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COGENT PROVOCATEUR: free agent, loose cannon, pointy stick ... taking an imposing analytic toolkit out of the box, over the wall and into the street ... with callous disregard for accepted wisdom and standard English reading tea leaves from original angles, we've led with uncannily prescient takes on the federal surplus, the dotcom crash, the "Energy Crisis", the Afghan campaign, the federal deficit. More where those came from ... stay tuned. For brief orientation, see this Welcome to CP Submit Feedback To: RonKsFeedbag at aol CP Archives current 05/01/2002 - 05/31/2002 04/01/2002 - 04/30/2002 03/01/2002 - 03/31/2002 
NOTE to READERS: (1) Item Links are not stable, we're still tweaking our organization and archiving strategy. (2) Older material -- with highlighted updates -- will appear incrementally as we import and consolidate it from other forums. OUR DEPARTMENTS: the COGENT PROVOCATEUR: free agent, loose cannon, pointy stick ... For brief orientation, see this Welcome to CP CAMP ENRON: ... gateway to the next Progressive Era? Some say it's nothing but a train wreck ... roll in the big cranes, clear the track, see what the crew was smoking. If I thought so, I'd not be writing this ... and if they thought so, they'd not be drumming so hard. For a brief orientation, see this Welcome to Camp Enron OTHER GOOD STUFF: Many thanks to Tony Adragna and Will Vehrs, still shouting 'cross the Potomac at QuasiPundit. Early Camp Enron material can be found in QP's Dispatches department. Archives (auto) |
Wednesday, April 23, 2003
--- Operation Desert Snipe ---
The Snipe Hunt is an American folk tradition, a rite of passage for the novice outdoorsman ... an elaborate practical joke which ends with the initiate crouching alone in the woods, in the dark, literally "holding the bag", waiting for the nonexistent Snipe.What if we sift through all the sand in Iraq without finding WMDs? (That means hundreds of tons, as advertised ... not lab samples, training rounds or inventory strays.) We're alone in the woods, in the dark, holding the bag. Paraphrasing NYT's Tom Friedman, we will have gone to war on the wings of a snipe. Too early to call it a night. It's a big desert, our last candle hasn't flickered out, and the mocking call of the snipe still echoes hauntingly in the distance, but ... the original standard WMD thesis is strictly defunct. Saddam Hussein had extensive, active, advanced, clandestine chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. UN inspectors couldn't find WMDs because they were inept, or corrupt, or because Saddam played the shell game so masterfully. US intelligence pinpointed dozens of high-value target sites, hundreds of intermediate-value sites and thousands of low-value sites. Chemical and perhaps biological weapons were deployed to commanders in the field, who had orders to use them against invading Coalition forces. Special Forces teams were dropping in to secure and neutralize high-value sites in advance of the ground assault, with high-tech analytic Mobile Exploitation Teams (MET's) close on their heels.Six weeks ago, it was beyond the pale to suggest otherwise. Today the man in the street doesn't exactly care much about WMD's ... but he's curious. The men in the hawk's nest -- and some of their media enablers -- care a lot. Alternative explanations are being spun out so rapidly, they're not even kept on the same page. In public, Bush and Blair -- as they must -- still insist WMDs will turn up. Behind closed doors, staff are obliquely, deniably huffing into trial balloons, testing branches of the contingency that never earned a spot of Rumsfeld's contingency sheet. What if there are no WMDs? A Washington Post embed reports analysts here and in Washington are increasingly doubtful that they will find what they are looking for in the places described on a five-tiered target list ... strategy is shifting from the rapid "exploitation" of known suspect sites to a vast survey that will rely on unexpected discoveries and leads. Come what may later on, Blair's dossiers, Powell's "solid intelligence", and Rumsfeld's "bulletproof evidence" are dead letters. C'est la vie, c'est la guerre. Operation Desert Snipe is a marvelous case study in one of CP's pet themes -- collective self-deception. The plot spoilers were there all the time. "Everybody" was so sure, and so wrong. Down the page, we'll retrace the divergent arcs of evidence and attitude that brought us to this pass, and we'll sample some of the surviving alternative theses ... but first, a rundown of Truth or Consequences. The joke is on us, but does it matter any more? We won, didn't we? Yes, we won ... and yes, it still matters, else high officialdom wouldn't be clinging gamely to the original premise. And the PR labs wouldn't be working overtime testing damage control solutions. From August's "what's all this frenzy about a war?", to September's "you don't introduce new products in August", through November's election victory over an opposition "soft" on Saddam, through the winter games of spinning Blix on ice, through Powell's PowerPoint prestidigitation in February, to a no-time-to-vote forced March, we plied the crowd with predictable fare. We loosened them up with liberation cocktails. We circulated tray after tray of Saddam-as-Hitler appetizers. We dutifully jotted down orders for commercial or strategic side-dishes. But the main course was always a grand sterling-covered platter of sizzling Snipe a la Bush. No WMD, no War Powers Resolution. No WMD, no UN Res. 1441. No WMD, no Coalition of the Willing. No WMD, no Azores ultimatum. Everything hinged on Iraq's possession of WMD, and her intransigent refusal to give them up. Scratch the surface of any auxiliary casus belli, and chances are you'll find a circular argument: "Saddam is evil and dangerous. How do we know? Because he has WMDs. How can we be so sure he has WMDs? Because he's evil and dangerous." "If she floats, she's a witch ... burn her at the stake! If she drowns, the poor thing's innocent." Did we go to war because Iraq failed a test she could only pass by surrendering artifacts she did not possess and could not reacquire? Did we run Hans Blix off the case because he was ineffective? Or because he was too effective? Why were we in such a hurry to dis-arm little Ali? Did we face an unacceptable risk that Saddam would pass nukes to terrorists? Or an unacceptable risk that the moment would pass without incident? The Stakes Bad enough if we were deceived. Worse if we deceived ourselves. Worse yet if we knew it all along, and deceived others. The downside is substantial. (Maybe that's why we never faced up to it.) We called the shot, we called it wrong, and there are consequences. Intelligence impacts are unavoidable. We won't trust our own stuff ... and that uncertainty will cost us dearly somewhere down the road. Foreign agencies won't trust our stuff. Our several agencies won't trust each other. Buckpassing antics, and the leakage that goes with them, will intensify. Local law enforcement won't trust national intelligence. And we'll think twice before paying retail for Israeli intel "product".What if "the goods" turn up later, neatly consolidated in a subterranean vault? The Coalition is almost as fully discredited. We wagered blood, treasure and sacred honor on the proposition that we knew what Saddam had, where he kept it, and how to prove it. We swore the stuff was field-deployed. We swore it all with a straight face ... the same face that now croaks "it is not like a treasure hunt". Potential winners include presidential aspirants Bob Graham and John Edwards. Both hold minority seats on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Graham in particular has hinted at improper variances between public and classified intelligence postures. He can't say much directly, but he may lure Bush into verifiable self-serving lies against the classified truth. (Bush, for his part, seems susceptible enough.) The rules of triangulation then change considerably. We may learn to walk more humbly amid the wastelands of imperfect information and credulous social consensus. That's the big "we", all of us, given fresh object lessons in how wrong we can be when we're as certain as we can be. Evidence and Inference Last summer CP raised hackles by suggesting there was as much as one chance in a hundred that Saddam had already folded his WMD tent. On the eve of war, we put the odds at three in ten. (The estimate would have been higher, but we gave deferential weight to conclusions formed by reputable insiders.) Today the odds are better than seven in ten that Iraq had no significant WMD, and ten in ten that the standard thesis is false. The possibility was always there, staring us in the face. Technically, our affirmative case was far from conclusive. The net amount of WMD materiel acquired, less materiel destroyed or degraded, was always well within the margin of error for ordinary bulk inventory accounting. Foreign intelligence knew it, antiwar activists knew it, foreign press knew it, but US war fever mentality excluded it. The remainder of the case rested on mind-reading Saddam's perfidious intentions ... always a dangerous game. We really should have had a clue, shouldn't we? We did. Let's start at the shallow end of the open-source swamp. Iraq told us they had nothing left. Take that with a large grain of salt ... the same officials swore "there are no infidels in Baghdad" ... but we played the same source cards high and low. When Saddam's in-law Kamel defected, we took his portrait of WMD programs straight to the bank. When Kamel told us the programs had been scrapped (as senior officials confirm in the post-Saddam era), we buried the story. If we had a mountain of direct evidence, as claimed, Powell could have brought the Security Council more than a few shiny nuggets of fool's gold. He didn't. More decisively, the very first week of renewed UN inspections produced unambiguous, direct categorical refutations of specific unhedged high-profile intelligence claims made by both US and UK. Bush personally voiced specific accusations -- with supporting visual aids -- of "new construction" at Al Furat's former uranium enrichment plant. On-site inspection found no new construction ... only weathered rebar protruding from construction abandoned ten years earlier ... not the sort of thing you can readily counterfeit. Iraq suggested that corrosion on unprotected material gave it a different ("new") visual cast. Alternatively, improved high-resolution imaging capabilities may have exposed long present ("new") detail. Embarrassing either way.We were deep in the grip of war fever, and flashing neon warning signs of cooked intelligence went by the boards. Jane's Defence Weekly (2003-03-05) diagnosed a case of "incestuous amplification ... where one only listens to those who are already in lock-step agreement, reinforcing set beliefs and creating a situation ripe for miscalculation". If we had a large portfolio of direct, reliable evidence, we should have fed UNMOVIC more than "shit, shit and shit" for leads. A single verifiable tip would have done wonders for US credibility, and would not have given away the store (unless the shelves were practically bare). Did we share our best intel with UN inspectors? There is controversy on this point. We said we couldn't (UNMOVIC was bugged, inspections would be a tip-off, disclosure would spoil sources & methods or compromise targeting data, Special Forces would be put at risk). We said we had done ... at least for all high and medium-value sites. After-class chatter suggested neither was entirely true, and we never played straight with anybody, least of all ourselves. The strongest inference flows directly from the infertility of US intelligence ... from the pattern of haystacks torched and needles not found when the ashes were sifted. Suppose -- per the standard thesis -- Saddam had major WMD research, production, inventory and deployment programs. That implies thousands of incriminating points of presence ... physical artifacts, persons, documents, messages. And suppose -- again per standard -- that we had immense stocks of specific leads ... some direct, some inferential, but altogether thousands of points of interest.CP could elaborate the damning Bayesian statistics here, but it comes down to a simpler rule of thumb: if a proposition is true and important, it's highly probable you can prove it without resort to probability theory. A universe of stubborn, contrary facts was screaming for attention, and we turned a deaf ear. A endless series of slapstick intelligence antics led up to Snipe Season's opening gun. Home-brewed ricin in London ... a balsa wood Drone of Mass Destruction ... missiles that "could hit the US" (provided they were shipped here first) ... forged uranium transfer documents and the aluminum tube follies ... "mobile labs" that on firsthand inspection proved to be food testing trucks ... an intel dossier plagiarised (typos and all) from student papers with times, places and conclusions changed to bolster the argument. Categorical refutation of a single highest-confidence intelligence estimate should have premised a discreet inquiry. Umpteen such events in rapid succession should premise an Inquisition. The follies continued after the ground campaign got underway. A warehouse full of SCUDs in one news cycle evaporated by the next. A "nerve agent" cache was a pesticide dump. Buried "chemical warheads" near a northern airfield failed the acid test. Likewise a half-rack of MLRS rockets. Special Forces broke down a terrorist camp in Kurdish territory and found recipes for "three kinds of chlorine gas" (probably the same three kinds you'd produce at home if you ignored the warning labels on household bleach). Numerous CW "finds" were defensive -- gas masks and atropine injectors -- and often past shelf-date. No inspection regime can find everything ... but no concealment regime can hide everything either. UNMOVIC probed aggressively starting in December. Special Forces probed more aggressively prewar. There's no concealment regime left, we've probed scores of high-value targets, hundreds of medium-value targets ... and we are still batting 0-fer. At some point the question morphs from "Where are the WMDs?" to "How did we let ourselves swallow that WMD line without de-baiting it?". Attitudes, Opinions, Reinvented Expectations We've followed the arc of evidentiary inference from plausible surmise to untenable