re: Thoughts on the Russian Mess from a non republican

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I'm not saying the Bremer part was wise. I said the reaction to it from 2005 to 2007 was wise. You've made a good case for why 2003-04 was botched, and I agree with most of all of what you say there.

Yes, they messed up early on and paid the price later, but that still doesn't mean finding the right process for vetting the Army would be easy. There would be problems no matter what.

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Absolutely, but they turned a big problem into a catastrophe.

And continued to do so on almost every front.

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I'm not buying this. Saddam's Iraq was an inherently unstable country that was going to fight each other eventually regardless. The taking-weapons-home argument has some merit, but it's not the root cause of the phenomenon. I don't think but-for causation is a very useful guide here in any case.

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As long as Saddam had an iron fist, much like we see in other autocratic nations of the region, where chaos is sewn, it tends to stem from internal sources of splinter group funding or from disruptions to the power structure. But surprisingly Saddam was an outlier in this regard and did not engage much in that sort of terrorist funding behavior that the Saudi's, Qatar, Iran, Pakistan and other engaged in(and continue to do so).

He was evil for his own reasons, and to be sure our decades of sanctions and occasionally bombings crippled Saddam's ability to control his territory and we certainly wanted to bring him to his knees, if not overthrow him entirely.

Not sure I have seen much evidence that supports the idea that the Iraqi citizenry was on a crash course to Civil War, widespread insurgency, and a borderline failed state regardless of our actions over the short or medium future if Saddam remained in power or alternative actions were taken.

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It doesn't matter. There was no way to keep a lid on Saddam's Iraq forever. The cat-and-mouse games with Hans Blix and company could not go on in perpetuity, and political will was running out. The bottom line was that the U.S. could not allow a situation where we had no visibility on what was happening inside Iraq, because then we would not be allowed to take actions anywhere else.

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If your guiding principle is essentially a re-charecterization of the Bush doctrine that extends the justification for military engagement to the potential scenario of a future failed state, well, I don't think I agree with that or find it to be a feasible foreign policy strategy.

And I will point out again that we had that visibility, unabated, leading up to the war. If you are personally explaining that as your justification for supporting engagement, thats fine, but it ignores the facts. If you think that was Bush's justification it does so as well.

LOSE!

For frick's sake.

shite. Baseball rain delay. [EDIT: Delay over!]

Just a couple of more points before I retire for the night...

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This idea that Iraq was always this time bomb that was going to explode into shrapnel exactly as happened with Bush's incompetence is revisionist nonsense. That I should point out you have not exactly supported with any evidence so far.

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It's hard to nail down evidence for historical counterfactuals, but it's just common sense. All the factors for a Yugoslavia-type situation were there.

There was that, and then there was Saddam's own executed design for an insurgency of resistance, and then there was the outside agitation pouring in from Syria and Iran. So the U.S. occupation acted like a magnet to take on everything at once, but all of that stuff was already there waiting to be tapped. It was all coming down the pipe somewhere, one way or the other.

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The sanctions crippled his regime more then he let on and even if he wanted to, he didn't have the resources and ability to fast track nuclear development.

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We knew he couldn't fast-track it, but we did not know whether he had a program or not. We did not know whether he had other WMD programs or not. We believed he did.

You can't just focus on how much progress Saddam had made. The context here was that our sanctions policy was growing more unpopular, and could not be kept in place forever. The CIA had been wrong about Saddam before. First they made a mistake underestimating the extent of his program, and later they overcompensated and made a mistake in overestimating the extent of his program.

So Hans Blix could tell us that Saddam didn't have a nuclear program making significant progress, but we had no idea what Saddam was doing behind closed doors on all of his WMD programs, or what he planned to do in the future. And if we let him get away with violating U.N. resolutions, thinking that he may have had budding WMD programs in place, then that would blow the whole WMD anti-proliferation policy out of the water for us right then and there. Other actors would surely start their own secret WMD programs almost immediately as a result.

I mean, you're still not getting to the bottom of the question: Why did we go to war? I don't think it makes sense to say that Hans Blix could have relieved the Bush Administration of its concerns with a fuller report. A more complete report wouldn't have mattered, because the true reason for going to war was Saddam's non-cooperation and willfully playing games to keep knowledge of his WMD programs secret (and more importantly, the immediate effect this would have on U.S. anti-proliferation efforts for the whole region)--not the state of Saddam's nuclear progress at a single point in time.

The garden of democracy thing was also a big component, but that's mostly an after-the-fact justification to be part of a larger vision for the future.

Getting back to the OP's subject, the way to handle people screaming about Russians hacking the election is say "define hacking".

We know no machines were affected and no vote tallies, so what is it that the Russians actually did?

They supposedly, and we may never know for certain, hacked into John Podesta's files , the DNC and a few other actors. So how did this affect the election you ask them.

It merely revealed what a dirty bunch of SOB 's Podesta and his Dem buddies actually are. And for that we owe the hackers a debt of gratitude for keeping us from putting criminals like them back in power.

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It's hard to nail down evidence for historical counterfactuals, but it's just common sense. All the factors for a Yugoslavia-type situation were there.

There was that, and then there was Saddam's own executed design for an insurgency of resistance, and then there was the outside agitation pouring in from Syria and Iran. So the U.S. occupation acted like a magnet to take on everything at once, but all of that stuff was already there waiting to be tapped. It was all coming down the pipe somewhere, one way or the other.

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You continue to assert this without any supporting evidence.

Saddam seemed no more positioned to end up in such a scenario then any other Middle Eastern autocrat. Regime collapse is and always will be an issue with autocracies. Especially ones you actively pressure into that direction.

