McCain who does not know how to use a computer but is willing to learn if we elect him

1) The Adminstration SAID it was invading because there were weapons of mass destruction. It never said it was invading because there were materials from which Iraq could make weapons of mass destruction and give them to our enemies. Why didn't we say that before the invasion, instead of making this claim only when our public claims proved to be completely and utterly false?

2) If we invaded because we feared that Saddam was about to give WMD to terrorists, how could the brief invasion now claimed by Feith prevent that? The reason we had long supported Saddam was that he was surpressing the anti-American Shiite majority. In the absence of occupying American troops, no government friendly to the US can govern Iraq. If and when we leave, there will be a terrorist–friendly government (probably allied with Iran) in Iraq. This government will be motivated to help terrorists.

3) Consistent with #2, Feith admits that creating a democracy in Iraq was not the goal. However, contrary to Feith's claim, democracy was not a hoped-for “ancillary benefit”. The US has long supported undemocratic governments in Epypt and Saudi Arabia because democratically-elected governments in these countries would be anti-American. We supported Saddam for this same reason and the Shah of Iran as well. (No one would describe the current Iran as a functioning democracy, but its government is more reflective of popular sentiment than are the governments of most of our allies in the Middle East and much more so than the Shah's brutal dictatorship which we strongly supported for many years.) Since our invasion of Iraq, it is well documented that we have attempted, through a variety of means, to influence the elections in that country in ways which, if some country attempted to do to us, would end diplomatic relations.

4) Feith and Webrand's argument that a similar plan in Afghanistan was a “success” is quite revealing. Like Iraq, we claimed that we invaded Afghanistran because our “negotiations” with their government failed to get us what we wanted–in this case, having Osama bin Laden and the rest of his criminal gang turned over to us. Of course, these negotiation were preposterous since, despite years of occupation, WE have not been able to capture or kill Osama or most of his followers. If we couldn't do this over a period of years, how did we expect the Afghanistan government to do so in the short time we gave them? In good faith negotiations, you ask the other side to do something that they actually have the power to do.

5)Since our invasion, many (most?) things in Afghanistan has gotten worse. For example, prior to our invastion, the Taliban had virtually eliminated the poppy/opium business. Now they have reversed course and are using it to support their insurgency. It is the largest cash crop. If our invasion of Afghanistan was such a success, then why are we still there and why are both presidential candidates arguing that we have to send more troops? (Obama and others have suggested that we could have succeeded in Afghanistan if only we hadn't pulled resources out in order to invade Iraq. Whatever its merits, I don't suppose Feith will be making this argument.)

6) Well there is an answer to all of these questions. The goal of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq was long-term American control of these countries. While a brief invasion could not prevent the creation of a terrorist-friendly government in Iraq, long-term occupation might. Similarly, the surge can be viewed as a success if the goal was to reduce the insurgency to the point that Americans would stop complaining about the loss of American life and put up with the (hopefully reduced) costs of a permanent occupying force.

7) The Bush Administration has long claimed that we should ignore sentimentaly rhetoric and claims of good intentions and deal with the harsh realities of the world as they really are. Now that their policies have made all of those realities worse, they are writing books like Feith's in which they beg us to judge them on their good intentions. They meant well. Unfortunately, for Feith and his friends, there is little evidence that anyone in the Bush administration meant well.

Feith had designed an interim government arrangement in which some “externals” such as Chalabi and others Iraqis who had been outside Iraq, along with “internals”, would take over governance just long enough to organize a vote for a government that would arrange for an election and the resulting government would write a constitution.

Armitage (State) and Tenet (CIA) did not like Chalabi nor did Bremer who replace Jay Garner. They claimed he would never be acceptable to the internal Iraqis. (At one time Chalabi had accused the CIA of incompetence). According to Feith, Armitage, Tenet and Bremer took actions so as to avoid the interim plan for some 14 months which exacerbated the insurgency. Finally Bush told Bremer he would have to leave and shortened the process, otherwise the Americans might still be sovereign today and the insurgency still flourishing.

It appears that Armitage, Tenet, and Bremer were wrong as the Iraqis have elected Chalabi and several other “externals” to full time positions in the Iraqi government. Feith strongly believes that the failure to adopt his interim Iraqi government plan was the cause of that insurgency or at least strengthened it appreciably.

This is what I got from Feith's book. He claims this history is derived from contemporaneous notes and memoranda. I have not, as yet, checked them.

