Right Wing Nut House

In some ways, I sympathize with the media and their efforts to try and cover the confusing twists, turns, ins and outs of the Iraq War. The political situation especially is so muddled that one literally needs a scorecard to tell who the players are.

The insurgency also has so many elements as to almost defy belief. Then there are the shadowy players - the militias - who at times seem to be playing both sides against the middle. Coalition forces have used some of the militias to help with local security while these same militias have carried out sectarian attacks that have contributed mightily to the instability in the country.

What’s a reporter/network/newspaper to do?

They can start by rolling up their sleeves and getting their hands dirty. By that I mean if reporters are to do their jobs it is absolutely essential that they get beyond the body counts and simplistic summaries of which political parties (or insurgent groups) are doing what to whom and start giving context to what is going on in country. In order to carry out that mission, reporters are going to have to start doing a little of their own work and stop relying on stringers and hangers-on for information that turns out to be little better than rumor.

Never has the failings of the American media in Iraq been more obvious than the recent reporting on sectarian violence - strife that continues at fairly high level despite assurances by officials of the American military and Iraqi government that the situation is much better. But the wild, out of control rumor mongering by the western media during the worst of the violence highlighted the pathetically poor job being done by in-country reporters who evidently fell for al Qaeda in Iraq propaganda in a disinformation operation that was as carefully planned by the terrorists as the bombing of the Golden Shrine in Samarra itself.

Yes we should cut them plenty of slack given the horrible security conditions for Americans outside of the fortified Green Zone. A western face that would show itself at a demonstration or any other gathering of Iraqis belongs to a brave individual indeed. But the point I’m trying to make is that there is good reporting from Iraq - reporting that gives depth and understanding to the problems and personalities at play and goes beyond the gory details of terrorist attacks and body counts that make up so much of the “news” that filters down to the average American. The question is why there isn’t a good deal more of it.

Specifically, both the New York Times and Washington Post have had excellent backgrounders on Iraqi militias in the past month (both articles now behind pay archive walls). Both articles played the story fairly straight pointing out that both Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Militia and the much larger and more influential Badr Brigades (which is the armed wing of the major political party in Iraq the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq or SCIRI) have infiltrated the police and the army as well as being virtually independent of any government control. And while they have worked with American forces at times to take out al Qaeda in Iraq cells, these militias remain outside the law for the most part and have been accused (with some evidence) of dispensing a kind of vigilante justice to Sunni Muslims who they believe are part of the insurgency.

Also, CNN recently did a long (7 minute) piece on al-Sadr and his growing influence on the political landscape of Iraq. Sadr has gone from being a thorn in the side of the American military to being a thorn in the side of the government in that his call for an immediate American withdrawal as well as his poorly disguised fealty to Iran flies in the face of the more moderate Shia elements who are trying to form a government with the Kurds and Sunnis.

Then there are the tribal militias who tend to be little better than outlaw gangs. Practicing murder, rape, extortion, and outright thievery, many of these tribal militias carry out revenge killings for money and are considered a big part of the monumental law and order problem in Iraq today. That problem was hugely exacerbated by Saddam Hussein who, in the final days of his regime, flung open the doors of his prisons and let loose an army of common criminals estimated at up to 100,000 murderers, rapists, thieves, and kidnappers. These criminals have formed ill-organized gangs who prey upon Iraqi citizens of all religious stripes and are a security problem on top of the other miseries that the new government must deal with.

StrategyPage:

For the average Iraqi, the biggest complaint is crime. Murder, extortion, robbery, burglary, kidnapping, muggings and carjackings are things that every Iraqi, especially in Baghdad, have to worry about. There are thousands of criminal gangs in Iraq. Some of them are basically enforcers for tribal leadership or the local religious leader. These semi-legitimate gangs get “paid” by whatever they are given, or take, in return for their protective services. This is basically an extortion racket, and the police will often leave these guys alone as long as they don’t get greedy, and more violent.

But the most worrisome gangs are those that kidnap, murder (for hire, or as a side effect of some other crime), rape and barge into, and loot, peoples homes. Many of the violent gangs are very temporary, either because the cops, or local vigilantes catch them, or because members find less stressful, and dangerous, employment.

The most common crime fighting tactic is to put more gunmen on the street, particularly at night. For most of Iraq, the police have brought peace to the streets in daylight. But night is another matter. That’s when more of the criminals are about, and when they are harder to catch. Most police don’t like to operate at night. There are several thousand special police (SWAT and the like) who are trained and equipped to go gangster hunting at night, and some of these are being assigned to that task. But for the moment, the priority is still taking down terrorist gangs.

The ins and outs of the political situation is much easier to report but even here, most reporters simply fall back on tired, shallow analyses that reveal little of the major forces at work to unify the country on one hand and drive the factions apart on the other. For instance, the number one reason that the SCIRI is so dominant is a very simple one; it has been organizing and planning for regime change for nearly 30 years.

The party formed during the 1970’s and organized effectively through their offices in Damascus and Tehran. Then after the fall of Saddam, the SCIRI hit the ground running and were miles ahead of any other political party that had to start almost from scratch, although Ayad Allawi’s secular Iraqi National Accord party had been around since the early 1990’s. The fact is, while there were political organizations involving all the factions, the kind of nuts and bolts organizing done by SCIRI was far beyond the scope of any Kurdish or Sunni group. It goes without saying that this kind of advantage translated into success for the SCIRI at the polls.

Then there is the political tug of war within the umbrella group of Shia parties that is presently trying to form a coalition to run the government. Some Shia factions wish to cut out the Sunnis and Kurds entirely while others wish to include them. The situation is further muddied by the machinations of smaller Shia parties that are jostling for cabinet posts and other means of influence. And there are the Kurds and Sunnis with their own factions, particularly the Sunnis whose umbrella group includes those who are fighting the Americans and the government itself as well as more moderate Sunnis like Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer who served as interim President following the handover of sovereignty in June, 2004 and currently serves as one of three Vice Presidents.

Clearly, much of this information would be of little interest to the average reader. But that is no excuse for the kind of cynical, lazy, and incomplete reporting done by people whose job is to see that Americans are informed about what is going on in a place where their sons and daughters are helping to rebuild a country at great personal danger and sacrifice to themselves.

As Americans, we should demand that they do a better job.

This is disappointing but not unexpected:

All British and United States troops serving in Iraq will be withdrawn within a year in an effort to bring peace and stability to the country.

The news came as defence chiefs admitted privately that the British troop commitment in Afghanistan may last for up to 10 years.

The planned pull-out from Iraq follows the acceptance by London and Washington that the presence of the coalition, mainly composed of British and US troops, is now seen as the main obstacle to peace.

According to a senior defence source directly involved in planning the withdrawal, Britain is the driving force behind the scheme. The early spring of next year has been identified as the optimum time for the start of the complex and dangerous operation.

The italicized portion of that excerpt is not in quotes which indicates a bit of editorializing by the Telegraph. The only people in the American government who are making that claim are the leakers in the intelligence establishment who have been at war with the Bush Administration since before the liberation of Iraq. Even the recently leaked National Intelligence Estimate from 2003 on Iraq did not claim that the insurgency would be “driven by the occupation” but rather by sectarian and other factors unleashed by the downfall of Saddam.