fixation. Now let's review the arc of opinion ... that's where we find the real smoking gun of collective gullibility. From the beginning, prominent hawks described Saddam's WMD programs in great detail, and with uncompromising certitude ... but the evidence was classified, war proponents were not the most sober judges of risk and opportunity, and doubt lingered in the air like the scent of dead woodchuck under the porch. A Labor Day sales blitz turned the tide. Cable news networks hopped on the bandwagon with "Showdown" this and "Countdown" that. Ken Pollack's Threatening Storm gave protective cover to more liberal, multilateral hawks. A light-weight space-age composite of auxiliary casus belli was molded to reinforce the creaky WMD superstructure. By weight of sheer repetition, Saddam grew bigger and deadlier. We've got to get him before he gets us!. In February, "reluctant warrior" Colin Powell presented a WMD-rich case to the UN Security Council. CIA Director (and reputed foot-dragger) George Tenet sat behind him, vouching with his very presence. To those who hungered for conviction, this was the clincher ... though it consisted entirely of photos out of context, loose paraphrases of translations of dialect audio intercepts (also out of context), artist's renderings of things not seen, and offhand reference to evidence never presented. For such worthies as Slate's Tim Noah and Fred Kaplan, "take the phrase 'nerve agents' out of the wireless instructions" was a smoking gun. [Your humble Provocateur found it no more dispositive than "take the phrase 'floppy disks' out of the database instructions".] At this point, most hawks quit treating doves with anything resembling civility, and many "reluctant hawks" -- still rejecting the standard thesis -- bowed to fait accompli and found cognitive comfort in an array of even more inventive arguments in favor of war. Two or three days before the shooting started, the winds of punditry shifted perceptibly. Talking heads openly hedged their bets ... musing aloud: "What if we don't find WMDs?". Candid speculation would no longer affect the outcome, but it could serve as a reputational safety harness. In prewar press backgrounders, Special Forces were scheduled to drop in silently and secure key WMD sites in advance of the visible war. A full moon later, the past has changed a bit. Those plans disclosed on background? They never existed. We never expected quick results ... are you out of your mind? It's a big country ... not as big as Texas, but a mighty big country ... and there are thousands of places we haven't looked yet, and may not get around to looking for a year or more. And we don't expect to find anything by looking ... somebody will have to tell us. Before the war, a majority of John Q. Public would have insisted on finding WMDs. Postwar, an overwhelming majority (6 or 8 of 10, depending which poll you like) no longer gives a hoot. We won, get over it! Public expectations are still open to post-traumatic reinvention, especially if Iraqi democracy goes sour, shocks to national security crop up elsewhere, or the economy stays soggy. Which trumps which ... the "I've been had" effect? Or the "I'll be damned if I'm ever going to admit I've been had" effect? Prewar or postwar, hawk, dove or undecided, man-on-the-street" opinion was remarkably uniform on one count. Everybody and his cousin assumed the Coalition was prepared to plant WMD evidence if necessary. Maybe everybody and his cousin sees too many movies. Or then again, maybe not. ... the CIA has exaggerated nearly all aspects of the WMD program in Iraq in order to support the administration. ... US planted Vietnamese uniforms and supplies in the Parrot's Beak area of Cambodia to make a case for the still secret war ... planted caches of weapons in Central America to justify and widen the war against the Sandinistas ... collaborated on a "finding" of boats on the Salvadoran coast in 1981 to link the FMLN to the Sandanistas ... essentially "planted" intelligence on the Papal Plot in 1985 and falsified a national intelligence estimate on Iran in 1986. (Mel Goodman, ex-CIA)The planting prospect was -- and is -- discussed with remarkable openness. METs were composed with this concern in mind (though they excluded CIA -- the most independent branch). UNMOVIC is on the outside looking in, and Russia is reluctant to drop UN sanctions until UNMOVIC completes its mission. Once the shooting war started, WMD "discoveries" were a breathless staple of war coverage. CNN would tease a "disturbing new development". Judy Woodruff put on her best "disturbing new development" facial expression, cued "disturbing new development" theme music, and tossed it to Wolf Blitzer for a barrage of "smoking gun" overkill. An expert talking head popped up at the push of a button, reliably confirming "this looks like the Real McCoy", and internet message boards lit up with the cries of the gloat-hawk.Thirty days on, the news climate changed. After a virtual Olympiad of false starts, the smoking guns stopped smoking. Newshounds no longer salivated on cue, and damage control experts took over. So we haven't found any WMD. There are plenty of reasonable explanations ... depending how warm the audience is. Try one of these on for size: Saddam had WMDs, which were incinerated in coalition attacks. Funny, that's what Saddam said last time ... at least in part ... and we didn't buy it then. Probably true, in part ... but too convenient, on the whole.There are a couple of late entrants in the reinvention derby. Most prominent is a report by NYT's Judith Miller, embedded with MET Alpha. In this version, an informant reveals that Saddam ordered all WMD destroyed just days before the war. So ... Saddam brought a superpower down on his head rather than surrender these WMDs? Then he destroyed the same precious WMDs rather than use them against the superpower? As in the vault thesis, he does this without leaving major production-residue signatures. And ...Only a prize-winning, best-selling subject-matter specialist could get a piece like this printed in the Podunk Herald. Miller is a journalistic rock star -- deservedly so -- but she's stuck in the desert, holding the bag, waiting for the snipe, while a goddamn real biological terror -- SARS -- bounces around the globe. In short, this report walks like a fish, quacks like a fish, and smells like a fish. On yesterday's Nightline, Ted Koppel spotted what may be a more promising explanatory trial balloon -- "all's fair in love and war". By this thesis, we were never serious about WMD. WMD was never anything more than a necessary selling tool for war. War was necessary and salutary as an "object lesson" to lesser beings, reminding them (for their own good) that the US is big and tough. Why now? "9/11 changed everything". Why Iraq? No special reason ... Iraq presented itself as an adversary of convenience. Koppel gathered unabashed supporting testimony from B-list neocon hawks, including former CIA Director Woolsey. So no WMDs -- and no apologies! You've been had, John Q. Public, and it's for your own good! Same for you, Coalition of the Willing! A disturbing new development, but this looks like the Real McCoy! Over to you, Wolf ... Monday, March 17, 2003
--- War Opposition Matters Now More Than Ever ---
The world at large will necessarily react to Plan Iraq ... and not in a good way. (See immediate preceding post.) Those abroad who stand with Bush will not stand long in office, and even while they stand they must task defense theorists to game out contingencies in which history finds them standing against us.If all this plays out badly, the American Era is over ... and that may not be the worst of it. Vocal, visible, vigorous war opposition is terribly important. We'll be booed off the world stage unless the world sees our role in Plan Iraq as an aberration -- not typical US behavior. Most hope for reconciliation and recovery lies in leading the global audience to view the action as psychodrama, not melodrama. In other words, we have to construct a temporary insanity defense: It's not the real USA ... it's reaction to the trauma of 9/11. We're hurt, we're scared, we lash out. Understandable, and understandably temporary.The more clearly we express home-grown opposition ... the more bravely and proudly we stand up for the OTHER America ... the more quickly and decisively we dump the people who got us into this fix ... the better a case we can make for clemency and probationary re-entry to the community of nations. Stop the War. Now More Than Ever. --- Choice of Evils ---
Plan Iraq had been pressed to the extent that there is no benign alternative. On every side there is the prospect of manifest harm to US principles and interests. What are we up against?Suppose US refrains from invading Iraq at this point. Emboldened, Saddam may resist inspection. Saddam may underestimate US/allied resolve, with serious consequences in future encounters. Other international actors may miscalculate likewise, with dire consequences.Suppose we invade Iraq, against the express or implied will of the Security Council. US maintains on the order of 100,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely, taking sporadic casualties ... sometimes in triple digits. The burden is aggravated by developments outside the dotted lines -- downstream regional conflicts (whether incidental or deliberate), loss of allies, demise of peacekeeping institutions, opportunistic thrusts by unrelated actors out-of-region. As a result the familiar all-volunteer, reserve-heavy US force structure becomes unsustainable.Either way, Plan Iraq was destined to estrange Americans from each other, bitterly, perhaps violently, in ways that will persist after all of us are gone. Either way, a large fraction of US citizens -- maybe an overwhelming majority, maybe a permanently embattled minority -- will eventually learn they've been driven warward (in Tom Friedman's words) "on the wings of a lie". Suppose we had waited. The situation would have changed markedly when and if a single US "solid intelligence" lead had ever panned out on the ground.The war now cranks on of its own momentum ... as large projects are wont to when interim findings separate The Plan from its reasons for being. Friday, February 21, 2003
--- "Some say the world will end in fire" ---
"I ran away ... my cat ran away ... and after that it was every man for himself."(KCPQ on-street interview with an apartment fire refugee) Wednesday, February 12, 2003
--- More Powell To Ya ---
Colin Powell raised a multitude of eyebrows yesterday morning when he announced the existence of a new bin Laden tape, one that proves Osama and Saddam are in cahoots.As the news cycle unfolded, al-Jazeera did indeed have a tape. [BBC transcript here.] Assuming the tape is genuine, bin Laden does indeed address the looming Gulf War II. He calls on all good Muslims to repel American "crusaders" and "infidels". And he shares his assessment of US military: "... in combat, they mainly depend on psychological warfare. ... They also depend on massive air strikes ..."But bin Laden clearly marks Saddam and fellow Ba'athists as "socialists" and "infidels" [not as bad as "apostates", but sword-worthy nonetheless], whose regime is illegitimate, whose "jurisdiction ... has fallen a long time ago", who remain infidels "whether they are in Baghdad or Aden". [Some confusion arose over whether bin Laden includes Saddam among the "hypocrites of Iraq" who are "apostates and outside the community of Muslims", such that true Muslims may permissibly "spill their blood and take their property". As I read this, it applies not to Saddam, but to those in Iraq and elsewhere who collaborate with "crusaders".] None of this plausibly supported Powell's morning testimony, and thus raised another multitude of eyebrows. Speculation grew that Powell would reappear to amend his remarks or adjust his position. Instead, Powell appeared on the Hill again this morning, insisting the tape confirms his interpretation. Here, we have a problem. To paraphase Powell's UN presentation: "My charges are based on solid intelligence -- intelligence not unlike the impressive-looking artifacts you see here today (which do not address such charges). Take my word for it, similar undisclosed artifacts do support these charges, and I would not interpret them falsely." [see posts below] Powell's case rests on his reading of privileged evidence. Yet the Osama tape lets us look over his shoulder as he reads public evidence. We can see bin Laden's original lines bent to intersect Powell's predetermined target ... and we imagine this interpretive motif recurring and compounding as information percolates through the pipelines and pyramids of our intelligence infrastructure. Obligatory note: Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was so dissatisfied with existing agencies' failure to validate the link between Saddam and al Qaeda, he chartered his own agency. Has CIA's George Tenet now become a true believer? Alone, or with agency buy-in? Or is he playing a classic double game to keep himself and/or his agency in the loop? UPDATE: Powell's credibility took another hit today when he announced "The ricin that is bouncing around Europe now originated in Iraq". Per CNN: A French intelligence source said he was "stunned" by Powell's comment. "There is no, repeat, no suggestion that the ricin was anything but locally produced," he said. "It was bad quality, not technically sophisticated."Iraq processes castor beans (source of ricin) on industrial scale, and has produced ricin in quality and quantity, but does not appear implicated in the current case. Members of the European poison web have contacts with al-Zarqawi, but the ricin cookbook has been open-book since the late 1800's, and current contacts seem linked to Chechnya and Pankisi Gorge. Monday, February 10, 2003
--- Powell Spoiler Updates ---
