Obsidian Wings

Wrong, Mr. Mayor.

Speaking about the tons of explosives missing from al Qaqaa, Rudy Giuliani said the following on the Today Show:

"The president was cautious. The president was prudent. The president did what a commander in chief should do. And no matter how much you try to blame it on the president, the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?"

(Note for those of you who don't trust Media Matters: the AP cites the last three sentences, which blame the troops. Transcripts aren't up yet, as far as I can tell.)

Wrong.

Let's be very, very clear here. Kerry is saying that al Qaqaa was not secured. Offhand, there wold seem to be two possible reasons it wasn't secured. One, the troops were ordered to secure it and they did not. In this case, supposing they were given adequate resources, they would be to blame. Two, they were not ordered to secure it, and they obeyed their orders. In this case, the troops would not be to blame. Soldiers are supposed to obey lawful orders, and this order, however unwise, would have been lawful. Moreover, if their orders were, for instance, to proceed to Baghdad, and they had instead stopped to secure this site, they would have disobeyed their orders, and would then be blameworthy.

Kerry alleges that what happened was the second of my two possibilities: that the troops were not ordered to secure al Qaqaa. In this case, as I said, they are not to blame for not securing it. Rudy Giuliani, by contrast, seems to assume that if al Qaqaa was not secured, it was not secured because the troops were ordered to secure the site, but failed. This contradicts what the troops themselves have said about their mission. Moreover, there are enough other reports of unsecured WMD and dual-use sites to make it plausible that our troops were not ordered to secure such sites. Nonetheless, Giuliani leaps to the conclusion that it must be the troops who are at fault, not the civilian leadership.

One of the things that bothered me about the President's remarks yesterday was that by saying that Kerry was criticizing the troops, he came uncomfortably close to saying that if al Qaqaa was looted after the occupation, it would be their fault, not his. He did not say that, however, and it's a judgment call whether what he did say really does suggest that interpretation. But Giuliani has made it explicit: if something went wrong, it's not George W. Bush's fault; it's the troops. This is shameful.

Realism, and the Reality-based Community

I fashion myself a foreign policy realist -- the words of Snowcroft, Lugar, and Biden are most resonant in my ears. My support for the Iraq War was accordingly cautious, my trust in our infallibility nonexistant, and my hopes for a quickie democracy in Iraq close to nil. When WMD were not found in Iraq, I was forced to confess that the invasion was a mistake -- albeit a mistake we must not magnify with defeat, or by drawing down our forces too quickly. (Indeed, I continue to advocate a significant increase in troop levels -- not that anyone is actually listening.)

One does not have to put oneself in the realist box, however, to appreciate this critique of the Iraq War, which extensively quotes Francis Fukuyama. Indeed, one might even be, like Fukuyama, a neoconservative.

Money quotes:

“Of all of the different views that have now come to be associated with neoconservatives, the strangest one to me was the confidence that the United States could transform Iraq into a Western–style democracy,” [Fukuyama] wrote, “and to go on from there to democratize the broader Middle East."

....

If Krauthammer [for instance], rather than summarily spurning continental arguments as just so much bad faith and responsibility–shirking, had instead “listened carefully to what many Europeans were actually saying (something that Americans are not very good at doing these days), he would have discovered that much of their objection to the war was not a normative one having to do with procedural issues and the UN, but rather a prudential one having to do with the overall wisdom of attacking Iraq.”

....

“the European bottom line proved to be closer to the truth than the administration’s far more alarmist position” vis–à–vis weapons of mass destruction (WMD). “On the question of the manageability of postwar Iraq, the more skeptical European position was almost certainly right.” Despite this, Krauthammer proceeds “as if the Bush administration’s judgment had been vindicated at every turn, and that any questioning of it can only be the result of base or dishonest motives.”

On Bush's relection:

“I just think that if you’re responsible for this kind of a big policy failure,” Fukuyama tells openDemocracy, “you ought to be held accountable for it.”

Fukuyama is not voting for Bush.

he said, He said

I'm not comfortable with all the God talk taking place this election. Fearing the consequences of seeming too secular, all kinds of pols are increasingly wearing their religion on their sleeves. As The Nation reported recently, it's become important to acknowledge that God is now a integral part of our election process, if only because Democrats are alarmed at how the Republicans are winning by doing so:

At last month's Democratic convention, few words were uttered more frequently than the one that seems to roll most easily off the tongue of George W. Bush: faith. "Let me say it plainly," announced John Kerry in his acceptance speech. "In this campaign, we welcome people of faith." John Edwards thanked his parents, Wallace and Bobbie, for instilling in him an appreciation of "faith" from an early age. Barack Obama declared that Kerry "understands the ideals of community, faith and service," and added, to those who think only Republicans turn to religion for inspiration, "We worship an awesome God in the blue states."