The idea that Britain is the “driving force” behind this plan is a smokescreen. If true, the idea to float this trial balloon originated in Washington. I just can’t believe that the Brits would even talk to anyone in the press about this without clearing it with the Bush Administration. Junior coalition partners do no drive policy.

The real question we should be asking is has the situation on the ground materially changed in the past few weeks to justify the sudden and complete pullout of coalition forces?

The answer to that depends on who you talk to. American commanders have given the Iraqi security forces middling to high marks for the way they handled the sectarian violence following the destruction of the Shrine in Samarra. Would the 325,000 Iraqis - the projected force structure by the end of this year - be able to manage security for the country without the help of coalition forces by next spring? That seems an open question at the moment. And anyone who thinks they can project the course of political events in Iraq over the next year which would impact the answer to that question dramatically, please give me a call and handle my stock portfolio; someone so good at prognosticating an unknowable future would make me a millionaire in a couple of months.

Also, the idea that we would precipitously withdraw all of our forces willy nilly is a left wing fantasy. As much as liberals would like to re-live their greatest triumph of watching America humiliated a la the last helicopter lifting off the roof of our embassy in Saigon, it ain’t going to happen. There is going to be a residual American presence of perhaps 25,000 men - a tripwire force - to prevent Iran and Syria from getting any grandiose ideas about taking advantage of Iraq’s weakness vis a vis any outside threat. And drawing down to that number will probably be graduated process - unless Democrats seize control of Congress in November in which case look for a repeat of the Democratic Congressional “triumph” of the class of ‘74 (generally considered the most liberal Congress in recent memory) in yanking funding for the war.

And that brings us to the real reason for this trial balloon; the growing prospect that the Democrats will indeed take control of at least the Senate and perhaps the House as well in the upcoming midterm elections. As remote as that prospect seemed as recently as 3 months ago, the fact is that the numbers have been trending Democratic since early last summer. It has not reached the point yet that the big gun prognosticators have upped the number of at risk Republican House seats significantly, but that could change if a rush of Republican retirements - as reported here - come to pass:

“If you look at past experience, it would suggest that you tend not to get a last-minute rush” of retirements, said Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “But I don’t know if that’s going to be the case this time. I think that actually the scandals, the problems, the headaches may cause a number of people two or three months from now to decide that maybe it’s time for a change, maybe they need to spend more time with their families. … I think we could see up to 40.”

Forty open seats with Republicans probably defending the overwhelming majority of them could - could - spell disaster for the party in November.

For the moment (and as long as the redistricting plan in Texas remains in effect) the Republicans would appear to have the strength to be able to hang on to their House majority by the slimmest of margins. But if Texas is forced to alter its district lines, all bets would be off. From a nuts and bolts point of view, losing 4 or 5 seats in any Texas redistricting challenge could tip the balance in favor of the Democrats nationally.

This scenario doesn’t take into account an energized Democratic party and a depressed Republican one. Even in so-called “safe” GOP seats (margin of victory in 2002 at +55%) it doesn’t take a soothsayer to tell you that a switch of as little as 7-8 thousand votes in a few districts that are now considered “safe” could spell the difference in who controls the House in January, 2007.

And that, dear readers, would mean that George W. Bush would face at the very least impeachment proceedings in the Judiciary Committee. A Democratic Congress would have Representative John Conyers as Chairman of that Committee and the frothing-at-the-mouth conspiracy nut already has an impeachment report all written up and ready to present to the Committee. It will probably be the first order of business for that Committee come January.

Which brings us back to Iraq and this trial balloon. There is little doubt that Iraq is currently a drag on GOP electoral fortunes. If the numbers keep getting worse, Bush may feel that he has no choice but to withdraw in order to prevent the catastrophe of having to fight off an impeachment inquiry. And at the moment, there is nothing that energizes the Democratic base more than the delicious prospect of humiliating George Bush and the Republicans by holding impeachment hearings that would destroy the Bush presidency.

There is another, less likely factor driving this trial balloon; the belief that Iran will become such a problem over the next year that we would have little choice but to initiate some kind of large scale military action against the mullahs. If so, re-deploying our forces to facilitate such an attack would make sense. It is extremely doubtful the new Iraqi government would allow any such attack on Iran given their inability to fight off an external threat from such a large army so any military action against the mullahs would have to be launched from somewhere else.

The problem with this scenario is that it is unclear whether any large scale raid to take out Iranian nuclear capability could solve the twin problems of overthrowing the mullahs and destroying the Iranian nuclear program. Only a massive invasion involving hundreds of thousands of troops could accomplish both those goals Thus, it is not likely that any military action involving a significant number of American ground troops is probably in the cards.

I have little doubt that this is a serious proposal and that the Administration will be carefully looking at both reaction from the public and Congressional Republicans to see if such an action would be efficacious in the present circumstances. What worries me is that many Republicans would see such a proposal as a life preserver and grab onto it in hopes that it might save their political hides in November.

Before signing on, I would suggest they and the rest of us wait to hear from our military commanders on the ground in Iraq. From what they’ve said recently, there would be little justification for such a pullout. But given the bleak political realities facing the Administration, they may have little choice but to go along with such a proposal which, in my humble opinion, would betray the sacrifice of the men and women who have fought so long and hard in Iraq as well as the sacrifice of their families.

UPDATE

The US military command in Iraq is specifically denying these reports:

Meanwhile, the U.S. military in Iraq said on Sunday media reports that America and Britain planned to pull all troops out of Iraq by spring 2007 were “completely false,” reiterating that there was no timetable for withdrawal.

Two British newspapers reported on Sunday that the pull-out plan followed an acceptance by the two governments that the presence of foreign troops in Iraq was now an obstacle to securing peace.

But a spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq reiterated previous statements by U.S. and Iraqi officials that foreign troops would be gradually withdrawn from the country once Iraqi security forces were capable of guaranteeing security.

“This news report on a withdrawal of forces within a set timeframe is completely false,” Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson said of the stories in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Mirror, which quoted unnamed senior defense ministry sources.

(HT: The Next Hurrah)

This is perfectly in keeping with a trial balloon. The military can safely deny such a report.

But watch the first comments on this report from a senior Administration official - Rumsfeld, Hadley, or Rice. Unless there is a categorical denial, this story will get legs over the next few days.

My post last Monday that dealt with exaggerated reporting by the MSM of the Iraq “civil war” turned out to be rather prescient if I do say so myself.

Yesterday, General George Casey, America’s top military commander in Iraq, gave a detailed analysis of what went on during the admittedly serious but hysterically over dramatized violence following the destruction of the golden dome on the Shia shrine in Samarra and came to the conclusion that both in numbers of incidents and severity of the violence, the MSM failed miserably in reporting accurately what was going on:

The top U.S. commander in Iraq yesterday declared an end to a 10-day wave of sectarian violence that killed an estimated 350 civilians, asserting that many reports of violence were “exaggerated.”

“It appears that the crisis has passed,” said Army Gen. George Casey, giving a detailed public report card. “But we all should be clear that Iraqis remain under threat of terrorist attacks by those who will stop at nothing to undermine the formation of this constitutionally elected government. … They tried to have this [be] the straw that broke the camel’s back, and it failed.”

