ye frickin' gods: this precise stuff was reported on long ago. all we've now done now is seen it first-hand rather than second-hand, but since no one denied it at the time, we had no reason to doubt the veracity of the original reporting (in, iirc, woodward's bush at war).

the question is: why should we take sullivan seriously? this is a case of willful denial and nothing more. anyone can make a mistake - even on as colossal as trustig george bush - but to stay in denial about the extent of the error as long as sullivan has?

irishkg, the truth is, once sullivan accused me of being a "fifth columnist," i stopped providing him any traffic. still, many people do read him, and quote him, and i don't see any signs that he's prepared to say "i was wrong and i have learned."

"my confidence has slipped a notch" isn't the same.

thadandersen: thanx for your excellent work. it doesn't obviate my point about sullivan, but it's broadly useful.

I obtained the FOIA request, and because there has been a lot of misunderstanding about what is new in the documents, and what is merely confirmed in primary source form, here is a short explanation:

1) The "[b]est info fast . . . judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time - not only UBL [Usama Bin Laden]" lines were reported in the 9/11 Commission Report and Woodward's Plan of Attack.

2) The "Go massive - sweep it all up - Things related and not" lines were reported by CBS, but were not mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report or Woodward's Plan of Attack, and were never confirmed by any other source.  Moreover, the CBS article doesn't sound that confident that they are real (perhaps post-Rathergate caution): "Now, nearly one year later, there is still very little evidence Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. But if these notes are accurate, that didn't matter to Rumsfeld."

3) Finally, these lines are completely new, as far as I know: "Tasks Jim Haynes [Pentagon lawyer] to talk with PW [probably Paul Wolfowitz, then Mr Rumsfeld's deputy] for additional support ... connection with UBL . . . Hard to get a good case . . ."

The "[h]ard to get a good case" line is the kicker, because it is a rare showing of humility from this administration.  Regardless, my hope is that the documents draw more attention to the administration's numerous attempts to link 9/11 and Iraq, so the more debate about them, the better.  When the 9/11 Commission Report came out, I thought this part of the report would doom Bush's re-election chances. 

The documents can be viewed as a <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/66726692@N00/sets/72057594065491946/">photo set on Flickr.

Democratic societies don't wage external wars. They may wage defensive wars, but since it is the common people who have to fight, in general they shy away from being the initiator. The US has enough of a history to demonstrate this. Look at the list of wars which were based upon false information.

• Spanish American War (Remember the Maine)
• Vietnam War (Gulf of Tonkin)
• Iraq (WMD)
  

Look at the wars where there was some justification for our entry:

• WWI
• WWII
• Korea

--- Policies not Politics
          Daily Landscape

Why not 3 scarlet letters?:  WMD

W - Warmongering, M - Mendacious, D - Duplicitous

Iraq looked like a cake walk from the military point of view.  They were only thinking of defeating SH's army.  The first Fulf War showed that his army was no match for a modern military.  What they failed to see is the mindset of those convinced that they are going to heaven when they die and all others are going to hell.

War is a very old enterprise.  It began when one man conviced a group of people that the heaven/hell thing was real.  What problem does heaven and hell solve that has anything to do with war?

In order for one person to take the life of another heaven and hell are absolute necessities.  The killer must BELIEVE that the KILLED is NOT going to show up in another world where he too will eventually go.  Yes, it's that simple.  The jihad suicide attacker believes with his whole heart that he is going to heaven while his victims are going to hell.  Failure to understand this simple principle has lead America to the brink of disaster, a never ending war that cannot be won.

The key to ending this and all subsequent wars is to educate the whole world that the Bible  is a hoax with the central and damning hoax being hell itself.  The inventor of the concept of a place called hell has been been fished out of the historical record proving that hell is a lie and the Bible is a hoax.

http://www.hoax-buster.org is the voice in the wilderness of ignorance about religion, war and man's inhumanity to man. 

J. McCutchen "JmacSF"

San Francisco. CA

The lying is sort of icing on the cake

The lying is the cake.  Lies, deception, and delusions obviously key the political message.  Less obvious perhaps, the slogans of the stump drive war strategy itself.  From inception to the present, from Niger yellow cake & AlQaeda Connections, to the central front in the WOT & National Strategy for Victory, the public lies are mirrored in the private delusions of the decision makers right down the line. 

