Why Oh Why Are We Ruled by These Incompetents? (Yet Another Occupation-of-Iraq Edition)

Gideon Rose of Foreign Affairs on George Packer's The Assassins' Gate:

Welcome to the Occupation: How could the strongest power in modern history, going to war against a much lesser opponent at a time and place of its own choosing, find itself stuck a few years later, hemorrhaging blood and treasure amid increasing chaos? Americans will be debating the answer for decades, and as they do, they are unlikely to find a better guide than George Packer's masterful new The Assassins' Gate.

In the run-up to the 2003 war, three rationales were offered for the invasion: fear of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, links between Iraq and terrorism, and a desire to bring liberal democracy to Iraq and the Middle East at large. The first was essentially an honest mistake.... The second was essentially a dishonest one; there were never any good reasons to think Iraq was connected to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks or likely to work closely with al Qaeda. The third... was a high-stakes gamble.... [F]ew experts thought it would be possible to transform Iraq's domestic structures quickly or easily, to say nothing of sparking a regional democratic revolution....

Packer... tells the story of this third rationale -- how it emerged, how the Bush administration tried to implement it and how things turned out... the case for democratization played an important role in buttressing the other two arguments and was the most exciting aspect of the endeavor.... The book is framed by the story of Kanan Makiya, an idealistic Iraqi exile whose writings had exposed the evil of Saddam Hussein's republic of fear and who had come to see American power as Iraq's only hope for a better future....

A hawkish liberal himself, Packer was torn between his sympathy for Makiya's goals and his misgivings about whether they were likely to be achieved. "I would run down the many compelling reasons why a war would be unwise, only to find at the end that Saddam was still in power, tormenting his people and defying the world," he writes. "The administration's war was not my war -- it was rushed, dishonest, unforgivably partisan, and destructive of alliances -- but objecting to the authors and their methods didn't seem reason enough to stand in the way." Eventually, crossing his fingers and deciding that Saddam Hussein had to be considered the greater evil, he went along for the ride (as did I). Packer's sketch of the prewar debates is subtle, sharp and poignant....

Writing with barely suppressed fury and continued bafflement, he describes how the great and noble enterprise he supported is inexplicably handed over to those least qualified to make it work: "No one at the top level of the administration was less interested in the future of Iraq than Donald Rumsfeld. Yet he would demand and receive control over the postwar, and he would entrust it to his more ideologically fervent aides, in whom he placed the same incurious confidence that the president placed in Rumsfeld." The result... has been one of the worst self-inflicted wounds in the history of U.S. foreign policy. The military leadership under Gen. Tommy Franks abdicated any responsibility... the civilian leadership at the Pentagon and in the vice president's office... block[ed] others from doing anything useful; a feckless president surrounded by sycophants and ideologues....

Thuggish Iraqis grow bolder as crime goes unpunished; decent Iraqis grow despondent as the occupying troops stand down and let chaos unfold.... Soon even Washington realized that things were not going well, and the first postwar team was abruptly sent packing. As Jay Garner and his hapless Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance were replaced by L. Paul Bremer and his Coalition Provisional Authority, a U.S. official tells Packer, the American approach shifted from "arrogance" to "hubris": "The arrogance phase was going in undermanned, underresourced, skim off the top layer of leadership, take control of a functioning state, and be out by six weeks and get the oil funds to pay for it. We all know for a variety of reasons that didn't work. So then you switch over to the hubris phase... we'll attack it with everything we have, we'll throw the many billion dollars at it, and to make Iraq safe for the future we have to do a root-and-branch transformation of the country in our own image."

That didn't work either, in part because ill-considered early decisions to pursue radical de-Baathification and disband the Iraqi army led many in the country's Sunni minority to oppose the occupation. Eventually the Bush administration shifted course again.... Packer relates all this clearly and briskly, painting moving portraits of both Iraqis and Americans while skillfully guiding the reader through the intricacies of colonial administration, Iraqi ethnic politics and Beltway skullduggery... putting the reader at the side of Walter Benjamin's angel of history, watching helplessly as the wreckage unfolds at his feet....

Ultimately, Packer refuses to tie the threads of his analysis together in a tidy bundle and settle accounts.... Given the sorry tale he has just told, this seems something of a cop-out. But it is also not entirely unreasonable, for although events in Iraq have now largely passed out of Washington's control, there is still a remote possibility that the worst outcomes... might be kept at bay, leaving the ending of one of the cruelest tyrannies in modern history as an accomplishment worth savoring.

