Politics Eclipse Policy, Part II

So, having criticized the MSM for focusing on politics over policy in the current health care debate, why have I written only on the politics and not made a single post on substantive healthcare policy? For two reasons. First of all, I consider Republican conduct here to be sufficiently disturbing that for me the politics of the issue really do eclipse the policy.

The second reason is that ultimately, healthcare reform is not my biggest issue. I didn't vote for Obama to pass universal healthcare. Yes, it is an important issue, and one that I favor. But it wasn't the reason for my vote.

I voted for Obama in hopes that he would clean up the mess Bush left. He hasn't done it. Given the choice between Bush with universal healthcare and Bush without universal healthcare, I will take the healthcare. But I was hoping for a President who wasn't George Bush and am now despairing of getting one.

Consider the Bush policies I saw as important and how Obama has responded so far.

Get out of Iraq. Check. Granted, he is following the timetable negotiated by Bush, but he is following in, not trying to subvert it as some hawks have desired.

Develop a rational policy in Afghanistan. None in sight.

Stop relying on defense contractors. We are, if anything, relying on them more than ever.

Practice diplomacy. Okay, we are making at least some progress there.

Close Guantanamo. A stated goal with approximately zero chance of happening. Granted, Congress has a large hand in that.

End torture. Well, the Obama Administration has formally committed itself not to torture and has closed down CIA "black sites" that weren't being used anyhow. But torture continued unabated at Guantanamo with no attempt to stop it, and who knows what is going on at Bangram.

End warrantles wiretaps. The Obama Administration seems quite content continuing the mysterious "basket warrants" allowed under the Protect America Act and sweeping the entire issue under the rug. Is the program appropriate? Is it entirely out of control? Just how much of our foreign communications are being surveilled? Who knows?

Stop the abusive use of National Security Letters. Who knows? I'm guessing not; they are just too convenient.

Stop infiltrating and surveilling innocent organizations. Who knows?

Stop heavy-handed PATRIOT Act investigations of innocent dissent. Who knows?

Put the No-Fly List on a rational basis. Not a sign of it.

Either abolish our color-coded system of alerts, or put them on a rational basis. No. In fact, orange appears to be the new norm.

Stop using the federal government (including the Justice Department) as a system of partisan patronage. Who knows?

Stop interfering with the independent judgment of government scientists. Who knows?

Stop the heavy-handed immigration raids that give the country a police state feel. It is my understanding there has been progress here, and the emphasis has shifted to deporting criminals and cracking down on employers.

Stop heavy-handed treatment of foreign tourists for small technical violations. Who knows?

Lighten up on the war on drugs. Once again, it is my understanding the feds have stopped raiding medical marijuana facilities. Otherwise things remain heavy-handed, but at least be are back to pre-Bush.

Allow unfriendly demonstrators in your vicinity and critics into town hall meetings. Yes, give Obama credit, he has done this. In fact, he was disappointed how few showed up on the health care tour.

Introduce accountability into the bank bailout and stop treating it as a handout. For the most part, no. As funds began to run low and everyone knew Congress would not approve any more, the Administration had started being more parsimonious, which is all to the good, but even the Bush Administration would presumably have done the same. Maybe Obama will offer a reasonable set of banking regulations and somewhat redeem himself on this one, but I am not holding my breath.

Run a more open Administration. Despite a few encouraging signs, the overall record is most unimpressive.

Expose what the Bush Administration was up to. This was the critical one for me. Only by revealing what they were up to can we really get a handle on what (if anything) was justified and how to reform it. Unlike, say, Glenn Greenwald, I can understand why prosecution is politically impossible, but exposure it essential. And, while there have been a few forced disclosures so far, on the whole this Administration has been fighting tooth and claw to keep its predecessor's actions secret. What are we to conclude but that it wants to reserve authority to continue them?

Firepower and the Rules of War

As I commented in my last post, every time Israel (or, for that matter, the United States) causes serious collateral damage with its firepower, the defense is always the same. It is the other side's fault for hiding among civilians, which is a war crime.

George Bush's arguments about unlawful combatants are different, but related. He argues that our adversaries in Afghanistan and Iraq are "unlawful combatants" and therefore not entitled to any of the protections under the laws of war. He even identified the Taliban as unlawful when we first invaded Afghanistan, even though they were, for all intents and purposes, the Afghan national army. The reason: they weren't wearing uniforms.

Both arguments do rely on the accepted rules of war. Those rules call for a sharp distinction between military and civilian to limit the scope of fighting to armies and protect civilians. For instance, soldiers are required to wear uniforms so that their adversaries will know who is and is not legitimate to kill. Military installations must be kept apart from civilian areas and clearly marked as such. And, of course, a wide range of protections are in force for non-combatants.

These rules, when followed, do limit the scope and brutality of war. But they contain an unstated but loaded assumption -- that war is and should be a duel of firepower. The unstated but implied preference for this type of war can be found everywhere. Some collateral damage as a result of firepower is tolerated. Requirements that military installations be kept away from inhabited areas are attempts to limit such damage, but it is assumed to be inevitable. Soldiers are encouraged to fight out in the open, away from civilians. Heavy artillery, tanks, trenches and the like are considered legitimate forms of warfare. And so forth.

The effect of these rules is to limit collateral damage, but also to privilege armies with high firepower over ones without. Consider how they look to a party with low firepower. These rules require a low firepower combatant to put on uniforms and march openly against an army with firepower enough to cut them to shreds. They require a group like Hezbollah or Hamas to mark its military installations as easy targets despite not having an airforce or anti-aircraft guns to protect them. Quite simply, they make taking on an enemy of vastly superior firepower suicidal. Or, alternately, they brand such an attempt as illegitimate. It is pointless to be shocked or morally offended when a weaker power refuses to accept the options of submission or suicide.

The response of a weaker power to a stronger one is old and long-established -- guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla warfare rejects the clear military-civilian dichotomy and instead does its best to blur the distinction. Guerrillas do not wear uniforms. They intermingle with civilians, attacking by surprise and ambush. They hide their weapons and outposts in the civilian population. They involve the entire population in the war. And when regular armies dismiss all this as a war crime and respond with firepower, the result is extremely brutal.

My own belief is that it is both pointless and immoral to simply dismiss such behavior as a war crime and insist that weaker adversaries make the choice between suicide and submission. It is better, instead, to recognize their tactical logic and try to reason from there to a moral logic. Guerrilla warfare operates by rejecting the military-civilian dichotomy. The best measure, therefore, of a guerrilla army's moral legitimacy is the lack of such a dichotomy. Or, as the best-known guerrilla theorist put it, "The people are like water and the army is like fish." A guerrilla army's moral legitimacy can but judged on how friendly the "water" is to the "fish."

For instance, an organization like the Fedayeen Saddam, that had no basis in the population but merely hid among them and intimidated them, do not have such legitimacy. They followed neither the conventional rules of separating from civilians to protect them from conflict nor the informal guerrilla "rules" of blending seamlessly into the population and relying on their support. The Fedayeen Saddam's quasi-guerrilla tactics may fairly be called a war crime. Many Iraqi insurgents were something different altogether. Indeed, in the early phases of the insurgency it was almost a cliche that a US patrol knew they were about the be ambushed because the streets would suddenly be empty. This meant that the insurgents had tipped off the locals and warned them to stay inside. That is the mark of a guerrilla force with a strong basis in the population, doing its best (in its own way) to minimize civilian casualties. Hamas and Hezbollah have both proven their legitimate base in the population by winning elections. They, too, have fish-in-water sort of legitimacy.

None of this is to deny that "legitimate" guerrilla forces can commit war crimes. Of course they can. The Mahdi Army, for instance, certainly had the support of the Shiite population in the areas where it was based, but it committed frightful atrocities against neighboring Sunnis. Mass murder, intentional killing of civilians, torture and the like are war crimes regardless of who commits them. Guerrilla armies are notorious for their cruelty and brutality toward people who oppose them. And nearly all guerrillas fighting civil wars (as opposed to resisting foreign invaders) commit serious war crimes. My point is not to glorify irregular forces but argue that guerrilla tactics should not in and of themselves be regarded as war crimes.

So, I have made the argument when "unlawful combatants" should be considered lawful. The next question is how to deal with them. That is a thorny matter, and one I do not pretent any competence to address. It is, however, the subject of all counterinsurgency doctrine.

Torture is Tactical; Rapport is Strategic

On the subject of torture and the war on terror, consider this column by "Matthew Alexander," (psuedonym), a military interrogator in Iraq, discussing the advantages of rapport building over torture in Iraq. One of the things he learned was torture and abuse by Americans was a major recruiting tool for foreign jihadis. Another was that being treated humanely could be a serious blow to terrorists' world view. He also gained valuable insight into the insurgents' motives:

Over the course of this renaissance in interrogation tactics, our attitudes changed. We no longer saw our prisoners as the stereotypical al-Qaeda evildoers we had been repeatedly briefed to expect; we saw them as Sunni Iraqis, often family men protecting themselves from Shiite militias and trying to ensure that their fellow Sunnis would still have some access to wealth and power in the new Iraq. Most surprisingly, they turned out to despise al-Qaeda in Iraq as much as they despised us, but Zarqawi and his thugs were willing to provide them with arms and money. I pointed this out to Gen. George Casey, the former top U.S. commander in Iraq, when he visited my prison in the summer of 2006. He did not respond.