 Every significant policy action has been infected. In a very real and dangerous sense, the war -  the lies used to sell and sustain it and the delusions that govern its conduct are of a piece.

irishkg, just to be fair, it's not my "personal" history with sullivan; it's what he wrote after 9/11, accusing a broad swath of the american public (me included!) of being a "fifth column." it was offensive beyond belief.

life is short: i don't mind having my ideas tested, but i do mind people so cuaght up in their emotions of the moment that they produce broad, misguided generalizations, especially people with a megaphone like sullivan.

insofar as someone who is doing the heavy lifting of reading him regularly can produce evidence that he regrets that kind of fatuous overstatement, or even (returning to the point at hand here) that he is willing to say more often "i was wrong," i'd be willing to return to his site. i did used to like his work, even when i disagreed.

howard -

I'll look since I do read. When he came out for Kerry it was clear that he had a very hard time doing it.

We agree that he has quite the megaphone and no lack of awareness of what he can do with it!

The problem is that we are lied to about going to war, not that the war didn't turn out to be a disaster.   Other presidents doing it does not make it excusable. 

J. McCutchen "JmacSF"

San Francisco. CA

Tucker Carlson Joins William Buckley 

"The War on Iraq is a failure"

Sullivan is one of my favorite bloggers and like the other replier, I visit him because he is usually a reasoned and principled fellow who can challenge my beliefs.  I only discovered Sullivan in 2004 after he had toned down a bit.  However, I've read his archives and the guy was definitely unhinged and irrational for a while.

To me it is evidence of how crazy people got after 9/11, how traumatic it was for so many.  They simply couldn't think straight, even a thoughtful guy like Andrew.  At some point a revenge instinct just takes over and squashes rational thought.  It was as obvious to me then as it is now that Saddam was no threat whatsoever to us.  It amazes me that so many thought otherwise.  It never made any sense.  And these notes show that even Rumsfeld and his buddies didn't really think it made sense to go after Iraq within the context of 9/11.  A few aluminum tubes and a mobile lab or two later though and it suddenly made sense.  

I do wonder at what point the war supporters will have to admit their mistake.  Andrew has in some ways but he attributes it to incompetance which is a copout.  Perhaps he and others will always attribute it to incompetence, but I think history has a way of slowly bringing people around to reality.  When we get out of Iraq it will become safer to admit the mistake and people will acknowledge it because it won't seem to matter so much.  I suspect much of the same dynamic happened with Vietnam.

But I don't blame you for abandoning him.  I suspect I may have done the same had I experienced those fifth column comments in real time. 

It's really difficult to contain feelings of anger, rage, and betrayal when the rest of the country is realizing the Iraq war is a mistake.  Even though I am angry with Bush supporters, I am angrier at these post-November "swing" voters.  This Adminstration exploited public fears, ignored legitimate facts, and used jingoistic demagaguery to manipulate the public into supporting the Iraq war.  This has been clearly proven time and time again over the past three years.

I could care less about Sullivan's opinion regarding public deception.   This is a person who loves to hear/read his own words, and is paid good money to sit around, research issues, and issue well-written commentary.  He has done his readers a disservice by only now issuing this declaration that, shocker!, the administration *might* conflated 9/11 and Saddam Hussein.  Gosh, Andrew.  You're virtually helpful in these debates, aren't you?

An added point: although democracies don’t fight each other, democratizing nations are at particularly high risk for wars — of any kind.  (At least that’s my understanding/recollection.)

Which just goes to suggest that the current administration is being awfully blase about the Good Things that will soon ensue thanks to democracy in Iraq. 

I agree that the lying is the problem. Moreover, the Bush lies did not come in a vacuum. Time and again, this administration has lied about any issue it has had to lie about to get over. And the lying is different historically from past lies to support war.

For one thing, the lies about Iraq weren’t technicalities to politically enable a seemingly justified endeavor (i.e. “they hit us first”). It is a different situation here. We did not preemptively invade Viet Nam. There must be overwhelming, airtight compelling reasons to invade a sovereign nation.