That Democrats are eager to propagate this message is not surprising. The United States is, after all, an astoundingly religious country. And in recent decades, Americans who take their religion seriously have been flocking to the GOP in numbers that have left Democratic strategists alarmed. Back in 1992, voters who told exit pollsters they attend prayer services on a frequent basis supported George H.W. Bush over Bill Clinton by a margin of 14 percent. Eight years later, in 2000, those same voters backed George W. Bush over Al Gore by 20 percent. In the 2002 Congressional elections, the religiously devout also favored Republicans by 20 percent, prompting Trinity College religion professor Mark Silk to observe, "Never before in American history have churches been tied so directly to one political party."

I guess most of my personal discomfort with this comes from my own very strict religious upbringing. God knows what's in your heart, I was taught, and there are few things more sure to enrage Him than false prophecy. Exploiting His name in any context is extremely dangerous. So much so, that it's best never to even approach it. Hence our reticence to wear our religion on our sleeve in my family. It's respect and fear that causes us to believe God's will shouldn't be reduced to slogans for bumper stickers, T-shirts, or campaign speeches (as if one understood God's will well enough to boil it down into a sound bite). It's also tacky, but that's another thread.

Anatomy of a Spin

Ahh. I see. When first reports regarding the missing 377 tons of high-grade explosives turn out to be, well, possibly lacking in nuance -- i.e., false, or at least incomplete -- then the 377 tons of high-grade explosives in fact never were the story at all. (Per Sullivan.) Well, then. Moving on.

In fact, no one knows what happened to the missing explosives. No one knows if they were at the weapons site when U.S. troops arrived, whether the Russians moved them prior to the war, or whether our gross incompetence delivered them to an Iraqi insurgency group (as Al-Islam’s Army Brigades now claims.) We can speculate until the end of time, but endless speculation does not a fact make.

We should keep that in mind, perhaps, before leaping on the attack.

(By this criticism, I do not mean to excuse Mr. Bush's inability or unwillingness to disinguish criticism of him from criticism of the troops who serve all of us. I'm not voting for the man for reason, after all.)

UPDATE: Reader Wilfred points to this story by a Minneapolis/St. Paul television station, which suggests that it may have videotaped some of the now-missing explosives when it visited the Al Qaqaa installation with U.S. troops on April 18, 2003 (after the fall of Baghdad). The story -- rightly -- takes pains to point out that it's not at all clear whether the videotaped exploses are the "high explosives" in question. But I've not yet seen this report in the blogosphere, so I'm passing it along. All caveats apply.

My World Tilts On Its Axis

The heavens have rolled up like a scroll; mountains have melted like mist; the sun has risen in the west; the rivers run uphill; the seas have turned to blood; the lion has lain down with the lamb; and the stars are falling like summer showers.

But in a good way.

The Red Sox have won.

Arafat In Critical Condition

HaAretz:

"Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat was fighting for his life as of Wednesday night, after his condition deteriorated sharply on Wednesday evening, officials in Arafat's office told Israeli security officials.

Arafat, 75, lost consciousness Wednesday evening, and a team of Jordanian doctors, headed by his personal neurologist, Ashraf Kurdi, was urgently summoned to join the Tunisian and Jordanian doctors already treating him. At Egypt's request, a team of Egyptian doctors is also en route. (...)

According to a bodyguard who was in the compound at the time, Arafat had been eating soup during a meeting with Qureia, Abbas and senior Palestinian official Yasser Abed Rabbo between 8 P.M. and 9 P.M. when he vomited. He was brought to the clinic inside the compound, where he collapsed and was unconscious for about 10 minutes, the guard said.

Some Palestinian officials said Arafat has been unconscious virtually ever since; others said he has been slipping in and out of consciousness; and still others said he was conscious, but delirious. (...)

In response to Arafat's illness, the PA put its security services on high alert. Palestinian officials are particularly worried about the possibility of a battle for the succession once Arafat dies, as he has never appointed a successor. Rumors were flying through the PA on Wednesday night that he had managed to do so shortly before losing consciousness, but there does not appear to be any basis to these rumors. Since losing consciousness, he has not seen anyone.