It is not too soon, however, to return a judgment on those at the helm who took a difficult job and made it infinitely more so, dramatically undermining America's regional and global position in the process. They were "careless people," as Fitzgerald said of Tom and Daisy Buchanan, who "smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made." That, if nothing else, can stand as a lesson for future tender souls contemplating the possible benefits of liberal imperialism and mulling attempts to do the right thing with the wrong partners.

Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach him now.

Comments

[DOR]

The three justifications: The first, WMD, was not an honest mistake; it was a flat out lie, conceived to justify war.

That makes two lies and one totally unjustified "high-stakes gamble."

Who are we to decide the fate of other nations? Where do we get the right to decide who is a good enough leader (e.g., Kim Jong-il, since we've let him be) and who isn't (Saddam Hussein)?

Oh, yeah, "God told me to."

We used to lock people up in padded cells if they used that justification for mass murder.
.

[John Emerson]

I am convinced that Rumsfeld, like Weinberger before him, is on a maintenance dose of some kind of amphetamine. This drug gives intellectual clarity, mental quickness, and an unnatural cheerfulness, at the cost of destroying the reality sense.

Robert MacNamara -- not sure. He didn't have that steely-eyed glitter in his eyes.

No, I'm not kidding.

[howard]

DOR beats me to the point: in what is otherwise a fair-minded review, Rose commits an enormous fallacy. The Iraq WMD case was not in the slightest an honorable mistake: it was a dishonest scare tactic.

Had the backbone administration limited itself to fears of chemical and biological weapons, that would have been an honorable mistake. But no, they didn't: they chose to harp on the atomic weaponry fear, and there was not a single honest syllable in that argument.

[david]

Sounds like Packer will continue to profit from supporting this stupid war. Maybe he should write a book about Iranian threats to world peace now.

Impeach Bush, sure; but there's a lot more to clean up around here.

[piotr]

About the gamble for democracy: this the the Administration that engineered an unsuccesful coup in Venezuela and a successful overthrowing of the government of Haiti. When a former genocidal dictator wanted to run for presidency of Guatemala, against their constitution, Busheviks had nothing to say (while they have plenty to say about Venezuela).

In Haiti, an "imperfect democracy" was replaced with gangs of genocidal veterans of the former army and till today there is a terrible mess there with hardly any serious effort on our part to rectify it.

Can someone provide one reason why Iraq should be an easier case for "creating a democracy" than Haiti?

Younger neocons got their foreign policy spurs during civil wars in Central America when we supported our bastards against bastards of the adversary. Older neo-cons were educated similarly.

I read explanations how our experiences from El Salvador would lead to successful, if protracted, counterinsurgency. Yet, in El Salvador we had pro-American elite and pro-American death squads, there was no serious attempt to promote democracy and human rights until the civil war ended. How one can expect that people who are totally oblivious to the promotion of democracy in Western Hemisphere (when they do not actively undermine it) change their outlook on the other side of the ocean?

[fifi]

"Writing with barely suppressed fury and continued bafflement, he describes how the great and noble enterprise he supported is inexplicably handed over to those least qualified to make it work:"

Inexplicably?

It's not a mystery why people do poorly at things they aren't motivated to do well. Bush wants democracy for Iraq like I want a million dollars: I am prepared to buy the winning lottery ticket. Don’t underestimate my abilities; I could earn the money. It’s just that right now I have other priorities.

[dearieme]

"a desire to bring liberal democracy to Iraq and the Middle East at large": I suggest that the belief that any such thing could be done easily and quickly comes from a flaw deep in American habits. You tell yourselves, and your children, that that's how you got your liberal democracy: one spasm of violence and - voila - the USA. BUT YOUR SPASM OF VIOLENCE WAS ABOUT SOVEREIGNTY, NOT LIBERTY AND DEMOCRACY: YOU GOT THE LATTER BECAUSE YOU ALREADY HAD THEM, BECAUSE THE 13 COLONIES WERE BRITISH, not Spanish, say, or Portugese. You underestimate the importance of habit, of the British template, of the quasi-organic nature of societies. You lack, in other words, reflective conservatives, and call a semi-leftist chump like W a conservative: ye Gods! You barge into Iraq, of which we know the history for thousands of years - and suppose that with minimal attention, and an absurdly small army, you can instal in months what took centuries to evolve elsewhere, in the face of its religion, its clan and family structure....oh dear, it's too painful to go on. I rest my case.

