In Boston
Hey readers, I'm on a work trip in Boston, blogging on the hotel's wireless network. Is it secure? I have no idea. But what is there to steal from my laptop?
Not much to report. Just checking in.
Any thoughts out there on Cobra II, the new book on the Iraqi war "plans"? Gordon and Traynor have been all over the tv the last few days, selling their book on how the Bush administration didn't plan for the post-war. Is that, um, newsworthy? Didn't we know this two years ago? Like, say, before the 2004 election?
This is the problem with the Iraq war. If you've been paying attention, and you don't buy the crap that the administration's flaks have been selling for the duration, then you know all these things. If you weren't paying attention, you still think Saddam was involved in 9-11. And if you're in that latter group, then you may just be immune to the truth.
posted by Number Three @ 8:48 PM
3 Comments:
Emery,
Apparently Tony Blair, like you, was well informed of the post-war lack of planning by May of 2003. See:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1730428,00.html
I'm much more interested in the first Cobra, a strategy that I think the administration should have employed.
Sly rolls into Baghdad in the street rod, match in mouth, pulls out the handgun and takes out the trash.
To Saddam: "You're a disease. I'm the cure."
But then that was in those heady days when Brigitte Nielson was a believable supermodel instead of a gravel-voiced man.
I just ran across this. Seems that Cobra II has brought to light at least one new signifcant factoid -- finally an explanation for those alleged radio intercepts of Iraqis talking about WMDs just before the invasion and cited by Powell in his speech before the UN. I had often wondered what that was all about. For an explanation of the intercepts, see http://www.slate.com/id/2137953/
According to the reporter, the Iraqi "officers were talking about removing not weapons, agents, or munitions, but rather residue from old unconventional weapons programs dating back to before the 1991 Gulf War."
If true, that puts the final nail in the last prop in Powell's UN speech. The only other prop left for WMDs, at least as far as the American public is concerned, remains the Niger yellowcake in Bush's SOTU speech. Namely the Bush adminstration is still hiding behind the claim that this information was supplied by British intelligence, not Martino Rocco's infamous forgeries. Thus there is still the possibility that the Niger story has some weight because it was based on some other intelligence. While the story of Rocco's forgeries has circulated a bit in the US press (nice summary by Juan Cole a few weeks ago), I have seen no US source report that La Repubblica -- the Italian paper that originally uncovered the Rocco-forgeries story -- also documented that Rocco went to Britain to sell his forgeries to them. There is thus the high liklihood that the British intelligence is the same scheiss that Rocco foisted on, or put together for, the US. Of course Blair and M16 refuse to comment on their source for the yellowcake. As the church lady used to say, "How conveeeeenient!"
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