I Dream Awake

Like a lot of smart guys (or, at any rate, guys who think they’re smart), Fallon seems to have outsmarted himself. He thinks the war in Iraq is a distraction from formulating “a comprehensive strategy for the Middle East,” according to the profile. The reality is that the only strategy worth a dinar is to win the war in Iraq. If we fail there, all other objectives in the region will be much harder to attain; if we succeed, they will be much easier.

Fallon didn’t get it - Los Angeles Times

Yep.

Tags: Iraq

With all of the debates I’ve heard and been involved in between those in favor and against the Iraq war, almost everyone who has brought up the WMD angle has… struggled… with just what they are talking about. It seems pretty clear to me that there is a big gap between the reality of what WMD are and the most common understanding of them. These “thoughts of a freelance theorist” I read earlier today do a better job with wording what that gap is made of than all of the experts, pundits, journalists, etc, I’ve listened to and argued with put together. It’s simple and to the point:

In Lord of Rings, the plot revolves around an attempt by all parties to control Sauron’s ring of power. The ring is an item unique in all the world. Whomever controls that one item rules the world.

This plot device of unique item is fairly common in literature and movies. Hitchcock called it a McGuffin. Every character has to be looking for that unique item.

It’s not just fantasy items like magic rings and swords that get that treatment. Technology does to. Most James Bond movies feature some piece of technology so unique that control of it will lead to world domination.

All this would just be of interest to students of fictions except that for a large section of the population their gut feel for how technology actually works comes from works of fiction. Most people in the contemporary world have no direct experience with researching, creating or manufacturing actual technology. They may use it but they don’t understand how it comes to be. It is very easy for people to think of technological items like nuclear reactors or computers in the same way they see them portrayed in the movies.

It’s very clear from reading the ongoing debate about the extent of Saddam’s WMD’s that most people have absolutely no idea of the technological issues involved. Most people, even major politicians and media figures talk about WMDs as if they were McGuffins. They act as if we expected to find a giant throbbing orb in an underground base under Baghdad that had WMD written on it. They think that WMD’s were discrete objects or things that could be located and controlled.

Technology doesn’t work like that.

There is more, of course.

Now I don’t expect anyone to really change their mind based on a bit of writing like that. Anyone can put a bunch of words together and publish them. That’s the beauty of instant publishing. Whether the thoughts behind the words are brilliant or worthless pulp is up to the reader to figure out. But for anyone that is still open to examining their own assumptions, I think the way this freelance theorist is looking at the common misunderstandings about WMD is one step in the right direction.

It’s really starting to seem like the Bush admin has totally screwed something up. It’s not what everyone thought. It’s not that there were no WMD. Looks like there was quite a bit. But no, what they’ve screwed up is the entire search for WMD after the war AND the media war over the war.

I think it’s important to put this report in the context of the WMD discussion. Everyone knows, and has agreed, that there was WMD in Iraq prior to the Gulf War, the first Gulf War. He used weapons of mass destruction extensively, killing thousands of his own people and thousands of Iranians.

From the Kay report and the Duelfer report, the conclusions that they reached indicated that during that period of time from the Gulf War to Operation Iraqi Freedom, there was evidence of continuing research and development of WMD, an ongoing effort with various kinds of chemicals, research programs and those types of things.

The piece that still remains unanswered, or remained unanswered, was that piece of exactly what, other than the programs, what existed in Iraq in 2003?

The Iraqi Survey Group, or the impression that the Iraqi Survey Group left with the American people was they didn’t find anything.

The report that Rick and I reference — and I’ll have to tell you that I’m disappointed in the summary that was provided for us in an unclassified version from the intelligence community because I think you lose some of the context of exactly what Rick and I and others on the committee have seen from that report.

But this says: Weapons have been discovered; more weapons exist. And they state that Iraq was not a WMD-free zone, that there are continuing threats from the materials that are or may still be in Iraq.

And I think what that points out to us — and remember, the Iraq Survey Group was in Iraq for about 16 months, employing up 1,700 people. They didn’t find many chemical weapons.

And since that period of time, we have found hundreds. This assessment says more exist. And I think what that points out is that there’s still a lot about Iraq that we don’t fully understand.

The Iraq Survey Group suspended field visits five months after they were there. So they stopped field visits in October of 2003. So what we’re now finding are our troops stumbling across these as they go into Iraq.

The full-blown effort to discover these caches of chemical weapons stopped a year and a half ago. And this is the kind of stuff that we are still finding.

I’ll wait to see what comes of all of this. But damn, if the administration did such a bad job using any of this in the war of opinion over the war someone really, massively screwed up.

Problem is the anti-war side can’t claim credit because it discredits everything they’ve said about WMD and other conventional wisdom about Iraq. But supporters of the war can’t criticize the admin as much as seems deserved for this because it will just be used to undermine Bush and co. in their continued war efforts. It looks like everyone is wrong about something and everyone is screwed.

Sitting on all of this documentation that actually works in their favor — and even more importantly in America’s favor — makes absolutely no sense. At this point my reaction is a big WTF???!?!!?!?!

An explosive and lengthy document has been released and translated describing the relationship betweem Saddam’s Iraq and the Taliban. It is a must read for anyone willing to have their views about everything we’ve thought we’ve known shaken up hard.

I’ve thought for a long time now that one massive failure on the part of the Bush Administration has been sitting on the millions of documents that have gone untranslated since their capture during the fall of Saddam’s regime. Many documents were translated right away to be sure, but the vast majority went unreleased and untranslated for lack of personnel dedicated to the task. Bush and his war cabinet should have been front and center from day 1 hammering away at how important a job getting a full and immediate translation of all of the documents recovered was in what has been essentially the first full blown information age war. They should have demanded from Congress the funds to make it happen, trumpeted loudly educational incentives for students who dedicate themselves to the study of languages and cultures most important to our current conflicts, and pressured the Pentagon to do in 2003 what they finally did just recently: Release large amounts of the untranslated documents so that the general American public can engage in their translation directly. No matter what one’s position on the war itself might be, I think everyone should be in agreement in criticisng the administration on this one point.

Whether they are winning the political and military war in Iraq itself or not is up for what is a far too often bitter debate, but it is clear to me that they have totally blown the media war about the war.