[Anand Hattiangadi]

"high stakes gamble" misses the point. Sometimes high stakes gambles are worth it - it depends on the utility function of the gambler. The problem with Iraq is that it was a "low odds" gamble. This was the deal we faced - if we did indeed succeed, the world would no doubt be a moderately better place. If we failed, we would have a much worse world. The chances of success were much lower than the chances of failure. Fundamentally, this was a bad deal, no matter what the cost. Then add in the high cost of the deal, and it's clear we shouldn't have taken the bait. Calling this a "high stakes gamble" makes it seem like taking it involved strong nerves and iron guts - these it did, but more importantly it involved bad management, groupthink, stupidity.

[Saheli]

david and fifi are right. Bush is one thing, the people who blindly followed him are another. "inexplicably"? "least qualified"? No sh--, Sherlock. The people who assumed that it didn't matter who you put in the White House--that competence didn't matter, that there was no difference between two candidates--they really piss me off.

The motto my generation will whisper to our children as we pay off the debt and clean up the mess: Competence matters.

[tom f]

We can easily presume that Batthist (sp?) Iraqi intellectuals took themselves seriously about Arab nationalism and defending Iraq from Kuwaiti aggression and neo-colonialism blah blah blah during and after their heroic and idealistic invasion of Kuwait.

We needn't presume that the Empire intellectuals take their ideas about "WMD honest mistakes" and "spreading democracy" seriously. Most clearly those who keep a safe distance (the better for adoration) from the powerful do.

I hypothesize a nearly-universal tendency among the champions and participants of social power: for your enemy, a spotlight on the facts of his actions placed in relief against absolute standards of conduct; for yourself, a dim-lit silk screen of good intentions and honest mistakes.

O the self-deception is beautiful in its emerging perfection! Jefferson said that "Power corrupts". But to see exactly how it corrupts, how subtle and inexorable the process is manifested -that is the priveledged realization for all keen students of the the human condition.

[Richard Cownie]

The invasion of Iraq was a political ploy to achieve Republican
gains in the 2002 midterms, and enhance Bush's prospects for
re-election - before 9/11 he was tanking, after 9/11 and
Afghanistan he was high in the polls, and wanted to keep that
momentum going.

And from the viewpoint of domestic politics, Iraq was a huge
success: the Republicans took back the Senate, solidified their
hold on the House, and Bush ran for re-election as a war
president, and won.

What's not to like ? The stuff that didn't go so well will be
someone else's problem (the deficit, the broken army, chaos in
the Middle East)

[gcochran]

Somehow, the likely course of events in Iraq wasn't clear in advance to the author or to any significant fraction of the people who run and/or influence the country. Few of them even noticed that they were being snookered about the Iraqi nuclear threat. I could swear that they wanted to be deceived.

I thought it was pretty obvious, in the sense that I predicted it in advance with fair accuracy - no nuclear program, guerrilla war, etc. But what does 'obvious' mean, really?

[Carl]

Packer also mentions the fact that many neocons wanted to bring back the Hashemite monarchy to Iraq, using the "everybody moves over one" plan: Palestine is Israel, Jordan is Palestine, Iraq is the Hashemite kingdom. Packer heard this being talked about in the Pentagon in the lead up to the war, and yet Packer's faith is still unshaken that democracy was Bush's intention?

The man who planned this war, Douglas Feith, co-wrote a paper in 1996 calling for the installation of the Hashemite monarchy.

Feith's friend, Marc Zell told Salon in 2004:

--"Ahmed Chalabi is a treacherous, spineless turncoat. He had one set of friends before he was in power, and now he's got another ... He said he would end Iraq's boycott of trade with Israel, and would allow Israeli companies to do business there. He said [the new Iraqi government] would agree to rebuild the pipeline from Mosul [in the northern Iraqi oil fields] to Haifa [the Israeli port, and the location of a major refinery]."--

So that was the plan. Install a convicted embezzler into power and have him make nice with Israel. How they thought they could get the Iraqis to agree to this is beyond me. Not even Saddam could pull this off without a revolution.

Our second choice to run the country was Allawi, a former Baathist thug who got 15% of the vote even when we stuffed the ballot boxes. (His subordinates appear to have embezzled billions during his brief tenure in power, while our auditors looked the other way).