Perhaps he should have. It turns out that my team was right to think that many disgruntled Sunnis could be peeled away from Zarqawi. A year later, Gen. David Petraeus helped boost the so-called Anbar Awakening, in which tens of thousands of Sunnis turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and signed up with U.S. forces, cutting violence in the country dramatically.

Balloon Juice blog presents Alexander's column with a revealing juxtaposition from Andrew McCarthy defending torture:

Superior force and discipline are not enough against this adversary. We need intelligence. Intelligence is the single asset that stands between the terrorist and scores — if not more — of slaughtered civilians. Between the terrorist and murdered American military personnel. In the war on terror, as in no war before it, intelligence will be the difference between victory and defeat. . . . [T]here are certain circumstances in which high-level al Qaeda operatives are captured in the throes of plotting massive strikes. There are certain circumstances in which such a terrorist might be able to tell us, right now, where bin Laden is, or Zarqawi, Zawahiri, and other leaders who are themselves weapons of mass destruction because they have the wherewithal to command massive strikes.

Alexander and McCarthy actually agree on an important point; it is intelligence that will win counter-insurgency. But they disagree, not only how how to obtain intelligence, but, at a much deeper level, on what intelligence really is.

For the sake of argument, I will grant McCarthy and other defenders of torture a point and assume that torture is, in fact, the quickest and easiest way to get the information they want. But the type of intelligence McCarthy and others like him discuss is revealing; it is narrowly military. What type of attack are you planning? Where is your weapons cache? Where are the EID's hidden? Where can I find your leader? Granted, all this information is important and worth knowing, but it is purely tactical. It may thwart a few attacks and win a few battles, but it is not how counter insurgencies or great wars of ideas are won.

Contrast this with what Alexander learns by building rapport; fighters' backgrounds, their motives, their quarrels and internal disputes, their differences, and what really makes them tick. This is strategic information, the sort of knowledge that defeats insurgencies, builds alliances, and wins wars of ideas. It is the sort of information that can not only win a war, but build a peace. And torture is worthless for gaining this sort of complex, sophisticated information.

I don't know Matthew Alexander's real name or where to find him. But I hope the Obama Administration finds him and gives him a major role in retraining our interrogation teams. Maybe, just maybe, he can help us win in Afghanistan.

The Iraqi Perspective Project on Iraq and Terrorism

My next, and even more outdated, original document will be the Pentagon's Iraqi Perspectives Project report, released in March, describing Saddam Hussein's ties to terrorism. Opponents of invading Iraq have claimed vindication because the report finds no direct ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Proponents have also claimed vindication because the report shows extensive ties between Saddam and terrorism, including some Islamic organizations with links to Al-Qaeda.

The report contains five volumes, the first one consisting of the report and conclusions, and the other four some 2,000 pages of captured Iraqi documents, translated into English. Having read the introductory volume only, my main impression is how poorly written it is. The first volume is 94 pages long, including table of contents, executive summary, footnotes, appendixes, and pages intentionally left blank. Only 46 pages are taken up by actual report.

It addresses terrorism committed directly by agents of the Iraqi state (the Fedayeen Saddam), Iraqi sponsorship of non-state terrorism, and Iraqi cooperation with Islamist terrorists. The reports treats most of its subjects by taking a document it considers a good example and quoting extensively from it, but with little or no attempt at context. The general impression is one of a minute and detailed description of several trees, but no description of the size, density or composition of the forest. When the report does attempt to reach a broader conclusion (as it does about Saddam's ties to Islamic terrorists), it does so with remarkable little supporting evidence.

Attempting to look past all these trees the outline of the forest seems to be as follows:

• The Fedayeen Saddam had an extensive terrorist network in Europe and kept considerably more arms at Iraqi embassies than would be needed for protection. Their main targets appear to have been Iraqi defectors abroad.
• The Fedayeen Saddam also recruited and trained suicide bombers from Iraq and other countries. The targets of these terrorists are not clear.
• Iraq also provided extensive training to non-state terrorists, especially ones attacking Israel, to the extent of building models of Israeli settlements to practice attacking.
• The Iraqi government collaborated (to an uncertain degree) with various Islamist terrorist groups, especially Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led by Ayman al-Zawahari, who later became Bin Laden's deputy. It kept an eye on a wide variety of other Islamic terrorist groups, hoping perhaps to exploit them in the future.
• During the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq and allied terrorist groups responded with attacks on American and allied interests.
• Iraqi intelligence and the Fedayeen Saddam engaged in extensive acts of sabotage and terror in the autonomous Kurdish regions. The report emphasizes attacks on foreigners and does not discuss either the extent to which Kurds were targeted or the extent of cooperation with Islamist organizations in Kurdistan, such as Ansar al-Islam.
• Iraqi intelligence spied on the Saudi and Kuwaiti royal families and attempted to assassinate members.
• Iran was also a frequent target of Iraqi terrorism.

One of the report's few attempts at extensive analysis was of Iraqi ties to Islamist terrorists. Saddam ruthlessly suppressed any such organizations within Iraq, but wavered on whether to support them abroad. However:

Saddam provided training and motivation to revolutionary pan-Arab nationalists in the region. Osama bin Laden provided training and motivation for violent revolutionary Islamists in the region. There were recruiting within the same demographic, spouting much the same rhetoric, and promoting a common historical narrative threat promised a return to a glorious past. That these movements (pan-Arab and pan-Islamic) had many similarities and strategic parallels does not mean they saw themselves in that light. Nevertheless, these similarities created more than just the appearance of cooperation. Common interests, even without common cause, increased the aggregate terror threat.

However, the report gives little supporting detail, other than to mention Iraqi support for Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

The report is conspicuous for what it does not address, especially any systematic sorts of comparisons. Obvious questions to ask might include:

• What sorts of terrorist acts did Iraqi intelligence plan? Who were their most common targets? What percentage of their planned attacks succeeded? Was there any pattern of successes or failures (say, attacks planned far from home were less likely to succeed that ones nearby).
• Which non-state terrorist organizations did Iraq have closest ties to? Training terrorists and planning attacks together would be evidence of close ties. Providing finance and more passive forms of support are evidence of less close ties. Mere occasional contact is a weak tie. Planning frequent attacks together is evidence of stronger ties than planning occasional attacks. And so forth.
• What were Iraq's ties with specific Islamist terrorist organizations? How were they similar and how did they differ?
• How did Saddam's policies evolve over time? Which terrorist organizations did he strengthen ties to, and which did he weaken ties to?
• And what about the Al-Qaeda fighters who fled to Iraq in the wake of the US invasions of Afghanistan?

Conceivably, the rather weak analysis and poor attempts to quantify the evidence could be because the evidence remains spotty. Although the report is touted as the product of reviewing some 600,000 documents, only 15% of those have been translated into English. And it is not clear whether 600,000 is the total number of documents about terrorism, or the total number of captured documents dealing with all topics. Nonetheless, there are some 2,000 pages of documents in the four succeeding volumes.

If I had the time, I might be tempted to read through all 2,000 pages to see if I could provide a more systematic analysis than the Pentagon has to offer. Unfortunately, I do not.

The Rockefeller Report: Conclusions

So, what is one to conclude from the Rockefeller Report? As I have said before, the Report does, indeed generally vindicate the Bush Administration's statements about Saddam's alleged arsenal -- but only by wilfully ignoring strong evidence of pressure on the intelligence community to modify its opinions. The Report criticizes the Administration for making unsupported statements about Saddam's ties to Al-Qaeda, his intentions (especially the possibility that he might give WMD to terrorists) and prospects for post-invasion Iraq.

The Republicans on the Committee offer a dissent. They point out that many Democrats at the time (including Senator Rockefeller) had access to the same NIE as Bush and made equally alarmist statements. They also argue that Saddam's intentions and the prospects for a post-invasion Iraq are necessarily vaguer, more nebulous and more subjective than his arsenal and therefore harder to determine. Ultimately, they argue, by criticizing George Bush for disagreeing with the intelligence community on such imprecise subjects, the Democrats are saying that the intelligence community rather than elected officials should make decisions of war and peace. This would only serve to further politicize the intelligence process.

Admittedly, there is some truth to all this. Democrats did, indeed, succumb to the general atmosphere of fear-mongering, though whether they feared Saddam more than their electoral opponents is an open question. But it was the Administration, not the Democrats creating and driving the whole atmosphere of the time, and the Administration that had contact with the intelligence community and was urging them to produce ever more alarmist assessments. Of course the Republicans are right that intelligence analysts are not and should not be policy makers. Although the President and his top officials necessarily have to rely on intelligence reports for technical matters like the best estimate of Saddam Hussein's arsenal and contacts with terrorists, the ultimate decision of whether the risks of war outweigh the risks of inaction are decisions for policy makers, not the intelligence community.

