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Thursday, September 09, 2004

Amazing

Jonathan at A Tiny Revolution is reading Kenneth Pollack's A Threatening Storm, a book Jonathan says convinced many American liberals of the need to go to war with Iraq. Here is one of Jonathan's favorite paragraphs so far:
The inputs into Saddam's decision making are deeply suspect... What Saddam knew of America came mostly from his spies and diplomats who tailored their reports to his prejudices. Iraq's intelligence services do not provide Saddam with anything like a comprehensive or objective picture of his strategic situation... they have few assets overseas and little ability to gather information. Saddam has often gotten awful intelligence... that has led him to make terrible decisions... [O]peratives tend to write their reports based on what they believe Saddam wants to hear... [B]efore the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq had little information regarding developments in Tehran, the mood of the country, or the operational status of the armed forces and instead relied on the misinformation of former Iranian generals who had fled the Islamic Revolution and desperately wanted Iraq to attack to try to restore them to power.
(emphasis added by Jonathan)

So the main differences between Saddam and Bush are:
  • Bush has WMD's
  • Bush has aircraft carriers to gloat on, not just balconies
  • Bush isn't in jail yet
  • Bush got approvals from his lawyers before torturing Iraqis in Abu Ghraib
  • Bush is hated throughout Iraq, not just in the Shiite and Kurdish areas
  • Saddam attacked Iran in the past; Bush wants to attack Iran in the future