Clueless or Lying? (Cont'd)
There is still an official story that the Bush administration was clueless about WMDs in Iraq (and to some extent on al Qaeda links as well). Remarkably enough, this is actually their defence against the charge that they were lying.
The recent report of the presidential commission on intelligence, chaired by Yale President Richard Levin, confirms that the major intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, produced intelligence estimates on Iraq that were deeply flawed--greatly overestimating the threat posed by Iraq to the United States.
The commission wasn't specifically asked to consider how political and policy people used the intelligence reports. The commission leaves the clear impression that the reports were misleading on their own, as it were, with no distortion or torquing from political people. But they literally didn't investigate whether there was political torquing after the reports were prepared, to give an even more slanted wrong view to the president and the public. Even if the major official reports were more wrong than right, there may have been a judicious or statesmanlike element of lying in the mix as well.
Getting back to an old hobby-horse of mine: Eisenhower was faced with grossly exaggerated reports about Soviet missiles in the 50s. He pretty consistently treated these reports as crap, which they were. If bright, highly paid people at senior levels are helpless dupes of faulty documents, why are they collecting pay cheques?
Even more to the point, if the Bushies were basically going to accept the major intelligence reports, why set up the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon?
Now there is a report that Carl Ford might testify against John Bolton. There have been allegations that Bolton took it upon himself to manage the flow of information--intimidating people who had reports Bolton didn't want to hear or take any further, and keeping people away from decisive meetings. Carl Ford was with the one agency (the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research) that was most consistently correct--and quite consistently disagreed with the CIA. (Via Kevin Drum: In fact their tendency to be correct goes back to the 50s; see Steve Clemons link from Drum).
Do the Bushies have a strategy to admit that this one guy, Bolton, lied or distorted the evidence, so they can feed him to the wolves and move on? (In a way they've already done that with Colin Powell). Or is Ford going off on his own? If the latter, does this mean he didn't get the think tank/private sector job he was hoping for?
Bolton's confirmation will only be stopped if Lincoln Chafee votes nay, and that doesn't look likely.
UPDATE: More on these issues in an exchange between Wesley Clark and Richard Perle. Who was more correct in his estimate of the danger posed by Iraq in September 2002?
My main interest in all this is my "Spartan" argument. One could argue that a big part of the "Vietnam Syndrome" was the belief that the case for war was too weak both on grounds of U.S. self-interest and on grounds of justice. Vietnam itself may not matter all that much, and it would be foolish to try to be the world's policemen. But neighbouring states may fall like dominoes, giving many victories to Communism. But: those states may not matter all that much, either.
The Bushies have been determined to make the strongest case they can based both on justice and U.S. self-interest, and they have been willing to go at least a bit beyond the facts they know in order to do so. 9/11 makes them feel that anything they do militarily, anywhere, is now a matter of self-defence--even torturing a grab-bag of people in Abu Ghraib or Syria. The appeals about WMDs and al Qaeda were both attempts to say: Saddam is threatening Peoria and Spokane, so we must fight--in fact, it's preemptive, almost retaliatory. The Spartan part of this is that it's good for morale to believe or pretend that there is no possible tension or opposition between your self-interest and justice. Everything you do is just; nothing you fail to do is required by justice. In always wanting to protect and pursue your legitimate self-interest, you are obviously no worse than anyone else, even if you are no better. But if your actions always coincide exactly with justice, you are probably, in all modesty, morally superior to everyone else. Self-defence is the one kind of self-interest that most people concede is required by justice. It was also important to mention the liberation of Iraqis--as reason number three or higher--and it is important to provide a security force to help elections and a constitution get underway. There is very little honest explanation, however, of why the Iraqis had to be liberated ahead of anyone else who needs it, and certainly no admission that most people who need liberation will not get it anytime soon. The Spartans want to assure everyone that they are the liberators of Greece, and indeed that they are on their way to liberate. As the Athenians point out to the Melians, this is substantially false: the Spartans only liberate others when they are convinced it is in their self-interest to do so; and for this reason, they are almost always not on the way to liberate.
I'm reading about Woodrow Wilson in Paris: 1919, so I'll have more on this soon. By the way, the Spartans did eventually liberate quite a few Greeks--partly at least by accident, or despite themselves, but when it happened they were very pleased: we always knew we were on the side of justice, as well as our self-interest!
|