CP hasn't seen print copy yet, but Newsweek gets in the game with a frame by frame review of Powell's case here. Excerpts:The intercepts clearly refer to stray items, not big caches.From a more unabashed generalized antiwar perspective, Traprock Peace Center offers Glen Rangwala's point by point analysis, with much useful comment. They also maintain an extensive survey of "Claims and evaluations of Iraq's proscribed weapons". Take the evaluations as you will, Rangwala's comprehensive running index of claims and counterclaims should prove valuable to advocates in both camps. For more Powell-watch coverage, see: Slacktivist here and here.Regarding Powell's assessment of al-Zarqawi, numerous doubts have been raised with respect to: (a) his relationship with al Qaeda, if any. Not previously identified as a Bin Laden subordinate, he fought with Afghan mujahdeen against Soviet occupation (contemporaneous with bin Laden), headed his own group (Al Tawhid), ran his own training camp under Taliban protection.See an International Herald Tribune profile on Zarqawi here. (It's the NYT piece, acessible w/o registration on NYT's IHT.) Iraqi expatriate nuclear scientist Imad Khadduri suggests Powell may have misread the "death threat" evidence: "The four or five, as I recall such declarations, which I read in detail, held us to the penalty of death in the event that we did not hand in all of the sensitive documents and reports that may still be in our possession!" And the UK Independent expands on the intel retaliation theme: "Mr Blair is facing an unprecedented, if covert, rebellion by his top spies, who last week used the politicians’ own weapon – the strategic leak – against him." Sunday, February 09, 2003
--- Colin Powell, the Adlai Moment, and the OJ Question ---
We digress from our series Unpacking the Case for Invading Iraq, to unpack Colin Powell's presentation at the Security Council.Wednesday, Feb.5, 2003 was Powell's "Adlai Stevenson moment" ... an allusion to the time Stevenson rocked the world by unveiling overhead photography of Russian missile sites in Cuba. US mainstream editorialists pronounce Powell's presentation "convincing". Senator Joe Biden declares "If I had this evidence before ... an unbiased jury, I could get a conviction". Arch-liberal columnist Mary McGrory says "I'm persuaded". "Powell shows litany of regime's deception" blares the teaser for an Aussie newsfeed. Other global reaction was mixed, and Security Council feedback leans to "No sale!". Wonder why? These "moments" have a way of losing their luster by the time History gets done with them. Reagan's televised moment -- charting "Soviet airbase" construction on Grenada -- was bogus. Bush41's bill of evils against Noriega was juiced with bogus intel. Bogus intel cemented the Gulf War Coalition and stampeded the Senate into approving it. LBJ's Tonkin Gulf "moment" -- bogus. Madeline Albright's "moment" -- displaying the detonator "fingerprint" linking Saddam to a car-bomb intended for Bush41 -- bogus. Stevenson's "moment" was real enough, but the intel gaps behind it nearly pitched us into WW III. Stevenson's other "moment", in the Bay of Pigs affair, held potential for career-ending credibility damage. Powell's performance was incontestably brilliant. He grabbed our attention, told us what we were going to see, and ninety minutes later most of us left the tent convinced we had seen it. What, if anything, did we really see? Working from video, press transcripts, and the official State Department version, I've made an effort to identify and dissect every major element of Powell's presentation. Let's see if there's any "there" there. [I may tidy up and add supporting links as I get to them.] 1. Electronic communications intercept ... ElBaradei is coming ... "modified vehicle" ... "evacuated" Odd. ElBaradei (of IAEA) heads inspection for nuclear weapons -- the last place you'd find a "modified vehicle". Does "vehicle" means vehicle? It could refer to a container or gizmo or who knows what. What ever it is, the general officer in charge ("I'm worried you all have something left") didn't know he had it, and he's not supposed to have it as far as HQ is concerned. "We evacuated everything". In this context, everything clearly does not encompass the "modified vehicle". Curious as to nuance of the Arabic-to-English translation ... the English evacuated conveys a "remove from danger" connotation not carried by removed or emptied or swept. In any event, this -- like the other two intercepts -- smacks of nothing more than routine pre-inspection brass-polishing ... same chatter you'd pick up eavesdropping on any US corporate branch office or military base on the eve of a VIP tour. Why compromise signals intelligence by disclosing this? It is not dispositive. If Powell has better, why didn't he share it? 2. Second intercept ... "forbidden ammo" ... "destroy the message" More brass-polishing and ass-covering, i.e., I hope you cleaned up what I told you to clean up ... and don't leave tracks, because I promised my boss it was already clean. "inspect the scrap areas and the abandoned areas" doesn't sound like top-secret project discipline. 3. "What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence" Solid intelligence is something of an oxymoron. Powell vouches for his own forthcoming conclusions, based on his own sources and credibility, and plants the suggestion that you have seen and will see evidence supporting each point. Our evidentiary tour de force soon wanders from solid intel onto shaky ground. 4. "We know" ... weapons were "ordered removed" from palaces ... scientists hiding documents ... files driven around in cars ... hard drives replaced ... not only documents -- weapons ... missiles distributed in Western Iraq ... satellite photos of "banned materials" being moved Vouching again. If we have solid intel on these points, why not present solid intel instead of those lame intercepts? 5. Active CW bunkers ... decontamination truck ... cleaned out ... "on the 22nd of December" just before inspection Photo imagery lends an aura of substantiality to Powell's assertion ... but if the bunker was cleaned out 22 Dec., why is the "before" image dated "10 Nov"? Out of 30 similar sightings, why not cite a single more compelling example? In any case, US would deploy similar decontamination support if it were working around a known high-toxicity legacy site, industrial or military. 6. UK's "fine paper ... which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities." This paper documented deception activities, all right, and it became notorious only hours later. Heads are going to roll over this, and Blair's may be one of them. Plagiarized (clumsily, typo's and all) from published sources including Jane's and a grad student thesis ... except that the original thesis detailed Saddam's operations in Kuwait in 1991. Not just plagiarized, but plugged with more alarming estimates to punch up the conclusions. Foolish enough and obvious enough to suggest a deliberate effort to embarrass 10 Downing Street. What possible motive ... revenge for Blair's arm-twisting Brit intel for support of the case against Saddam? The story is still unfolding ... start with this CASI discussion and this from Channel 4. 7. "housecleaning at close to 30 sites" ... "don't know precisely what Iraq was moving" ... "We must ask ourselves, why would Iraq suddenly move equipment" Proof by suspicion. We don't know, so we must assume the worst. 8. U-2 flights, safe conduct denied Iraq claims it can't guarantee safety of U-2 surveillance flights so long as US air patrols penetrate Iraqi airspace. Iraq asserts the right to shoot at these patrols (though it never hits anything), and the international community seems to agree. The 1991 cease-fire created "no fly" zones, but did not grant US enforcement powers. From US/UK perspective, we're enforcing an agreement the only way possible. From Iraq's perspective, they're exercising a legitimate right to territorial defense. It would be helpful if US sought, and UN approved, a resolution formally legitimizing US patrols and requiring Iraqi air defense to stand down. US doesn't want to seek formal approval, as any such request would imply we've been operating for 12 years without that authority. 9. Witness intimidation ... espionage accusations against UNMOVIC are "a veiled threat" that cooperative Iraqi's will be treated as traitors ... "human sources" reveal more explicit death threats ... "these are not assertions. These are facts" But in point of fact these statements (though very likely true) are literally no more and no less than assertions -- in this case, assertions of hearsay. 10. Small vial is held up to the light ... ominous tones ... "less than a teaspoon ... shut down the United States Senate" The anthrax moment ... high drama, but contrary to fact. "Mr. DASCHLE ... At about 10:15 this morning, a member of my staff opened an envelope ... the substance was anthrax ... this Senate and this institution will not stop. We will not cease our business. We will continue to work. ..." And so they did. (Congressional Record, 2001-10-15, Page S10673.) Why gild the lily with a HOWLER so easily checked in preparation, and so easily exposed as fabrication? Why not gild the lily? Nobody called him on it. At this point in the presentation, Powell has laid down a hypnotic groove and is plowing it deeper with each pass ... lulling us into a pattern of acceptance by rhythmically alternating assertions with evidentiary exhibits. Assertion, exhibit, assertion, exhibit, assertion, exhibit ... only the least susceptible subjects notice the exhibits are growing thinner and fuzzier, while assertions are growing bigger and heavier. Weak-minded subjects -- journalists and the like -- will go away convinced they have seen an exhibit to support every assertion. Powell's "8,500 liters", by the way, pertains to liters of anthrax slurry ... not the equivalent of refined, dried, particulated spores simulated in Powell's vial. And hundreds of people did NOT receive emergency medical treatment ... they received -- or at least they were offered -- prophylactic doses of antibiotics. 11. Mobile BW production facilities Powell makes up in detail what he lacks in documentation. Interior schematics, artists conceptions based on "firsthand descriptions" ... 7 units, 2 or 3 trucks each ... an accident killed 12. Former UNSCOM exec Rolf Ekeus is skeptical: "... UNSCOM detected a system of mobility [but] a production line up on the flatbed of the truck, that sounds still a little difficult to believe ... not even Iraq is always that reckless. I still need to be a little convinced about that." UNMOVIC exec Hans Blix has already complained about acting on US tips and "busting" mobile food safety inspection labs. 12. Iraq "weaponized" anthrax, botulinum, aflatoxin, ricin ... investigated a laundry list of others ... "has the wherewithal to develop smallpox" Anthrax and botox are legitimate threats. Aflatoxin is a laughing stock in BW circles. Ricin heretofore was relegated to the footnotes on Iraqi BW research ... well down the laundry list of other BW agents investigated. It is powerful -- a single molecule can kill a cell -- but BW community consensus does not rank it as well-suited to mass-casualty attacks. Iraq has NOT weaponized ricin ... it test-fired a single artillery shell loaded with ricin solution in 1988, with unsatisfactory results. Suddenly, ricin is the latest Fear Factor Flavor of the Month ... all the rage in Europe! Powell headlines "ricin" to seed the mental association of Saddam with recent news events. Smallpox is potentially disastrous ... not so much for the US as for the other 95% of Earth's population. There's no way to tell how fast it would spread in today's more mobile population, where the "speed bumps" of residual immunity (by vaccination or survived infection) are increasingly sparse. [We knew of Iraq's suspected "wherewithal" for many months, but only surfaced it publicly a few days before the November 2002 election.] 13. F-1 Test video of Mirage F-1 sprayer-modified drop tank To many viewers, this was the emotional clincher. Powell recites the lethal effect of a pinch of this or a pinch of that, then wows us with the image of 2,000 pounds sprayed over vast territories. In context, most of the audience probably remembers it as US intel revealing Iraqi BW advances ... but that's not what they saw and heard. The chilling dramatic effect would be attenuated if Powell emphasized that this is Iraqi footage, not US surveillance ... that it dates to 1990 or 1991, not 2002 ... that Iraq provided it to UNSCOM in the mid-90s ... that US has conducted similar open-air tests with similar material (harmless lookalike B. subtilis in lieu of B. anthracis) ... that tests (theirs, ours, and others') found the wet aerosol spray method rather ineffective ... and that Iraq has a snowball's chance of getting an attack jet across anybody's borders. A number of detachable tanks remain unaccounted for ... could one of these be the "modified vehicle" mentioned above? 14. Chemical weapons ... missing inventories ... precursors for 500 tons ... four tons VX ... dual-use infrastructure Reciting items of well-known concern and widely debated status. Saddam may or may not retain them, and might or might not be able to document them if he wanted to. Nothing new here. 15. Unusual activity at a CW transshipment point in May 2002 ... satellite image corroborated by a human source ... topsoil removed and sites graded. US works around toxic nightmares in huge legacy stores and dumping grounds of discontinued war material, and takes similar precautions. Even Seattle's beautiful but quirky Gasworks Park, a fossil fuel processing site many decades ago, got a wall-to-wall soil transplant recently. 16. Procurement of CW precursors that "can also be used for legitimate purposes ... why did we have to learn about them [the hard way]?" Proof by suspicion. 17. A third intercept: "nerve agents" ... "wireless instructions" Caught 'em red-handed! Or did we? Anyone who has maintained tech manuals or S.O.P.'s might read this passage differently. A directive to strike the phrase "nerve agents" throughout a set of documents -- without scrapping the documents, and thus apparently without compromising their continuity -- does not indicate Iraq has nerve agents, any more than it indicates Iraq does not have nerve agents. It simply does not signify. What are "the wireless instructions"? a stilted translation from the Arabic? weapons training manuals? first aid hot line protocols? an inventory reorder fax blank? an IVR script? ("For Anthrax, Press 1 ... for Botulism, Press 2 ...") If this is our best intercept mentioning "nerve agents" ... sorry, I'm not impressed. 18. 122-mm warheads "could be the tip of a submerged iceberg" Or the tip of a moldering scrap heap. Proof by suspicion. 19. "he recently has authorized his field commanders to use [chemical weapons]. He wouldn't be passing out the orders if he didn't have the weapons or the intent to use them." Intercepts to that effect would be more compelling "smoking guns" ... though Saddam certainly might issue such orders -- and allow them to be intercepted -- even if he had no such weapons. A routine disinformation tactic, and Powell knows this, as any warrior would. 