The weird twisted logic of Dr. Wolfowitz
From yesterday's Meet the Press:
MR. RUSSERT: Many people are now asking why the urgency in going to war. If, in fact, we have not found the weapons of mass destruction, could not we have waited a few months with more coercive inspections and have resolved this without a war?
DR. WOLFOWITZ: Let me say a couple of things, Tim. People act as though the cost of containing Iraq is trivial. The cost of containing Iraq was enormous. Fifty-five American lives lost, at least, in incidents like the Cole and Khobar Towers, which were part of the containment effort. Billions of dollars of American money spent so...
MR. RUSSERT: Was Iraq linked to those?
DR. WOLFOWITZ: Absolutely. Oh, no, not to the—I don’t know who did the attacks. I now that we would not have had Air Force people in Khobar Towers if we weren’t conducting a containment policy. I know we wouldn’t have had to have the Cole out there doing maritime intercept operations. And worst of all, if you go back and read Osama bin Laden’s notorious fatwah from 1998 where he calls for killing Americans, the two principal grievances were the presence of those forces in Saudi Arabia, and our continuing attacks on Iraq. Twelve years of containment was a terrible price for us.
So basically Wolfowitz is saying that we had to invade Iraq to appease Osama, whom we pissed off with our last attack on Iraq based on false pretenses.
Here's some more Wolfy logic:
We know that for 12 years Saddam Hussein did everything he could to frustrate U.N. inspectors. He sacrificed $100 billion in money that he could have spent on palaces and tanks and all those things that he loved so much in order to frustrate those inspectors. Isn’t that in itself an indicator there was something there? Let’s be patient and let’s figure out—wait until we can find things out.
Replace "12" with "2", "Saddam Hussein" with "George W. Bush," "frustrate U.N. inspectors" with "block a serious investigation into 9/11," "palaces and tanks" with "tax cuts", and "frustrate those inspectors" with "block that investigation," and the statement makes more sense. The "sacrificed $100 billion" part I assume refers to the very questionable idea that the US would ever have removed the sanctions on Iraq no matter how thorough the inspections had been. From what I've read in Scott Ritter's book, Iraqi compliance between 1995 and '98 was quite good, and inspectors had verified that Iraq didn't have much in the way of banned weapons left. This certainly seems to have been substantiated now. Since '98, Iraq was mostly or entirely WMD-free, but the sanctions continued. On the other hand, Bush willingly pursued an illegal war which will eventually cost over $100 billion, and while global empire was probably the main reason, distracting attention from the massive failures by his administration leading up to 9/11 was certainly desirable collateral damage as far as the Bushies were concerned.
From yesterday's Meet the Press:
MR. RUSSERT: Many people are now asking why the urgency in going to war. If, in fact, we have not found the weapons of mass destruction, could not we have waited a few months with more coercive inspections and have resolved this without a war?
DR. WOLFOWITZ: Let me say a couple of things, Tim. People act as though the cost of containing Iraq is trivial. The cost of containing Iraq was enormous. Fifty-five American lives lost, at least, in incidents like the Cole and Khobar Towers, which were part of the containment effort. Billions of dollars of American money spent so...
MR. RUSSERT: Was Iraq linked to those?
DR. WOLFOWITZ: Absolutely. Oh, no, not to the—I don’t know who did the attacks. I now that we would not have had Air Force people in Khobar Towers if we weren’t conducting a containment policy. I know we wouldn’t have had to have the Cole out there doing maritime intercept operations. And worst of all, if you go back and read Osama bin Laden’s notorious fatwah from 1998 where he calls for killing Americans, the two principal grievances were the presence of those forces in Saudi Arabia, and our continuing attacks on Iraq. Twelve years of containment was a terrible price for us.
So basically Wolfowitz is saying that we had to invade Iraq to appease Osama, whom we pissed off with our last attack on Iraq based on false pretenses.
Here's some more Wolfy logic:
We know that for 12 years Saddam Hussein did everything he could to frustrate U.N. inspectors. He sacrificed $100 billion in money that he could have spent on palaces and tanks and all those things that he loved so much in order to frustrate those inspectors. Isn’t that in itself an indicator there was something there? Let’s be patient and let’s figure out—wait until we can find things out.
Replace "12" with "2", "Saddam Hussein" with "George W. Bush," "frustrate U.N. inspectors" with "block a serious investigation into 9/11," "palaces and tanks" with "tax cuts", and "frustrate those inspectors" with "block that investigation," and the statement makes more sense. The "sacrificed $100 billion" part I assume refers to the very questionable idea that the US would ever have removed the sanctions on Iraq no matter how thorough the inspections had been. From what I've read in Scott Ritter's book, Iraqi compliance between 1995 and '98 was quite good, and inspectors had verified that Iraq didn't have much in the way of banned weapons left. This certainly seems to have been substantiated now. Since '98, Iraq was mostly or entirely WMD-free, but the sanctions continued. On the other hand, Bush willingly pursued an illegal war which will eventually cost over $100 billion, and while global empire was probably the main reason, distracting attention from the massive failures by his administration leading up to 9/11 was certainly desirable collateral damage as far as the Bushies were concerned.
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