But it would be nice if policy maker assessments of those risks bore some relationship to the real world. The Bush Administration based its decision to invade Iraq on the most hysterical, inflated, far-fetched speculations about the dangers of not invading and the most rosy, optimistic, ill-thought-out predictions about the aftermath of an invasion. The Republicans are right. This is not bad intelligence or even misuse of intelligence; it is simply bad policy making.

Still, the Rockefeller Report is worth something, even if ignores the question of how honest intelligence assessments were in the leadup to the war. Ever since it was determined that Saddam did not have WMD, the position of Bush supporters has been that the President was simply the innocent victim of bad intelligence. Everyone believed Saddam had such an arsenal, they argue. George Bush simply fell for bad intelligence and acted on it. If only he had known better -- well, it is not altogether clear what he would have done if he had known better.

This argument has never been convincing on its face. Before the war Administration leaders were constantly berating the intelligence community for underestimating the danger Saddam posed, urging them to to be more alarmist, and cherry picking raw data for anything to support their views. The Rockefeller Report ignores all that. However, by showing how the Administration ignored uncertainties, dissents, and caveats, insisted without support on an Iraq-Al-Qaeda alliance, and based its assessment of costs and benefits on little more than fantasy, it shows that the Administration was considerably more hawkish than the intelligence community and not simply the victim of its bad advice.

But by failing address to what extent the Bush Administration was responsible for ever more alarming intelligence estimates, the Rockefeller Report remains a whitewash. Here is an Enlightened Layperson's summary, that should make the overall trajectory clear:*

Saddam Hussein, in reality

• Did not have any nuclear, biological or chemical weapons or active programs
• Had destroyed all missiles with a range of 650-900 km
• Did unlawfully possess missiles with a range longer than 150 km
• Had unmanned aerial reconnaissance drones
• Supported secular terrorist organizations
• Did not support Al-Qaeda, although since the US invasion of Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda operatives fleeing Afghanistan had begun operating in Iraq and may have been passively tolerated.

Before the push to war began, the intelligence community estimated Saddam:

• Did not have an active nuclear program
• Did have an active biological weapons program, although details were not known
• Might have a small-scale chemical weapons program, but was unlikely to have any more than 100 tons of chemical weapons
• Unlawfully possessed missiles with ranges longer than 150 km
• Might have 25-30 pre-Gulf War missiles with ranges of 650-900 km
• Supported secular terrorists
• Did not support Al-Qaeda

In the October, 2002 NIE, at the height of war fever, the intelligence community estimated Saddam:

• Had an active nuclear program and was 5-7 years from building a nuclear bomb
• Had an active biological weapons program, including mobile labs in trucks
• Had an active chemical weapons program, though on a smaller scale than before the Gulf War, and had 100-500 tons of chemical weapons, most made in the last year
• Unlawfully possessed missiles with ranges longer than 150 km
• Might have 25-30 pre-Gulf War missiles with ranges of 650-900 km
• Had unmanned drones for delivering chemical and biological weapons and might even be planning to strike the US
• Supported secular terrorists
• Did not support Al-Qaeda, although since the US invasion of Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda operatives fleeing Afghanistan had begun operating in Iraq and may have been passively tolerated.
• Was unlikely to attack the US unless his survival was at stake, and was unlikely to give WMD to terrorists, especially ones he did not control.

The Bush Administration alleged or implied Saddam:

• Had an active nuclear program and was 5-7 years from building a nuclear bomb
• Had an active biological weapons program, including mobile labs in trucks, unverifiable specifics given
  Had an active chemical weapons program with 100-500 tons of chemical weapons, most made in the last year, unverifiable specifics given
• Had missiles with ranges of hundreds of miles
• Had unmanned drones for delivering chemical and biological weapons and might even be planning to strike the US
• Supported terrorists, either including Al-Qaeda or strongly implied to include Al-Qaeda
• Might give WMD, presumably including nuclear weapons, to terrorists, presumably including Al-Qaeda.

In short, the intelligence community, even in its most unvarnished assessments, was wrong about Saddam and overestimated his arsenal. However, its unvarnished assessment was more accurate than its assessment after the Bush Administration began the drive to war. And during its drive to war, the Bush Administration did not find even the most alarming intelligence estimates scary enough and either exaggerated, or suggested things that were flatly contradicted. The general trajectory is clear enough. It certainly shows the Bush Administration was no mere victim of bad intelligence. And, although it does not prove political influence on intelligence estimates, it strongly implies such influence.

________________________________________________

*And, FWIW, an Enlightened Layperson's ill-informed pre-war assessment was that Saddam:

• Did not have nuclear weapons or an active program (I could smell the hype a mile off)
• Obviously had chemical weapons (after all, he had used them in the past)
• Might or might not have biological weapons (I was open to persuasion either way)
• Did not have any delivery vehicles capable of hitting the US
• Was unlikely to have delivery vehicles capable of hitting Israel
• Was therefore a threat mostly to his neighbors, who did not seem unduly alarmed
• Supported secular terrorists
• Did not support Al-Qaeda.

Based on the foregoing, I opposed the war.

Rockefeller Report: The Contents

Following up on my last post, what does the RockefellerReport actually show? And what can an Enlightened Layperson find by reading between the lines?

The Rockefeller Report focuses on eight main areas, nuclear weapons, biological weapons, chemical weapons, weapons of mass destruction (generally), delivery vehicles, ties to terrorism, Saddam's intentions, and the prospects for Iraq following an invasion. It reaches 16 conclusions. It focuses on five main speeches, George Bush's speech to the United Nations, his 2003 State of the Union speech, Colin Powell's speach to the UN, and two earlier speeches, one by Cheney and one by Bush, although it also includes snippets of other speeches. The Report takes the speeches in chronological order and compares them to the intelligence then available. At the end (over Republican objections) it concludes by showing the reality as discovered after the war.

Nuclear Weapons. Nuclear weapons are extremely capital intensive to produce and difficult to conceal. Not surprisingly, then, during the 1990's and 2000, the intelligence community consistently concluded that international inspectors had destroyed or neutralized Saddam's nuclear infastructure and that he did not have an active nuclear program, although he might wish to resume it at some time in the future.

A shift began in 2001 even before the 9/11 attack as the CIA began to consider that Saddam might be reviving his nuclear weapons program. Their main evidence was his purchase of aluminum tubes that might be used for uranium enrichment and other "dual use" items. Suspicions escalated in 2002 as the buildup to war continued, culminating in the October, 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which concluded that Saddam had resumed his nuclear weapons program and was about 5-7 years from producing nuclear weapons. Interestingly, the notorious uranium forgeries played a only a minor role. Of the five speeches, only one (the State of the Union) mentioned the alleged uranium purchase. The aluminum tubes, on the other hand, were central to the assessment.

The main pieces of evidence cited in the NIE cited that Saddam had revived his nuclear program were (1) purchase of aluminum tubes and other dual-use technology, (2) meeting between Saddam and nuclear scientists, and (3) apparent activity at nuclear sites. The Department of Energy, the agency that knew most about uranium enrichment, dissented, saying that the tubes appeared to be for artillery rockets. Despite the DOE's expertise, its dissent was relegated to a footnote and excluded from the executive summary. Allegations about activity at nuclear sites are too vague to evaluate. (Indeed, one observer (can't find cite) watching Colin Powell's address to the UN immediately knew there was no solid evidence when he displayed diagrams instead of satellite photographs. Needless to say, the Report does not address that).

Committee Conclusion: Statements about Saddam's nuclear program "were generally substantiated by the intelligence community estimates, but did not convey the substantial disagreements that existed in the intelligence community."

Enlightened Layperson reading between the lines: Administration statements may have been "generally substantiated by the intelligence community estimates," but those intelligence estimates reek of political influence. After years of believing the Iraqi nuclear program was haulted, the intelligence community changed its mind just when the Bush Administration was pushing for war. The main basis for the change was Saddam's purchase of aluminum tubes that the agency most familiar with nuclear weapons did not believe were suited for uranium enrichment. That opinion was duly buried. Substantiated by the intelligence means nothing if that intelligence was the result of political pressure.

Biological weapons. Unlike nuclear weapons, biological weapons are extremely difficult to detect. Bioweapons are measured in liters and can be grown in inconspicuous places (such as mobile trailers). Bioweapon materials, personnel and facilities are indistinguishable from legitimate medical research. Accordingly, the intelligence community throughout the 1990's and 2000 worried a great deal about Iraqi biological weapons and believed that Iraq had retained its bioweapons and resumed production. What the Report does not emphasize is that the intelligence community had no actual evidence of biological weapons, only the speculation and paranoid that flourishes in the absence of real information.