20. Human experimentation with CW ... prisoners strapped to beds Horrific, probably true, and brought to our attention by Israeli intel back in the 1980s, when Saddam was "our bastard" in the Iran-Iraq War. 21. Recital of Saddam's past lies re nuke developments ... Saddam has scientists ... has design ... needs fissile material Of course he needs fissile material. That was the stumbling block in 1990, that's the stumbling block today. Any evidence of progress? Oh, yes ... 22. Tubes, tubes, tubes! ... higher tolerance ... anodized ... 11 countries ... magnet production plant ... balancing machines ... "can be used in a centrifuge program" ... "debate this issue, but there is no doubt in my mind" Clintonesque scope-parsing: "all the experts who have analyzed the tubes in our possession agree". An unspecified population of unnamed experts -- delimited by a qualifying clause entirely under Powell's control -- all agree with Powell. But as Powell admits, "there is controversy". A "Who's Who" of prominent anti-proliferation figures begs to differ. IAEA's ElBaradei. Wisconsin Project's Gary Milhollin. David Albright of ISIS. If you want tubes for centrifuges, you would not want them anodized (the experts say) ... and if the tubes had to be re-bored to centrifuge specs, that would defeat any supposed advantage of anodizing, wouldn't it? 23. Imported rocket engines ... "acquired as late as December" ... "engine test stand ... exhaust vent ... five times longer ... clearly intended for long-range missiles" Aha, the "smoking test stand"! Powell's long-distance photo evidence conveys an impression of surreptitious development. A pack of journalists then toured the site -- well known to UNMOVIC -- up close and personal. They saw what UNMOVIC saw ... a vertical test stand with a short exhaust track, and a horizontal test stand with a long exhaust track. 24. "He is not developing the missile for self-defense." Proof by suspicion. We are entitled to our suspicions, but how do we know he is developing the missile, and how do we know his intent? (IRBM's are usually held for deterrent counterstrikes. You can use them to break things, but you can't break enough things to put your side on offense.) 25. Modified MIG-21's, L-29's, and smaller UAV's ... 500 km test flight ... could attack the US The smaller UAV is an artist's conception. "Iraq is now concentrating" on smaller UAV's ... the MIG-21 program was probably a disaster. UAV's could attack the US how? (From boats, we learn in off-line discussion.) Fair enough, but Iraq could attack Chicago from some ramshackle farmhouse in Wisconsin, using nothing but locally obtained materials. It doesn't matter what does or doesn't exist within Iraq's borders, and it would be foolish to imagine Saddam is the only bad actor perusing this script. 26. "Iraq and terrorism go back decades" ... 1990s nonaggression pact with al Qaeda ... Saddam applauds bombings Preparing to weave a nebulous nexus between Saddam and al Qaeda. Iraq ... terror ... Iraq ... terror ... Iraq ... terror ... but Iraq's terror history is minimal (by neighborhood standards anyway). 27. Afghan labs were inadequate ... "Where did they go ...? They went to Iraq" ... Abu Atiya developed European poison network ... 116 arrests ... Abu Atiya knew al-Zarqawi ... al-Zarqawi went to Baghdad ... developed a network ... Zarqawi has a camp in NE Iraq Where did they go? They went to several dozen countries, including all of Iraq's neighbors. Conveniently, Mr. Z camps out in NE Iraq. Conveniently, Powell omits mention of Qatar, where Mr. Z received safe haven and lavish funding. Shouldn't we land an expeditionary force in Qatar and ... oh, wait ... nevermind. Powell omits mention of Mr. Z's other travels in the region. Conveniently, Mr. Z is an expert in "ricin and other poisons". Ricin gets star billing these days. Blame a fickle public ... that poor "dog in the box" from the captured Qaeda nerve agent video needed a better agent. There's a small problem here, a missing link, but conveniently ... 28. "Baghdad has an agent in ... Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of Iraq" ... "this agent offered al Qaeda safe haven" So here's Mr. X, an agent from Baghdad with leadership influence in a region outside Saddam's control. Inconveniently, our Kurdish friends in NE Iraq are perplexed ... their understanding of local physical geography, political geography, factional alignment and leadership structure is at apparent variance with Mr. Powell's. Parse that text again. Is Mr. X an agent of Saddam? Or is Mr. X an agent of anti-Saddam cadre operating in Baghdad. Mr. X offered safe haven? Or Ansar al Islam offered safe haven? Did Mr. X have authority to extend this offer, and could he make good on it? 30. "Some believe ... these contacts do not amount to much." We've come to the climax -- or the punch line, if you prefer -- the first novel assertion in Powell's catalogue. Ricin plots in Europe are linked to Atiya, a colleague of Zarqawi, under protection of Mr. X, who may be Saddam's agent. If you read carefully, Powell disclaims any sure knowledge of Saddam's direct control or material support of Qaeda terrorist activity. Still, the allegations are serious, and we should weigh them seriously. Have we heard similar allegations before? Yes. Have they panned out? No, quite the opposite. Have their advocates retreated gracefully from definitively discredited claims? No, anything but. As with the "Prague meeting", they hung on til the last wisp of evidence blew way. After recanting under oath, they let their shills reflate the original reports, making them "common knowledge". Though it wears many hats and goes by many names, one obvious name for Bad Intelligence is "stupiddity". Press your intelligence resources hard enough, and they'll deliver the results you demand. One problem with this -- when you get the results you want, you can't possibly tell if they're genuine. At that point in the game, though, you probably don't care ... you're locked in on a favorite number, and you probably bet it big. Powell and the gang are the boys who not only cried "Wolf!" ... they stood pointing to an empty box, insisting it had a wolf in it. If we "age discount" these newly-minted assertions -- if we assume they'll decay over time, along trajectories similar to previous Saddam/Qaeda "clinchers" -- we can't give them much weight at all. 31. "we confront a regime that harbors ambitions for regional domination, hides weapons of mass destruction, and provides haven and active support for terrorists" Ambitions of domination? Proof by suspicion. Once true, but Saddam's potential for mischief is fading. Hiding WMD? Proof by suspicion. Probably true, but no new evidence here. Haven for terrorists? Proof by suspicion. Instead of "solid intelligence", we're up to here in intelligence quicksand ... while Powell's hypnotic performance has us thinking we can walk on water. His task was to prove what everybody concedes: Saddam practices deceit, Saddam covets weapons of vast destruction, Saddam cheats as much as he can get away with. We believed it before, we believe it now, only now we believe we've seen the proof, when we've actually seen ... nothing. We are left with many questions, including the classic OJ Question: Why frame a guilty suspect? Thursday, February 06, 2003
--- Unpacking the Case (I.1): Saddam's Threat Inventory ---
This is the first of a series of posts surveying Saddam Hussein's WMD threat potential, within a larger series Unpacking the Case for Invading Iraq. Here we lay out some principles applicable to all WMD, and to all potential bad actors. We proceed to apply these principles to Saddam and his threats ... though magnified and distorted focus on Saddam is half the problem with The Case. WMD occur in four widely discussed categories of concern -- chemical weapons (CW), biological weapons (BW), radioisotope dispersant "dirty bombs", and nuclear fission weapons. Biotoxins are produced like BW but applied like CW, and we'll address them in either category as appropriate. [A wily foe might find superior options outside these four categories ... but that's outside the envelope of this discussion.] WMD threats arise in two very different domains. First is general warfare -- nation against nation, armed force against armed force, contesting supreme and subordinate objectives. Second is terrorism -- unconventional, surreptitious, agenda-driven attack, usually on unsuspecting civilian elements -- basically shooting fish in a barrel. On most counts the two domains have very little in common. They intersect (more rarely than you think) in a zone dubbed "state-sponsored terrorism". Beyond that, tech evolution and proliferation may eventually put Mass Destruction within the ambit of non-agenda vandalism, akin to teenage pipe bombings and computer virus construction. Segments to follow will zoom in on each threat category, and explore their potential in each domain. The standard WMD threat involves a particular actor (state, faction, rogue military element, stateless organization, or the ubiquitous "accidental actor"), with respect to a particular capability. Before we welcome any new applicant to the Threat Club, we should cover a couple basic interview questions: What are his capabilities? What are his ambitions? What are his Capabilities? Can the actor in question invent active WMD ingredients? Not required. Most active ingredients have been around forever -- mustard "gas" (1910's), sarin (1930's), uranium/plutonium (1940's), VX (1950's) -- and the basic recipes are not well-kept secrets. Important new discoveries are incredibly rare ... though the biotech revolution may soon bless us with a whole new catalog of horribilia, and somebody someday may figure out how to build a fusion device without the more bulky and detectible fission trigger. Can he produce or procure these active ingredients? Not a high hurdle. Any dot-on-the-map island with a modern medical center can roll their own dirty bomb. Any town with a brewery, any two-star restaurant, can brew BW, and most seed cultures aren't that hard to come by. Any town with a 20th-century economic base can cook up potent CW. Scores of nations can refine weapons-grade material from power reactor waste. If you can't make it, you can buy, beg, borrow or steal it. Can he weaponize them? Mandatory. A chunk of fissile material is not an atomic bomb. CW molecules make lousy weapons without stabilizers, thickeners, dispersants and aerosol sprayers or bursting charges. Likewise most pathogens and biotoxins. Innovative preparation/presentation is the locus of most contemporary "Iron Chef" competition. Can he deliver them? Mandatory. Until you rain them on the enemy in a controlled fashion (at controlled distance from your guys), WMD stockpiles mainly threaten the night watchman. For CW and most BW, controlled dispersal is a critical challenge. Big-league missiles are resource-intensive, nukes are resource-intensive, one isn't much good without the other, and a long row of technical hurdles separates the test stand nuke from the missile warhead. [Meanings of "weaponize" and "deliver" diverge dramatically in general versus terrorist applications.] Can he test them prior to delivery? Not strictly required, but highly advisable. Most WMD make people mad even faster than they make people dead. Any WMD launch is a high-risk proposition, even riskier if you don't know it works ... and you don't with home-brew, even with best-effort copies of proven designs. State actors have a definite edge over rogues and stateless actors in the testing department. What are his Ambitions? Is the actor hostile? Maybe not ... but he can learn. Amities and enmities are even more mutable than national boundaries and identities. Whole regimes -- and subordinate chains of command -- can change in a heartbeat. Remote, obscure developments can drag friendly powers abruptly into conflict. Misunderstandings occur, mistakes are made, accidents happen, leaders miscalculate, counterplay escalates, bluffs are called, events overtake us. Hostile attitude elevates the risk that ordinary mishap will escalate to hostile action, and it sometimes predicts coalition structure, but it's at best a rapidly decaying intermediate-term predictor. (Both Saddam and Osama have realigned repeatedly.) Can he use WMD to advantage? Usually not. The stronger party prevails without WMD. The weaker party fears retaliation. Most 20th-century WMD were held for deterrence and defense, and almost never used. Non-state actors are less sensitive to retaliation, more likely to miscalculate, and may inflict damage as a mission per se (rather than a side effect of a means to an end) -- but most terrorists serve political agendas that are poorly served by indiscriminate destruction. Are WMD his preferred implements? He might be reluctant to bet the ranch on his technology and his chain of command, against our countermeasures and intelligence capabilities. He might prefer a series of bargaining games to a single-elimination shootout. He might envision more effective ways -- economic sabotage, etc. -- to inflict consequential damage. Mass destruction alienates allies and trading partners, who may be vital to his larger agenda. Is the US his preferred target? He may identify higher priorities, more opportune targets, more troublesome immediate adversaries. He might very well reserve his options, anticipating unspecified emergent priorities in the indefinite future. What are Saddam's capabilities? Saddam finds Xtreme weapons fascinating. If you want to crack his inner circle, approach him with "mad science" schematics for an antigravity beam or a weather machine. Much of his portfolio is junk ... incompetent knock-off's of purloined plans, outlandish schemes sold by cranks and hustlers, useless production runs by bureaucrats trying to make quota. Several technically sound projects have been disrupted by discovery. We should assume some of the others are deliberately mounted as intelligence decoys. Saddam's labs have all the popular recipes. He has sponsored research in all four classic WMD quadrants, though dirty bomb efforts appear extremely limited (as Doomsday weapons, they leave a lot to be desired). Saddam has produced substantial stocks of BW and CW ingredients (though nothing to rival US or Russian stocks), and