Also, the lies that took us into Iraq are qualitatively different from the Gulf of Tonkin lie because they come in the wake of history. The perspective of Viet Nam has changed our attitudes and threshold for war. We inched into Viet Nam and lies about the ability to win that war were more damaging to its continuance than our almost unconscious inheritance of the war itself.

The lying is the icing on the cake? MY, you contradict yourself. If the administration had not been lying, and WMD had been there or there had been a link to 9/11, then we would probably be looking at the situation in Iraq as unfortunate and poorly managed, but a necessary step. In other words, if Bush had been telling the truth, then the war would be widely considered to hae been a good idea, badly executed.

J. McCutchen "JmacSF"

San Francisco. CA

Anger's a good thing.

Cole -
AP points to the way in which the Askariyah Shrine crisi points to the great authority and power of the clergy in contemporary Iraq.

NPR reported that on Wednesday and Thursday, many Iraqi policemen and soldiers either stepped aside for Shiite mobs who attacked Sunni mosques, and that some even joined in the attacks.

It just goes to show how inadequate this report for the Pentagon is. It says that 53 battalions can fight with US help, and that none can do so on their own, and that Sunni attacks have not yet produced sectarian violence. In comedy and in politics, timing is everything.

 

Of course, everything Matthew says (and Sullivan says) is completely wrong.  There was no lie.  No deliberate misleading.  Nothing of the sort.

There was, on 9/11 as well as in 2003, the same exact case.  After our 9/11 experience, it was simply too dangerous to leave Saddam Hussein in place.  The Sullivan who existed in 2002 understood that simple fact.  But that Sullivan does exist any more - that Sullivan was complete annihilated by Bush's support for the anti-gay marriage amendment; he was replaced by left-wing extremist Sullivan, who exists today.

Rumdfeld knew implictly, on 9/11, that we simply could no longer trust Saddam the way we could pre-9/11.  THAT was what the Cambone notes were about.  And it was the exact same argument that was made in 2002 and 2003.

Those who accuse the Bush Administration of lying are themselves lying.

Never mind, it just hit me. "Implicit knowing" is just like "remote viewing", another well thought out DOD program.

Recently, I've been rereading Clark Clifford's autobiography, Advisor to the President, and looking both at his recollections of conversations and his speculations. While the Gulf of Tonkin indeed was a major escalation, that is not to say that the US had not been involved in Southeast Asia. Eisenhower, who had turned down the French request for help at Dien Bien Phu, potentially involving nuclear strikes, remained concerned about Laos. Kennedy and Eisenhower agreed that Laos was the hot spot in the "domino theory", and there were US troops in Laos certainly from 1961.

Clifford speculates that Kennedy wouldn't have taken the Gulf of Tonkin as a personal affront to his ego, as did LBJ. Obviously, we can't know.

The three examples of wars started over false information do differ, both in the source of the information and the political conditions in the US:

1. Spanish-American War: The Hearst newspapers had been pressing hard for a war before the incident with the Maine. We still aren't certain what caused the explosion, although most of the theories say it was accidental -- different kinds of attacks, but all accidents. My personal view is that with the explosives and technology available to Spain, sabotage is not likely -- there were no free divers or submarines, and the amount of explosive, especially the less powerful explosives of the time, would be hard to conceal if being smuggled aboard.


2. Viet Nam (Gulf of Tonkin phase): I believe that LBJ believed that the North Vietnamese had attacked. Unfortunately, there was insufficient analysis of the sensor records from the destroyers, and it appears that LBJ may have been unaware of the CINCPAC OPPLAN 34A clandestine raids on North Vietnam. The NV may have been responding to what they assumed was an escalation of 34A, by destroyers rather than junks. In fact, the destroyers were on DESOTO signal intelligence collection missions that had nothing to do with 34A. LBJ acted impulsively rather than in support of a deliberate, pre-formed policy. Also see HR McMaster's Dereliction of Duty for some of the political context and newly released conversations.


3. Iraq: The Administration seemed to have a predefined policy of hitting Iraq, and essentially paid attention only to intelligence reports that supported their goals.