Harold Pinter acknowledgement speech

[Occhidiangela]

Occhi,

You seem to be missing what it is we find so appalling about this whole affair.

This could have been a mistake. It wasn't. It was a scenario contrived to scare and delude the people of your nation (and the rest of the world, albeit unsuccessfully) to support a war for geopolitical gain.
-Jester
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I am aware of PNAC's agenda, and I understand what you find appalling, based on the after the fact evidence of "what bombs?" (Did you ever see the film Wrong is Right? Sean Connery? Rent it, if you haven't, it's a spooky prophecy on celluloid, written about 1983.) I seem to recall what you and other critics believed before the war, and I know what I believed. Neither of us knew, we had to believe conflicting reports and after filtering through them, come up with a position to take. My biggest surprise after Mr Kay's report was the Secretary Powell had briefed the UN with such a thin set of slides.

Since we are on the PNAC topic now, do you take the position that PNAC set up the 9-11 event deliberately in order to enable a war to be made in the Middle East? If you are going to rest your argument on PNAC's dream sheet, how about we look at all the bugs under that rock?

Is it your position that Zionists have infiltrated the White House, invited in by the Boys From PNAC, and have steered the US to a policy of "Israel's security at all costs?" Is that your belief?


I cannot concur with your limited scope explanation. I am not sure how much was self delusion and how much was "it's close enough to truth for me to act on, I can't afford to wait until we can only react."

The 9-11 event provided a window of opportunity to garner public support to end the uncertainty, to end the failed policy and political liability that were the UN Sanctions on Saddam. Were you around for the constant whinging in the press that the sanctions were starving the people of Iraq? Vintage "America is the Evil of the World" even when operationg under UNSC umbrella.

I am tired of the "Cry Wolf" crap, and have been since the Cold War. The whingers are never happy, its just a matter of what they want to whine about today. Pinter is squarely in the whinger's club, I've checked out some of his previous work. I was not joking when I referred to his favorite song.

With a failed policy, what do you do? Sanctions/inspections for 12 years, or the 10 before the 9-11, had the problem of

Too much bad or non existent information
No closure on the sanctions Failures of both Clinton and Bush to close that deal by leading the UN to action in the mid 1990's. (Need not have been war)
Lack of will among all Security Council members to see through what they signed up for in 1991 when the original Sanctions were crafted.

My theory remains that the administration believed that the 2004 election would be lost, and appeasement would return as the policy. Appeasement gives time to your enemy.

The real problem was no one seemed to want to try to work with Saddam. That is as true of Clinton, who Saddam had comtempt for, and of Bush. Reagan showed Saddam could be worked with somewhat, vis a vis Iran, so where was the lateral thinking and hard working statecraft to find that third way?

No where.

Back to the intel versus decision:

Forecast to the decision maker: Saddam under an appeasement policy will be able to, and will, slowly but surely reconstruct some Nuke or Chem programs over the period 2004-2012, or 2004-2008.

This puts Saddam's threat in the mid term, a completely different perspective than immediate threat. (The fact that he was a massive obstacle to the Mid East Roadmap to Peace tends to support your assertion that the PNAC script was the only one available to play from in Cabinet meetings.)

When one comes to most people and politicians with a mid term threat, they typically pass the problem on to the next guy, and put off any action and screw about in committee.

I still am upset with the lack of leadership and statecraft used in 2002/2003 and how much Iran was virtually ignored as the long term threat, not to mention the problem of the "no nation building policy" being one of Bush's openers on taking office and the glib assumptions of a short war. It was a big risk.

Assuming that "it was now or never" a case for war was made to solve a near term political, and mid term security, problem. When people rejected the idea, and both Anthony Zinni and James Webb rejected it as idiotic (I have a lot of respect for Webb and Zinni's opinions) as not in the national interest, too many critics focused on "not an immediate threat." No one had enough information to make that determination either, that was the problem. The true state of play was unknown, in Saddam's Iraq. You and I know what we know AFTER THE FACT about the condition of his programs.

It was the wrong reason to object in any case.

As to the "immediate threat" problem, it was assumed his WMD programs were still being worked on. After 12 years of shell games, Saddam himself played into that belief. I believed, thanks to his policies and past record as an opportunist.

It was a surprise to me that once the egg was broken open, the few scientists who could be found to talk exposed a dysfunctional program. If you want to talk about an all sources intelligence failure . . . Where was that information before 2003?

The intelligence services of how many nations were unable to confirm or deny?

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absense.

Now, was war the only way to deal with Saddam?

Absolutely not.

As Zinni pointed out, Saddam was not the only arsehole in the gulf to deal with. Not enough alternatives were tried, or maybe, not enough were deemed to be of any use.

If you want to blame PNAC's influence on policy making for a certain tunnel vision, I will agree with you completely. The lack of patience to build better support and add more pressure was, IMO, tied directly to a belief that 2004 was a lost presidential election.

Occhi