has made multiple attempts to produce or procure weapons-grade fissile materials. He likes playing hide-and-seek, he's good at it, and it's fair to assume he still has some of the goods. Case by case, however, it's also conceivable he does not have them. Much has been destroyed under uncontrolled conditions -- battlefield capture, destruction under aerial bombardment, or casual disposal. [US is uniquely fastidious in WMD disposal, under legal pressure from enviro's. Lots of folks just landfill 'em, burn 'em or dump 'em at sea.] US DOD racks up billions in inventory discrepancies, and we haven't lost staff and records centers under precision bombing. Many intel estimates net out finished goods based on presumed input stocks, presumed production yields and presumed degradation rates. Subordinates might divert assets for their own reasons. And Saddam might encourage deliberate ambiguity to keep potential adversaries' uncertainties up in the yellow zone.Weaponization is a mixed bag. Iraqi and imported researchers have advanced the state of the art in some areas, e.g., particulates, but other results are primitive or incompetent, and some are downright head-scratchers ... either he knows a whole lot more than we do, or a whole lot less, or somebody's pulling his leg. Delivery is Saddam's weak suit. Iraq isn't much of a force on land, sea or air. Iraq probably never developed effective CW, BW or nuclear warhead designs. For whatever reason, Iraqi rocket scientists aren't exactly rocket scientists. (We'll take up delivery considerations in greater detail under each WMD category.) All intelligence detail on Saddam's holdings must be taken with a grain of salt. Saddam leaks disinformation, opposing factions invent horror stories, defectors reel out lines of bull in exchange for sponsorship, and US "war entrepreneurs" grasp at straws and scurry them past the usual screens and filters of prudent assessment. On the whole, Saddam retains an active interest in WMD technology -- greater than that of his near neighbors (possibly excepting Iran). He has taken a scattergun development approach ... initiating more projects and maturing fewer than would be in his best interest. Recent progress and current holdings are uncertain. To the extent his holdings have been reduced, he could reconstitute them on short notice. What are Saddam's ambitions? Saddam is situationally hostile to US, not inherently hostile (as per current myth). His major beef is our intent to destroy him ... declared (with intermittent equivocation) for more than a decade, after cultivating him as a regional ally for more than two decades prior. He retains an evident grudge against George H. W. Bush and family. Other than that, he's no more hostile than the average of his immediate neighbors. He properly anticipates that US might revert to form -- courting, coopting, aiding and abetting him -- under different circumstances. The popular profile of Saddam as territorially ambitious is a bit of a stretch, extrapolated from two incidents over 35 years (again, not atypical for his neighborhood). First was an opportunistic incursion to resolve long-unsettled boundary issues with Iran. This backfired, escalating into a war which threatening Iraq's very existence. Iraq enjoyed US support in this conflict, while Iran enjoyed minor covert US support (Iran-Contra arms trading). Second was the annexation of Kuwait ... a more serious case of unforced aggression, a serious miscalculation, but not entirely without provocation. Saddam may have believed (or persuaded himself) he had a US green light for this adventure.Saddam appears to value WMD primarily for the same reasons most of us do -- deterrence and defense, especially in light of Iran's 1980s "human wave" attacks -- but we should consider other possibilities. "Going out with a bang". Saddam unleashes horrific, pointless destruction at the end of a losing battle. No way to know whether he'd do this, or whether subordinates would comply.If developed to maturity, Saddam's WMD programs would give him substantial deterrent capability. No scenario gives him a fighting chance to initiate aggression, and almost all of them hasten his demise ... but we cannot precisely calculate his propensity to miscalculate. Interim summary: Saddam possesses, or is close to possessing, or can readily reconstitute, a variety of WMD assets. He has few, if any, advantageous offensive uses for them. He may or may not realize that. Many other potential actors have similar capabilities -- some in less advanced stages of development -- and similar prospects. In subsequent segments, we'll survey each category of WMD ... and reinforce the premise "what Saddam has probably won't hurt us, and what hurts us probably won't come from Saddam". Saturday, February 01, 2003
--- So Light a Candle, and Lift a Glass ... ---
Recite Kirtan, Kaddish, and MassOur best in class, brief shooting stars They reached so high, and fell so hard The arc of hope, the searing blast "we interrupt this telecast ..." The silent prayer, the lines gone slack The empty chair, the marble plaque From dust ... to dust and ash and gas But surely this torch, too, shall pass Friday, January 31, 2003
--- Unpacking the Case for Invading Iraq: Introduction ---
What are we going to do about Saddam? It's increasingly clear ... we're going to invade Iraq and take him out. On subsidiary questions -- who, when, where, how -- the veils of uncertainty are dropping to permissible minimums for an impending military operation. What next? We'd rather not think about that. But the disquieting big question -- WHY? -- lingers like Dilbert's "stench of a dead woodchuck under the porch". General public sentiment hangs uneasily on the vapor trail of last year's bogus arguments ... mostly on a residual impression that Saddam masterminded 9/11. Leadership sentiment hangs on a very different set of pegs. This post is the first in a series taking up -- and taking down -- the strongest of these pegs, including the Case for Invading Iraq presented by Kenneth Pollack in his very thoughtful, knowledgeable and influential book The Threatening Storm. (Highly recommended, BTW.) Some of the supporting arguments are far-fetched, some are not even sane, not even on their own terms -- though perfectly sane analysts stand behind them. Capable decision-makers would object vociferously if they saw other people in other settings apply these same principles the same way. What's going on here? One school of thought explains dreaming as an elaborate side-effect of random synaptic noise and involuntary muscular contractions -- the upper brain inventing story lines to satisfy its need for a master narrative consistent with the moves it thinks its neuromuscular subsystems are making.I hope that's not all there is to my dreams ... but I'm tempted to believe "action before thought" accounts for the parade of arguments for war in Iraq. I also hope Colin Powell will bring us better material next week, but we can only work with what's on the table. Some Ground Rules For purposes of this discussion only, we confront the issue on narrow consequential grounds: Does invading Iraq make the US foreseeably more secure, or less secure? We exclude several popular bases of argument, or truncate them unceremoniously, claiming the central question can be settled without them. (These are the CP's rules -- love 'em or leave 'em -- though objectors are encouraged to stick around out of curiosity.) Moral argument is out of bounds. We may lose a few dogmatic pacifists and pilgrims on the road to Armageddon, in order that the rest of us can communicate in terms of least common denominator precepts. On the other hand, the real-world dynamics of competing belief systems and their effects on various players' motives, reactions and affiliations, etc., are very much in bounds. So are pragmatic pacifist considerations (warfare's proclivities for miscalculation, contagion and unintended consequences), and likewise "peace through strength" arguments. Compassion is out of bounds. Saddam characteristically tortures and kills innocents, often in front of their loved ones. War characteristically tortures and kills innocents, often in front of their loved ones. Postwar score-settling does likewise. US policy apparatus has been happy to abide (and abet) all of the above, and has promised Saddam uncontested tenure if he disarms. The human tragedy is real; the sentimental argument is an illusion. Legalisms are out of bounds. "Material breach" and "burden of proof" are window dressing. To go, or not to go -- that is the question. US can devise satisfactory rationale for either option, and overwrought fears of irreparable harm to UN legitimacy are not dispositive. Ordinary economic effects are out of bounds. Dollar costs of invasion and occupation won't derail the US economic juggernaut. Same for visions of plunder on one side and "War for Oil" accusations on the other. Ultimately, similar volumes of Iraqi oil will reach world markets at similar prices regardless of US action. If we expropriate oil as spoils of war, the financial upside pales next to the geopolitical downside. On the other hand, the prospect of large-scale disruption of Gulf oil production (Iraq + Kuwait + Saudi + Iran) is in bounds. It is a distinct possibility (either way), it has large-scale security implications, and it figures prominently in Pollack's argument. Extraordinary economic effects are out of bounds. If some chain of events induces a major reversal of US fortunes, or lights the fuse on a massively expensive WW III, we'll have a lot more than red ink on our hands. Speculative futurology is out of bounds. If you enjoy thinking through Rube Goldberg historical scenarios, you have an inquiring mind and should consider a career as a video game designer. If you think you know how these chain reactions will play out, you have a deranged mind and should be allowed nowhere near the levers of power. Short-range knock-on effects are fair game. For instance, a US presence in Iraq would give us political, military and market leverage with Saudi Arabia. Raise taboo arguments, and you are arguing from premises not shared widely enough to win the day, or you are claiming superhuman foresight, or seizing on fine points in a coarse-grained landscape ... or you are simply rounding up palatable arguments in service of a predetermined conclusion. Where the case hangs on controversial estimates, we'll grant the hawks any reasonable benefit of the doubt -- and sometimes more. For instance, we'll score the war itself as a non-cost item in either dollars or blood, and we'll ignore the prospect of immediate stateside reprisals. The case for invasion is so riddled with error, we are comfortable spotting the hawks many valuable debating points. We will call "foul!" when midrange probabilities are inflated to perfect certainty, or deflated to dismissal, or compounded with no respect for the steepening odds against longer parlays. Series Outline I. Unpacking Saddam's threat inventory. We'll post separate segments on each major weapons category: chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear. We'll survey the interplay of development, production, delivery, and operational strategies for each. We do not assume Saddam's strategic intentions are sound, but we do assume they are purposeful. In each category, we'll review Saddam's threats to America (and American interests), and place them in perspective against Saddam's threats to Others, Others' threats to America, and Post-Saddam's threats to America. Conclusions in brief: in each category, what Saddam can do isn't likely to hurt us, what ends up hurting us is more likely to come from other hostile actors, and Saddam's successors are nearly as likely to hurt us as he is. II. Unpacking Pollack's Case. We'll show that some key links in Pollack's chain of inference are stretched, bent, badly forged or just plain missing. We'll take up an explicit ad hominem angle, one we believe has explanatory legitimacy in this case. Starting from the premise "something must be done about Saddam", Pollack convincingly eliminates a series of noninvasive alternatives, and reluctantly concludes "something must be done about Saddam". Not surprising -- he spent the most intense years of his career assigned to do something about Saddam, and Saddam is still with us. Pollack shuns the hysterics that color most popular discussion, but his support for the main premise is unsatisfactory. Saddam, in his eyes, is a problem -- necessitating a solution -- in closed context. Downstream consequences get short shrift. III. Inspecting National Security Impact. This is a big payload. Rather than unpacking the whole thing, we'll pry open selected crates from selected pallets. It should become clear there is much at stake outside the Iraq regional "bubble". IV. Unpacking arguments of last resort. There are a handful of arguments that some see as bulletproof clinchers, and others see as grasping at straws. These include "What's your alternative?", "Bet your city!", "Appeasement!", and various permutations of Pascal's Wager. What's My Alternative? Briefly: If we invade Iraq on current public evidence alone, if we proceed with few partners, if we look trigger happy, we incur adverse national security consequences that are extensive, severe and long-lasting -- even if we are eventually proven right on most points.In all cases, the future history of Iraq is highly unpredictable. OK, but what's my alternative? In terms of US national security, "nothing" beats the heck out of "invasion" ... but US and friends can do better than "nothing", and we'll have some suggestions. Wednesday, January 29, 2003
--- S.O.T.U. Review ---