(HT: Powerline)

As I wrote on Monday (my information coming from about a dozen Iraqi bloggers that any reporter could have read if they took the time), Al Qaeda in Iraq made it part of their strategy to have propaganda cadres fan out and spread false stories and rumors about the violence that our MSM, eager to finally have their three year old predictions of civil war in Iraq come true, fell for hook, line, and sinker: Here’s what I wrote about the media’s predictions about civil war on Monday:

The Iraq “civil war” theme almost immediately became media short hand for the failures of the Bush Administration. It has since become a yardstick to measure the incompetence of the authorities to deal with the daunting set of problems facing the country in the aftermath of the war and in trying to build a strong government based on democratic values. But has the expectation of civil war led to reporters in Iraq swallowing disinformation from al Qaeda cells about horrendous death and destruction across the country that simply doesn’t exist?

General Casey:

He also said the number of violent incidents turned out to be lower than press and security forces reported in the immediate aftermath of the bombing of the revered Shi’ite Askariya mosque in Samarra, north of Baghdad. Gen. Casey said that in a reported 30 attacks on mosques, only two were severely damaged. Of eight mosques that were reported damaged, inspections showed only one had damage — a broken window.

“The overall levels of violence did not increase substantially as a result of the bombing,” he said in a statement that seems at odds with the 10 days of television footage and commentary. “It took us a few days to sort our way through what we considered in a lot of cases to be exaggerated reports.”

John Hinderaker points out that this kind of biased reporting is impossible to counter:

Initial reports of deaths in violence that followed the mosque bombing turned out to be inflated by a factor of four. In this and other respects, reporting on sectarian violence in Iraq resembles the reporting on Hurricane Katrina. No doubt many in the press and on the left are disappointed that al Qaeda’s effort to provoke civil war in Iraq has failed. But, once again, misleading headlines do damage that subsequent corrections can’t repair.

By most credible reports - both from Iraq and the Pentagon - most of the the violence done by sectarian mobs was either non-existent or blown out of proportion. Par for the course when examining how the MSM continues to misinform the public about what is really going on in Iraq and how the Iraqi people are struggling to overcome the numerous problems associated with re-building a nation from scratch.

Have American reporters, ensconced comfortably in Iraq’s “Green Zone” and relying on stringers and runners to gather information on the chaos that continues in the wake of the Samarra Shrine bombing, been duped by al Qaeda operatives into reporting widespread violence that never happened? How accurate a job can reporters do when chaos reigns and they must rely on second and third hand reports to write their stories?

On Saturday, I wrote a post about how so many media analysts have been predicting an Iraq civil war almost since the statue of Saddam was toppled. I supplied about a dozen links to stories over the past three years that all said the same thing; civil war was imminent and nothing could be done to stop it.

I feel constrained to point out that this theme is a no brainer. Sectarian tensions were kept tightly under wraps by force when Saddam was in power so it stands to reason that once the tyrant was removed, these tensions would bubble to the surface and spill over into violence as age old hatreds and blood feuds were allowed free reign.

You may recall something very similar happened during the break up of the made-up country of Yugoslavia after the death of Marshall Tito. Yugoslavia was an afterthought, the solution to the intractable problem of what to do with the flotsam and jetsam of the old Hapsburg empire following its collapse after World War I. With Tito’s death, the region exploded as the dictator’s careful power sharing regime among the factions collapsed and old nationalist aspirations came to the fore. The problem of the Balkans is far from being solved and only the presence of UN peacekeepers and NATO troops keeps the lid on sectarian and nationalist violence.

The Iraq “civil war” theme almost immediately became media short hand for the failures of the Bush Administration. It has since become a yardstick to measure the incompetence of the authorities to deal with the daunting set of problems facing the country in the aftermath of the war and in trying to build a strong government based on democratic values. But has the expectation of civil war led to reporters in Iraq swallowing disinformation from al Qaeda cells about horrendous death and destruction across the country that simply doesn’t exist?

Following the destruction of the Askariya Shrine in Samarra, it appeared that predictions of civil war would finally come true. Apparently, sectarian violence exploded across the country as Shia militias - aided and abetted by the Shia dominated police and army - burned Sunni mosques, killed innocent Sunni civilians, and spread death and destruction throughout the country.

I say apparently because there are conflicting reports on just how many mosques have actually been damaged or destroyed, how many people have been killed, and most importantly, how close the country really is to actual civil war. Here’s today’s New York Times:

Sectarian violence appeared to be ebbing across Iraq on Sunday, with more people venturing outside for the first time in days. Nonetheless, Shiite militiamen retained control of some Sunni mosques they had raided, and scattered mayhem left at least 14 people dead, including three American soldiers. At least 227 people have been killed since the shrine bombing.

Please note that number of 227 dead carries with it no authoritative confirmation. The number is not coming from the Iraqi government or the American military. As far as we know, it is the best guess of the reporter. And the reports of “dozens” of Sunni mosques being attacked and damaged is still being reported by AP.

The Iraqi Interior Ministry (which has an interest in downplaying the violence) reported on Saturday a different story. From Iraq the Model:

Mosques attacked/shot at without damage: 21 not 51
Moderately damaged: 6 not 23
Mosques destroyed totally: 1 not 3
Mosques occupied by militias: 1 not 2 (evacuated later).
Civilians killed: 119 not 183

Why the discrepancy?

I think it’s a given that the Interior Ministry is downplaying the violence to some extent. But consider this from Iraqi Bloggers Central: on who carried out the attack on the Shrine and why:

They (al Qaeda) have made it clear since late 2003 or early 2004 that platform number one in their mission is to generate a sectarian civil war in Iraq between Sunni and Shi’a Arabs to drive out the U.S. A war between these parties is also useful to them in that if Shi’a are (or perceived to be) attacking Sunni Arabs, the Return Party (Sunni insurgents) can step in as the Sunnis’ protectors. The great thing about a plot like this is that the perpetrators need no higher goal than chaos for the sake of chaos. It fits with their M.O. (ala Tal Afar). Their propaganda cells can run around spreading false stories about attacks on Sunnis and Sunni mosques, or they can sit back and let Iraqis do it for them. They can put on black pajamas, Iraqi Army uniforms, or come as they are. It doesn’t matter. They can launch attacks indiscriminately on Sunni or Shi’a Iraqis (They don’t care. Either they’re turn-coat deviants or “traitorous apostates”), or they can let Iraqis do it to each other. There is no sense in which blowing up a holy site in Iraq redounds against them. They’ve been sending carbombs and murder-suicide bombers against plenty of mosques up until now. How could this hurt them more?

The point being how much information are we getting first hand? How much information from the Interior Ministry has been confirmed?? How many stories regarding these atrocities have been verified? And as the blogger points out, anyone can dress themselves in army uniforms or in the black, hooded costume of Muktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Militia. So when the New York Times says that some of these attacks have been carried out by Sadr’s militiamen or elements of the armed forces, can we really take that information at face value?

I don’t envy the job of reporters who have to try and sort all of this out and try to make sense of it. But it seems pretty clear to me that there has been at least some exaggeration of the violence and mayhem. Some of that is the natural result of reporting in a war zone. Some of it is probably disinformation being spread by al Qadea as well as rumor mongering by ordinary Iraqis. And some of it may include some wishful thinking on the part of reporters that the long awaited civil war has finally started.

I would recommend you read a lot of Iraqi blogs to get a sense of what is really happening. The two hours I spent going through about a dozen sites brought me to two conclusions:

1. The violence is serious and people are afraid.

2. No one thinks a civil war is imminent. In fact, almost all believe that the destruction of the Shrine in Samarra has accomplished exactly the opposite of what the perpetrators were hoping for. Instead of a civil war, it has brought the Sunnis and Shias closer together with a firm belief that no outside force like al Qaeda is going to derail what they are trying to build - a democratic, united Iraq.