The main actual evidence of a bioweapons program were reports from three (by some accounts four) defectors who claimed to have seen mobile bioweapons labs in trucks and rail cars. The intelligence community began giving credence to these reports in 2000, i.e., before George Bush was elected. One of the defectors was the notorious "Curveball." The CIA agents working most closely with "Curveball" expressed doubts about his credibility, but these doubts did not make it up the chain of command. Another defector was Major General al-Assaf, determined by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to be a fabricator in April or May of 2002. He was nonetheless named as a source in the October, 2002 NIE. The Report does not identify the other defector(s). There were occasional references to satellite photographs of bioweapons facilities but, like the alleged satellite photographs of nuclear facilities, these never amounted to anything.

Committee Conclusion: Statements about biological weapons were "substantiated by the intelligence information," though they did not discuss intelligence gaps.

Enlightened Layperson reading between the lines: These statements were, indeed, subtantiated by the intelligence information, but that information was based on little more than speculation and paranoia. The fabricators added a few specifics, but did not change the intelligence community's overall conclusions. The question, then, is, how much credence should be given to intelligence information that is almost pure speculation.

Chemical weapons. Chemical weapons programs are less conspicuous than nuclear programs, but more conspicuous than biological weapons programs. Large scale production is detectable, but small-scale production can be concealed within the legitimate chemical industry. Up to 2002, the intelligence community believed Iraq had a residual portion of its pre-Gulf War chemical weapons. It was confident that no large-scale production was underway, but suspected small-scale production concealed in the civilian chemical industry. The general estimate was that Iraq's chemical stockpile was 100 tons or less. The intelligence community also had some doubts whether Iraq could produce nerve gas without external resources, but believed it readily produce mustard gas.

This assessment remained generally the same throughout most of 2002, but abruptly shifted with the release of the NIE in October, 2002. Suddenly the 100 tons or less of chemical weapons became 100 to 500 tons, much of it produced in the last year. The NIE produced actual evidence for suspicion of at least one chlorine plant -- that it was producing more chlorine than needed, its equipment was being buried for concealment, and it employed people linked with past chemical weapons production. The Report does not list any other evidence cited to support claims about increased production. The NIE acknowledged that Iraqi production capacity was probably below Gulf War levels.

Committee conclusion: Statements about Iraq's chemical weapons were "substantiated by intelligence information" but did not reflect the intelligence community's uncertainty whether actual production was going on.

Enlightened Layperson reading between the lines: The intelligence community's assessment of Iraq's chemical weapons combines all the weaknesses of its report on nuclear weapons and its report on biological weapons. Like the report on nuclear weapons, it shows a suspicious escalation during the push for war. Suddenly a stock of under 100 tons becomes 100 to 500 tons, most of it recently made. The possibility of small scale production suddently becomes a certainty. Like the report on biological weapons, it is based on fear and speculation in the absence of verifiable evidence.

Weapons of mass destruction. The committee added a separate section on references to "weapons of mass destruction" when it was not clear whether public speeches referred to nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. It finds such references generally substantiated, but showing greater certainty than the actual intelligence judgments. It also reports that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made unsubstantiated statements about underground facilities. This section adds nothing to the nuclear, chemical and biological sections.

Delivery vehicles. Unlike the reports on weapons, the section on delivery vehicles does not discuss the intelligence community's pre-2002 opinions on Iraq's delivery vehicles. In 2002 before the October NIE, the intelligence community generally believed that Iraq retained a small number (25-30) of pre-Gulf war missiles with ranges of 625 to 900 kilometers. It also believed that there were newer missiles with ranges of 150 to 300 km. Finally, it believed the Iraqis might be in the early stages of work on missiles with ranges of 750 to 3000 km. All of these would violate UN resolutions setting a maximum range of 150 km. UN weapons inspectors ultimately confirmed that Iraq did, indeed, have missiles exceeding the 150 km maximum range. All of the longer-range, pre-Gulf War missiles had been destroyed.

The October, 2002 NIE repeated these findings and also reported that Iraq was developing and testing small to medium sized unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV's, or drones). The NIE's opinion was that these drones were probably for delivering biological weapons. Furthermore, the Iraqi procurement network was seeking route planning software about the United States, leading the NIE to conclude the drones might be used to deliver biological weapons to the United States. The Air Force dissented, saying that the drones appeared better suited to reconnaissance. Like the DOE dissent about the aluminum tubes, the opinion of the agency with the most technical knowledge was relegated to a footnote and excluded from the executive summary.

Unlike other intelligence reports, which became increasingly alarmist as war approached, in this case the intelligence community began backing off its more extreme conclusions. In January, 2003, the new NIE began hedging and qualifying its opinions about the UAV's. The Airforce continued to dissent, saying that the drones appeared to be reconnaissance, and this time was joined by Army Intelligence and the DIA.

Committee conclusions: Statements about missiles were "generally substantiated by the intelligence." Statements about UAV's being used for chemical or biological attack were "generally substantiated by the intelligence but did not convey the substantial disagreements or evolving views that existed in the intelligence community." Statements that the Iraqi government was considering using UAV's to attack the US were "substantiated by intelligence judgments at the time, but these judgments were revised a few months later."

Enlightened Layperson reading between the lines: Intelligence assessments of the missiles were unproblemmatic and even relatively accurate. The UAV's are a different matter altogether. Like the aluminum tubes, the intelligence community ignored the opinions of the agency with the most technical knowledge and buried its dissent. This smacks of political pressure to produce an alarming result. As for the prospect of Saddam using these drones to attack the US, I concur with this war opponent, "I mean, for crying out loud, at one point our rulers declared that Saddam Hussein might attack America with remote-controlled model planes. You didn’t have to wait to bounce that one off the folks at your next MENSA meeting to judge its likelihood." The intelligence agencies appear to have figured this out and backed off their own conclusion for fear of looking foolish.

Links to terrorism. Saddam Hussein had long standing and well known ties to various terrorist groups, especially secular groups attacking Israel. Al-Qaeda was a different matter. The CIA believed that, although there had been periodic contacts between Al-Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence, these contacts were "mutually wary" and, at most, attemts to exploit each other. Unlike its assessments about Saddam's arsenal, the intelligence community did not change its mind about his association with Al-Qaeda.

In the buildup for war, two changes did take place. Following the US invasion of Afghanistan, some Al-Qaeda fighters fled to Iraq. Most moved to Kurdish areas outside Saddam's control and joined the Islamist Kurdish organization, Ansar al-Islam. Some, however, went to Bagdad. The CIA was not able to determine the degree of complicity by the Iraqi government. Although it found no evidence of active collaberation, given the nature of Iraq's security apparatus, it seemed unlikely they could operate without passive acquiescence. In addition, captured Al-Qaeda fighter Ibn al-Shayk al-Libi said that Iraq had been training Al-Qaeda fighters in chemical and biological weapons. The intelligence community had grave misgivings about these statements, that were almost certainly the product of torture.

Administration officials responded to all this with a game of insinuation. They would mention Saddam Hussein, support for terrorism, Al-Qaeda and 9/11, implying a connection without stating one. Or they described contacts between Iraqi intelligence and Al-Qaeda that were technically accurate but suggested a stronger connection that existed. Republicans dissented from these views, insisting that the Committee should take Bush officials' statements at face value and not look at what they implied. Republicans also pointed out that the CIA approved various speeches about terrorism, so they must have supported the conclusions.

Committee conclusions: Speeches about Iraq's support for terrorist groups other than Al-Qaeda were substantiated by the intelligence, as were statements the Iraq was giving safe haven to Al-Qaeda members fleeing Afghanistan. Statements and implications that Iraq and Al-Qaeda had a partnership, and that Atta met with Iraqi officials in Prague were not substantiated. Statements about contacts between Al-Qaeda and Iraqis were substantiated, but created a deliberately misleading impression of collaboration.

Enlightened Layperson reading between the lines: The intelligence community allowed itself to be pressured on Saddam's arsenal, but on his ties with Al-Qaeda the intelligence community remained firm. This is probably a sign the intelligence community was more confident in its judgment about Al-Qaeda than about WMD. The main shift in its assessment, about Al-Qaeda members fleeing Afghanistan to Iraq, was based on real-world changes and not on paranoia or pressure. Before the US invasion of Afghanistan, Saddam's police state was able to prevent any Al-Qaeda cells from forming in Iraq. That fact that Al-Qaeda operatives were arriving in 2002 does, indeed, suggest at least passive tolerance. And, after all, since the Bush Administration was making absolutely clear that it intended to invade Iraq soon, it should not have been suprising that Saddam was accepting any allies he could find. The Committee Republicans are being deliberately obtuse about what a speech can imply, especially to low information voters, without actually saying.

Intent. Administration officials repeatedly warned about the danger of Saddam giving WMD to terrorists. The intelligence committee repeatedly assessed such a danger as unlikely. Although intent is inherently difficult to evaluate, the intelligence community believed it unlikely that Saddam would attack the US unless he believed his survival was at stake, or that he would share powerful weapons with terrorist organizations he could not control. The majority found that such statements were "contradicted by available intelligence information." The Republican minority dissented, saying that the Bush Administration was only saying that it was possible for Saddam to give WMD to terrorists, not assessing the likelihood. In the wake of September 11, we need to consider such possibilities.