Where do these liberal hawks get there wacky ideas?

[derek]

I disagree that the WMD was an honest mistake, and though it's not a focus of the Fitzgerald grand jury's determinations, the indictments that are eventually handed down are going to be the trigger for a proper examination, by competent observers if not by the official press, of just what Joseph Wilson was expected to do when he was sent to Niger, and just why his lack of cooperation so enraged the administration that they went after both him and his wife.

He was expected to go along with adding another brick to the wall of lies about WMD.

[Toby]

To add to the comments regarding the 'honest mistake', the inability of the inspection teams to find the slightest trace of biological or chemical weapons, despite having the US intelligence on such, should have called into question the assumption that WMD was a rationale for war. That is, if the US had an administration that valued facts over ideology.

[Aunt Deb]

There were no honest mistakes made in the run-up to or the execution of the invasion and subsequent occupation.

Ahmed Chalabi is Deputy Prime Minister now and he has just negotiated a deal with the US to buy grain -- shut out the Australians.

Danielle Pletka is expressing 'disappointment' over the outcome in Iraq, too. My my my.

[JackNYC]

I stopped reading the Foreign Affairs outtake after "The first was essentially an honest mistake...." and went right to the comments (excellent, thanks). The day is too short and my time too valuable. The only thing I will remember is that the name "Gideon Rose" equates with "hack".

[JackNYC]

Sorry, Mr. Rose. It is George Packer who is the hack.

[PJ]

"Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach him now."

Is there a shred of evidence that the President has committed treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemenours, at least in ways that wouldn't make many of his predecessors equally guilty? He may have been incompetent and corrupt and has betrayed one group of supporters after another, but surely that is a reason to vote against his party in the next elections in 2006, not to impeach him. Of course, if Brad wants to tear up the constitution, he should admit so publicly.

[Ben Brackley]

Robert J. Aumann and Thomas C. Schelling have won this year's Nobel Prize in Economics. While I'm not an economist and find it difficult to assess the merits of this prize, it does seem to me that the Swedish Academy of Sciences has shown a disproprotionate infatuation with the insights of game theory in awarding this prize over the years. Game theory is interesting, but are the insights and analytical tools it has provided as significant to our current and future understanding of economics as Nobel Prize awards over the last decade or so would suggest.

[Richard Cownie]

"Is there a shred of evidence that the President has committed treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemenours, at least in ways that wouldn't make many of his predecessors equally guilty?"

Lying to Congress - the Niger uranium claim in the SOTU, the
Medicare cost, etc

Committing war crimes - detainee abuse policy

Violating the Constitution by unilaterally abrogating or
ignoring treaties ratified by the Senate - Geneva Conventions
etc.

Possibly engaging in a conspiracy to out Valerie Plame,
to the detriment of national security.

Possibly engaging in a conspiracy to subvert the results
of national elections. Those 2004 exit polls still look
mighty strange.

Providing aid and comfort to our enemies by being a total
incompetent and moron. OK, that's probably not impeachable :-)

[sm]

"We shall be as gods."

-- various American thinkers, 2003

The gods hear these things, never believe they don't.

[Roger Bigod]

I seem to recall that a recent US President was impeached for behavior that was trivially related to the duties of the office.

[J Thomas]

"Is there a shred of evidence that the President has committed treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemenours, at least in ways that wouldn't make many of his predecessors equally guilty?"

You want to bet Clinton was the first president to get a blow job?

[liberal]

PJ wrote, "but surely that is a reason to vote against his party in the next elections in 2006, not to impeach him."

Faking a _casus belli_ is IMHO a "high crime."

"Is there a shred of evidence that the President has committed treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemenours, at least in ways that wouldn't make many of his predecessors equally guilty?"

Well, if we're using historical standards, given Clinton's impeachment for something which cannot be construed by a rational, honest person as a high crime or misdemeanor, Bush is impeachable.

Furthermore, your "historical" standard guts the impeachment clause.

[liberal]

Ben Brackley wrote, "Game theory is interesting, but are the insights and analytical tools it has provided as significant to our current and future understanding of economics as Nobel Prize awards over the last decade or so would suggest."

Oh, come on---they could have given it to another ludicrous hack like Prescott.

[liberal]

I second the opinions of those above claiming that Packer is a hack.

