Hillary Should Have Known

This is amusing. Now left is using arguments that the right has been using for those who whine about being duped by the President on Iraq. It's all rather pathetic though. They are attacking Hillary because she won't grovel to the anti-war crowd for making a decision at the time that fit the available evidence.

Only Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., remains resolute about her vote for the war, admitting she wouldn't do it again, but refusing to apologize for it. It's an issue that has, so far, dogged her with voters.

For the most part, Clinton has tried to portray herself as an innocent duped by an administration that had a monopoly on the facts, then lied about them. "I'm not going to believe this president again," she said on NBC's "Today Show" this past December. "Obviously, if we knew then what we know now, there wouldn't have been a vote, and I certainly wouldn't have voted that way."

Personally, I'm willing to give her a pass on this. (And absolutely nothing else.) The writers of the Salon article seem to think that the evidence they provide is sufficient to have stopped Hillary voting for the war. Unfortunately, the sources are far weaker than the intelligence that we now know was flawed.

Aug. 15, 2002 -- The national security advisor to Presidents Ford and George H.W. Bush, and for three years chairman of President George W. Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, Brent Scowcroft was a foreign policy realist who favored stability over the grand ambitions of the neocons, and was largely derided for doing so. In an Op-Ed for the Wall Street Journal, "Don't Attack Saddam," he laid out his case: "There is scant evidence to tie Saddam to terrorist organizations, and even less to the Sept. 11 attacks. Indeed Saddam's goals have little in common with the terrorists who threaten us, and there is little incentive for him to make common cause with them.

"He is unlikely to risk his investment in weapons of mass destruction, much less his country, by handing such weapons to terrorists who would use them for their own purposes and leave Baghdad as the return address. Threatening to use these weapons for blackmail -- much less their actual use -- would open him and his entire regime to a devastating response by the U.S. While Saddam is thoroughly evil, he is above all a power-hungry survivor. Saddam is a familiar dictatorial aggressor, with traditional goals for his aggression. There is little evidence to indicate that the United States itself is an object of his aggression."

I'll take it they intend this to be one of their stronger arguments. Though it is particularly lame. First, the idea of containment being the proper treatment for Saddam is pathetic at best. That means the US spends huge amounts of money to keep an enemy dictator in power instead of just pushing him out. That reality means that he gets to bide his time until the US public gets too bored with the action and it's costs. Which is pretty much what was happening. After the Clinton administrations period of sitting on its hands, its little wonder that the situation had never been cleared up.

This also shows the thought that Saddam wouldn't aid terrorists. Interesting if incorrect. Saddam is known to have paid the families of suicide bombers against Israel and had contact, if not direct support to al Qaeda. The question to be answered is whether his low profile support would have escalated once the US and the allies withdrew? Saddam obviously didn't have any WMD after the US invaded. But that ignores the facts that he didn't eliminate the skills or equipment to create them.

I'll skip their contention that the press had questions and that was an indicator that the administration was wrong. That's so thin an argument that it is laughable.

Sept. 25, 2002 -- Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., voiced some of his concerns at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "I have attended numerous briefings and read countless reports from a variety of sources. I have listened carefully to the Administration. And I have read, quite closely, the proposed resolution authorizing the use of force that the Administration sent to Congress last week. After all of this, I still do not have answers to some fundamental questions. I remain extremely troubled by the Administration's shifting justifications for going to war in Iraq. I remain skeptical about the need to take unilateral action now and to accept all of the associated costs of that decision. I remain unconvinced that the Administration has thought through the potential costs and challenges of post-conflict reconstruction in Iraq, or even thought through how to address the issue of weapons of mass destruction once an engagement begins."

Feingold is a great bit of political crap to use as an argument. I really enjoy the "shifting justifications" statement. Poor old simple Russ hasn't the ability to understand that having more than one reason isn't shifting of reasons. Though obviously Russ isn't that simple minded, but he is an all-star when it comes to political spinning. The questioning of "why take action now" is also telling. Considering that it took about thirteen months before any military action occurred, makes his statement rather odd.

Also on this day, Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., penned an article for the Hill, the influential political newspaper in Washington. Though Skelton would end up voting for war, he was a longtime leader of the party on military issues, and in his piece, he reflected the concerns of many in the military: "While the Bush administration cites the threat of Iraqi WMD, the case has not yet been clearly made as to why military force is an appropriate way of addressing the threat, and why action must occur now.

"I have no doubt that our military would decisively defeat Iraq's forces and remove Saddam. But like the proverbial dog chasing the car down the road, we must consider what we would do after we caught it.

"Any strategy must consider the form of a replacement regime and take seriously the possibility that the Iraqi people might reject it, leading to civil unrest and even anarchy. What will we do with Iraqis that continue to support Saddam, and with the scientists and engineers with expertise born of the Iraqi WMD program? Can we create a stable regime that's geopolitically preferable to Saddam and incorporates the disparate interests of all groups within Iraq -- Shi'a, Sunni, and Kurd?"

Skelton had good questions. And in fact the Administration did a poor job of re-instituting Iraq once Saddam was gone. I think he obviously must have believed that the US could succeed since he voted in favor of the resolution. And in fact I find this to be a rather odd argument against Hillary. The logic tells me that this argument actually supports her decision at the time. Just because the Administration has done some of these things poorly, doesn't mean that the logic fails at the time that it was convincing to these Senators.

Oct. 7, 2002 -- In an article titled "Hail Caesar!" Salon's Gary Kamiya explored President Bush's foreign policy and its implications and considered the cost-benefit ratio posed by the talk of invasion: "It is impossible to know what will happen. But deciding whether or not to invade Iraq requires making a judgment about the possibility that the Middle East may go up in flames as a result, or that the attack will breed future terrorists in the region and around the world, or that other nations will emulate us and launch invasions of their own, or that our allies will turn away from an out-of-control America -- and balancing those possibilities against the chance that Saddam will use WMD at some point in the future. Confining ourselves only to one possible negative consequence, dangerous instability in the Middle East, the answer is clear: It is much more likely that an invasion of Iraq will inflame the Middle East than that Saddam will use WMD against the United States or its allies. Even if al-Qaida never existed and there had never been a Sept. 11, invading a major sovereign Arab nation would be an extremely risky undertaking, one likely to spin out of our control."

Hmm. So a Salon opinion piece should be a major influence on making foreign policy? I think not. Since they enjoyed playing the "what if" game then, let's try a bit now. What if the UN had dropped all sanctions and containment of Saddam in 2003? Would the cost-benefit ratio have been justified to continue containment with no allied assistance? (no) Would the loss of containment have lead to a peaceful cooperative Iraq? (no) Would Saddam have become a peaceful dictator and helped stabilize the Middle east? (no) Would Iraq become a terrorist haven after containment was ended. (Can't say for certain, but Saddam certainly had enough reasons to assist them even peripherally to get back at the US and the allies. Not to mention the logic that Iraq became a terrorist fly-paper trap.) It's nice to use the "what-if" scenarios, as long as you're willing to use them in both directions when weighing the possibilities. Something that the opinionated at Salon tend to fail to do.

Of course, there is more, but it's all quite thin. The article makes the case, but fails to point out any side motivations for those against the war. Zinni is quoted, but wasn't a proponent, and was possibly on the outs with the Administration at the time. He has some good arguments, but not overwhelming arguments. And the Byrd argument is just lame. The only strong bit of evidence comes from Scott Rider on the WMDs. That bit, as with most of this article, seems to view the WMDs as the sole reason that the US took down Saddam, forgetting (intentionally?) that there were 23 resolutions in the AUMF. None of the other reasons in the AUMF could possibly been reasonable then, could they?