Two other points Feith raised were quite interesting. He denied the purpose of the Iraq invasion was to introduce democracy into the Middle East although he thought that was an ancillary benefit but would not have, by itself, justified the invasion. Nor was the invasion for the purpose of revenge against al Qaeda. He claimed it was to avoid further attacks such as had occurred on 9/11. These were not necessarily attacks by al-Qaeda. There was and still is a global network of many terrorist organizations other than al Qaeda and he was concerned that a state terrorist such as Iran, North Korea or Iraq could provide WMD to one or more of these groups. Why Iraq? Feith explains that they had tried diplomacy on Iraq and it hadn't work. They had yet to fully explore diplomacy with Iran and North Korea. Although no stockpiles of WMD were found, the inspectors showed that Iraq still maintained resources from which WMD could be manufactured in a very short time frame.

Finally, one more interesting point was the discussion over the interaction between Defense and CIA on whether there were meaningful contacts between Iraq and terrorist groups. One of Feith's researchers found that CIA was systematically devaluating many contacts between Iraq and terrorist groups because of its analysts preconceptions that a secular government such as that of Saddam Hussein would never collaborate with a religious extremist group — even against a common enemy. Defense's people thought that each contact should be evaluated on its own merits and not be watered down or filtered out because of the CIA's preconceptions. According to Feith, this was a matter of professionalism rather than a question of the administration trying to pressure the CIA to change its views as was leaked to the press by CIA. I have not yet checked the contemporaneous notes and memoranda on this point either.

There is a reason that Senator McCain, while claiming that the surge was a success, says we have to stay in Iraq for 50 or 100 years. There is a reason why the first President Bush, supported by almost all of his advisors, decided not to take over Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein during the First Gulf War. There is reason why Senator Clinton (when she thought she was going to be the next president) practically begged the current President Bush to get us out of Iraq before leaving office. And now, unfortunately, there is a reason why Senator Obama is waffling on his pledge to leave Iraq. The invasion was a mistake which cannot be easily fixed. There was no way out and there is no way out. To borrow the title of a recent movie, “There Will Be Blood”

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Feith can place a thousand endnotes in his book but if they are selective then they tell more about his desire to avoid accountability than they do about what happened. For example, he seems to expend a great deal of effort in distancing himself from Chalabi. The facts that we do have contradict his assertions. The Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon used information from the dubious Chalabi source “Curveball” to skew the case for war. This included the assertions about rolling biological labs, an al Qaeda-Iraq relationship and WMDs. Feith states there was no “conspiracy” to place Chalabi as head of the government but he was given a key role in the Iraq interim government council under the Coalition Provisional Authority. (A fact missing from the article). This was the culmination of many years of seeking to support the Iraqi National Congress (INC), which was Chalabi's group. Thanks to lobbying by the neo-cons outside of government (which included Perle, Feith and Wolfowitz, among others) the (Republican) Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998 which funneled almost $97 million to the INC. Feith would scapegoat Powell and the CIA but the INC also received $33 million dollars from the State Department between 2000 and September 2003 and $335K a month from the DIA from September 2003 through May 2004–and that is only what has been uncovered by auditors and the GAO. He was a special guest of First Lady Bush at the 2004 State of the Union Address. So SOMEONE influential and senior in the Administration was working very hard to finance Chalabi and the INC and all fingers point to his sponsors: the principals at the Project for the New American Century–the neo-cons who drove the case for war based on a belief in American hegemony in the region. Ockham's Razor, regardless of all of the jesuitical arguments that Feith and his ilk can come up with to try to cloud the issue, tells us that the obvious really is obvious. Documentary evidence, while the best evidence for determining motivation or establishing a direct relationship in a simple manner, is not the only evidence. Phone calls, undocumented personal conversations, unwritten orders can all be determined by the historian through cause and effect–what is called circumstantial evidence. No “smoking gun” standard stands against common sense. Documents can and have been destroyed and altered. Criminals are convicted every day absent documentary evidence.

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The judgment of history will fall very heavily against this Administration. The cause and effect of Iraq and the economic effects we are now feeling has yet to be fully realized and the history yet to be assessed. Despite their assertions to the contrary, historians tend to get things right about an American Administration right. Few presidents have risen significantly over time. Even Truman–that favorite of Nixon and Bush apologists–though vilified and unpopular when he left office in 1953, was seen as an above-average president by historians when he left office; one who got the small things wrong but the big things right. He has risen to near-great in assessment but no one has gone from being considered a failure to rise above an assessment of mediocrity or malfeasance. I am afraid that this time in our history will be seen as not only one in which we experienced that manner of human frailty, but also an Administration, blinded by faith in the rightness of its cause and ideology, subjected the country to abuse of power and tyranny. Those who continue to want to paint this as a partisan issue (like Senator Lieberman) and not learn from it damn future generations of Americans to a worse fate.

I was rather surprised at the anti-semitism and ad hominem attacks on our ally and some of our elected officials in the comments section. More like the raving of maniac's than considered thought; suited for something like Kos but certainly not for a James Risen review.