Enlightened Layperson reading between the lines: It is entirely possible that the Bush Administration did not take the threat of Saddam giving WMD to terrorists seriously and actually went to war for some other reason. But it was this threat that Bush emphasized over and over to fearmonger Americans into supporting the war, this threat that was ultimately persuasive. The Republican dissent is absurd. Of course it was physically possible, if Saddam had had WMD, for him to give them to terrorists, including Al-Qaeda. All sorts of things are physically possible. But when people obsessively warn about a certain danger in speech after speech and ultimately (appear to) go to war over that danger, it is not asking too much to expect that danger to have some reasonable degree of probability. Otherwise there is no limit to the number of wars we would have to wage to head off all manner of remote but physically possible dangers. The Republicans do have a point that intentions are far more nebulous than physical capacity. I will address that in my next post.

Post-War Iraq. Matching Administration officials' far-fetched alarmism about the dangers Saddam Hussein posed were their extraordinary indifference to problems that might arise after an invasion. The intelligence community was less optimistic, warning that creating democracy in Iraq would be difficult but doable and require a great investment of time and resources. The did also warn about the danger of violent conflict unless the occupying power acted to prevent it. The Rockefeller Report finds that Administration statements about post-war Iraq "did not relfect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products." The Republican minority, understandably, wants to avoid the entire subject.

Next: An Enlightened Layperson's Overall Assessment of the Rockefeller Report.

The Rockefeller Report: Introduction

My next firsthand document reviewed is the Rockefeller Report by the Senate Intelligence Committee comparing public pronouncements of the Bush Administration to intelligence available at the time. This post is a bit late since the Report was released in June, but better late than never. It is a companion to an earlier report on intelligence failures leading up to the invasion of Iraq (which I admit to not having read, and which would no doubt give the more recent report greater depth).

The Report is useful to people like me who focus obsessively on false information such as Niger uranium forgeries, aluminum tubes, aerial drones, and the fabricator "Curveball" by offering a wider picture. Its basic findings are that Administration reports about Saddam's purported arsenal and ties to non-Al-Qaeda terrorist were substantiated by the intelligence available (though sometimes leaving out caveats and dissents), but statements about Saddam's ties to Al-Qaeda, his hostile intentions, and what could be expected if we invaded Iraq were not substantiated.

Like the earlier earlier report on intelligence failures, however, the Rockefeller Report does not explore the degree to which intelligence reports during the buildup to the war, and especially the October, 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) were the result of political pressure. Instead, it simply accepts intelligence finished product at face value as what the Administration would have known.

But there is ample evidence that the administration was not simply relying on finished product. Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff regularly visited CIA headquarters to argue with mid-level managers and analysts about unfinished work, offer their opinions and urge analysts to use defector sources the CIA generally regarded as unreliable. And the earlier finding that intelligence reports were not politicized simply because no analysts admitted changing their minds because of political pressure simply is not realistic. A veteran analyst explains that the pressure can take more subtle forms as well. The knowledge that the President has already decided on war can lead analysts to accommodate that inevitability. Reports that tell superiors what they want to hear can be more easily approved than ones that superiors would find unwelcome. Unwelcome news can be sugarcoated. And an obsessive focus on one particular topic (such as the threat posed by Saddam Hussein) can create a sort of tunnel vision that exaggerates that particular threat while overlooking others. In short, the Administration decided on a course of action an looked for intelligence to support it.

The Rockefeller Report does not address any of these issues. However, one does not have to read very far between the lines to find evidence of political pressure shaping intelligence. This evidence comes in three main forms.

First and foremost, a sudden shift in assessment during the leadup to war is suspicious. Intelligence reports from 1991 to 2000 may be taken as a baseline of the intelligence community's independent judgment, free from political pressure. Opinions that show increased assessment of the danger from Saddam during the first nine months of the Bush Administration should be treated as at least mildly suspect. The Administration's obsession with Iraq may have begun as early as 10 days after inauguration, but only after 9/11 did it irrevocably decide to invade. Major increases in the assessed danger from 9/11 to the March, 2003 invasion are highly suspect, especially if they continue to escalate with the growing push for war. Of course, changes in assessment may also be the result of changes in Iraqi behavior. However, given post-war findings that Saddam had not been reconstituting his nuclear program or aggressively seeking chemical and biological weapons makes such an explanation unlikely.

The second suspicious sign is in how intelligence reports handle dissents, such as the Department of Energy dissent from the view that aluminum tubes were for enriching uranium, or the Air Force dissent that Saddam's drones were for spraying chemical and biological weapons. Slate columnist Fred Kaplan suggests that this is the most important lesson of the Rockefeller Report. In case of disagreement, the agency with the most expertise or the best track record of being right should be given most weight. Republican members of the Committee, in their minority dissent, argue that the executive summary of the NIE that the President read did not even mention these dissents. But both of these views put the cart before the horse. The real question should be why the agencies with the most technical expertise were ignored, relegated to footnotes and left out of the executive summary altogether, while the views of less knowledgeable agencies that told the President what he wanted to hear were adopted.

Finally, there is the question of what gets approved. The Rockefeller Report repeatedly chides Administration officials for making speeches implying without directly stating that Saddam had ties to Al-Qaeda. The Republican minority dissent shows itself remarkably obtuse in taking these speeches at face value and refusing to see what was implied. They also repeatedly point out that the CIA had approved these speeches, so it must have endorsed them. More realistically, this shows the CIA, under pressure, adopting the same narrow literalism as the Republicans and being wilfully blind to what was being implied.

So, using these three criteria as evidence of politicization, my next post will review the Rockefeller Report and read between the lines to see what its real conclusions should be.

So, Should I Admit I Was Wrong?

The Mahdi Army has done it again. In Sadr City, as in Basra, when attacked it has fought long enough to bloody its opponents and then backed down. Both times it has, in effect, agreed to power share with the Iraqi Army in an area it formerly controlled, but in has it agreed to disband or disarm. In both cases the US/Iraqi offensive has yielded a military stalemate, a partial political victory, and the potential for a renewal of hostilities.

When fighting first broke out in Basra, my impulse was to write a warning about the folly of a general offensive against the Mahdi Army. I intended to warn that it would not be limited to Basra; it would include Sadr City, and every major town in southern Iraq. Certainly the US forces would be able to take any one given city, at the price of reducing it to a heap of rubble, but an attempt to subdue all of southern Iraq would be like the height of the war in Anbar Province multiplied three-fold. (Because Shiites make up about 60% of the Iraqi population and Sunni Arabs 20%). But in both cases Muqtada al-Sadr backed down when faced with the prospect of all-out war, whether fearing the outcome, or preferring to live to fight another day (possibly in the October elections).

So, should I acknowledge that I was wrong about the Mahdi Army, that it is really a paper tiger, that there won't be war in the south after all? Maybe. But I have made other baleful prophecies (pre-blogging, alas), that appeared to be dead wrong but ultimately proved right, just later than expected.

When we were just getting started in Iraq, there was discussion that an Iranian-style theocracy was the "worst case scenario," but it unlikely to happen. My thought at the time was that we would be lucky to end up with a theocracy; I could think of much worse things, like a prolonged people's war against the US as occupying power. Potentially theocratic factions joined the negotiating process over Iraq's future, and optimists declared the danger was passed. I wondered myself. Fast forward to today.

An even stronger example was when George Bush announced that Yasser Arafat must go. Arafat, he said, was inhibiting the creation of moderate leadership, and if only he could be removed, a new, freely elected, democratic leader would make peace with Israel. I was scornful. Yes, Arafat was a brute and a thug, but he was not inhibiting the creation of moderate leadership, he was the moderate leadership. His chief rivals were not model democrats eager to make peace with Israel, but Hamas, which thought Arafat was not hawkish enough.

In the short run, I appeared to be wrong. The Americans and Israelis were about to conjure up a moderate after all, Mahmud Abbas. He started moving into Arafat's place; he showed himself willing to make a deal with Israel. Then Arafat died and negotiations proceeded. I was prepared to acknowledge myself wrong. And then the negotiations broke down. And Hamas won the election. And they are regularly bombarding Israel with rockets. And Arafat looks a whole lot better by comparison.

So maybe I was wrong and the Mahdi Army is overrated and with crumble without all-out war. Or maybe it is just lying low and biding its time. And maybe some day it will decide we have pushed too far and that its survival is at stake. And maybe whoever pushes that far will come to regret that decision.

The Most Shocking Theory on the Battle of Basra

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's sudden attack on the Mahdi Army in Basra and Mahdi Army leader Muqtada al-Sadr's equally sudden agreement to a truce have puzzled many. There have been several theories proposed now for why Maliki decided to launch the attack. But none explain the biggest mystery of all -- how he could possibly have expected it to succeed. Consider the theories:

(1) Forced to hold provincial elections, Maliki was moving to eliminate his most popular rival who was expected to win. This has been the most widely-held theory. What it fails to explain is why the government of Iraq employed such obviously inadequate force and apparently expected to sweep away the Mahdi Army within a few days.