Give Bush credit -- he found an acceptable tone, avoided pitfalls, and pulled a couple of velveteen rabbits out of the hat. He may get his SOTU bounce after all. [UPDATE: ABC News has the first legit response poll, giving W about a 3 point bump (within MOE).] Will it stick, or is it (as one MSNBC commentator speculated) a "sugar high"? [Bad decisions pile up ... he'll never make the play-off's.]One rabbit was a threadbare stuffed bunny, but it plays surprisingly well in early reviews. Did the Hydrogen Car sound familiar? It should. In dailyKOS comments, "olds88" notes that Bush announced this US Council for Automotive Research FreedomCar subsidy last January, using it to run Clinton's quicker-starting USCAR Partnership for a Next Generation of Vehicles (PNGV) off the road. The other was AIDS funding for Africa. $15B over 5 years, of which $5B was previous committed ... so it's a $2B/year rabbit out of the $2000B/year federal hat. Will it displace other "hearts and minds" expenditures? How much ends up in Big Pharma coffers? (Or is US going to bell the drug-patent-waiver-for-poor-countries cat? Unlikely.) How much is earmarked for condoms? (Or is "prevention" a windfall for Christian conservative abstinence missions?) The tone of delivery was serious, subdued, almost leaden ... successfully avoiding flippancy on the one hand and hysteria on the other. This was no mean feat. The economy? What economy? Glad to hear "our economy is recovering" but we still need tax cuts, what with "unemployment rising" and all. Deficit? We have a deficit? OK, more tax cuts. Response by Washington Governor Gary Locke provided a study in contrasts ... the affirmative action Yalie versus the legacy admissions Yalie ... and oh, yeah, that economy! CP suspects several Republican governors were tuned in and muttering "You tell him, Gary!".Social Security? Privatize it. Medicare? Privatize it. An odd passage railed against bureaucrats and HMO's. (The proposed reform involves herding seniors into HMO's, by holding prescription drug benefits hostage). All that was just warm-up. The feature act was Iraq. "If war is forced upon us ..." we'll kick ass. If war is not forced upon us ... we'll find another pretext to kick ass. SOTU coinage can be disastrous, but it's never accidental. New coinage: "Hitlerism", as in "Hitlerism, militarism and communism" ... the Axism of Evil? What happened? Was that Hitler fellow giving "fascism" a bad name? And tubes? The Boy Who Cried Wolf cried "ALUMINUM TUBES"! Bush's "intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production", but CP's intel says the "centrifuge tube" story was doubtful from day one, and recent inspections refute it decisively ... or so it seems. (Does Bush have even more secret secrets up his sleeve?) Not to worry ... Colin Powell is scheduled to break out the good stuff next week, and we'll all have a snort before we hit the Road to Baghdad. In light of this development, we'll interrupt our regular programming (OK, not very regular) to unpack the case for war with Iraq. And then we'll get back to those staggering deficits -- in finance, marketing, personnel and elsewhere. Tuesday, January 28, 2003
--- "Big Hat ... No Rabbit" ---
The Bush43 Presidency is on the skids. People with a nose for these things can smell it, and several of them are becoming honorary citizens of New Hampshire. With the exception of two minor bounces ("Bush takes Iraq resolution to UN" and "Bush rules in midterm electoral contests"), his poll numbers have been in sustained decline from stratospheric heights post-9/11. Polls don't begin to hint at the depth of underlying problems, but the polls alone require a tactical response. Bush has been playing winner-take-all on thin margins, and the polls are an indispensable part of the act. What does Bush do to regain momentum? One classic answer is "invade something". The Commander in Chief usually gets a rally-round-the-flag boost in the polls and a free pass on minor controversies while troops are in harm's way. Problem is, troops are already in harm's way. We're still taking casualties in Afghanistan (and Kuwait). Folks are still asking "Why Iraq?" and "What about Korea?". If Bush has better answers, it's time to trot 'em out ... but folks are starting to feel like they've had enough cowboy talk for the moment, and more isn't necessarily better. Another classic is "reorganize". Been there, done that. We have a new Homeland Security department ... two dozen old agencies, doing the old same things they did yesterday, trying to figure out where they report today. Pretend it was your idea, George, and take your bow, but avoid details. Another answer: "stimulate the economy" and/or "fire the economic advisors". Did that, too, and then introduced a "not-a-stimulus" growth plan that didn't pass the laugh test. [My guess is that Bush commissioned a stimulus plan, and his right-wing think tank advisors gradually -- maybe even unintentionally -- morphed it into yet another tax revolt initiative, and the not-a-plan was out the door before the boss knew the difference.] Speechwriters will do their best to deliver applause lines about "not punishing the winners" and "it's your money", but there's only so many ways you can dress up the trickle-down pig before people realize she's the same old pig. The State Of The Union is a biggie in its own right ... always good for a bounce in the polls, right? Right? It's a time to hand out goodies, a time to unveil bold new initiatives ... a time to astonish the crowd by pulling a rabbit or two out of the federal top hat. Stirring phrases, bold delivery ... but what about content? What's in the hat? Where's the damn rabbit? A lot of Bush's bold talk may not wear well on today's audience. War talk ... we're not too excited about that. The economy ... I wouldn't spend too much time on that. The deficit ... you can blame it on terrorism, or on your political opponents, but tomorrow's fact-checkers will have a field day. Social security reform ... no, those numbers don't work anymore (as if they never did). What's next? A half-baked Medicare reform -- give 'em drug coverage if they'll take the HMO route in lieu of traditional Medicare (the only segment of US health care that delivers world-class outcomes). Again, go light on details -- promise 'em another bipartisan commission or something. It will look like action, and it may bump the polls before the geezers find out you really are out to kill Medicare just like those shameless "MediScare" Democrats always said. Even the S.O.T.U. tone is problematic. Bush can't come on looking too confident ... things are bad, people know it, they want answers. He can't look too fretful -- there's no room for bunny-in-the-headlights paralysis. He can't show too much bravado ... last year's "follow me!" won't cut it this year. He can't point the finger of blame, or play the "pass my program or lose your job" card. Bush made the big time as a cheerleader -- not as a player. Last year we wanted a cheerleader. Now we want answers. We want solutions. We want results. My guess is he'll talk the talk again. The talk will be BIG and bold, but the talk is getting old. He may make even register a negative S.O.T.U. bounce. It's not a man on the moon, but it is sho'nuff a historic achievement! What keeps Bush from pulling a rabbit out of that hat? He has a nice, shiny hat -- it's his to keep until 2004 -- but he doesn't have any rabbits. Can't he beg, borrow or breed one? The prototypical profligate son, Bush hocked the family jewels to throw wild parties, cover his gambling debts, make friends and influence people ... and when the bills came due there was nothing left to feed the rabbits. Starting from unprecedented heights of positional advantage, Bush managed to run the nation into a sea of red ink, squander a king's ransom of international good will, frittered away the flexibility to make discretionary "friend or foe" decisions, gave the policy development pipeline a bad case of vapor lock, spent down his own credibility inside and outside the Beltway, and allowed unmanaged issues to overtake the White House's limited management bandwidth resources.More on these fundamental deficits tomorrow. For now, as a famous man once said, "this looks like a re-run of a bad movie". Grab some popcorn, sit back, and enjoy the show! Monday, January 20, 2003
--- The Devil's in the Denials ---
Though it recycles interminably in hothead circles, the Patty Murray "Tribute to Osama" hubbub fizzled out quickly in mainstream discourse. Today, of all days, what draws us back to this graffiti-covered eccentric outcrop on the political landscape? As always, the visible landscape is a superficial projection of underlying geologic formations and processes. Every pebble has a story, and every story has a story, and so on back to the beginning of time. Context blocks in this case include a rash of astroturf McCarthyism ... an imaginary martyr's bloody shirt ... a reluctant penitent's premature redemption ... a Faustian bargain ... sympathy for the Devil ... a Civil War by other means ... the Great Chain of Denying ... freedom from truth ... a commentariat's toadying antics ... national agendas driven without headlights ... a proscription on painful questions ... and the painful question of how we all ought to behave when this proscription inevitably runs out. Behind it all, there's a Dark Wizard dazzling us with parlor tricks ... putting notions into our heads and yanking them back out again ... materializing large wild creatures and then rendering them invisible. For instance, there's this elephant in the sitting room. The central figure in the Murray flap is none other than Trent Lott. Hothead writers press the explicit parallel, and cry 'foul'; mainstreamers validate it by playing dumb. Both are senators, see ... and both made remarks in informal settings ... "outrage" ensued in both cases ... the inning's over ... and on the level playing field of reputational demolition derby -- the score is tied, sportsfans!Next, there's the beached whale behind the elephant. To buy into Lott-Murray parity theory, you have to think Lott was the victim of unjust, opportunistic, politically motivated attack. You have to think "I'm sorry" was -- or at least should have been -- a false confession, extracted under duress. And to think that, you have to invest in the full panoply of comment-board denials and deflections.There's a brontosaurus behind the whale. The "race problem" shaped our colonial development, nearly deadlocked the Constitutional Convention, nearly destroyed the USA. Everybody -- North and South, black and white -- pitched in to bungle slavery's aftermath, but a sizable faction has always clung to the idea that each step forward is one step too far.We'll take a closer look at the jackals of Southern Strategy (and the hyenas of Southern Strategy Denialism) another time, but look! A herd of yaks grazing near the brontosaurus! Mainstream editors chided Murray for discounting US aid, even as they pooh-pooh the incident's scandalometer reading. Problem is, Murray has it right. The paucity of US aid is a significant fact about the world we live in. The fact that most editors don't know better is another significant fact.There's a bunch of drunken chimps swinging from the chandelier. Editorial boards are the habitat of social climbers -- higher primates in J. Fred Muggs plaid sportcoats and crumpled fedoras. They are self-consciously "even-handed" lest certain readers write off their chatterings as "biased". Most of them felt compelled to slap Murray around a bit before noting that her conservative antagonists have no case. [For an extended example, see the post below.] Here they are caught in the curious stance of bidding for credibility by propagating misinformation.A troupe of ravening baboons is keeping the chimps away from the buffet table. If Brand X was eating our lunch in the market for beer or widgets, we'd want to know why. But with national security at stake, 9/11 "rally mode" ruled out after-action review of how the US got blindsided with the key demographic. Self-interested policy adjustments were tabled In the immediate aftermath -- perhaps wisely so at the time -- lest they signal that terrorists can pull our strings.Here's the wide shot -- the proverbial Big Picture. A lot of influential people think two wrongs make a Right. A lot of influential people think their Lott was wronged. A lot of influential people think race issues deserve benign neglect. A lot of influential people think everything after abolition was misguided social engineering. A lot of influential people think the US is a foreign aid spendthrift. A lot of influential people think they can buy credibility by spinning tall tales. A lot of influential people think it's disloyal to ask whether we could have played our hand better. Each of these is a BIG STORY in its own right. And most people think it's impolite to interrupt our lovely national dialogue by mentioning the elephant (and his friends) in the sitting room. (P.S. That Dark Wizard may not be who -- or what -- you think. More in future posts.) --- Inept but Entitled ---
The Washington Post sticks it to Senator Patty Murray, and CP sticks it to the Post. In their defense, it's only fair to note that the editorial below was filed Christmas Eve, and the responsible editorialist may have handed it off to an intern, who may already have had a drink or two in the course of office merriment, and was probably in a hurry to get on to the next party.Inept but Entitled to Her Say (Wednesday, December 25, 2002; Page A28) THERE IS POLITICAL criticism, there is political attack, and then there is political political correctness: the massive overreaction to perfectly useful ideas that have been badly stated or misinterpreted. We could devote the whole blog to this sentence alone. What is it that warrants reaction, or even overreaction, but not "massive overreaction" -- bad ideas, badly stated ideas, innocent misinterpretation, or deliberate misrepresentation? One branch of the parse tree reads "overreaction to misinterpreted ideas is political P.C." Something's evidently wrong with P.P.C., but what? The "correctness" part, or the "political" part? And which "political", the first or the second? What is the right-sized overreaction to a misinterpretation of "perfectly useful ideas"? Playing dumb, the Post concedes scalp-for-scalp equivalence with the Trent Lott matter. There is a danger, for instance, that people will become afraid to criticize any aspect of American foreign policy, lest they be branded "anti-American." Hmmm. There is a danger, for instance, that the Post will become afraid to call McCarthyism "McCarthyism". That, at any rate, is the conclusion many will reach after reading of Sen. Patty Murray's experience. That, at any rate, is the editorial voice lurking behind an overgrown hedge of presumptive vicarious passive-case indirection. But the editorial is built on a classic formula: tell 'em what you're gonna insinuate, insinuate it, and tell 'em what you insinuated. Sen. Murray's (D-Wash.) crime, it seems, was to make an ill-worded and rather silly When building a case for "extraordinary ineptitude" (as below), choose your words and facts with all the eptitude you can muster. No "rather", no "seems" about it, the whole editorial is