The Israel Defense Forces also began preparing for the possibility of Arafat's death on Wednesday night. Over the past year, the army prepared a plan for "the day after," which stresses the importance of preventing a deterioration in the situation in the territories immediately following Arafat's death."

There seems to be a uncertainty and disagreement about what exactly Arafat's illness is. -- I posted such a long excerpt since I wasn't sure how many of you read HaAretz (or any other Israeli paper) on a regular basis; as one might expect, the coverage is more detailed than, say, the AP story that both the NY Times and the Washington Post are currently running.

Securing WMD Sites In Iraq

Today's Boston Globe has an editorial by Peter Galbraith on the kinds of failures that let WMD sites be looted after our invasion of Iraq. For those of you who aren't familiar with Galbraith, he was one of the first people to publicize Saddam Hussein's Anfal campaign against the Kurds in 1988, and wrote the Prevention of Genocide Act, which would have imposed extremely serious sanctions on Iraq had it not run into resistance from lobbyists and the White House, and died. He supported the invasion of Iraq. He has, in my view, a lot of credibility on Iraq, and I don't say this because I agree with him (I often don't, e.g. about the invasion), but because he has a very long track record of being a thoughtful, astute, and honest observer, and one who often turns out to be right.

In any case, his article provides useful background to the story of the missing explosives at al Qaqaa. It helps to answer such questions as, is it credible that the US would simply fail to secure such a dangerous site? If al Qaqaa was looted, was this a one-time slip-up, the one point at which a carefully planned effort to secure Iraqi WMD sites fell apart; or part of a pattern? And so forth. He writes:

"IN 2003 I went to tell Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz what I had seen in Baghdad in the days following Saddam Hussein's overthrow. For nearly an hour, I described the catastrophic aftermath of the invasion -- the unchecked looting of every public institution in Baghdad, the devastation of Iraq's cultural heritage, the anger of ordinary Iraqis who couldn't understand why the world's only superpower was letting this happen.

I also described two particularly disturbing incidents -- one I had witnessed and the other I had heard about. On April 16, 2003, a mob attacked and looted the Iraqi equivalent of the Centers for Disease Control, taking live HIV and black fever virus among other potentially lethal materials. US troops were stationed across the street but did not intervene because they didn't know the building was important.

When he found out, the young American lieutenant was devastated. He shook his head and said, "I hope I am not responsible for Armageddon." About the same time, looters entered the warehouses at Iraq's sprawling nuclear facilities at Tuwaitha on Baghdad's outskirts. They took barrels of yellowcake (raw uranium), apparently dumping the uranium and using the barrels to hold water. US troops were at Tuwaitha but did not interfere.

There was nothing secret about the Disease Center or the Tuwaitha warehouses. Inspectors had repeatedly visited the center looking for evidence of a biological weapons program. The Tuwaitha warehouses included materials from Iraq's nuclear program, which had been dismantled after the 1991 Gulf War. The United Nations had sealed the materials, and they remained untouched until the US troops arrived.

The looting that I observed was spontaneous. Quite likely the looters had no idea they were stealing deadly biological agents or radioactive materials or that they were putting themselves in danger. As I pointed out to Wolfowitz, as long as these sites remained unprotected, their deadly materials could end up not with ill-educated slum dwellers but with those who knew exactly what they were doing. (...)

This was a preventable disaster. Iraq's nuclear weapons-related materials were stored in only a few locations, and these were known before the war began. As even L. Paul Bremer III, the US administrator in Iraq, now admits, the United States had far too few troops to secure the country following the fall of Saddam Hussein. But even with the troops we had, the United States could have protected the known nuclear sites. It appears that troops did not receive relevant intelligence about Iraq's WMD facilities, nor was there any plan to secure them. Even after my briefing, the Pentagon leaders did nothing to safeguard Iraq's nuclear sites."