(2) Corollary to (1). Many people have noticed that the offensive took place a week after Dick Cheney visited Iraq and suggest a quid pro quo. Cheney insisted that Maliki hold provincial elections that the Sadrist were expected to win but agreed, in exchange to allow him first to eliminate Sadr's organization by force. The US knew of the offensive in advance, but did not expect the Iraqi government to act so soon (or, presumbly, so ineffectually).

(3) Maliki saw himself at a disadvantage because his own Dawa party, unlike the Sadrist or the SIIC, did not have its own militia. He was therefore attempting to turn the Iraqi Army into the Dawa militia. If so, he is got off to a poor start, attacking an entrenched rival with woefully inadequate force and wildly unrealistic objectives.

(3) Iran was really behind the offensive, urging its proxies to eliminate the overly independent Mahdi Army. The offensive, after all, also took place shortly after a visit to Bagdad by Ahmadinejad. This theory lost a great deal of plausibility when Iran then brokered a cease-fire. Maybe the Iranians changed their mind when the offensive did not go so well. But it still leaves unaswered the question of why they would have expected a quick and easy victory.

(4) Maliki fell for propaganda that the Mahdi Army was weakened and would be easily defeated. This accounts for the inadequate force and unrealistic expectations, but really!

The inadequacy of Iraqi forces to defeat the Mahdi Army in a densely populated urban area, and the absurdity of expecting such an operation to take as little as 48 hours have, to me at least, always been the greatest mystery of the whole operation. This commentator explains just how absurdly inadequate that force was:

During the Second Battle of Fallujah, the US attacking forces were composed of a composite division as six battalions led the main attack, another battalion as a diversion force, and two battalions as local reserves. . . . The defending forces would have been the equivlant of two or three battalions of light infantry and local insurgents/neighborhood militias. Fallujah was a city of roughly 300,00 residents before the assault. And this assualt was supported by theatre level artillery and air support. And despite this large armored and heavy infantry force with excellent air support, plenty of helicopter mobility and firepower, superior logistics, the defending force was able to inflict heavy absolute and proportional casualties --- roughly 10% of the US force was wounded or killed, and many infantry companies saw 30% to 50% casualty levels.

The Iraqi Army force in Basra is a single division of lightly supported infantry with some US/UK locally controlled air support, minimal artillery, minimal aviation support. Basra is a city of 2.6 million people (2003) and it is overwhelmingly Shi'ite. If one assumes that one half of one percent of the male population are available to be called up for Mahdi Army fighting units, the defenders have numerical parity with the attacking force. That is never a good thing, especially when the defenders are on their own grounds, fighting from prepared positions in dense urban networks and have higher morale and more firepower than the attackers.

In short, expecting the Iraqi Army to prevail, let alone quickly or easily, was sheer madness.

Well, now a provocative, if rather paranoid new theory has been proposed. Apparently based on British sources, this theory holds that the initiative for the Basra offensive rested with the United States and the Iraqi attack was intentionally botched to thwart US plans. According to this theory, General Petraeus, who had no illusions about what it would take to defeat the Mahdi Army, had planned a summer offensive. This operation would have deployed thousands of Marines and was expect to last for months.

The purpose of Cheney's visit was to pressure al-Maliki to go along with this offensive. Unable to prevent an offensive altogether, Maliki agreed to an attack, but only on his own terms. The Iraqi Army would attack Mahdi forces in Basra with a few brigades, but no British or American forces. The operation was planned to last only a week to ten days. Naturally Petraeus warned that the scale of the operation was not large enough and that the proposed time frame was unrealistic. And, of course, events proved him right. When the Iraqi Army offensive failed to capture Basra, Iran negotiated a cease-fire. "That ploy move . . . raised the possibility that al-Maliki intended from the beginning that the outcome of the Basra operation would be a new agreement that would prevent the deployment of U.S. and British troops to fight the Mahdi Army during the summer."

This interpretation, if true, could explain some of the principals' odd behavior. It would explain why Maliki launched such an obviously ill-conceived attack; he did not intend for it to succeed. It would also explain why Sadr was so amenable to a ceasefire; presumably the government delegation explained that they were launching a mere token offensive, designed to prevent a more serious attack by the United States. But it raises an even bigger question. Why on earth would Maliki believe that launching a mock offensive prematurely would prevent a real US offensive later on?

PS: I should note so far serious experts such as Juan Cole and Marc Lynch have not taken this theory seriously enough to link to it. See also this article suggesting that the Basra offensive, although not militarily successful, may be the start of a slow reassertion of government power over Basra.

Groucho Marx and Hedging One's Bets

Many people are asking since the US and Iran claim to be arch-enemies, how did we end up supporting the same faction in Iraq? The best answer, I think, is that it is a particularly bizarre example of the Groucho Marx syndrome.

The Groucho Marx syndrome is named for Groucho Marx's famous quip that he wouldn't want to belong to any club that would accept him as a member. In the context of international politics, the Groucho Marx syndrome means that any government or faction that is too friendly with a foreign power almost never has much support with its own people. The syndrome works in several ways. One is that a weak government or faction lacking popular support may seek a foreign patron as an alternate source of power. Another is that foreign powers seeking allies tend to choose unpopular governments or factions because they are the most compliant. Finally, even an originally popular government or faction will tend to lose legitimacy to the extent that it becomes too strongly associated with a foreign power.

This creates an inherent problem for any government looking for foreign allies. The more loyal a regime is to its allies, the less loyalty it is apt to command from its own people and the more tenuous its grip on power. Strong governments are rarely reliable allies; they insist on placing their own interests first. The same phenomenon applies to intervention in a civil war. The factions most eager for foreign support are, almost by definition, the ones that would otherwise lose. (Why look for foreign backers if you are winning anyway?) And too strong a foreign association undermines any faction's domestic support.

Iraq's ruling coalition of the Dawa Party and the SIIC suffer from the Groucho Marx syndrome. The leadership of both groups spend the years of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in exile in Iran. The SIIC (formerly SCIRI) was founded under the auspices of the Iranian government. The SIIC's paramilitary, the Badr Brigades was founded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and fought on the side of Iran in its war with Iraq. Is it any wonder that many Iraqis look upon them as Iranian stooges? Partly to lessen their dependence on Iran, the Dawa and SIIC are more than happy hedge their bets by accepting help from the United States as well.

The Iranian-backed Dawa-SIIC coalition was not the US government's first choice as an ally in Iraq. Famously, neoconservatives favored Ahmed Chalabi, as extreme an example of the Groucho Marx syndrome as one could ask for. He had been an exile from Iraq since 1956, when he was only 12 years old. Not surprisingly, then, he had no base of support in Iraq whatever and was therefore willing to do whatever he US backers wanted. However, his complete lack of support inside Iraq meant that his party failed to win even one seat in parliament in the 2005 elections. This was a little too Groucho-Marxist for the Bush Administration, which was forced to hedge its bets and support the Dawa-SIIC coalition. In the meantime, Chalabi has apparently decided to hedge his own bets, and has become friendlier and friendlier with the government of Iran.

The Sadrists and their paramilitary, the Madhi Army, have no such foreign associations. It is the boast of the Sadr family that they stayed in Iraq and endured Saddam's persecution with their fellow countrymen while other opponents went into exile. (Yet, interestingly, Muqtada al-Sadr is in exile in Iran now under the guise of studying. We will see whether this weakens his legitimacy). The Sadrs built their organization under the nose of Saddam Hussein, The Madhi Army is entirely Iraq in origin; it is often the only one to provide security and services to the Shiite poor; it is fiercely nationalistic and proclaims its opposition to American forces and also to Sunnis as fellow countrymen (even as the Madhi Army committed the bulk of ethnic cleansing and the worst atrocities against Sunnis). The Madhi Army does take Iranian arms, money and assistance. They need what help they can get, after all, and the US is arming their rivals. And the Iranians know enough to hedge their bets and support what may be the winning faction.

Meanwhile, the US Army, recognizing the weakness of the Dawa-SIIC coalition, has chosen to hedge our own bets by supporting Sunni Awakening Councils. Any power, whether the US or Iran, hedging its bets by backing rival factions runs into trouble if the rival faction come into open war with each other. Open war will undermine the hedging game and may force the backer to take sides. The whole logic of the Groucho Marx syndrome encourages a foreign power to side with the weaker (and therefore more compliant) faction. This creates a choice between bloody intervention to prop up a weak and unpopular ally or losing altogether. To avoid such a dilemma, the United States is desperately trying to bring about reconciliation between the ruling coalition and the Awakening Councils and the Iranian government is trying, with even more dubious prospects, to maintain a cease-fire between the ruling faction and the Madhi Army.

And if the cease-fire fails, then what? Will Groucho get the last laugh?

The irony would be thick, if rank: the Bush administration and the Iranians finally come to some accord on the situation in Iraq, with the compact formed over the decision to crush a popular indigenous movement, likely killing tens of thousands and disenfranchising millions.

