http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/7444083.stm

I should point out, I don’t mean to say that everyone knew Iraq had disarmed (although they could have figured it out). I mean that none of the people talking about WMD and noncompliance showed a real interest in the question.

Hmm…if there were a good chance of wiping out the US’s nuclear weapons capabilities by bombing them, would you say that Iran would be justified in doing so?

The situations aren’t parallel, Dianne. The leader of Iran is a power-hungry, unstable, cruel, dishonest, fundamentalist religious fanatic with delusions of grandeur, while the leader of the US is…wait, nevermind.

And the Washington Post has reported holes in the administration’s claims about Iran, just like they reported on US spies posing as weapons inspectors. The paper just hasn’t given it front-page attention (and apparently everyone forgot the A1 story on spying). I almost forgot to add: this (Clinton Signs Iraq Liberation Act) seems like the most important point when it comes to “conspiracy theories” .

Remember Scott Ritter? Here he is in 2000, quoted by a leftist-source that Robert would automatically tune out.

Ritter went on to expose the claims of the Clinton administration that Iraq posed a military threat to neighboring states: “By 1998 Iraq’s biological and missile plants were destroyed. In terms of the intent of the UN Security Council resolutions, Iraq had been disarmed. The world is blind to this reality. Even though Iraq has been disarmed, sanctions will remain until Hussein is gone.”

But don’t take his word for it. Madeleine Albright, March 26, 1997, in her first major foreign policy address as Secretary of State: “We do not agree with the nations who argue that if Iraq complies with its obligations concerning weapons of mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted. They would, however, have to end by law if inspectors certified Iraq’s compliance. I repeat: we pulled the inspectors out before bombing the country in 1998.

Is that fortunate? I’m not convinced…Certainly a world in which the US and only the US had nuclear weapons would be a disaster: the government would start using them at every opportunity and apart from the obvious damage to the rest of the world, who’d want to live in a country like that? Not to mention what would happen once the radiation drifted around the world…a problem that probably wouldn’t have been recognized until it was too late. If Julius Rosenberg did provide the Soviet’s with the information they needed to build their first nuke, he probably saved the planet. (End treasonous thought for the day…have I mentioned that I’m procrastinating badly right now?)

I don’t know if they do, but they at least did.

I like the Canadian plan for coping myself:

1. Counterinvade about 20 miles.
2. Destroy all connecting roads, railroads, etc.
3. Retreat north.
4. Hope the Britsh come save our very, very cold butts.

I assure you, any sane Iranian leader would think so. Fortunately for us, there isn’t a chance in hell that anyone on Earth can manage it (the same applies for the Russian nuclear arsenal)

At this point, maybe because of the stupidity and incompetence of our latest government, a significant part of the Muslim world considers the West their enemy. Whether this is a bad thing, whether this was avoidable, whether your favorite demagogue would have done better is subject to debate. Some people would even deny that the Muslim are justified in feeling threatened.

But this does not matter. Every Iranian I know thinks that their country is threatened by US politics, and that having nuclear weapons is the best way Iran can protect its independence and self-determination. I can hardly argue with them, given what happened in Iraq.

I do not have to like the Iranian government to believe that a American Invasion would be hell for the common citizen. By the way, I also believe that it would be a disaster for the US, and no politician would be stupid enough to allow it. Then again, I thought exactly the same in 2003. Even got a few articles published both here and in Bulgaria… to the everlasting amusement of my friends.

But bombing? Well, If we get away with it, sure. Especially if we manage to get the Israeli to do it for us - they have no reputation to lose from doing so. It will make the world safer for us, and maybe even for Iranians. A pyramid is a very stable construct, and it’s not a bad one, as long as you are near the top.

Quick survey: Does anyone here think that invading Iran and/or bombing it would be a good idea? If so, under what conditions? And is there any doubt in anyone’s mind that the Iraq invasion, whether you support/ed it or not, was mishandled?

Oh, I suppose if Iran declared war on a NATO country and launched a missile that struck a NATO country then bombing and/or invasion might be in order. The fact that there are a lot of insufficient reasons offered for going to war with Iran does not preclude the possibility that the US would discover sufficient reasons for going to war with Iran (or with anybody else, for that matter). That’s one of the reasons I don’t get alarmed when people accuse the administration of “making plans for invading Iran!” I hope the Pentagon has such plans; I hope they have plans for invading Canada, too. I don’t anticipate that we’ll need either set of plans, but I don’t see the harm in contingency planning.

Has the occupation been mishandled? Rumsfeld’s dismissal signaled the end of any dispute on that score. Indeed, among the many problems with the Iraq war has been the lack of planning. The State Department had done a lot of planning, and the Administration used these plans as a basis for identifying people to help run the invasion: people who were acquainted with the State Department plans were EXCLUDED from participation. True to form, the Administration actively sought out ignorance as the basis for action.

The documentary (and companion book) No End In Sight includes an interview with Barbara Bodine, a career Foreign Service officer, former ambassador and “co-ordinator for central Iraq in charge of Baghdad,” discussing the botched job we did. “There were 500 ways to do it wrong and two or three ways to do it right…. What we didn’t understand is that we were going to go through all 500.” Kinda sums it up.

Of course the Iraq invasion was mishandled. After all, we’ve taken nearly as many casualties in five years of war as we took in a couple of bad days at Normandy. Sheer incompetence, that we haven’t developed our military techniques to the point of total omnipotence on the battlefield, only to 90% of the way there.