I also like Anand Hattiangadi's analysis of what reasonable computations of the expected outcome should have been like.

[Stormy]

Patience.

The scandals are now encircling this embattled White House, drawing every closer, despite all the efforts of an equally inept and corrupted Congress.

In the fulness of time, all rotten apples must fall.

[save_the_rustbelt]

Besides all of the other mistakes and deceptions, the US is trying to practice "nice war."

One of my mentors was with Patton's Third Army. I asked him what Patton's troops would do when the Germans put machine gun nests in Catholic church steeples.

"We were in a war, we would blow the church to hell."

Nice war doesn't work. War is not social work or timid political correctness.

Time to leave Iraq, NOW.

[realist]

is there any evidence that the president, or any of his family members, received any financial profit from the war?

[Jonathan W. King]

An interesting point about the impeachment of George W. Bush is that it is absolutely impossible unless the GOP suffers crushing losses in 2006. But if the GOP does suffer such crushing losses, then impeachment become almost likely.

It's really difficult to assess how likely a massvie loss by the GOP is, but it appears that they would have to avoid once again every worst case outcome they avoided in 2004, and that might be tough. I think they lose big if any of the following happen:

1) $4 per gallon gas or unaffordable heating oil
2) general inflation breaks out
3) a recession hits
4) a US retreat from Iraq is seen as a loss
5) continued casualties in Iraq are seen as useless
6) Bush falls below 35% in the opinion polls
7) 2006 becomes the "Year of Corruption Trials"

and there may be others as well. These things are not independent, of course, which makes life tricky to predict. I think Bush's popularity will probably be the best index of what people are feeling. If it gets down to 35% and stays there, the GOP would be forced to run away from Bush, and there isn't really any place they can run and hide.

I guess the next important bellweather for the upcoming election will be who decides to retire. Open seats could be really difficult to defend in an election that will be a referendum on Bush.

[liberal]

Jonathan W. King wrote, "An interesting point about the impeachment of George W. Bush is that it is absolutely impossible unless the GOP suffers crushing losses in 2006."

Correct.

"But if the GOP does suffer such crushing losses, then impeachment become almost likely."

Would that it were so. Dems are too wimpy and divided for that. Also, some of the Dems (and the leadership in particular) are somewhat tainted as they supported the the case for invasion. Of course, logically speaking they could honestly say "we weren't the ones who fudged the intelligence assessment," but there's nothing logical about politics.

"It's really difficult to assess how likely a massvie loss by the GOP is, but it appears that they would have to avoid once again every worst case outcome they avoided in 2004, and that might be tough. I think they lose big if any of the following happen..."

Again, would that it were so. Problem is that IMHO I think for the Dems to capitalize on the situation, they (a) have to have some kind of coherent political ideology, (b) have to display leadership. They have neither.

[EconReadr]

Richard Cownie said...
"the Niger uranium claim in the SOTU"

He was under oath during the SOTU? That's new to me. Hear the words again, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." What was said?

[wkwillis]

I think the situation for Bush is much worse than you do.
I think that Bush may wind up pleading guilty in exchange for the Democrats promising to put him in a nice safe solitary jail cell where the Nomenklatura, the Red Princes, the Regulatory Raj Wallahs, the Wa-Benzi, the Eurotrash, the Triads, the Mafia, and the Colombians.
If (that is, when) the dollar collapses, whose Swiss bank accounts will disappear?

[bob]

PJ seems to believe that the Constitutional requirement of "high crimes and misdemeanors" for impeachment pretty much limits it to "treason or bribery". He forgets that "high crimes and misdemeanors" includes things such as misprision, and subornation of a felony, both of which, I submit, have been repeatedly commited by Junior and his minions.

[snort]

What will it take to impeach Bush? Discovery of his and his family's non-tax paying offshore accounts.

[howard]

for the record, as that eminent constitutional scholar, gerald ford, once said, "high crimes and misdemeanors are whatever a majority of the house thinks they are."

that said, fun as it is to call for bush's impeachment, we don't really want to play the right-wing game of using impeachment as a political toy. Bush has been an awful, dishonest, incompetent president, but this was clear about him in 2004 and he was re-elected, and thus far, nothing new has surfaced to be comparable to what surfaced about nixon after 1972....

[howard]

btw, econreadr, at risk of repeating old stuff, the bush speechwriters used that formulation to sneak into the SOTU misleading information, and the fact is, the british government had "learned" no such thing.