ill-worded. speech An ill-facted assumption. No, not a speech ... just extemporaneous remarks in small-group Q&A.; What's the diff? Critical standards for brief impromptu utterances are necessarily looser than for set piece composition (a prepared speech, for instance, or a published editorial). last week to a high school in Vancouver, Wash., that was then excerpted by the Columbian, a newspaper in Vancouver, Canada. The Post ill's the facts again. A local daily like the Post might extend more professional courtesy to a local daily like the Columbian (the "Daily Columbian") in Vancouver ("the other Vancouver") Washington ("the other Washington"). Vancouver Washington lies opposite Portland Oregon ("the other Portland"?), across the Columbia River (far from the District of), about 300 miles south of Vancouver British Columbia (Canada). The Post may have an alibi, since New Westminster's British Columbian is sometimes dubbed the "Daily Columbian" ... though that usage declined sharply after the masthead change in 1910. Cincinnati OH had its own Daily Columbian back in the '50s (the 1850s), and the 1893 Chicago World's Fair (the "Columbian Exposition") published yet another "Daily Columbian" on site.In a normal week, the Columbian's Web site receives 60,000 to 70,000 visitors. The day following the paper's story about Sen. Murray's speech, it had 230,000 visitors. As the Web site put it, "There are top stories, and then there is Patty Murray." Other Web sites, Web logs and talk shows picked up the story, Another classic "top story" formula: fabrication, repetition, repetition. When the Mighty Wurlitzer wheezes, the Post gets the fever. and by the weekend, the chairman of the Republican Party in Washington state had publicly questioned Sen. Murray's patriotism. Great, Chris Vance impugns Patty Murray's patriotism. Whatever happened to the "dog bites man" rule? What did Patty Murray actually say? The Post doesn't actually know, exactly. Low fidelity audio samples are wafting about the web. The Columbian's transcript begins (and ends?) in mid-passage, marked by missing connectives, qualifiers and possibly whole phrases (without the usual "[inaudible]" notations). The surrounding thread of discussion is not on record, so we don't actually know what issue Murray calls "very highly debatable" when she says "I don't know which way I fall on it. But I want you to think about it." According to the Columbian, she said that Osama bin Laden has "been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day-care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. Subject matter experts agree, excepting the term "day care" (which might more appropriately read "child care"). [Extra credit if you spotted the transcript discrepancy.] . . . How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?" No doubt, bin Laden stole a march on us in the battle for hearts and minds. For perspective, we spent twenty-some years in Vietnam before it occurred to us that hearts and minds mattered. [And BTW, what are these ellipses doing . . . here?] Sen. Murray got a few things very wrong. And the Post is going to tell us what these wrong things are, isn't it? Or is it? I'll be so disappointed if they forget. Osama bin Laden spent a lot more money on terrorist training camps than on day-care centers; Behold, the power of Glennuendo! Yes, of course ... Murray must be a naif, since she most certainly would have raised this point if she was aware of it -- even though training camp budgets have no bearing on the "hearts and minds" problem. So is Murray "wrong" in the sense that she should have chosen a different topic ... or "wrong" in the sense that she should have interjected talking points irrelevant to her defined topic? the senator appears to have confused him with the fundamentalist charities that have won so much support for the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas on the West Bank. The Post demonstrates the mind-reading skills for which it is so justly famous! No such confusion is evident. Full-time expert first-person accounts support Murray's view. Nor did she seem to have considered the possibility that the "bombing" of Afghanistan and Iraq might also, in the long term, be in the interest of the Afghans and the Iraqis. More mind-reading, of a deeper sort, since Murray said nothing at all about bombing Afghanistan ... but the Post knows she was thinking it, and they know that she did so heedless of the Afghans' long term interests, too. Afghans were heedless, too, in decades past when bin Laden was winning "hearts and minds" ... which seems to be the theme of Murray's remarks. Nevertheless, there is a deeper point that Sen. Murray, with extraordinary ineptitude, seemed to be trying to make -- a point that is worth preserving: One last chance WaPo: identify Murray's point, and discuss. At the very least, it ought to be possible to discuss America's image in the Islamic world, and the kinds of mistakes the United States has made there. There's no indication Murray -- or her young audience -- ever doubted or debated whether such discussion "ought to be possible". So her point was ... For decades, American governments have spent remarkable amounts of money in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, relatively little of which is visible on the ground. No, that's not her point ... that's not even true, and she says as much. The US spends remarkably little on direct foreign aid, and little of that on direct humanitarian development. Debate can be educational but, as we were saying, Murray's deeper point was ... Yet if successive American administrations had identified the United States more closely with good works in the Middle East and had tried more assiduously to explain American values, then American relations with the Islamic world might look different today. No, that's not it! Murray was talking about reality, not perception (though we neglected perception, too), and primarily about reality in Al Qaeda strongholds, not the Middle East, and about how it might cost more to spend more, and how this might also, in the long term, be in the interest of the Americans. Or they might not. Outstanding! A bank-shot editorial hedge fund diversifies its holdings against political currency risk. Or not. Either way, this is a point worth debating, Which point? That our policy mix is debatable? That money can buy off unhappiness? That things might look different today if things were done different yesterday, or they might not? C'mon, Posties! If, for instance, the editors have, it seems, a deeper point ... they should, at any rate, have, at the very least, seemed to be trying to make it. Or they might not. and no one should be called "unpatriotic" for bringing it up. The "liberal" Post lowers their picayune boom on Murray's critics, after compulsively filling the column with misdirected swipes at her ... an ironic bid for credibility, paid for in small-denomination counterfeits. "Turnabout is fair play, because we're, y'know, balanced". In doing so they fed the even-the-liberal-Washington-Post-says beast of a million bleating e-mails, and helped the Right negotiate a hostage exchange -- Lott's radical race-baiting (with abundant supporting history of consistent sentiment) for their radical "Patty Loves Osama" distortion of Murray's remarks (with no supporting history). The Portland Oregonian rendered mixed commentary. On one hand, she "brought it on herself". On the other hand (in a column essentially apologizing for not raising a bigger stink) "we need to think about and debate such matters". In more enlightened commentary, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Joel Connelly invokes Sun Tzu ("If you know yourself but not your enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat") and Central Asia Institute founder Greg Mortenson, who actually funds and develops schools in the affected areas ("Senator Murray has not stuck her foot in her mouth," Mortenson responded. "She has placed Uncle Sam's shoe in his mouth. Lots of talk, but no action."). Wednesday, December 18, 2002
--- Winter Games Update ---
A few senators -- notably Ted Stevens, the man who would be president pro tempore -- have lined up behind Lott. Others are frantically gesturing and stage-whispering from the wings: "Ix-nay! Ix-nay! Ink-thay ark-May uhrman-Fay!".Various sources have parsed Mississippi law re Senate vacancies. (See this from the Biloxi SunHerald.) An appointed replacement sits for 90 days if Lott resigns by the end of the 2002, or through November if he resigns in 2003. Note: from notice of vacancy, the Governor has 10 days to name a replacement. I assume (but have not confirmed) that this provision could NOT be exploited to toll the date logic and roll a 2002 resignation into 2003. Dwight Meredith at P.L.A. logs a Count Your Fingers series on promises made to legislators and broken by Republican leaders, noting one deal even less likely to be honored by a vacant Lott. A factor in that January 6 caucus date: most of 9 new GOP Senators won't be sworn in til then. Can mere Senators-elect vote in a leadership challenge? That depends on caucus rules. What are the rules? Don't know, but they're set by the caucus and (I assume) can be suspended by supermajority, or a 'done deal' could be adopted by gentleman's agreement before formal action in January. Lott could score a committee chairmanship as payoff for stepping down but staying in the Senate. (Chuck Grassley's Finance Cmte. slot has been mentioned.) Lott gets a major chair, which gets yanked out from under some other senior R, who must then be bought off, which creates a chain reaction ... and its hard to find any chair that doesn't preside over racially sensitive subject matter. Let the Mountain come to Murkowski ... who now hints he may not name his own replacement until after Christmas. Bids are open. It's a good time to be a Murkowski ... or a Chaffee ... or perversely, even a Friend of Lott. Judicial appointments could be a huge bone of contention. Positive Clinton would lose the 1996 race, Gingrich Revolutionaries blocked his picks from late 1994 forward. A few months of pre-election stalling would have been routine, the two-year speculative embargo was a stretch, but -- reinvigorated by impeachment prospects -- the blockade held through 2000 (punctuated by horsetrading exceptions). D's regained Senate control in 2001 with many scores to settle, blocking selected Bush nominations.Lots of chips on the table, some big chips on big shoulders, and several guns drawn and cocked. In any grand cross-caucus bargain, these could be deal-breakers... or the currency by which hold-outs are bought into the fold. Monday, December 16, 2002
--- Let the Winter Games Begin! ---
It was shaping up as a joyous holiday season for Senate Republicans. November's two-seat swing gave them the Majority. The Louisiana run-off seemed to promise an additional seat. They'd take their time fine-tuning January's Organizing Resolution, leveraging a 52-48 advantage to stick it to the losers. Any static that might emanate from this process would be of the "dividing the spoils" variety. Suddenly they're clinging to a 51-49 edge with a terminally discredited Leader who threatens to take their Majority down with him. As curmudgeon Moe Lane remarks in a DailyKOS comments section "there's a little part of my brain that loves to see those slo-mo movies of test crashes and expensive glassware shattering on cobblestone floors". Ah, schadenfreude! What happens now? Here's a pre-game run-down of basic rules, strategies, strengths and weaknesses, who's holding (and hiding) which cards, chips, guns. For starters, time is of the essence. Normally the O.R. -- and subsidiary detail down to the last stick of furniture -- is negotiated between respective Leaders of both parties. Even before the crystal shattered, the R's brought high expectations to a difficult negotiating process. That process should be in full swing RIGHT NOW. [See this November outlook by National Review's Byron York.] Until the new Senate adopts a new O. R., normally by U.C. (Unanimous Consent) it operates with no O.R. in force ... but it functions largely by terms of the old one. Daschle remains "Majority" Leader, D's retain a one seat margin (and the chair) on most committees. Committee staff and budgets are divided equally. Other important business stays in limbo until the Resolution is resolved. Rookie Senators (R's Alexander, Chambliss, Coleman, Cornyn, Dole, Lindsey Graham, Sununu, Talent, and Murkowski's unnamed replacement ... and the D's Pryor) wait for their committee seats. Appropriation subcommittees don't even meet ... and the 107th Congress left a ton of spending questions unsettled. Thus R's are impatient to score a new O.R., while D's can afford to run out the clock. In a game of negotiations and coalitions, this gives D's a decided advantage. Banking on a 52-48 majority, R's had been drawing up an ill-conceived power offense -- acting like D's had no leverage and the pendulum would never swing back. R's would demand a 2-seat margin on most committees and a 2-to-1 ratio for supporting staff and budgets. [2-to-1 is the maximum ratio allowed under Senate rules, regardless of voting margin. With D's up 51-49, committee budgets were divided 50-50, plus 10% for admin.] Landrieu's win pared the margin to 51-49, but caucus hotheads clung to the same objectives. In either case Daschle had, as he put it, "options" that would give R's cause to reconsider. Now, with "all these troubles", everything is up for grabs. Everything. When the dust settles in January, control of the Senate might belong to the R's, or the D's, or somebody else. An earlier post surveyed the creative options available to John McCain (beyond a mere party switch or a presidential bid). No reason to think he'll ever stumble across a better chance to lead. If he makes a move now, he's an 800-lb. eagle. If he stands pat now, he's only an 800-lb. parakeet. How about Lott? I wish he'd spare us the gruesome spectacle of a man being dragged through racial sensitivity training every night on live TV, but he vows to stick it out. He further signals he would resign from the Senate if deposed. (A fallen Leader often cleans out his desk and goes home.) Mississippi's Gov. Musgrove is a D, who would likely appoint a D to replace Lott ... moving the Senate back to 50-50. The White House signals back, suggesting they would call this bluff if necessary. Is Lott bluffing? Is Bush? We don't know. Maybe they don't either ... not uncommon in games of mutual assured destruction. Among the R's is Lincoln Chaffee, who might jump to join the D's. Conceivably he could jump even at 51-49. He'll be seated where his vote and voice can't matter much (perhaps paired up with a DINO like Zell Miller), since his RINO vote effectively re rawing enough high holy heat from the Right, where the exercise will help separate sheep from goats. (Robert Novak: "Party of Lincoln? Lincoln was more of a racist [than you think] ...") It may occasion a much-needed refresher course in US history for the younger set (and for absent-minded seniors). What happens next? Lott simmers slowly in his own juices. If he escapes the frying pan of damage control through the fires of penitence, he's still scarred for life. Now every public appearance by the Southern Strategy's Master of Ceremonies gets scrutinized for back-masked subliminal hints of White Supremacy, and even innocently ill-chosen words reverberate in the echo chamber. In the end Lott must retreat -- at least to the back bench -- but no hurry ... first, let's find out who wants to stand up with him. Sunday, December 08, 2002
