than venality. It's high time you corrected that.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 21, 2007 10:21 AM

You keep repeating the same arguments, and yet they remain as they were, inapplicable.

Your opinions as to what would have happened to Iraq had the state not been destroyed are irrelevant and uninteresting. The same is true regardless of the nobility and fame of another predictor; each still has to make a convincing argument, not simply list their identity and positions.

Further, the analogies were well chosen -- because Guatemala, unlike even Saddam Hussein's Iraq (which somewhat came close), was actually the site of an actual, UN described genocide. Reagan's tyrant friends aimed to eliminate with direct US support the Mayan Indian population of the nation. Again, the analogy is apt -- it would not have helped them had a larger external nation invaded and destroyed the entire state and infrastructure. And that's in an actual genocide. (However, that's not saying *some* type of military action -- say, a blockade of US / CIA support of the genocidal generals -- may not have been effective.)

The fact that Democratic politicians also found Saddam Hussein to be a threat and eventually voted (in a minority) with Republicans to authorize Bush & Cheney's invasion and occupation is in no way a justification for the invasion and occupation. There are fools who think that bipartisan support for idiotic policies makes the policies non-idiotic, but then, your arguments are consistently foolish. In fact, had Bill Clinton himself invaded and occupied Iraq -- irrespective of the fact that he *might* have done so in a less wildly foolish and arrogant manner as Bush Jr & Cheney did -- he still would have been wrong and stupid to do so.

If every single current and past president and prime minister of every single nation on the planet, of every political party, and including the ghosts of the Founding Fathers and Mao and Lenin and Gandhi and whoever else, gathered together on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno to sing in harmony that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was entirely justified, it means nothing as far as the legitimacy of the argument goes.

You are not the only one who have read and spoken with Iraqis and other inhabitants of the region. A set of representative views is no magic inoculation against having a good argument -- I leave that game to dilettantes like Hitchens to give stories of who they met in exotic cafes and how dare you question this noble so & so.

I also read the IAEA reports throughout the period. I do not think you know the difference between discussing Saddam Hussein as a criminal on probation and the real world consequences of wars. I believe that you think that the presence of issues or questions about the status of various items in the inspection automatically justifies a state-destroying invasion and occupation. But it doesn't. In fact, even the discovery of hidden chemical and biological weapons would not in themselves justify an invasion and occupation, much less the nearly total destruction of an existing state. But that is subtle reasoning, far below such bellowing moralists as yourself.

As to whether or not people who aren't bellowing vain fools like yourself are to be judged by you to be ignorant or venal, go ahead and make whichever decision amuses you, because I sincerely don't weigh your opinion in the slightest.

Posted by El Cid | November 21, 2007 10:40 AM

You complained that my arguments weren't based on documented facts, so I provided a decent basic list of relevant source documents I've used for facts. Your reply, like everything else you've written, is mostly your personal opinions leavened with a little fact and a lot of political nonsense gleaned from partisan media. Not encouraging.

Central America was the location for a lot of massacres by various groups, but since Guatemala's population is over 60% Mayan the tragedy there percentage-wise was much smaller in "genocide" terms than those involving Iraqi Kurds, Marsh Arabs, etc.--not that it matters much to those killed. I know something about it, having spent some time in the region opposing Reagan's policy of state-sponsored terrorism--unlike you, I've been consistent in my opposition to murderous tyrants.

Look, you obviously have your heart in the right place, but your posts are often wildly inaccurate in factual terms, and don't reflect much reading of the essential background materials. I've already got a job, and don't have any interest in providing you with the education you need to make more intelligent posts, especially since you've indicated an unwillingness to learn anything beyond recycled Deaniac talking points. It doesn't make any difference to me at all how you "weigh" my opinion, but unless you're prepared to learn something about what you presume to be an expert on, you shouldn't expect much serious consideration of yours.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 22, 2007 5:07 AM

Powell: You still do not know the difference between referring to documents and official quotes and reports and using them to support an argument. Perhaps somehow you managed to acquire a significant education despite this lack of argumentative skills, but apparently the standards I faced were higher, and I feel that's a good thing.

Look, you obviously have your heart in the right place, but in construing terrible arguments based on misreadings of actual evidence, you only serve to hurt those you proclaim so loudly to care about.

That is the nature of political discourse in the country today. I don't have the time, being gainfully employed, to drag you through courses in constructions of arguments and use of empirical evidence, but then fortunately it doesn't much matter to you whether or not your arguments are taken seriously -- as they simply are not.

You may find this frustrating, or entertaining, but since you are employed you may be able to hire a therapist if it bothers you.

Posted by El Cid | November 25, 2007 10:38 AM