If I thought that allowing al Qaqaa to be looted was the only case in which we failed to secure important caches of weapons, I would think it was a terrible mistake, since it seems likely that soldiers are dying as a result of it. But I would not be as angry about it as I am. I am angry because it's part of a pattern of extraordinarily bad planning for the occupation which has jeopardized our objectives in Iraq and put our troops at much greater risk than was necessary. If we did not order our troops to secure lethal and contagious biological agents, uranium ore, or 377 tons of high explosives, then I see only two possible explanations. First, the planning was incompetent on a scale that truly defies belief. Second, it was not incompetent. The planners prioritized their objectives more or less correctly, but they did not have enough troops to work down their prioritized list to objectives like securing WMD sites. In neither case, obviously, would the troops be at fault. In both cases, the civilian leadership would be, since if they failed to ask whether the war plans included securing known WMD sites, they were culpably negligent, and if they knew that those sites would not be secured, they should have changed the plans and sent in enough troops to do the job right.

Wrong, Mr. President.

George W. Bush has finally said something about the 377 tons of missing explosives from al Qaqaa:

"Now the senator is making wild charges about missing explosives when his top foreign policy adviser admits, quote, 'we do not know the facts.' Think about that. The senator's denigrating the action of our troops and commanders in the field without knowing the facts," Bush said in Lancaster County, Pa.

There are several things wrong with this statement. First, the charges Kerry is making are not "wild". They have been reported by the NY Times, as well as other newspapers. Those reports quote Iraqi and UN officials as claiming that the explosives disappeared after the US invasion. Iraqi officials are on the record as saying that "it is impossible that these materials could have been taken from this site before the regime's fall." For all I know, tomorrow the Department of Defense might release satellite photos of large convoys of trucks leaving al Qaqaa before the invasion. But based on the evidence now available to us, the claim that we allowed al Qaqaa to be looted, despite clear warnings not to, is not "wild" at all.

Second, it is simply false to say that Kerry is "denigrating the action of our troops and commanders in the field". Here's what Kerry actually said:

"George W. Bush who talks tough and brags about making America safer has once again failed to deliver. After being warned about the danger of major stockpiles of explosives in Iraq, this administration failed to guard those stockpiles – where nearly 380 tons of highly explosive weapons were kept. Today we learned that these explosives are missing, unaccounted for and could be in the hands of terrorists. (...)

In May of this year, the administration was warned that terrorists may be helping themselves to ‘the greatest explosives bonanza in history.’ And now we know that our country and our troops are less safe because this president failed to do the basics. This is one of the great blunders of the Bush policy in Iraq.

The unbelievable incompetence of this president and his administration has put our troops at risk. George W. Bush has failed the essential test of any commander in chief to keep America safe.

Every step of the way this administration has miscalculated – miscalculated about how many troops we need. Secretary Rumsfeld cavalierly dismissed the danger of looting -- and now we know the impact.

“Make no mistake: our troops are the best-trained and best-led forces in the world, and they have been doing their job honorably and bravely. The problem is the Commander-in-Chief has not being doing his." (Emphases added.)

Nowhere in his response does John Kerry blame the troops. On the contrary, he goes out of his way to praise them. He blames President Bush and his administration. I cannot see how he could possibly have been clearer about this. For President Bush to interpret criticism of him as criticism of our troops, and by extension to cast his attempt to avoid responsibility for his administration's mistakes as an attempt to stick up for the men and women he has sent into harm's way, is dishonest.

Bush did get one thing right, though. He said that "a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief." I completely agree. And here I can only echo the response of my favorite Presidential candidate:

"Retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark ... said Bush's words amounted to "a very compelling and thoughtful argument for why he should not be reelected."

"It was Bush who "jumped to conclusions about any connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11," Clark said in a statement released by the Kerry campaign. "He jumped to conclusions about weapons of mass destruction. He jumped to conclusions about the mission being accomplished. He jumped to conclusions about how we had enough troops on the ground to win the peace. And because he jumped to conclusions, terrorists and insurgents in Iraq may very well have their hands on powerful explosives to attack our troops, we are stuck in Iraq without a plan to win the peace, and Americans are less safe both at home and abroad."

Clark concluded: "By doing all these things, he broke faith with our men and women in uniform. He has let them down. George W. Bush is unfit to be our commander in chief.""

The problem with ...

... good writers is that they sometimes feel that they don't have to make an argument. They just have to make their sentences pretty enough and the world will swoon. Such it is with Lileks, who is a great writer. His blasts Andrew Sullivan for Sullivan's endorsement of Kerry, and it reads like a shotgun going off. Appearances and noise aside, though, Lileks has only one point: I don't trust Kerry on anything, no way, no how.

