Posted 7:40 pm by BOTE
Where are the weapons?

Ok, Lets try this again, The new Blogger setup killed my last post on this issue.

Lets wind the clock back to mid February. We were treated to innumerable press conferences and statements vehemently insisting that Saddam Hussein and his evil weapons of mass destruction represented an imminent danger to the security of the United States. Its now mid-June and US forces control (sort of) Iraq. Where are the weapons (and where is Saddam for that matter?)

It is too early for a definitive answer to the question of whether there are WMD in Iraq. What is clear is that those weapons that do exist were not forward deployed. They were not readily available for use by Iraqi forces against US troops in the field. If they had been then the evidence would have been relatively easy to spot and the legitimacy of US intervention would have been established, QED.

It's pretty clear now that Iraq did not present an imminent danger to the US prior to the invasion. There is no reliable evidence to suggest that Iraq had any plans to have attacked the US or aided those who were intent on doing so. There is also little reliable evidence of an advanced nuclear weapons programme in Iraq (documents suggesting Iraq had tried to purchase nuclear materials from Niger turn out to have been poor forgeries).

Somewhere along the line the threat from Iraq was overestimated (not the first time this has happened). The important question is how and why? It is not difficult to construct a scenario where members of the Bush administration, I'm thinking here of Don Rumsfeld and his 'cabal' of Pentagon advisors, wrote the conclusions and then massaged the evidence to support those conclusions. If this were the case, it would be an astonishing abuse of power.

Assuming for a moment that this were the case, the next question must be whether the President himself had direct knowledge of the 'enhancement' of the case against Iraq. Monicagate would pale in comparison to the scandal that this would rightly create. A President who lied to the American people so that he could commit US troops in battle.

There is only anecdotal evidence to support this worldview. There is no smoking gun that I am aware of, but it is heartening to see the American mainstream media beginning to wake up to this possibility while the neo-con rearguard action kicks in. Maybe we will finally see some real debate about this administration and its war in the US.

Posted 5:23 pm by BOTE
On Pangloss?

Three years ago politicians and politics were firmly in the background. All eyes were on the miraculous US economy and the equally spectacular future that was predicted for equity investors in hat was perceived at the worlds most dynamic economy. Technology was to be the harbringer of a new era of global prosperity. Stability was a given.

How times have changed. The sparkle and fizz of the equity markets has dissipated, replaced by unfamiliar worries about global security. Since 9/11 security has dominated the agenda of the political world which itself has reemerged from obscurity to be the focus of considerable media attention.

George W. Bush has reacted to an aggresive assault on a potent symbol of American hegemony by adopting a more muscular and interventionist foreign policy. He and his cabal of advisors have set their sights on nothing less than reshaping the middle east. This, of course has been tried before, with little success but the lessons of history seem lost on this administration.

Or are they...

Viewed as an evangelical drive to civilise the middle east the intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq make little sense. The region is rife with deep seated problems that go back hundreds of years. It would be foolhardy to believe that an American force could take and quickly transform Iraq, and indeed this was not the point of the exercise. The real agenda was twofold.

(i) To send a strong message to Syria, North Korea and Iran that the US is ready and more than capable of toppling any regime that attacks or facilitates those who would attack sovereign US territory. Al Qaeda is too nebulous to target directly so they are going after the supporters (there is no verifiable evidence that Saddam had any direct involvement in 9/11, he was the easiest available target). The caveat of course is that the commitment to real change in Iraq, that would require billions of dollars and a long term military presence is unlikely to exist. Once Iraq slips from the attention of the mainstream media so it will also fall down the list of priorities of the US government. We will undoubtedly see, in future years, an expose of the neglect that allowed the fledgling democracy of Iraq to fail, but by then George and his buddies will be long gone.

(ii) To divert attention from the radical rightwing agenda of the Bush administration at home. Taxation as a percentage of GDP has been cut to its lowest level in a generation which might strike you as no bad thing. But the cuts overwhelmingly favour the wealthy and ultimately if you choose not to tax then you must sacrifice some of the services that government provides. The targets that will suffer seem to be pension and healthcare entitlements. These are long term programmes that disproportionately benefit the poor and they will, thanks in no small part to recent tax cuts, suffer severe future funding problems. The Bush administration is well aware of this but chooses to sacrifice the future of millions of Americans to pander to the richest sections of American society (who incidentally will fund his reelection campaign to the tune of millions of dollars). The social safety net is steadily being eroded and all the while the presidents popularity remains largely unaffected.

The media is overwhelmingly focused on the war on terror, and apart from a few notable exceptions (the New York Times preeminent among them) the mainstream US media has disturbingly collaborated in concealing the truth about this administrations aims.

It seems that the President has focused on a very different lesson of history. Presidents in wartime tend to have much more freedom of action at home and can supress dissent much more easily. This is a lesson he has learned well.