The most that could accurately have been said is "the british government has received information which leads it to believe that saddam may have attempted to purchase uranium, although our own intelligence capabilities regard the information as of low credibility."

[liberal]

EconReadr wrote, "He was under oath during the SOTU?"

The specific SOTU allegation aside, it's clear that Bush et al. faked a _casus belli_.

They didn't have to do it under oath to be guilty of a "high crime."

[liberal]

howard wrote, "that said, fun as it is to call for bush's impeachment, we don't really want to play the right-wing game of using impeachment as a political toy."

It's not a political toy.

There are two reasons to impeach Bush:
* Lying about a _casus belli_;
* Tit-for-tat vis-a-vis the Lewinskygate impeachment. (Tit-for-tat is an eminently reasonable strategy in an interated prisoner's dilemma.)

"Bush has been an awful, dishonest, incompetent president, but this was clear about him in 2004 and he was re-elected, and thus far, nothing new has surfaced to be comparable to what surfaced about nixon after 1972...."

But one point about impeaching him is that presumably *new* evidence would surface with the subpoena power.

Furthermore, I think what Bush has done is comparable to what Nixon did. I'm taking the view that the worst of Nixon's crimes wasn't Watergate per se, but rather his connection to the bombing of Cambodia and the spreading of the war to that country. In that sense, Bush's crime re Iraq is quite parallel.

Not that I think he's going to be impeached before he retires.

[howard]

liberal, for what it's worth, the house judiciary committee specifically chose NOT to impeach Nixon over Cambodia, on the not irrational grounds that once you start using the impeachment power on matters of the president's war-making abilities, there's no telling where it will end up.

In fact, Nixon wouldn't have been impeached only for Watergate, either: what he was impeached for included Watergate (article I was the "obsturction of justice" article that concerned Watergate) but also included running a secret police force ("the plumbers") covered in article II and general contempt of congress for lying and failing to turn over materials (article iii).

none of this was known before the watergate investigation, which is why i say that things were different after 1972 than during the election.

now, who is to say? possibly it will turn out that there are comparables to be fully aired with respect to how bush, rove, and cheney have conducted their governance, but unless and until they are....

PS. Per the Cambodia example, there is, in my estimation, zero chance of any impeachment being founded upon the notion that Bush misled us into the iraq war.

[DuckedApe]

I can understand that the sixth and seventh are unspeakable, but why the omission of the fourth and fifth rationales?

4th) Oil. Perhaps less disconnected from the 2nd than we'd like to think. Saudi Arabia is not a democracy, is the homeland of Bin Ladin and many of his subordinates, and is a big supplier of oil. Without confidence that Iraq (and neighboring Kuweit) are in safety, no threat to Saudi Arabia could be credible. Not that we should hold our breath until the U.S.A. warns the Saudis to get serious and step in line like Khadaffi did. Tactical positioning.

5th) Cronyism. Billions are changing hands, both from "oil for Halliburton and all-volunteer-army retirement pensions instead of food" program and to the purveyors of the arms being consumed. Like Ike said. [military-industrial complex of which to beware, for the kids in the audience]. War creates jobs (and debt). Profiteering.

6th) The U.S. felt guilty and wanted to make up in some way without losing face for having supported and encouraged the ten year war between Iraq and Iran, trading arms for oil while ensuring that an entire generation, or what survived of it, knew only combat as a trade. To offer "reconstruction" out of the blue was impossible, invasion and occupation had to come first. Humanitarianism and contrition.

7th) The labs that were supposed to be making WMD were actually synthesizing cocaine and other drugs. World dope markets were unhappy. Afganistan is back on line with opium, now that the Taliban have been taken out. The job had to be finished. Economics.

[Basharov]

"EconReadr wrote, "He was under oath during the SOTU?""

The "false statements" act, 18 U.S.C. sec. 1001, doesn't require that you be under oath when you lie to the representatives of a federal branch of government, just the lying is enough for conviction (as Martha Stewart found out). Of course, Bush and the whole criminal gang should be impeached and shipped to the Hague for the crime of waging "aggressive war," which is the ultimate international war crime, and the reason we hanged a bunch of German and Japanese leaders and generals after World War Two, but the prohibition against that particular crime seems to apply only to non-Americans.

[BroD]

I agree that WMD was not an honest mistake but a deliberate lie.