What I Got Right About Iraq

So, the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war is being marked by former (and not so former) supporters of the war describing what they got wrong. Long time war critics and even one of the participants have pointed out that the wrong people are being asked for their opinions. Why aren't we asking people who opposed the war from the start how they got it right? Granted, self-congradulation can annoying, but surely it makes more sense to listen to people who showed good judgment to understand what they saw so clearly than to listen to people whose judgment was so clearly wrong.

So, speaking as one who is not a commentator of any note and did not even have a blog at the, how did I nonetheless have the judgment not to support the war? I had two main objections to the war, well expressed by my two favorite commentators at the time, Georgie Ann Geyer and Molly Ivins. Their respective reasons for opposing the war are surprising. Ivins, an unabashed liberal, opposed the war because she feared it would be followed by the peace from hell. Geyer, a Cold War hawk, opposed the war for a deeper reason -- she was appalled at Bush's doctrine of preemption. I shared both concern.

First the easy one. I feared a Vietnam-style "people's war." Though not old enough to have any meaningful memories of Vietnam, I did remember Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Israel invaded Lebanon to drive out the PLO, which had been firing rockets at northern Israel. World opinion was shocked and outrage -- with one notable exception. The PLO was so hated and oppressive a presence in southern Lebanon that the Shiite inhabitants welcomed the Israelis with open arms as liberators.

It did not take long for the Israelis to wear out their welcome. Once it became clear that they were there to stay, within a few months, Shiites began attacking the Israeli forces. The Iranian intelligence service moved in to train the scattered resistence, and Hezbollah was born. In 2000, 18 years later, the Israeli army finally withdrew, its reputation for invincibility shattered forever, and a much more entrenched enemy to the north. The lesson for Iraq was obvious. Even if the Iraqis did great us as liberators, sooner or later we would wear out our welcome and then what? I had no idea how long it would take for our welcome to wear out, but from the start I never doubted that it would.

But opposing a war because you fear a bad outcome is still the easy way out. By implication, it means that one has no moral objections to the war and would support it if only one expected it to succceed. But my objections went deeper than that; I objected to the entire doctrine of preemptive war. Preemptive war sounded way too much like the doctrine that we got to invade any country we wanted, any time we wanted, for any reason we wanted, and no one else could challenge us. I had major moral objections to that. Or, as Geyer put it (quoting right-wing military historian William S. Lind):

"[W]henever one nation attempts to attain world dominance, it pushed everyone elase into a coalition against it." . . . The real question Lind and other historians see from history "is not whether the American drive for world hegemony will succeed; it will not. The question is why we are attempting it in the first place."

(Sorry, no link available).

These were the main reasons I opposed invading Iraq. But since the Bush Administration, kept giving justifications for the invasion, I did find refutations for them. The bare fact supporters of the war did not agree on a single, coherent reason to fight it was itself reason enough not to trust them. When a war is truly justified, there will be one, single immistakable reason to fight it. But going down their lists of reasons:

Ties to Al-Qaeda. It was obvious that there were none and any claims to the contrary were merely wishful thinking. That removed by far the most reasonable grounds for war.

Nuclear Weapons. I didn't believe it for a minute. During the first Gulf War, I originally hoped to settle matters without war. I was ultimately convinced to support the war by scare stories that Saddam was months away from developing nuclear weapons and that his army was so powerful as to be an intolerable threat. Our quick and easy victory proved how exaggerated these fears were. And now, just when some other President wanted to start a war, Saddam was months away from nuclear weapons again. I could smell hype a mile away.

Chemical and biological weapons. Like most people, I never doubted for one minute that Saddam had chemical weapons. We had what seemed like irrefutable proof; he had used them in the past. As for biological weapons, I was open to persuasion either way. But it was clear that he had no delivery vehicles capable of reaching us, or even Israel. His weapons threatened only his neighbors. If the neighbors had been frightened enough to favor preeemptive war, I probably would have supported it. But they didn't, so I didn't.

Giving WMD to terrorists. If we went to war every time someone could dream up a nightmare scenario, we would not have had a singe minute of peace for our entire history.

Humanitarian intervention. Saddam was beyond any doubt a brutal tyrant, and there were times in the past when a humanitarian intervention would have been justified. But there was no immediate humanitarian crisis in Iraq, so I could not see invasion as justified because of past atrocities.

Of course, I am not infallible. I got many things wrong about the war. I assumed Saddam had chemical weapons. I expected the initial invasion to take one to three months (it took three weeks). I expected resistence to stiffen as we moved into the Sunni heartland, and a Battle for Bagdad to occur. I expected more immediate hostility in Sunni areas (and a less friendly welcome among Shiites) than we got. I feared that Saddam, cornered, might take desparate measures such as using chemical or biological weapons, setting all the oil wells on fire, or flooding the Tigris and Euphrates. (But I still expected we would win in one to three months). I feared Sunni and Shiite might unite against us. And, although I also feared we might patch together a government that looked good, only to see it collapse into civil war and anarchy after we left, I assumed we would be strong enough to prevent civil war so long as we were present. That last was my most serious mistake.

It's official (though not surprising). Civilian deaths in Iraq are up. The officially reported number of civilians killed in February was 636, compared with 541 in January. (Official figures are, most likely, just the tip of the iceberg). Unlike US increased US military casualties, which could be attributed to our latest offensive, the upswing in Iraqis civilian deaths is hard to attribute to anything but an increase in internal strife. So, is this simply an inevitable but temporary setback, or the first indication that
the Anbar Awakening has failed?

My answer (the coward's way out) is that it is still too early to tell. The level of violence in Iraq has long been cyclical. During the years 2003, 2004 and 2005, violence levels regularly cycled up and down. During the "up" cycles, opponents of the war would wail that the sky was falling. During the "down" cycles, proponents would proclaim that victory was at hand. In fact, there was not much use in pointing out that up-cycles were more violent than down-cycles. A more fruitful approach was to compare the level and duration of peaks with other peaks, and the level and duration of lulls with other lulls. Looking at violence levels in Iraq this was, it is clear that the overall trend from 2003 to 2005 was increased violence.

The February, 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque seemed to be an end to the perpetual cycle. From the bombing until mid-2007, violence seemed to keep getting worse and worse with no end in sight. In fact, violence was heading into the highest, longest peak yet -- definitely significant, but still not irreversible. Then, with the Anbar Awakening and the Surge, violence declined month after month. Iraqis dared walk out on the streets; normal life began to return. It was the most sustained decline in violence, and brought killing down to levels seen years earlier. And, like the preceeding peak, the scope and duration of this lull have been significant, but not irreversible.

So, we will see soon enough whether February's increase in violence is a mere fluke, or the beginning of the failure of the Surge. In either case, this much is clear -- it ain't over yet.

Iraq: An Analogy Fit for Polite Company

If, as is much reported, the Iraqi civil war is currently winding down, that in no way vindicates the decision to invade in the first place. All civil wars eventually end. If this one ends after 4 to 5 years instead of continuing for 10, 20 or even 30 (as some civil wars have), that is certainly a development to be applauded. But it does not logically follow that our decision to invade, which set off the war in the first place, was sound.

Glenn Greenwald has likened treating the end of the civil war as a vindication of the invasion that started it to chewing up food and spitting it all over one's home for months and then expecting to be applauded for partially cleaning it up. Ever since reading that, I have been looking for a less disgusting analogy, one that can be used in polite society, including the campaign stump. Here is my effort.

Imagine that Crazy George believes that driving cars over cliffs is a cheap and effective means of repair. He sets out to prove the point with a beat-up old clunker that was in terrible shape to begin with. To people who question the wisdom of this course of action he responds, "What's the matter? Don't you think poor people with only beat-up old clunkers to drive are morally worthy of cheap and effective repair techniques?" He drives the car over the cliff and, suprise surprise, it is severely damaged in the fall. When people point this out, he says it is just a bit of "creative destruction" and once he finishes fixing up the damage, the old clunker will emerge in prime condition and everyone will want to drive cars off cliffs. For a seemingly endless time, he toils away at the car and succeeds only in exposing more and more damage. People urge him to give up the attempt as hopeless, but he perserveres.

Finally, he decides the real problem is that he was not devoting enough resources to the repair, buys a bunch of expensive new tools, and begins working on it 18 hours a day. After several months of this, he actually gets the car into a rough working order and is able to drive it for short distances. "See," he says, "I told you I could fix cars by driving them over the cliff."

The analogy is imperfect, of course, because when a car is truly hopeless, you can always junk it and buy a new one. That is not an option with countries, and it is callous to imply that it is. But, of course, that is all the more reason not to try to repair broken countries by driving them off the cliff.