If you mean, were there mistakes and errors in the strategy? Sure. I don’t think anyone will defend every choice that’s been made. But most of the criticisms I’ve seen have focused on bad outcomes of choices without any consideration of what the potential bad outcomes of the other choices were. Sure, we shouldn’t have dismantled the Iraqi army and caused widespread unemployment; of course, if we had left it intact, we’d have caused widespread corruption and probably put much greater military infrastructure into the hands of insurgencies. Then the criticism would be “by not dismantling the army, we handed our enemies the weapons they needed to fight our troops!” Etc.

My error: I consider the post-invasion occupation as part of the invasion and was making the unfounded assumption that everyone else did too…The great weakness of the Iraq War seems always to have been a lack of plan for what to do if/when it was won. Bush seems to have had a reasonable idea of how to conquer a country, but little idea of what to do with a country once you conquer it.

Hmm…if there were a good chance of wiping out the US’s nuclear weapons capabilities by bombing them, would you say that Iran would be justified in doing so?

1) The situation is nowhere near the threshold for invasion of Iran. Iran would pretty much have to invade Iraq or get a whole lot more active and blatant about supporting terrorism and insurgency in Iraq. My threshold for bombing Iran is somewhat lower, depending on circumstances and depending on just what the hell you can reasonably expect to accomplish by doing so. If there was a very good chance of wiping out their nuclear weapon capabilities I’d go along with it.

2) I’ve stated a number of times that while the actual invasion of Iraq was very well handled, the post-invasion occupation and the support of the Iraqi government (once constituted) up to the adoption of Gen. Petraeus’ COIN strategies was grossly mishandled.

Ties with Iran Worry Iraq’s Neighbors

“The Arab states, by and large, have considerable doubts about the Maliki government,” [says David Mack, former State Department official now with the Middle East Institute in DC]. “They view it as being under very heavy Iranian influence, as being a rather narrow coalition of Shia Iraqi religious parties and the two principal Kurdish parties.

“They are struck by the fact that a lot of Iraqi diplomats that they were familiar with over previous years, who were either secular Shia or Sunni Arabs” are excluded from the current government, he says.

Mack says the Shia politicians who won in Iraq’s January 2005 election “were closely identified with Iran … in many cases had been exiled in Iran for a long period of time. Their parties and militia groups had received financial assistance, refuge, training [and] weapons from various elements of the Iranian political system.”

But U.S. officials have argued that Arab governments are driving the Maliki government “into the arms of the Iranians, since [the Iraqis] don’t have any other neighbors to turn to for support against the various militias and terrorist elements — both Shia and Sunni — that are attacking their government,” Mack says.

“The Arabs are having difficulty deciding,” he says. Not helping matters is the loss of integrity behind U.S. intelligence, which makes it tough to convince Arab governments about what’s going on in Iraq, Mack adds.

I seriously doubt that Iraq will be a client state of Iran unless we pull out before the secular government can finish it’s job and abandon them.

I see at least two major problems with this. Iraq’s Parliament seems to want us out, like the vast majority of the Iraqi people, and Maliki already seems friendly with Iran (as do people in the legislature).

Oh, that’s nothing new. Here’s what the Associated Press reported in 2006:

TEHRAN, Iran — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki made his first official visit to Iran, a close ally, asking the Islamic regime on Tuesday to crack down on al-Qaida militants infiltrating his country and seeking new deals to help Iraq´s troubled oil industry.

The visit reflected the complex relationship between Iran, a mostly Shiite Muslim country, and Iraq´s government, now dominated in the post-Saddam Hussein era by Shiite allies of Tehran….
The two enjoy increasingly strong ties that include new oil cooperation. Iraq has already turned to Iran for help with a chronic shortage of petroleum goods, reaching a deal last month to import Iranian gasoline, kerosene and cooking fuel. Iraqi officials said al- Maliki´s visit and other recent exchanges could improve the cooperation.

Moreover, Iraq is struggling to control months of brutal Shiite-Sunni sectarian violence, some of which is blamed on Shiite militias that are linked to parties in the government but also believed to have ties with Iran.

Al-Maliki´s welcome was warm in Iran, where he spent part of his yearslong exile from Iraq during Saddam´s rule.

Now, why would the US permit a guy who spent years under Iranian protection to become the leader of Iraq? Because all the other candidates for the job are even more compromised than he is. Face it: Iran has won the Iran/Iraq war, and to the victors go the spoils.

Nixon put on a good show, but I don’t really believe Nixon loved China. I believe Nixon concluded that we weren’t gonna change China. We could be friends or we could be enemies. Given that choice, he opted for friends, and it’s worked out to our mutual benefit (mostly). We should be doing the same in Iran.

And ironically, this is a service that Bush is uniquely qualified to render for his country. He got us into this; he can get us out and burnish his legacy at the same time. Do the deal.

Now? On a particular timetable? Or after some functional milestone such as after the Iraqi government can take full responsibility for civil and military security? Hell, I want us out of Iraq. But under what circumstances? Polling an open-ended question such as “Do you want the U.S. out of Iraq” can make for great support for a particular narrative, but isn’t actually too informative regarding what particular course of action people want.

Maliki is friendly with Iran? Maliki wants to get along with Iran - no one wants another Iran/Iraq war. Describing their relationship as “friendly” is not particularly accurate, I’d say.