I doubt very much you’ll see that theme mentioned much in the media over the next few days.

BULLWINKLE: Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat.

ROCKY: Again?

BULLWINKLE: Nothin’ up my sleeve. (riiiiiiiip!) Presto!

LION: ROAR!

ROCKY: Wrong hat.

BULLWINKLE: I take a size 7 1/2.

Bullwinkle tried that trick about 10 times but was never able to master it. He pulled everything but a rabbit out of that hat, proving if nothing else that he was bound and determined to make that rabbit appear despite being wrong so often in the past.

For some reason, Bullwinkle’s efforts in this regard reminded me of media coverage over the last 3 years of the Iraq Civil War.

What’s that you say? You mean to tell me that there hasn’t been an Iraq Civil War? You’d never know it by reading what the “experts” have been saying over the past several years, including our own State Department, the CIA, and all of those wise and prescient “analysts” so beloved by the media.

Here’s a random listing of articles from “experts” telling us that the Iraq Civil War was imminent or that it had already started.

“Iraq’s Civil War” Slate (5/2-03)

Beirut Redux The New Republic (5/15/03)

“CIA Officers Warn of Iraq Civil War, Contradicting Bush’s Optimism” Common Dreams, (1/22/04)

“Civil War in Iraq?” Anti-War.Com (7/22/04)

“Possibility of Iraq civil war looms large” China Daily (9/22/04)

“Iraq Edges Toward Civil War” United Press (12/28/04)

“Seymour Hersh: Iraq “Moving Towards Open Civil War” Democracy Now (5/11/05)

“Allawi: This is the Start of Civil War” Times Online (7/10/2005)

“Weekend of slaughter propels Iraq towards all-out civil war” Times Online (7/18-05)

“Undeclared Civil War in Iraq” CBS News (9/26/05)

Iraq Edges (What, again? ed.) Toward Civil War Al Jazeera (10/4/05)

Iraq: Game Over Tom Paine (12/22/05)

It would be hilarious if the subject matter weren’t so serious.

If there’s one thing that the press has yet to realize (and even bloggers who should know better) is that just about every word they’ve ever written can be retrieved with a click of a mouse button. So when we can easily see how many times they’ve cried “wolf!” in the past with regards to an Iraqi civil war, we can begin to examine events in that bloody, tragic country as they really are and not through the prism of bias and stupidity.

Iraq is in trouble. No one with half a brain denies that. The fact that Iraq has been in trouble since the statue of Saddam fell escaped many observers including most of the civilian Pollyannas in the Department of Defense and even some Rebeccas of Sunnybrook Farms in the White House. The forces at work spreading chaos, blood, and sectarian divisions have at times been underestimated and downplayed. This miscalculation has cost both Iraqi and American lives and contributed in no small way to the current state of affairs Iraq finds itself.

The war in Iraq is now not between America on one side and homegrown insurgents and their allies in al Qaeda on the other. The war is between Nihilism and Order. It is between hope and despair. It is between the past and the future. And most assuredly, it is between democracy and tyranny.

We might not particularly like the kind of democracy that Iraq is moving toward. It doesn’t look much like ours and it incorporates some elements of religion that most Americans would find unacceptable. Be that as it may, democracy is not an event, it is a process (HT: Reynolds). And the process, despite the bombings, the murders, the beheadings, the blowing up of mosques, and all the other furies of war that have been unleashed on that benighted country, is moving forward.

It may be moving two steps ahead and one back at a time. And in the end, time itself may work to destroy the fragile hopes and dreams of a people who have suffered through a conflict that features actors who have more at stake than what happens in one tiny corner of Mesopotamia. Make no mistake; both the United States and al Qaeda, as well as most of the other countries in the region, are fighting this war for goals that reach far beyond the sandy expanse of Iraq. This is a war for the future and what shape it will take. In that respect, every nation in the world is affected by what’s happening in Iraq.

It’s always easier to spread chaos than instill order in societies that wish to be free. For that reason, we’ll always be at a disadvantage against our enemies in Iraq. But maybe, just maybe, there is just enough hope in the future among just enough people in Iraq that in the end, it is they who will be able to will a new Iraq into existence. Consider:

* Every single politician of note from all sects and all regions of the country have called for an end to the violence.

* Every prominent religious leader (including the problematic cleric Muqtada al-Sadr) have appealed for calm.

* In the mixed neighborhoods where Shias and Sunnis live side by side, there has been cooperation in protecting each others lives and property. Many Sunni mosques are being guarded by Shias and vice versa.

* Both Sunnis and Shias have begun rebuilding the Shrine in Samarra. This began less than 12 hours after the bombing.

* The same Powerline reader who passed along the rebuilding news, points out that it appears the bombings have had the opposite effect; it has brought Shias and Sunnis together in a unity that was not there before the destruction of the Shrine.

In short, the forces at work to keep a civil war from happening are strong. Are they strong enough?

Only time and circumstance will reveal the answer to that question. But I’m sure of one thing; the people who have so confidently been predicting civil war in Iraq for 3 years haven’t been right yet. Why believe them now?

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

Every once and a while over the last few years, I have come very close to saying to hell with it and tossing George Bush and the Republicans over the side. That’s when the left comes to Bush’s rescue and proves all over again why even allowing them to get a whiff of regaining power is extremely hazardous to the collective health of the west not to mention the personal safety and well-being of hundreds of millions of people.

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

The problem with liberals isn’t only Bush Derangement Syndrome. If that were the case, they would be easy to dismiss. The ragamuffins who mindlessly mouth their hatred of all things Bush and the intellectual dilettantes who enable them have become caricatures, cardboard cutouts of a political opposition. They are as relevant to the political debate in America as a flight of quacking ducks.

The real problem with serious leftist critiques of the Administration is that they actually get some things right - but start from the cockeyed premise that America’s response to 9/11 has made things worse.

I sympathize with some of these critiques on a couple of levels. The choices made by the Bush Administration have indeed sharpened sectarian tensions between Shias and Sunnis in the Middle East, provided fodder for radical Islamists to preach their vision of Holy War against the “Crusaders,” given Iran an opening to acquire influence in the region, and threatened the stability of the corrupt, autocratic regimes who are sitting on top of about 20% of the world’s oil.

All this may be true to one degree or another. The problem with these critiques is that they fail utterly and completely to address in any sane or rational way what else could have been done in response to 9/11.

By sane or rational, I’m talking about the curiously myopic notion advanced by liberals that if only we had done exactly the same things to prevent terrorism after 9/11 as we had done before, none of the problems brought about by going to war in Afghanistan and Iraq would have happened. The belief by the left that the Clinton/Albright law enforcement approach - treating terrorists as criminals - could have been sustained in the face of Bin Laden’s massive success on 9/11 shows that liberals have learned absolutely nothing from that event and indeed, continue to downplay its significance or ignore it altogether.

For example,to say that Iraq was an “elective” war is correct. But by struggling to effectively refute the idea that our liberation of Iraq was the next logical step in the war against the Islamic radicals, their criticism only points to the overarching problem with all serious liberal analyses of the War on Terror; either 9/11 for all intents and purposes didn’t happen or we have “overreacted” to that seminal event.

