Comments on: BILL QUICK ON IRAQ ‘VICTORY’

By: Nagarajan Sivakumar

Nagarajan Sivakumar — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 02:14:18 +0000

“Al Qaeda is a 98% myth”
Hmmmm… i think the US troops in Afghanistan need to know this. just like the troops who fought in Anbar province.

Dont forget to tell that to the Sunnis in Anbar either - i think they were all fighting myths.

Imagine the amount of time and money the US has wasted investigating the 98% myth of Al Qaeda…

Chuck, i hope the Obama administration offered you a job at the NSA - they need you.

By: Chuck Tucson

Chuck Tucson — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:41:25 +0000

I still think all of these nations would have stronger al queda factions if the US hadn’t taken action in Iraq.

Al Qaeda is a 98% myth. Iraq was on the chopping block regardless of 9/11. That just made the process easier to sell to the American People.

By: Bill Arnold

Bill Arnold — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 01:34:56 +0000

Overall Bill Quick’s assessment is very rational. Since we’re quibbling:
(1) It is unclear where Pakistan is going politically, and according to recent reports they’ve chosen a different route on permissive action links than the U.S. did, physically separating the fissionables and the devices, at different sites if I recall correctly. (Looking for a citation). Perhaps they are positioning themselves for arsenal destruction if the political situation gets dicey. Wouldn’t want to bet on it though.

(2) It is unclear how close Iran is to deliverable devices. There seems to be an element of national pride in the uranium enrichment program, and missile-deliverable (non-gun-design) weapons are a non-trivial engineering challenge involving testing, unless they take a shortcut, swallow pride, and use somebody else’s design. (FWIW, by this point the level of uncertainty in the amount of LEU produced by their current public centrifuges is or will soon be high enough that they could divert some to a covert program to enrich to HEU without being discovered, but an implosion design using HEU would involve testing.)
Plus, it is possible that the Iranian program’s progress will suffer from “induced Murphy’s Law” incidents, or be more directly set back through bombardment.

By: carolynp

carolynp — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:40:06 +0000

I’m actually shocked that anyone would accuse you of being optimistic on Iraq. I truly appreciated your honesty in the last article that you reference. I’m pretty far right and I’m a Bush fan, but that doesn’t mean I need blinders or that I don’t want the truth. That said, I notice people have selective memory regarding Iraq. I remember reading in Newsweek that Iraq’s jets were stepping up attacks (crowding, etc…) by 400% the month Bush took office. It seems apparent to me that Hussein was attempting to provoke Bush into a confrontation and that he thought Bush would never have the political will to follow through on. I don’t agree that 9/11 was “the” cause of the US invasion of Iraq, I believe that Hussein caused a US invasion by refusing to honor the peace accords that he had signed. 9/11 created the political will, but the writing was on the wall. In my opinion, the US would have already suffered another 9/11 if there had been no show of US force in the middle east. I don’t have half the education that you and Mr. Crittendon have, so I am probably in the wrong on this. I still think all of these nations would have stronger al queda factions if the US hadn’t taken action in Iraq.

By: gunjam

gunjam — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 20:28:13 +0000

Sobering. Sobering indeed.

By: michael reynolds

michael reynolds — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 19:58:57 +0000

We fell in a hole and managed to pull ourselves back out. That’s not victory, that’s us getting back to the starting point — but muddier.