I agree with dearieme that the idea that we know the recipe for creating democracies is a delusion.

I was in favor of impeachment in 2003 (on the basis of the lies for war) but felt it would be preferable first to try to remove him electorally.

Since then, he has violated US and international law (and shamed my country) by the facilitating torture.

I agree: impeach him now.

[gordon]

I'm really surprised that the supposed motivations for the war listed by Packer don't include oil, and equally surprised that no commenter has so far made the obvious point that Iraq was and is an oil war. I found the frank acceptance of this, to me, elementary observation by Paul Roberts in "The End of Oil" very refreshing.

[liberal]

howard wrote, "liberal, for what it's worth, the house judiciary committee specifically chose NOT to impeach Nixon over Cambodia, on the not irrational grounds that once you start using the impeachment power on matters of the president's war-making abilities, there's no telling where it will end up."

I'm assuming they didn't indict him on that charge because they were a bunch of cowards.

What "war-making ability"? The President is allowed to make war pursuant to a declaration of war by Congress. He or she isn't entitled to invade other nations on a whim.

[liberal]

howard wrote, "PS. Per the Cambodia example, there is, in my estimation, zero chance of any impeachment being founded upon the notion that Bush misled us into the iraq war."

Are you making a positive/descriptive statement ("in the American political system, it would be difficult or impossible to impeach a president on a matter of war") or a normative statement ("I myself think it would be wrong to impeach a president on a matter of war")?

As a moral issue, Nixon and Kissinger should have been convicted of crimes against humanity for what they did. Bush is at least a war criminal.

[liberal]

howard wrote, "In fact, Nixon wouldn't have been impeached only for Watergate, either: what he was impeached for included Watergate (article I was the 'obsturction of justice' article that concerned Watergate) but also included running a secret police force ('the plumbers') covered in article II and general contempt of congress for lying and failing to turn over materials (article iii)."

Neither of which comes anywhere close to the moral crime he committed by invading Cambodia and conspiring to overthrow Sihanouk.

[howard]

liberal, i don't want to be tarred by you as some kind of nixon and/or invasion-of-cambodia apologist - i'm old enough to have protested the invasion when it happened. so to start with your 4:53 comment, i'm making a descriptive statement.

as for why the judiciary committee chose not to include cambodia as a basis for impeachment, bear in mind that rodino realized, above all else (unlike delay and hyde) that for impeachment to be seen as legitimate, there had to be bipartisan support on the judiciary committee. This put the power to impeach, and to determine the basis for impeachment, in the hands of the moderate republicans (they did still exist in those days!) on the committee, and here's what Hamilton Fish had to say at the time (quoted in Tony Lukas' superb Nightmare): "The President had lied to us about Cambodia, but we couldn't shoulder him with responsibilty for a war many of us had supported." You can make your own judgements of how to interpret that, but i'll say that while it would be nice if we followed the constitutional method for wars, in simple reality, we don't and haven't for a very long time, which takes us back to my earlier point - it's not irrational to fail to impeach on what has become (i'll grant you) the president's war-making abilities.

As for moral crimes, i agree with you completely, but impeachment isn't a moral process - it's a political one.

[liberal]

howard,

OK, I follow you.

But as to "As for moral crimes, i agree with you completely, but impeachment isn't a moral process - it's a political one." I don't see why the Dems couldn't impeach Bush for lying about the _casus belli_.

The only reason not (aside from Dem cowardice) would be some kind of "but-the-President-can-wage-whatever-war-he-wants-to-and-Congress-can't-do-anything-about-it" backlash from the populace. Guess it could happen...

[tom f]

Here's a hypothesis: politicians generally (Dems no less than Repubs.) would rather have a lesser possibility of lording over and shaping an empire than the slightly greater possibility of participating in the attempted creation of a republic.

[RT]

As DOR said in the first post in this thread, WMDs were not an honest mistake. As Barton Gellman reported in the WaPo on May 11, 2003, the Bush war plan placed a very low premium on securing prospective WMD sites, indicating that the Bushies didn't take the WMD threat seriously themselves.

Second, while there's no question of Saddam's ruthlessness, calling his rule "one of the cruelest tyrannies in modern history" is really quite absurd. Even if we exclude the era of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao from "modern history" which is quite a leap to begin with, we've still got Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Charles Taylor, and many others whose standards of ruthlessness rival or exceed that of Saddam.