This is the “We are doing exactly what Osama wants” critique which may be satisfying on a political level in that it makes for an excellent-sounding riposte to Administration arguments. But deluded enemies often wish for disastrous confrontations. Think of the Japanese militarists who pushed for a knockout blow with the Pearl Harbor attack. They wanted war, but they didn’t suspect our strength of resolve.

Osama’s learning the truth of the old infidel saw: be careful what you wish for.

By any yardstick, Bin Laden has been hurt and hurt badly over the last 4 years. His ranks have been thinned considerably. His financial resources have been targeted relentlessly (one of the most underreported successes of the war). His operatives have been killed or captured in dozens of countries. According to recent polls, his popularity has waned considerably throughout the Muslim world. The fact that he himself is still alive and kicking (we think) is almost irrelevant. I say almost because obviously, killing or capturing the maniac would be a victory of sorts. Whether our liberal friends would recognize it as such is doubtful even though they themselves, by their criticism of the Administration for not capturing him, have set the destruction of Bin Laden as a major benchmark in judging the success of the war.

But beyond what we’ve done to him, are we really doing what Bin Laden “wants” or are we doing what he predicted would happen?

The proof is in the pudding. As a terrorist, Bin Laden may be a mastermind. But as a strategic planner, he is an utter failure. While predicting some of the reactions in the Middle East to American countermeasures against terror, he failed to see a host of other, more detrimental outcomes which are in the process of making his dream of a worldwide Islamic Caliphate less probable and in fact, a pipe dream.

While Bin Laden foresaw the overthrow of the old order in the Middle East as a result of American policies, the forces at work to affect change are not of his making or choosing. In fact,they are the antithesis of of what he desired. Even with an ascendant Hamas on the West Bank and a powerful Hizballah in Lebanon, radical Islamists are being either contained or defeated elsewhere in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Egypt, and even Syria. And the admittedly dangerous situations in Iraq and Lebanon - where sectarianism threatens the tiny steps made toward democracy - nevertheless ignores the huge opportunity to deal Bin Laden’s dreams a death blow from which he could not possibly recover.

Where the left correctly sees chaos and confusion, there are also tidal historical forces at work that regardless of what kind of governments emerge in Iraq and a Lebanon, are going to change the face of the Middle East to the detriment of Bin Laden and his plans. In the short term, he may gain from the violence and despair wrought by both the resistance of the old order and his al Qaeda minions. But in the end, he loses due to either the emergence of a new kind of Arab nationalism friendly to democracy and democratic countries or a new kind of hybrid government with a justice system based mostly on Sharia law but also containing elements of western democracy like freedom of the press and tolerance for secular political parties.

In the end, Bin Laden may indeed have “wanted” the kind of response from America to 9/11 but I doubt very much he’s sitting in his cave gloating.

Don’t tell that to Simon Jenkins of the Times Online. Jenkins has written a scathing critique of the Bush/Blair Axis of Evil. And while making some salient points (many of which I outline above), Jenkins analysis suffers from a breathtaking naivete that more than 4 years after 9/11 sounds almost quaint in its old-fashioned, ostrich-like tendency to belittle the impact of 9/11 as well as criticize the American response to it:

On any objective measure, terrorism in the West is a trivial crime. True, New York and London saw outrages in 2001 and 2005 respectively. Both were the outcome of sloppy intelligence. Neither has been repeated, though of course they may be. Policing has improved and probably averted other attacks. But incidents genuinely attributable to Al-Qaeda rather than domestic grievances are comparable to the IRA and pro-Palestinian campaigns. Vigilance is important but only those with money in security have an interest in presenting Bin Laden as a cosmic threat.

Indeed if ever there were a case for collective restraint it is in response to terrorism. The word refers to a technique, usually a bomb, not an ideology. A bombing is an anarchic gesture calling for police and medical services. It becomes a political weapon only if publicised and answered with hysteria. A killing is so staged as to cause over-reaction, violent response, mass arrests and a decay of civilised values. Bin Laden’s intention in 2001 was to portray the West as scared, emotionally vulnerable, over-reactive, decadent and careless of liberal values. The West has done its damnedest to prove him right.

Every liberal canard about the War on Terror is contained in those two paragraphs. Despite the rest of Mr. Jenkins’ article which accurately sums up many of the problems engendered by our response to 9/11 (sans his statements about “latent authoritarianism” in democratic leaders), his only alternatives - “restraint” and “policing” - precisely proves my point: That the left has learned nothing from 9/11 and that following the lead of Jenkins and others of his ideological ilk would be extraordinarily dangerous.

For at bottom, the “alternative strategy” being pushed by Jenkins and most of those on the left is one of reaction - waiting for the terrorists to strike before committing ourselves to countering them. In an era where weapons of mass destruction are becoming more widespread and easier to manufacture and/or acquire, this policy is not only suicidal, but morally reprehensible. It condemns hundreds perhaps thousands of innocent people to death all in the name of a simpering kind of internationalism, a belief that most countries are on the same page when it comes to combating terrorism.

Nothing could be further from the truth. There are many countries - Russia and China come to mind immediately - that would not be averse to seeing a catastrophic attack on America. Mr. Jenkins and his reactive strategy would make such an attack more likely by several degrees of magnitude. I daresay that Beijing especially wouldn’t mind seeing America severely weakened as it would probably mean affecting our ability to block their designs on Taiwan and establishing economic hegemony over the rest of East Asia.

September 11, 2001 has become a date that marks a great divide in American politics. The fact that we are arguing about its significance more than 4 years later should not be surprising given the polarization of our politics. But what is surprising is that the only conclusion the left seems to have drawn from that awful day is that everything the Administration has done after it has been wrong headed and only made the situation worse.

That’s not much of a critique. But given the paucity of ideas coming from liberals about how to stop the terrorists from destroying us, maybe it shouldn’t really surprise us after all.

When I first heard of the existence of the Saddam Tapes, I was mildly interested. After all, from a purely academic point of view, it would be fascinating to listen to the dictator and try and discover how his mind worked. Saddam is surely one of the most destructive leaders that lived during the 20th century. Not quite in the Hitler/Stalin/Mao class but rather more of a second tier thug, easily as evil as Idi Amin or Slobodon Milosivec.

But when John Loftus, the organizer of this weekend’s “Intelligence Summit” came out and said that there was a “smoking gun” in these tapes that proved the existence of WMD in Iraq prior to our invasion, I was skeptical. I remembered from the Duelfer Report that close aides to Saddam had routinely lied to the dictator about his own WMD program so any conversations about WMD on the tapes would have to be listened to bearing that in mind.

And I also had to consider the source himself. Yesterday, I said that Loftus was considered a “gadfly” by the intelligence establishment. As it turns out, I was being too kind by half. Here’s Byron York on Loftus:

I first encountered his name in the fall of 2003, when I was working on a story about Bush hatred. I was looking at the people who claim that the Bush family got its wealth from financing the Nazis, and I discovered that one of the sacred texts of that particular worldview is a book, The Secret War Against the Jews, by the authors Mark Aarons and…John Loftus. In 1995, when the book appeared, Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman, who can reasonably be counted on to speak out against people who financed the Nazis, called it “so exaggerated, so scantily documented, so overwrought and convoluted in its presentation, that Loftus and Aarons render laughable their claim to offer ‘a glimpse of the world as it really is.’”