We Won, Now What? (In the US)

I have discussed what Iraq's future may hold, now that we have AQI on the run. The next question is, what options does the US government, i.e., the Bush Administration, have. I see four:

Option 1: Declare victory and pull out. George Bush goes on national television and declares that AQI is defeated and the troops will now be coming home. They return home to ticker tape parades. The decision to invade Iraq will be proclaimed vindicated. In fact, if we have defeated AQI and are able to wind down Iraq's civil war, that is a vindication of Bush's decision to "surge" and General Petraeus' strategy. It is not a vindication of the decision to invade in the first place. Defeating AQI and ending Iraq's sectarian war are worthy achievements, but neither AQI nor sectarian war existed in Iraq before we invaded. Creating the conditions that give rise to a threat and then defeating that threat is a dubious victory at best. But this subtle distiction will almost certainly be lost in the victory celebration. George Bush's approval ratings will soar. All his other policies will presumed vindicated by implication. Democrats will lose whatever remains of their spines and give him whatever he wants. Republicans will win the Presidency and both houses of Congress by a landslide in 2008. All Bush's policies (preemptive war, warrantless wiretaps, torture, black sites, extraordinary rendition etc) will be locked in permanently. I certainly do not with continued war or any harm to either US soldiers or Iraqi civilians. But, unpatriotic as it may be, the prospect of George Bush using victory in Iraq to vindicate his policies alarms me.

Option 2: Stay the course (sort of). Our troops remain in place but do not seek out any ambitious new mission. Casualties continue to fall. No spectacular declaration of victory, but opposition to the war fades. What follows depends on the Iraqis. (See previous post). If Iraqis are willing to work hard enough to avoid continued war, then we may yet have a constructive role prodding along the sides to some sort of accommodation (probably a soft partition, even if they don't want to admit it). This will be less spectacular than a victory homecoming parade, but a reasonably good job of salvage. If successful and well-executed, I would support this course of action. If unsuccessful, we will be exactly where we have been for the past four years.

Option 3: Take on the Madhi Army. At least some people believe that, having defeated AQI, we will (or should) turn our attention next to the Madhi Army. Some hope they can be defeated in a "Shia awakening" similar to the "Anbar awakening" that defeated AQI. My own belief is that the Madhi Army will prove to be more formidable. AQI was always an alien imposition, with a foreign leadership (though mostly Iraqis in the rank and file), no strong ties to the country, and no real agenda other than kill, kill, kill, kill, kill.

The Madhi Army is a different matter. It is led by a member of Iraq's most respected clerical family, a mass movement with strong roots in many Shia communities. Its atrocities against Sunnis are well documented, and no doubt it has alienated many potential followers with its bloody clashes with the Badr Brigades and imposition of an overly rigid Islamic code. But it has also offered security, protection and social services to numerous Shiites when no one else was able to do so. It formed a strong organization in the slums of Bagdad even under Saddam Hussein's watchful eye, and continues to have strong support there to this day. It is strongly nationalist and has the streed cred of the only organization to defy Saddam while remaining in Iraq. It also hold posts in the government and remains (more or less) on the government's official side. The Iraqi government is apt to see any attempt to suppress the Madhi Army as a general attack on Shiite domination and resist. This will place us in the awkward position of claiming to be upholding Iraq's sovereign and democratic government while actively going against the government's wishes.

In short: The Madhi Army, like AQI, has many enemies. Unlike AQI, it also has supporters. Defeating it will be a messy business.

Option 4: Start a war with Iran. If you want to start a war with the 60% of Iraqis who are Shiite, with no guarantee of support from the 20% who are Sunni Arab, this is the way to do it. I remain optimistic that the Bush Administration is not this crazy.

Future posts on Iraq will depend on what course of action our President chooses.

Update: Glenn Greenwald also argues the possible wind-down of the Iraqi civil war is not a vindication of the decision to invade in the first place, with a (truly) pungent analogy:

It's basically akin to someone sitting on their couch and chewing up food and spitting it all over the floor and the walls and the furniture month after month until it piles up and congeals and grows into mold, turning the room into a repulsive, health-threatening mess. Guests come by and run away in horror at how repugnant it all is.

Then, one day, the person decides to pick up some of the congealed food from the floor and scrapes a little bit off the walls, making it a bit less filthy. Then he starts calling his friends, announcing: "You must come over. I've completely redecorated my home and it looks beautiful now. You have to see what I've done to it."

His reasoning is sound (if unduly gross), but I wish I shared his confidence that most people will agree. Maybe he should start a new career as a speech writer for his favorite Democrat.

Iraq: We Won, Now What? (In Iraq)

News coming back from Iraq has been encouraging lately. Casualties (military and civilian) are down for the second month in a row. This is especially significant because violence usually peaks in the fall. Suicide bombing are becoming rarer and less deadly. Fewer corpses are showing up on the streets of Bagdad. Some members of the military are going so far as to declare Al-Qaeda in Iraq to be defeated. Assuming that AQI has been defeated, the next question is, now what? That question applies both to Iraq and to the US.

The defeat of AQI is an excellent development for Iraqis of all factions. Though all participants in Iraq's civil war have atrocities to account for, only AQI followed a program of pure nihilism, with an agenda of nothing but kill, kill, kill, kill, kill. But the defeat of AQI is not the same as the return of peace. There are still rival armed factions out there with a lot of grudges against each other. Since the leaders of these factions show now inclination to resolve their differences, the US Army is instead pursuing a policy of "reconciliation from the bottom up." I see three possible outcomes from the attempt:

(1) Reconciliation from the bottom up works. The factions settle down into an uneasy truce that gradually becomes stronger as reconciliation works its way up.

(2) Reconciliation from the bottom up fails. Sunnis rebel against the Shiite dominated government when it refuses to share power. Or, the Shiite dominated government sets out to crush the strengthened Sunni militias by force. Sectarian war continues (with power struggles and internal wars within each side).

(3) Reconciliation from the bottom up stagnates. Rival factions stop shooting each other, but do not reconcile. Instead, Iraq devolves into a highly fragmented society with different factions controlling different regions or even neighborhoods, in a more-or-less stable equilibrium, but with minimal central authority. This will almost certainly be the case in the short run. Although Iraq is theoretically experiencing a sectarian war between Sunni and Shiite, both sides are extremely fragmented. The question is what direction the factions will move in. The goal of reconciliation from the ground up, presumably, is to work a reconciliation first between local warlords, then between factions within each side, and finally between the recognized "sides" in the civil war. In other words, moving from patchwork of warlords to "soft" partition to central state. Failure could mean either fragmentation worsening into complete anarchy, or reconciliation within the Sunnis or Shiites so they can more effectively pursue sectarian war.

Iran -- A New Definition of Chutzpah

Do our leaders know how ridiculous some of their excuses for war with Iran are? Their arguments about protecting Iraqi sovereignty from outside meddling deserve some sort of prize for chutzpah. Consider, for instance, Vice President Cheney's recent and much-quoted speech:

Iran's real agenda appears to include promoting violence against the coalition. Fearful of a strong, independent, Arab Shia community emerging in Iraq, one that seeks religious guidance not in Qom, Iran, but from traditional sources of Shia authority in Najaf and Karbala, the Iranian regime also aims to keep Iraq in a state of weakness that prevents Baghdad from presenting a threat to Tehran.

Perhaps the greatest strategic threat that Iraq's Shiites face today in -- is -- in consolidating their rightful role in Iraq's new democracy is the subversive activities of the Iranian regime.

Consider, seriously, what Cheney and others in the Administration are saying. We have the right to invade Iraq, a country on the far side of the world that poses no threat to us and impose our will by armed force. But for a neighboring country to attempt to influence events there is an intolerable infringement on Iraqi sovereignty. We can back anyone we want in Iraq's civil war, but Iran (sitting right next door) has no right to back anyone (even though, in fact, the Shiite factions Iran is supporting are mainstays of the government we also support). Furthermore we have the right (which have repeatedly and broadly hinted we will use) to preemptively attack Iran. But Iran has no right to preemption against our forces forces in Iraq, even as we hint that attack is at hand.

My purpose here is not to morally defend the Iranian government, merely to point out that as a matter of realpolitik, any government in their position would do much the same. No government wants civil war and chaos next door; civil war and chaos tend to be contagious. But many governments would nonetheless prefer civil war and chaos to a hostile army camped out on their doorstep, especially if the leaders of the hostile army keep dropping hints that they will attack as soon as the civil war and chaos die down. Under those conditions, what government would not want to keep the civil war and chaos going for a long time? And what country does not have a strong, indeed, legitimate, interest, in influencing its neighbors? As Anonymous Liberal puts it:

The truth is, of course, that Iran has an enormous interest in the outcome of our Iraq experiment, and it is perfectly rational for Iran's leaders to attempt to influence events there. Remember, this is a country that invaded Iran in 1980, leading to a bloody eight-year war in which nearly a million people died, the majority of them Iranian. It's probably fair to say that nothing is more important to Iran's national security than the character of the regime that eventually emerges in Iraq. To expect that Iran would just sit back and not try to influence events there is profoundly naive.

What our government is asking of the Iranian government, in effect, is for them to sit quietly while we invade a neighboring country, make no attempt to influence events, and then refrain from acting even as we prepare for a new attack on Iran. Old definition of chutzpah: killing your parents and then throwing yourself on the mercy of the court because you are an orphan. New definition of chutzpah: Invading a country on the other side of the world and then starting a war with its neighbor on the grounds that it is not respected the invaded country's sovereignty.