--- McCain, the 800-Lb. Lone Eagle ---
It's reorg time in the US Senate, and John McCain now has more strategic options -- and more strategic motivations -- than he can shake a stick at. Will he just stand there shaking that old stick ... or will he throw it? [On this decision tree, there's a hornets nest at the end of every branch.]What options am I talking about? There's some buzz about a double-switch ... Lincoln Chaffee (r-RI) and McCain (R-AZ) crossing the aisle, joining the D's (or caucusing with them), giving them effective majority control.Third parties rarely make much sense. In McCain's heart he's still a Republican, anyway, though the party of his youthful heart barely has a pulse these days. The switch might make sense -- just not for McCain. The GOP is no longer the Party of Lincoln (Chaffee). He'll never win top committee slots or drive legislation as a Republican, so he'd not sacrifice much influence by joining the minority. He's tired of hanging around in hopes of saving the Republicans from their bad selves, or staking out the leftmost margin to preserve wiggle room for other Northeast moderates. Let's count Chaffee, then, as a prospective effective D ... dividing the Senate 50-50 with VP DIck Cheney still the tiebreaking vote. But McCain has more diverse and interesting options on the board. By crossing the aisle (all the way or halfway as Jeffords did), he can flip the balance. That gives him a ton of bargaining power on both sides of the aisle. With this bargaining power he can effectively dictate organization of the Senate. Committees will be divided equally, and McCain could decide who gets which Chair ... which give him immense bargaining power with individual senators. Using the threat to switch -- and to drive committee seats accordingly -- he could quite possibly make himself Majority Leader on the GOP side. From that seat he might wield powers he could not exert as key player on a Dem-centered coalition. For instance, he would control GOP appointments to the 9/11 Commission (something he couldn't do from the other side). He could enforce the late-session agreement to "revisit" certain unattributed midnight additions to the Homeland Security package. On this basis, he could place an even higher premium on his option to cross the aisle. He could negotiate his choice of Democratic Majority Leader, for instance, and insist on a number of other committee and policy fiats. On the third hand, he could form a swing caucus in the Senate, without going through the corresponding set of (less practicable) third-party gyrations. Attracting a small number of temporary followers from both parties, he/they could control the reorg -- and the agenda -- and the subsequent directional debate in both parties -- without either permanently defecting or quietly capitulating. McCain probably doesn't want to be Leader on either side (too much bean-counting and nuancing, not enough swashbuckling), but he could be the one who gets to decide who gets to be Leader on one side, or the other side ... or on both sides!!! Those are the basic elements. A slew of creative combinations are conceivable. How about McCain's motivations? Some are policy-centered, some political, some patriotic, and some personal. He thinks less these days of living in the White House, but he senses trouble ahead for his beloved Republican Party ... and maybe his Republic. As with Jeffords, the "last straw" was likely both personal and principled. The Bush/Rove/Lott machine has been On top of the 2000 campaign smears, on top of the unceremonious McCain-Feingold signing snub, Bush & Co. delivered a series of sharp insults that go beyond the personal ... they go to questions of honor and substance ... to substantive agreements negotiated with a United States Senator, and later dishonored. They double-crossed McCain on a Federal Elections Commission appointment (agreed in return for a pass on other appointments). They waved a red flag in front of the Bull Moose by larding up the Homeland bill with a Thousand Points of Pork. They'll screw him again when these points are "revisited". They are moving now to screw him on previously agreed 9/11 Commission appointments. They won McCain's contempt beyond their wildest dreams with their Cleland/Osama posters and Confederate battle flag themes, and maybe even with their pissing on (fellow maverick) Paul Wellstone's grave (blithely reversing Wellstone's last amandment, a provision against corporate tax turncoats). [These and other moves have also earned contempt from folks like Zell Miller and John Breaux, in ways that may end up pivotal in the drama to follow. Why do GWB & Co. do stuff like this? Simple. They just can't help themselves.] "Word is bond". A great deal of important business is done -- and can only be done -- on one's word of honor. Beyond that, GWB -- after a 2003 of damage control followed by a 2004 of creative desertion -- may not run. McCain can still be "Mr. Republican" without really trying. As with Jeffords, some fraction of the electorate might interpret post-election shenanigans as corrupt practice. Party switches might furnish Rove with more propaganda fodder, and contribute to even greater electoral alienation, and keep Bush from being held accountable for ... well, everything. These are some of the hornets nests I mentioned earlier. But post election polling says most voters never wanted Bush to control both houses of Congress. This factor -- wind-aided by Landrieu's victory, confirmed by DiIulio's "Mayberry Machiavelli" disclosures, reinforced by Trent Lott's Confederate cheerleading -- give McCain much freer rein. If McCain makes a move, most Americans will appreciate it as a move in the right direction ... and especially so if it's a move he doesn't have to make alone. Thursday, December 05, 2002
--- Machiavelli's, Mayberry's, and Moron-Like Entities ---
In The Dilbert Principle, Scott Adams reminds us the universe of relevant information is expanding rapidly, while our minds are not. Thus every one of us is becoming ever more functionally, relativistically idiotic by the minute ... even as we sleep.Part I: Henry the Palterer* and the Chamber of Secrets December 1968. Daniel, a RAND Corporation defense theorist and Vietnam subject matter expert, is briefing Henry, a newly elected president's top national security appointee. [Henry will later help turn the City of Secrets upside down in an effort to destroy Daniel ... but that's another story.] Daniel speaks: Henry ... you're about to receive a whole slew of special clearances, maybe fifteen or twenty ... higher than top secret.Henry took to Circe's potion like a pig takes to mud. He practised the torturous arts of juggling secrets within secrets, lies within lies ... eclipsing all past masters. He dealt with people only from the standpoint of what he wanted them to know, and kept them from suspecting what he knew. Ever more nimbly, he learned to traverse the fractal labyrinths of his own interior landscape ... compartments within compartments, false fronts, secret panels, hidden passages, coded tumblers, disappearing ink, mirror boxes and flash powder. Somewhere in this palace of mirrors, behind nth-order reflections of shadows of smoke, ten million ghosts of men, women and children -- mostly children -- are waiting patiently for the instant the juggler loses his touch ... but that's another story. [... thirty-four years pass as if in a dream ...] December 2002. A Commission to investigate the 9/11 horrors is to be divided evenly between Republicans and Democrats, with a distinguished chairman -- Henry -- appointed by the President. George, who had steadfastly opposed any such quest, has abruptly reversed course, but announces (contrary to Congressional charter) that the panel's mission is to ponder what horrors might lie ahead, but to never look back. Dr. K. -- Henry -- is still something like a moron, incapable of learning from most people. Then again, he's more like a wizard with moron rays at his fingertips, capable of suspending the passage of time and transforming whole academies into villages of idiots. The Secrets are safe ... for now. [* palter: to speak or behave insincerely; see equivocate, tergiversate, evade, dodge, fudge, beat around the BUSH] Part II: Opie-Dopie and the Traveling Mayberry's Somewhere up towards the North Pole, a government functionary has made the PR imbecile's career-limiting move ... referring to George as a "moron". [Whaddya want? Even her boss is a Cretien.] In terms of a once-authoritative diagnostic scale (now considered offensive), a moron can attain the adult mental development of a typical 7 to 12 year old ... potentially amenable to limited vocational training.George is not a moron -- not literally. Morons don't graduate from Harvard Business School, or pilot jets, or even get elected POTUS. But "moron" can also be used descriptively in a relative sense. Among HBS students, or fighter pilots, or P'sOTUS, there are inevitably some as dim as they can be and still function. George is -- in his own reference set -- a Moron-Like Entity. A minor laughing stock among heads of state, except that this MLE named George has bigger bombs and a shorter fuse. George is apparently near average intelligence (or at least he was at the front end of two dissolute decades). He is also apparently learning disabled. [Mother's emphatic and very specific insistence that George is NOT dyslexic suggests a concerted diagnostic effort.] Like many LD kids, George acquires exceptional coping skills ... faking comprehension by speaking in lofty generalities, and simulating depth by markedly EMphasizing the rare polySYllable ... wrapping vague pronouncements in non-falsifiable claims (claiming to have looked into men's eyes and seen their souls). The wily LD'er may hone skills of social interaction to win approval for inferior work, and get others to shoulder his assignments. So George is Tom Sawyer, and here we all are today ... white-washing the old fence while he dreams of high adventure. Leaders and LD'ers alike rely on effective social manipulative. Genuine leaders -- LD or not -- combine the art of getting people to follow them with the art of sniffing out better paths to better destinations. Their followers tend to make progress. Mere social-coping charismatics may succeed only in running their gangs into destructive clashes with rival gangs. Their followers tend to take casualties. But President Opie isn't the only MLE in our show of shows. Poll internals consistently demonstrate that a decisive fraction of the electorate can't figure out whether 'yes' means yes or 'yes' means no -- even in simple one-line questions. And we don't really care. Most of us coast along assuming if the issue was really important, somebody (else) would have done something about it already ... which turns out to be almost true enough, almost often enough. In the space between our Dear LD'er and them that don't know the difference between ignorance and apathy (and don't care), we find the MLE's of journalism. George has shown he can make major media newshounds roll over, play dead, or attack on cue by treating them like dogs ... calling them across the lawn with distinctive one or two-syllable nicknames, relying on simple consistent command gestures, vocal inflections and facial expressions of approval or disapproval. Did humans domesticate dogs by incrementally manipulating wolves? Or did wolves turn themselves into dogs by incrementally "learning" to manipulate humans? There's a lively debate afoot on this co-evolutionary topic, directly relevant to White House and Pentagon press briefings.News-slingers can fake their part of the show, too -- and escape the backbreaking burden of actual information-bearing -- by learning a few gimmicks of their own. Mainstream news is pitched to the verbal comprehension of a typical 12 year old ... and the emotive/narrative comprehension typical of a 7 year old (black hat, white hat, "bang, you're dead!"). In this context, witness the DiIulio gambit. Truth -- the "Mayberry Machiavelli" thesis -- was proffered, then retracted ... sort of. In the ordinary course of business, Truth from the mouth of a Opie-whacker would receive zero notice, and Truth shared by a disgruntled Opie-backer would receive scarcely more notice. The goodhearted gullible Opie, in particular, would never hear the alarm John D was trying to raise. But DiIulio -- though he may self-delude on occasion -- is no moron. He stumbled on a way to give the Truth longer legs ... by adding drama, or at least melodrama, appealing to journalism's inner 7-year-old. Ron: Bang! You're dead!So, with sufficient reverberation in the echo chamber, George may hear John's alarm after all. Just before this tempest blew up, Matthew Yglesias posted an astute observation re low turnover in the upper ranks of GWB's posse: Bush is ... not very curious about things ... he'll probably take his trusted advisors' advice about what to do with his less-trusted advisors. ... It's in the interests of advisors Bush trusts to keep non-trusted advisors around since it diminishes the amount of competition they have ... the circle of trusted advisors may get smaller and smaller as time goes on ...Oh, well, how does the saying go? "People get the government they deserve." OK, And hit it, Traveling Wilbury's! Sometimes you think you're crazyMore turkey, anybody? |