A curious gent, this Loftus fellow. It seems also that he is absolutely convinced of a connection between the Enron scandal and…(wait for it) 9/11:

In the article, Loftus reports that the now-defunct energy company had a contract with the Taliban to build a pipeline, and that Vice President Dick Cheney, determined to help out Enron, forbade U.S. intelligence sources from investigating the Enron/Taliban/al Qaeda connection in the months leading up to the September 11 terrorist attacks. After outlining this somewhat Fahrenheit 9/11-like theory, Loftus concludes, “The Enron cover-up confirms that 9/11 was not an intelligence failure or a law enforcement failure (at least not entirely). Instead, it was a foreign policy failure of the highest order. If Congress ever combines its Enron investigation with 9/11, Cheney’s whole house of cards will collapse.”

Does his kookiness rule out the possibility that there might be something valuable on the Saddam tapes? Not necessarily, although for the sake of credibility, one needs to look not only at the message, but the messenger as well.

And in this case, the messenger - the person with actual possession of the tapes - was a former weapons inspector, former translator at Gitmo, and a confessed spy named Bill Tierney.

Actually, Tierney was spying for us while working for UNSCOM which is OK by me but probably didn’t sit well with those fairminded, impartial countries like Libya and France. The problem with Mr. Tierney - depending on who you talk to - is that he is either a certifiable wacko or someone who likes to exaggerate things a little. Taking him at his word is hazardous to the truth.

In 2003, in the immediate aftermath of the Iraq invasion he told Sean Hannity:

“In addition, Tierney said that he has told our government where Hussein has hidden an underground uranium plant. “I can drive there with my eyes shut.”

Also in 2003, Tierney appeared on George Noory’s Coast to Coast radio show and made some startling admissions:

Bill Tierney, a former weapons inspector who worked with UNSCOM in Iraq in the late 1990s, was the guest for the first two hours of Friday night’s show. He believes that Iraq has nuclear capability and the intention to use such weapons. Further, Tierney claims that he has pinpointed a hidden location in Iraq (map here) where there is a uranium enriching processing facility. “You can’t put an underground chamber on the back of a truck,” Tierney said, indicating that if an inspection were made in this suggested area, the Iraqis would not be able to haul off the evidence.

Tierney’s methods of ascertaining this location were rather unconventional. “I would ask God and just get a sense if something was valid or not, and then know if I needed to pursue it,” he said. His assessments through prayer were then confirmed to him by a friend’s clairvoyant dream, where he was able to find the location on a map. “Everything she said lined up. This place meets the criteria,” Tierney said of a power generator plant near the Tigris River that he believes is actually a cover for a secret uranium facility.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is not the way one should go about trying to ascertain whether Saddam Hussein had WMD. It may be a good way to divine a well or fortell the future. But when it comes to “smoking guns” about WMD, I’d trust Michael Moore before I trusted this guy.

An indication of just how loony this whole business with the tapes and the “Intelligence Summit” has gotten is that two top intelligence professionals and dedicated public servants - James Woolsey and John Deutch - have resigned from participation in the event. It seems that there are some very shady characters behind the scenes. Mr. York:

Now, the Sun reports that Woolsey and Deutch resigned from Loftus’ group because of their concern over “new information they received regarding one of the summit’s biggest donors, Michael Cherney, an Israeli citizen who has been denied a visa to enter America because of his alleged ties to the Russian mafia.”

Does any of this matter as to the legitimacy of the tapes? Not really, although according to ABC News, the tapes were taken from the FBI where presumably Mr. Tierney was translating them. As for their impact, Lori Byrd has it about right:

If the tapes are authentic, the discussion of efforts to deceive the inspectors and to be ready to quickly resume WMD production is huge news, but it obviously will not be reported that way. As I said yesterday, it is going to take a heck of a lot to convince the media, and those on the left, that Bush didn’t lie about Saddam’s WMD. Scratch that. They already know he didn’t lie about it. It will take a heck of a lot to convince them to admit that Bush didn’t lie about it.

We already knew there were chemical weapon precursors on site with the artillery shells to deliver them. The fact that they weren’t assembled was the reason given for not listing them as “stockpiled” WMD. Be that as it may, Lori has a good point. The tapes confirm once and for all that Saddam was a threat. Given the left’s eagerness toward lifting sanctions on the dictator’s regime in 2000, it would only have been a matter of time before he had his labs of death up and running again.

There are still nearly two million documents and tapes that our government, for whatever reason, has refused to look at in any meaningful way. The historical value of those documents alone is astonishing, a priceless glimpse into one of the 20th century’s most organized criminal regimes. While it is doubtful the whole truth of Saddam’s WMD’s will ever come out, those documents and tapes can answer other questions that are just as valuable in aiding our understanding of the organized terror and calculated evil that was Saddam and his regime.

UPDATE 2/17

Add to the list of distinuished Americans who have pulled out of the “Intelligence Summit” Debbie Schlussel who has some additional shocking information about John Loftus.

From Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker, we hear the news that the “Saddam Tapes” which were scheduled to be unveiled at the Intelligence Summit this weekend will instead air tonight on ABC’s Nightline.

The tapes, which have been verified by the House Intelligence Committee, are said to contain conversations between Sadaam and his top aides well into the year 2000 talking about hiding WMD, attacking Washington, and other topics of interest. Drudge just broke the story and we have this that just popped up on the CNS News Service website:

(CNSNews.com) - Secret audiotapes of Saddam Hussein discussing ways to attack America with weapons of mass destruction will be the subject of an ABC “Nightline” program Wednesday night, a former federal prosecutor told Cybercast News Service.

The tapes are being called the “smoking gun” of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq. The New York Sun reported that the tapes have been authenticated and currently are being reviewed by the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

The panel’s chairman, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), declined to give the Sun details of the content or context of the recordings, saying only that they were provided to his committee by former federal prosecutor John Loftus.

Loftus has been tight-lipped about the tapes, telling the Sun only that he received them from a “former American military intelligence analyst.” However, on Wednesday he told Cybercast News Service, “Saddam’s tapes confirm he had active CW [chemical weapons] and BW [biological weapons] programs that were hidden from the UN.”

First of all, a word of caution is in order.

The Duelfer report made clear that interviews with dozens of Saddam loyalists revealed that his top aides routinely lied to the dictator about having WMD. However, this could be a cover story by the aides who could have worked one up prior to the invasion. Or, it could be the truth. It could very well be that Saddam was talking about WMD he didn’t have.

That said, the program should give us a fascinating glimpse into the mind of one of the most brutal dictators in history.

Another aspect of this story that should give us pause is that the tapes come to us via a man named John Loftus. Loftus is known as something of a gadfly in intelligence circles and his book about the Nazi connection to the Vatican and American intelligence has been criticized for sloppy research. That said, Loftus really has nothing to gain from trying to perpetrate a fraud and the House Intelligence Committee felt them important enough to verify and examine.

Will the tapes change any minds? Not very likely. They may cause a flurry of “I told you so’s” on the right and “it doesn’t matter’s” on the left. But beyond that, the MSM could be sitting on a 155mm binary nerve gas shell and still insist it needed more proof of Iraq WMD.

UPDATE

Hah!

Lori Byrd beats the rush so to speak and issues a statement proclaiming her belief that there were WMD in Iraq all along. She’s got the links to prove it, too!