If that pellet is Lilek's entire defense of Bush, then, as Sullivan notes, he must vote against Kerry. Here's hoping, however, that Lileks isn't so confused to think that he's actually provided a reason to vote for Bush. Because voting against and voting for are, in fact, two separate things -- even if they get you to the same place.

Three down, one to go

I don’t believe in decades-old curses that were magically discovered by sportswriters in 1986 and whose most popular versions get most of the facts wrong. I don’t believe in jinxes either. Hell, I’m not even a real Red Sox fan--1986 was a very good year for me. I can still recite most of the Mets’ roster and hum most of the soundtrack of the commemorative video upon request.

So why am I still so worried about the Boston Red Sox’ fate? Why did part of me hope they would lose game three, because if they won they’d be perfectly set up to have the Cardinals do to them what they did to the Yankees last week?

Here are two illustrations of why:

Email exchange with my sister before the Red Sox Yankees series:
MY SISTER: “I want the Red Sox to win, but I feel like if they win Kerry will lose. Two things I wanted that badly couldn’t possibly both happen."
ME: "Don’t be silly. You said the same thing about the Mets and Gore in 2000, and you know what happened then."
MY SISTER: "I never doubted that two bad things could happen."

Scene from the Seinfeld episode, “The Pilot”:
GEORGE: Yeah, that's exactly what I'm worried about. God would never let me be successful. He'd kill me first. He'd never let me be happy.
THERAPIST: I thought you didn't believe in God?
GEORGE: I do for the bad things.

I’m a little superstitious, more than a little neurotic, but mainly I’m a pessimist. The glass is half empty, and the good guys almost always lose.

And there’s no question that this year’s Red Sox are the good guys. For God’s sake, I like their owners. I like their GM a whole lot. I like their manager.

And the players—look, the hair worked for a while, but guys, you’re not fooling anyone anymore. If the 1986 New York Mets were a gang of juvenile delinquents, the 2004 Red Sox are a goofy uncle who’s decided to grow a pony tail. Even leaving aside Curt Schilling, who is in slight danger of being raptured during game six if he keeps this up. …Manny Ramirez became a U.S. citizen in May. He gets hitting advice from his Little League coach, who stayed with him at his hotel room in New York. Watching the dugout, it is actually possible that Larry Lucchino was correct when he said breathlessly that David Ortiz “leads the league in hugs”. Bronson Arroyo offered to donate his kidney to his father several years back, though it would have cost him a summer of trying to reach the majors. Those nice Jewish boys Gabe Kapler and Kevin Youkilis struggled for several days about whether to be available off the bench on Yom Kippur. Idiot Johnny “Keyrock of Nazareth” Damon shaved his beloved beard for a donation to the Boston Public Library’s literacy program—though he promptly grew it back; presumably Gilette won’t fall for this trick again. They all voted to give Nomar Garciaparra a full share of the playoff bonuses. And—this is the one that really kills off the rebel image for me once and for all—Kevin Millar’s favorite musician is Phil Collins.

And they really seem to mean it about picking each other up, really seem to like each other, really seem to like playing the game, have already pulled off the best comeback in baseball history—and it was the BOSTON RED SOX, against the NEW YORK YANKEES.

So there’s clearly a good chance they’re doomed. If it can happen to the NEW YORK YANKEES with a lead and Rivera on the mound in the 9th, it can happen to the BOSTON RED SOX with two banged up aces, three other guys who can be great or awful depending on the day and mood, and some very tired relievers. Lowe has a good postseason record, but his regular season E.R.A. is over 5, and reports of his “mental gidget”-hood are exaggerated but have plenty of basis in reality. Tim Wakefield’s knuckleball might not knuckle any more in Game 5 than in Game 1, and the Cardinals have faced him once already. And my God, those consecutive walks at the end of his last outing. Curt Schilling cannot possibly have a third good game in him. Tendons are there for a reason, stitches take their toll, especially on deep tissue, and even if the doctor wasn’t getting nervous, stuff like that only happens in after school specials. So Arroyo has to be ready out of the bullpen for games 4 and 5 and might have to start game 6, and his arm’s not made of rubber--nor is Keith Foulke’s, by the way. At some point the Cardinal’s offense will show up, and its baserunners won’t keep beating themselves, but the Boston defense just might. And even a mediocre Cardinal starter can pitch a gem on a given day (see Bobby J. Jones’ 2000 complete game 1 hitter against the San Francisco Giants), and….

But even I can only carry my pessimism so far. Red Sox in 7.

This is an apolitical open thread.