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Why GHW Bush Didn't Kill Saddam

15:08 / 25.11.03

Snopes has this piece about how Bush I wrote in his memoirs that

"Trying to eliminate Saddam .. would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible ... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq ...there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles." and

"Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."

When I first read this, being so jaded to the Iraq debacle, I thought, yeah well, big surprise, the whole thing's fucked up, we know that. But after further consideration, it's really shocking. Bush Sr knew why deposing Saddam was a bad idea, he envisioned the consequences almost exactly as they've happened... why on earth was Junior allowed to go ahead with this plan? Why hasn't Bush Sr spoken up? (Well, that's hardly surprising given post-911-Dubya-mania.) Weirdly, it's not as though this is some secret document. It's a published memoir.

17:21 / 25.11.03

It's because the crowd who are advising Bush2 now aren't as savvy or cautious as the ones who were advising Bush1.

I remember seeing a documentary on the BBC about the first war and General Norman Swatzkopft said it really all came down to money. That invading Iraq and toppling Saddam would have bankrupted the US as they wouldn't have had the money support from Japan and the others bankrolling the war to do that when Kuwait had been liberated.

He said under the geneva convention the occupying power was responsible for all costs for keeping the population fed and healthy and they simply couldn't afford to do that.

As to what has changed between then and now, I'd say that Bush2's advisors laid in a supply of rose tinting welding goggles and were hoping against all advice they'd been given that Iraq would love them and topple Saddam in a revolution and they'd be able to finance everything by selling their oil.

Only one problem.... It was a really stupid plan. That's ideology winning out in the face of common sense or just plain self interested realism for you.

17:25 / 25.11.03

Yeah, I remember seeing something on TV here in the UK - possibly Newsnight, maybe the recent Pilger doc - where they went on about how George Snr knew a lot of people in Jr's administration - but they were thought of as right wing crazies, whereas now they're the moderates.

George Snr is also a very canny man with close intelligence links - it is possible that he went for the 'actions following intelligence' position, rather than the 'intelligence used to justify actions' position which Jr went for.

Will go and have a dig for some stuff on this...

19:42 / 25.11.03

I highly recommend reading this New Republic article about VP Dick Cheney and about how his push for imperial democracy was met with much derision in 41's administration.

The two (Bush Sr and Bush Jr) couldn't possibly be more different if they tried. The neocons simply found a sympathetic puppet/ear in Bush Jr that they never did in the late 80s and early 90s and it's an inpenetrable bubble in that regard, be it a dissenting voice from Bush Sr or any other naysayers of the job they're doing.

A frighteningly insulated bubble that will be extremely disallusioning to many when it pops.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

20:29 / 25.11.03

I'm sure I remember that Bush Senior did at some point say he didn't think invading Iraq was a good idea for most of the reasons that were in his diary, it only got passing mention over here, I guess it wasn't mentioned in America at all then?

20:55 / 25.11.03

'Close Intelligence links'? He was the ex-head of the CIA. The last thing Bush Snr would have done was to outflank existing intell channels by forming a shadow data-collating quango. It is fast becoming apparant that on both sides of the Atlantic, committees and other bodies were formed, outside the authority of the established intelligence agencies with questionable impartiality. To put it bluntly, it seems that both governments believed that they need to shape and package data coming out of the region to justify actions which had already been decided upon.

The new Bush junta has proven time and again that they will value their theoretical structure of reality over advice from outside the neo-con world-view. If that has adverse effects on the economy, environment, international relations or the lives of millions of Iraqi citizens - well tough shit. Reality is a precious commodity in the White House; they're even using the 'yellow-cake uranium' section of the State of the Union address in political ads. Why didn'y Daddy go as far as dubya in Iraq? Whatever you think of their policies, one administration had a very different balance of pragmatism and ideology from the other.

Morlock - groupie for hire

12:13 / 26.11.03

Perhaps the stakes are different now, as well. Or seen to be different, at least.

Gulf War 1 wasn't about Iraqi oil as much as Kuwaiti oil, and people were probably more optimistic about long-term supplies anyway. And oil-for-euros thing?

08:10 / 27.11.03

So after, er, "dicking" with Gorbachev, Cheney emboldens the August 1991 coup plotters while demoralizing the opposition who would, quite rightly, have seen Yeltsin as an American puppet. Maybe the coup happens earlier and succeeds and the Soviet Union retrenches. It might collapse later, but more messily. Or the coup fails but Yeltsin is seen as damaged goods and the Soviet Union splits like it did, but its components hang onto their nukes. Zhirinovsky gets a bigger vote thanks to good old Russian paranoia, fed by US support for Ukraine.

Occupying Iraq would have weakened Gorbachev and, again encouraged the coup plotters by reigniting Soviet paranoia.

I never thought I'd consider George Bush Sr. a class act, since he oversaw rightwing attacks on publicly-funded art, tried to ban flag-burning and got Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia onto the Supreme Court, but compared to his dimwitted son he's ace. Also, he was pretty much right to be cautious while Gorbachev dismantled the Soviet Empire from 1989 to 1991. But I'm still glad he lost to Clinton.

That article suggests very strongly that it was Scooter Libby who outed former ambassador Wilson's wife as a CIA employee. It was a message to the ambassador AND to the CIA: mess with us and we'll bust your balls.

16:19 / 27.11.03

Bush Sr. is not happy with Jr.'s performance as president, and has apparently said so in private. Sr. is far too much of a gentleman to say so in public, however, he's clearly hinting at it. Witness the award Bush Sr. recently gave to Jr.'s political opponent Ted Kennedy. This op-ed explains things pretty well, but if you want actual news stories they shouldn't be too hard to find.

Hmm, maybe not so easy. I wonder if Fox News covered this? In any case, here's Yahoo News.

15:10 / 02.12.03

Taken from Talking Points Memo:

Saddam's Capture Imminent

U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood held his thumb and forefinger slightly apart and said, "We're this close" to catching Saddam Hussein.
Once that's accomplished, Iraqi resistance will fall apart, said the five-term Republican congressman from Peoria who serves on the House Intelligence Committee.

A member of The Pantagraph editorial board -- not really expecting an answer -- asked LaHood for more details, saying, "Do you know something we don't?"

"Yes I do," replied LaHood.

The comment about the deposed Iraqi president came while LaHood discussed next year's elections.

I really, really hope that he was just talking, and not mentioning some horribly sinister plan to wait to capture Saddam until the election comes near... that would be too evil wouldn't it?

17:08 / 02.12.03

Quote from an American military source in this TIME article (page 3 of article):
Guantanamo detainees will be released at "a politically propitious time"...

so it's not as though they're making a secret that the battle for American hearts, minds, and votes will be quick and very, very dirty.
Expect the head of a Saddam-alike to be paraded around Baghdad/Syria/Iran/your backyard sometime in the coming year.

09:59 / 03.12.03

That would be your October Surprise -- a Roman triumph of Saddam and various baddies paraded before a victorious Bush, then dropped down a hole for a few years and executed as politically needed a la Vercingetorix.

17:12 / 04.12.03

I think you've got the makings of a riveting Robert Ludlum novel there...