UPDATE II

Mr. Lifson is on a roll today:

Slowly, very slowly, we are beginning to discover what happened to the WMDs of Saddam. The left and the antique media have made it an article of faith that there never were any WMDs, and that “Bush lied.” So deep is their investment in a political position premised on this conclusion that they will pay no attention to contrary evidence.

Via Peter Glover’s website Wires from the bunker, we learn of an interview between Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti, a southern regional commander for Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen militia in the late 1980s and a personal friend of the dictator and Ryan Mauro of Worldthreats.com.

Only two weeks ago, General Sada, formerly Sadaam’s no 2 Air Force Commander, told the New York Sun that Sadaam’s WMD was moved to Syria just six weeks before the US-led invasion. Now Ali Ibrahim confirms this and explains the underlying strategy of Saddam.

Read the whole thing for a pretty plausible explanation. The important thing is, Mr. Ibrahim confirms what Mr. Sada said 3 weeks ago about WMD being flown out of the country to Syria.

So what does all this mean?

As I said in the post, this is not likely to change many minds about whether or not the Iraq war was worth it. And failing Syria coming out and admitting that Saddam shipped his WMD’s prior to the invasion to Damascus, it’s not likely that the “WMD to Syria” story will get much play in the MSM.

In the end, the more evidence that emerges that Bush wasn’t lying about WMD, the more the media and the Democrats will play down the story. A sad commentary on the times.

UPDATE III

Goldstein weighs in with his usual perspicacity:

What will be most interesting to watch is the amount of the coverage this receives. I suspect the next stage of legacy media denial will come in the form of, “because ‘intel agencies’ and other unnamed sources have expressed no clear consensus about what these tapes signify, we are simply being circumspect about our reporting.”
Of course, had somebody suspected Dick Cheney of keeping a flask of whiskey in his hunting vest, that would be a different story entirely…*

Yep.

And Jeff also has a blurb from the Newsweek Disaster Tag Team of Isikoff and Hosenball who inform us that 1) this is old news. 2) it’s not really important. 3) intelligence professionals aren’t impressed.

I find that last assertion laughable. There is no group in the United States of America with more of a vested, vital interest in our not being able to find any Iraq WMD’s than our so-called intelligence professionals.

Entire careers are at stake here. To believe anything about Iraq WMD’s coming from that crew is loony.

UPDATE IV

I just heard excerpts of the tapes. Nothing conclusive. Nothing earth shattering. Saddam was a thug who wanted WMD. We knew that. Did he have any at the time we invaded? Yes. Massive stockpiles? Probably not. Enough that he would have moved them to Syria? Unknown.

Does it matter anymore in a political sense? Not to me. Taking out Saddam was the logical next step in the War on Terror.

Representative Hoekstra of the House Intelligence Committee reminds us there are still nearly two million pages of documents from this thug’s regime. If history is any experience, it’s best we get to reading that stuff.

The West German Goverment requested we return all the documents that fell into our hands at the end of World War II in 1953. How long before the new Iraq government does the same?

Not content with demanding that the free nations of the world outlaw the caricaturing of the prophet Mohamed, the “moderate” Muslim group Organization of Islamic Council (OIC) is now trying to piggyback their grievances on the bodies of 3,000 dead Americans.

They are trying to tell us that the Cartoon Controversy is the Muslim world’s 9/11:

The publication of cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Mohamed has had the effect of the September 11 attacks on the Islamic world, argued Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the Secretary-General of the Organization of Islamic Conference.

Muslims are offended by the cartoons, Mr. Ihsanoglu told High Representative of the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union (EU) Javier Solana; currently on tour in the Middle East.

“It is unfortunate that the Islamic world took the satirical drawings as a different version of the September 11 attacks against them,” said Mr. Ihsanoglu. “I hope,” he added, “the EU will adopt a new ruling to fight against Islamophobia.”

This is the same group that wants the United Nations to pass a resolution outlawing “contempt” for religions and impose sanctions on countries and institutions that don’t toe their line against free speech:

The Muslim world’s two main political bodies say they are seeking a UN resolution, backed by possible sanctions, to protect religions after the publication in Scandinavia of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad.

Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary-general of Organisation of the Islamic Conference, said in Cairo on Sunday that the international body would “ask the UN general assembly to pass a resolution banning attacks on religious beliefs”.

The deputy secretary-general of the Arab League, Ahmed Ben Helli, confirmed that contacts were under way for such a proposal to be made to the UN.

“Consultations are currently taking place at the highest level between Arab countries and the OIC to ask the UN to adopt a binding resolution banning contempt of religious beliefs and providing for sanctions to be imposed on contravening countries or institutions.

I don’t know about you but I’m getting sick and tired of other nations trying to tell me that this or that happening to them is somehow to be equated with the most brutal and deadly terrorist attack in history.

We’ve had Spain’s 9/11 (which was also supposed to be Europe’s 9/11), Great Britain’s 9/11, Indonesia’s 9/11 to name a few. We’ve also had 9/11 used as a metaphor for any number of idiotic issues with the Cartoon Brouhaha only the latest. It makes me wonder if the people trying to piggyback their pet issues and agendas on the ghost of 9/11 ever wonder how totally ridiculous they look.

The OIC wasn’t content with comparing their “plight” to 9/11; they had to throw in references to the Holocaust also, a curious idea since so many of them are Holocaust deniers:

“In Europe unfortunately Muslims have taken the place of Jews during World War II. There is a need for a UN legislation and clarification of existing conventions,” he said.

Ihsanoglu asked for adopting a code of conduct for the European media. “The code of conduct should take into account the sensitivities of the Muslims and defamation in any form or manifestation and the core beliefs of the religions including mocking and criticizing prophets, and it should be considered an ethical offense in the European media code,” he said.

(HT: LGF)

Who do we have to thank for this kind of nonsense? The left in Europe and America of course. The kind of moral relativism that can equate the horrors of Holocaust atrocities with the extinction of snail darters can easily morph into Muslims saying that the mocking of their prophet can equal the death of 6 million human beings. After all, it’s how it makes them “feel” that matters.

I think we should call for a moratorium on the use of both 9/11 and the Holocaust to describe anything but events that are realistically similar in both numbers and impact on history. Don’t hold your breath, though. The world’s “victims” have the media playbook of the left down cold and can manipulate their emotions as easily as a child can be manipulated by fairy tales.

For almost three years, the conventional wisdom regarding Iraq WMD’s prior to our invasion was that Saddam never had them, we knew it, Bush lied, and we invaded anyway because we wanted their oil, or to establish military bases, or because George Bush is a meany, or because the Jews told us to, or…just because America is eeeevil and we like to throw our weight around just to remind the Europeans of that fact every once and while.

I pretty much accepted this CW - well, not all that other stuff but certainly the analysis that Saddam did not have WMD for years prior to our invasion. After all, this was the Duelfer Report’s conclusion (with one important caveat that we’ll get to in a minute) as well as the conclusion of several bi-partisan reports from Congress.

But something always bothered me about this conclusion, a nagging itch at the back of my mind. And that is the overwhelmingly belief by the world’s best intelligence agencies that Saddam did indeed have stockpiles of WMD in the six months leading up to the war. The French, the British, the Germans, The Israeli’s, the United Nations (UNSCOM and IAEA), not to mention the CIA, DIA, and most politicians here in this country.

That’s quite a number of people to be dead wrong about such a huge issue.

