Tag: War

Iraq has Officially Settled Down

The NYT's Burns takes a moment to contrast the reality of yesterday's fighting with the somewhat more sanguine spin offered by U.S. spokesmen. Burns says a "senior American officer rushed into a news briefing inside the American headquarters compound in central Baghdad wearing a helmet," and said, the fighting represented "a fairly significant event," adding, "At this point, it's pretty settled down."

Iraq on the Record

Representative Henry Waxman's staff has put together Iraq On The Record, a collection of the Bush Administration's false or misleading statements about Iraq.

Statement by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice

"[H]e had . . . an active procurement network to procure items, many of which, by the way, were on the prohibited list of the nuclear suppliers group. There's a reason that they were on the prohibited list of the nuclear supplies group: Magnets, balancing machines, yes, aluminum tubes, about which the consensus view was that they were suitable for use in centrifuges to spin material for nuclear weapons."

Source: NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, PBS (7/30/2003).

Explanation: This statement was misleading because it suggested that Iraq sought aluminum tubes for use in its nuclear weapons program, failing to mention that the government

WMD Argument Comes to a Head

On the same day that the anti-war Carnegie Endowment for International Peace released a report stating, under no uncertain terms, that the Bush Adminsitration "systematically exaggerated" Iraq's WMD capability, the U.S. Joint Captured Materiel Exploitation Group leave Iraq. So after nine months, no WMD are found and the Bush Administration withdraws 400 of the 1400 staff on their weapons inspection staff. Hoping tenacity and reptition can overcome reality, the U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell provides the most tepid defense of the Administration's policy to date: "I am confident of what I presented last year, the intelligence community is confident of the material they gave me," Mr Powell told reporters.

Iraqi Debt Coming to a Head

The NYT fronts with news that the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority is going to give up some power in order to attract donors to the cause of Iraqi reconstruction. We'll leave the "I told you so" work to others. Instead we'll focus on the discussion of debt: $120 billion dollars, in addition to "tens of billions" in unpaid war reparations. The NYT says the World Bank and international funds aren't going to pony up the loans until that debt is settled. We wondered about this just a few days ago. Much of the debt is owed to France, Germany and Russia, who will almost certainly demand a debt payment plan before they begin participating in any reconstruction effort. It's possible the the United States will flex its muscle and force a default to prevent these nations from being paid: Iraq accumulated this debt by breaking the UN embargo, after all. On the other hand, a default would damage the already stuttering Iraqi economy, and the United States would be cutting off its nose to spite its face. That makes a default unlikely. Instead, the debt will be restructured. This isn't much better. Ideally, Iraq would arrange to pay the interest on the debt until it is back on its feet -- like getting a forbearance on your student loan. That won't happen, though: again, the gang from Bretton Woods wants to see that debt reduced before they make any meaningful loans. This dovetails into last week's spat in the U.S. Congress over a bill offering Iraq $20 billion in aid -- a number of Republican Senators mutinied, and demanded that half that amount be converted into a loan. This makes good political sense for the Senators: with cutbacks everywhere in the U.S. budgets, it's hard to sell a massive foreign aid package to constituents. Unfortunately, a loan would mean exacerbating Iraq's debt problem. That means that Iraq will almost certainly have to start paying off its debts -- and it will be a terrible burden. "But what about all that oil," you ask? Iraqi oil won't close the gap -- the UN has $1 billion in contracts under the oil-for-food program, and the infrastructure just can't handle the required output. The World Bank itself issued an assessment document, acknowledging "it is currently not possible to predict offsetting expenditures on principal and interest payments on Iraq's very sizeable external debt." Someone has to put down their gun, or Iraq will not get the money it needs. This should make the upcoming donor summit in Madrid very interesting.

Where’s the Old Iraqi Debt?

A brief, rhetorical question: what will happen to the foreign debt accumulated by Iraq during the sanctions? There are millions of dollars owed to Russia, France and Germany. Why aren't they staying more engaged in the reconstruction process, since that would ostensibly ensure they get a seat during the debt renegotiation? Why isn't Washington holding that money over their heads to get more cooperation? With all the talk about the $87 billion we're spending, why hasn't there been more coverage on these questions?

Bush Loss On Every Front

After President Bush's well-publicized speech and weeks of haggling, the United States finally secured a resolution from the UN Security Council on the future of Iraq. The resolution finally passed because everyone agreed to disagree: the U.S. will still run the show, and will transition to an Iraqi-led government "as soon as is practicable." It contains no timetable, and no commitments of money or troops. Do not let anyone tell you that this is a diplomatic success: the actual positions of the Security Council members has not changed a bit. The Beeb was good enough to point out that while the Security Council was voting, the U.S. Senate converted $20 billion in reconstruction costs into loans, despite heavy lobbying by the Bush Administration. "It's very hard for me to go home and explain that we have to give $20 billion to a country sitting on $1 trillion worth of oil," said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. More substantive discussion can be found at NewsDay. This loss is especially stinging for the Administration, and is yet another indication that they are losing control of Congress on this issue. Lugar
Last weekend, Senator Richard G. Lugar, the Republican of Indiana who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, publicly chastised the President for losing control of Iraq policy. This is the guy in charge of getting the President's $87 billion budget request approved. Morale Trouble
Stars and Stripes, hardly a mouthpiece of the liberal press, announced survey results that indicated low morale, and a lack of faith in the mission. At the same time, the Army admitted that 13 soliders stationed there had committed suicide. A shocking 35% of respondents said that they had no clear mission. This revelation, publicized by the Washington Post, was especially bad on the heels of what Josh Micah Marshall describes as the Great Push-Back, an effort by the White House to characterize media coverage on Iraq as overly pessimistic and unpatriotic. All this, and the President's approval rating has leveled off around 50%. Clearly, the wartime injection of goodwill has run its course. It looks as though Bush will now have to fight for re-election with both the economy and Iraq, pillars of his administration, flagging.

Abizaid: WMD Intel “Perplexingly Inaccurate”

Arabic-speaking Lieutenant-General John Abizaid is replacing Tommy Franks. In his confirmation hearing, he admitted to being confused about the missing weapons of mass destruction. "Intelligence was the most accurate that I've ever seen on the tactical level, probably the best I've ever seen on the operational level and perplexingly incomplete on the strategic level with regard to weapons of mass destruction."

Blix: “Bastards” Get Him Down

Now that he's retiring after three years as the Chief Weapons Inspector, Hans Blix seems to have found a new voice. He gave an interview with the Guardian in which he called out the "bastards" in the Bush Administration who interfered with the inspection process. They leaned on him for more damning language in the reports, gave him bad intelligence, and were dismissive of the UN in general. "There are people in this [US] administration who say they don't care if the UN sinks under the East river, and other crude things," he said. They believe it is "alien power, even if it does hold considerable influence within it. Such [negative] feelings don't exist in Europe where people say that the UN is a lot of talk at dinners and fluffy stuff." He also says that despite of the bad apples, his relationship with the United States was good.

Not So Much with the Looting

This story has been collecting steam for a few weeks, and WaPo finally put it all in one place. The looted Iraqi National Museum of Antiquities isn't missing 170,000 artifacts, which would be their entire collection. It's not missing the 3,000 artifacts estimated by this Saturday's initial report from the State Department and the Customs Service. It's actually missing only 33. Still bad, but not the "rape of civilization" as one archeologist described it. The confusion apparently came from some hyperbole from the museum's respected director, Donny George. He has since apologized for the alarmist remarks.