And that’s what’s always bothered me. It bothered Charles Duelfer also, the fair minded and thorough former CIA and State Department expert who also took a turn as an inspector for UNSCOM. In his report on WMD, one little noticed caveat that Duelfer mentioned appeared in an addendum to the document:

The CIA’s chief weapons inspector said he cannot rule out the possibility that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were secretly shipped to Syria before the March 2003 invasion, citing “sufficiently credible” evidence that WMDs may have been moved there.

Inspector Charles Duelfer, who heads the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), made the findings in an addendum to his final report filed last year. He said the search for WMD in Iraq—the main reason President Bush went to war to oust Saddam Hussein—has been exhausted without finding such weapons. Iraq had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the early 1990s.

But on the question of Syria, Mr. Duelfer did not close the books. “ISG was unable to complete its investigation and is unable to rule out the possibility that WMD was evacuated to Syria before the war,” Mr. Duelfer said in a report posted on the CIA’s Web site Monday night.

This statement dovetails with some information released by a Pentagon Undersecretary John Shaw who said a few days before the election that the Russians were helping to spirit high explosives that had gone missing from a depot at Al-Qaqaa out of Iraq into Syria. Apparently, Putin was attempting to eliminate any evidence that the Russians had violated the sanctions regime by supplying Saddam with illegal weapons.

Then there was a little blurb about a press conference given by Israel’s Ariel Sharon that was shown in December of 2002 where the Prime Minister announced that Iraq WMD was being shipped to Syria’s Bekaa Valley:

Several different intelligence sources raised red flags about suspicious truck convoys from Iraq to Syria in the days, weeks, and months prior to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.[23]

These concerns first became public when, on December 23, 2002, Ariel Sharon stated on Israeli television, “Chemical and biological weapons which Saddam is endeavoring to conceal have been moved from Iraq to Syria.”[24] About three weeks later, Israel’s foreign minister repeated the accusation.[25] The U.S., British, and Australian governments issued similar statements.

Finally, there was this story about the UN losing track of WMD prior to the war and what satellite imagery showed:

U.N. satellite imagery experts have determined that material that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles has been removed from 109 sites in Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors said in a report obtained Thursday.

U.N. inspectors have been blocked from returning to Iraq since the U.S.-led war in 2003 so they have been using satellite photos to see what happened to the sites that were subject to U.N. monitoring because their equipment had both civilian and military uses.

In the report to the U.N. Security Council, acting chief weapons inspector Demetrius Perricos said he’s reached no conclusions about who removed the items or where they went. He said it could have been moved elsewhere in Iraq, sold as scrap, melted down or purchased.

Taken individually, these stories mean nothing. But I can’t be the only one who sees something of a pattern here. I think it is safe to assume that somebody was moving Iraq WMD (and the equipment to manufacture it) somewhere prior to the liberation.

And now we have a former Iraqi Air Force General who says that massive amounts of WMD was flown to Syria prior to the invasion.

The information comes to via this story in the New York Sun and features the General - who is selling a book called Saddam’s Secrets - talking about Iraqi passenger jets being used to whisk the WMD out of the country and flown to Syria:

The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein’s air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed.

The Iraqi general, Georges Sada, makes the charges in a new book, “Saddam’s Secrets,” released this week. He detailed the transfers in an interview yesterday with The New York Sun.

“There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands,” Mr. Sada said. “I am confident they were taken over.”

Mr. Sada’s comments come just more than a month after Israel’s top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam “transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria.”

General Sada is evidently being supported by a Christian humanitarian group out of Oklahoma run by a man named Terry Law. Sada, a Christian, works for the group as director of Iraqi outreach.

General Sada has several problems with this story, not the least of which is that it is secondhand information. He heard about it from two men who say they were pilots on the transports:

The pilots told Mr. Sada that two Iraqi Airways Boeings were converted to cargo planes by removing the seats, Mr. Sada said. Then Special Republican Guard brigades loaded materials onto the planes, he said, including “yellow barrels with skull and crossbones on each barrel.” The pilots said there was also a ground convoy of trucks.

The flights - 56 in total, Mr. Sada said - attracted little notice because they were thought to be civilian flights providing relief from Iraq to Syria, which had suffered a flood after a dam collapse in June of 2002.

While the information is certainly intriguing, it hardly qualifies as “smoking gun” evidence that Syria has the missing WMD.

That said, if the government were aware of Syrian collusion with Iraq to hide their stockpiles of WMD, why wouldn’t they announce it?

First of all, it would be very difficult to prove without revealing “sources and methods” that the CIA would rather remain a secret.

The second reason would be diplomatic. If we accused the Syrians and offered proof, then we would have to do something about it. This would complicate our efforts to effect regime change in Syria that right now are at a very delicate point. The UN is beginning to put more and more pressure on Baby Assad as the investigation into the assassination of Lebanese nationalist Rafiq Hariri continues to implicate high level Syrian intelligence and political figures. Eventually it is thought that the elites in the military and the government will see Assad as the dead weight that he is and get rid of him. After that, all bets are off and the US government may in fact start inquiring about what was transferred from Iraq to Syria prior to the war.

Next week, General Sada will meet with members of the Senate Armed Services committee. It should be interesting to see what might come out of that meeting although, don’t hold your breath for any bombshells. The last thing the White House wants at this point - even though it would permanently blunt some criticism about the war - is to make Syrian complicity in hiding Iraq WMD an issue.

UPDATE

Welcome Powerline readers! Thanks to John for the link and for highlighting this important story.

And the lovely Pamela at Atlas Shrugs is also on the story and says this:

I said it for years, it was the most logical explanation. This story will shape the November elections, and rightly so. I am sure the mainstream media will go out of its way to ignore this story instead it will whine about al qaida’s civil rights being violated in the New York Times manufactured scandal of the week.

Glad to know I’m not the only crazy right winger out there…

See also a great post at the blog Publius Rendevous who makes this prescient observation:

Does it take an enormous stretch of the imagination to see the enactment of this assertion? Are any mental gymnastics needed to piece together that Saddam had all the time he needed to transport or hide the WMDs? In the transparency of their position, the Democrats and liberals failed to give any credence whatsoever to the fact that in a country the size of California, and with the time actually spent galvanizing a coalition, that Saddam had ample time to cover his tracks in whatever solution he chose to implement.

Make sure you hit Macsmind for a surprising answer to the question “Which United States Senator is in big trouble over this news?”

UPDATE II

I had totally forgotten about this interview with former UNSCOM inspector and intelligence agent Bill Tierney that appeared in Frontpage Mag who also thought the WMD had been moved to Syria. (HT: Sister Toldjah).

UPDATE III: THE “SADDAM TAPES”

Here’s a shocker sent to me by Doc Gardner at Maggies Farm. Apparently a civilian contractor in Iraq is claiming he found some audio tapes that purport to have Saddam Hussein discussing his WMD with aides as late as 2000.

The tapes will be revealed next month at The Intelligence Summitt which is being put together by John Loftus, a former intelligence agent, Justice Department attorney and frequent analyst on several cable networks.

More grist for the mill…

And reader ROdioso emails me with a link to this WA Times story from last April where the plot to blow up a truck laden with poison gas and other chemicals in Jordan was thwarted at the last minute.

The truck was stopped 75 miles from the Syrian border.

Don’t miss Mark in Mexico’s article on General Sada’s book Saddam’s Secrets. He’s got extensive quotes and background info on the general.