His design for resistance also fell on deaf ears. As I pointed out earlier, the majority of Saddam's army just did as America asked and rolled over, took off their uniforms and awaited instruction. Communication that never came and when it did threw gasoline on the fire due to Bush appointee incompetences that treated the whole of a national symbol of Iraqi identity as an enemy of the occupiers. Something the intelligence community and military leaders roundly criticized. A situation that made it very easy for well funded terrorist outfits to slip into the security vacuum amidst citizen disillusionment and chaos and offer that steady paycheck that was just taken away from Baathists and soldiers. To entice them to go from protesting the occupying force they felt treated their compliance with a stab in the back, to shooting Americans and helping build an insurgency infrastructure in a country with 40% unemployment.

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We knew he couldn't fast-track it, but we did not know whether he had a program or not. We did not know whether he had other WMD programs or not. We believed he did.

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I can only say this so many times, Hans Blix had unfettered access to Iraq to go and inspect any and all areas he wanted to once Saddam recognized we were not bullshitting. To say that we did not have a path to verification is just factually untrue.

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I mean, you're still not getting to the bottom of the question: Why did we go to war? I don't think it makes sense to say that Hans Blix could have relieved the Bush Administration of its concerns with a fuller report. A more complete report wouldn't have mattered, because the true reason for going to war was Saddam's non-cooperation and willfully playing games to keep knowledge of his WMD programs secret (and more importantly, the immediate effect this would have on U.S. anti-proliferation efforts for the whole region)--not the state of Saddam's nuclear progress at a single point in time.

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Of course Blix couldn't have relieved him, because the decision was not based on this false narrative that we were concerned about imminent nuclear proliferation. It was at times offered as a rationale, along with a host of other, similarly questionable rationales like strong ties to Al Qaeda, democratic regime change as a basis for improving international security, and just the sort of general violations that could b applied to dozens and dozens of regimes and countries.

The Office of Special Plans led by Rumsfeld and Neocon ideologues Feith and Wolfowitz illustrate the farcical rationale building exercises that became on display.

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The garden of democracy thing was also a big component, but that's mostly an after-the-fact justification to be part of a larger vision for the future.

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I mean thats also not in alignment with the totality of facts we have. Feith and Wolfowitz had been advocating regime change and the garden of democracy philosophy going back to at least 1991. The two that led the Office of Special Plans that cherry picked intelligence based on how the intelligence supported the narrative of Saddam/Al Qaeda connections. Which they would then leak or use officially to bolster their rationale to the American public and the UN. Even when it regularly disagreed with the intelligence communities own assessments of that raw intelligence.

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Getting back to the OP's subject, the way to handle people screaming about Russians hacking the election is say "define hacking".

We know no machines were affected and no vote tallies, so what is it that the Russians actually did?

They supposedly, and we may never know for certain, hacked into John Podesta's files , the DNC and a few other actors. So how did this affect the election you ask them.

It merely revealed what a dirty bunch of SOB 's Podesta and his Dem buddies actually are. And for that we owe the hackers a debt of gratitude for keeping us from putting criminals like them back in power.

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So what you are saying is that the illegal targeted hacks and tactical leaking influenced citizens voting calculus. For you it served as a calcifying agent in opposition of one of the candidates.

I think you will find that outside of the Mensch wing(which seems to be a far too big of a wing) that is how most people define Russian hacker influence on the election.


As to certainty, Comey just testified under oath about such wide intelligence certainty about the hacks origins and it largely went unnoticed around here, but Trump's own appointed team formally accepted those findings and multiple spokespeople when pressed have said Trump officially does as well now too.

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WASHINGTON — Several top Trump administration intelligence officials told a Senate panel Thursday they accept the conclusion of a report earlier this year that says Russia undertook data thefts and hacking during the 2016 election — a finding President Donald Trump has questioned.

At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats submitted a statement concluding that Russia “has assumed a more aggressive cyber posture” in recent years.

“This aggressiveness was evident in Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. election and we assess that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized the 2016 U.S. election-focused data thefts and disclosures, based on the scope and sensitivity of the targets,” Coats wrote in his statement.

Coats, a former senator from Indiana, was nominated as director of national intelligence in January by the incoming president.

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Russia's plan worked in a totally different way. When it came out they had possibly influenced the election thru hacking it did make people loose faith. and to a bigger point all this bullshite congress is dragging us thru has made us loose faith in the MSM

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That's fine and good.
Except all Russia did was expose truth about Hillary and the DNC. They don't appear to have falsified Podesta or DNC documents. They don't appear to have altered a single vote.

So we should ask ourselves, WHO EXACTLY IS WORKING TO UNDERMINE our confidence in this election?

The answer is not the Russians.

The answer is our own Deep State, our own IC.
Of course, it's effort is willingly aided by Dems, NeverTrumpers, and the MSM. Those groups serve as the IC's communication conduit.
People had damn well better wake up and see it for what it is!

When James"Liar"Clapper is audacious enough to publicly equate Russia and DJT as equally threatening to our democracy, people had damn well better wake up!

When the FBI Director works within the FBI to support or excuse one candidate/party and sully the other, people had damn well better wake up!

When the IRS, EPA, and DOJ show demonstrable vulnerability to being politically weaponized, people had damn well better wake up!

None of that has a thing to do with Russians!
It has to do with our willingness as an airhead society to be Grubered.

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You continue to assert this without any supporting evidence.

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It's a fricking historical counterfactual. You can't ask for "evidence." That's not how this works.

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His design for resistance also fell on deaf ears. As I pointed out earlier, the majority of Saddam's army just did as America asked and rolled over, took off their uniforms and awaited instruction.

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You're being absurdly naive. You can argue that de-Baathification was botched, but in no way could you hand over democratic power to a majority-Shia nation without de-Baathification happening in some form. This belief that everybody in Iraq was ready to get along fine with the old army structure is preposterous. It would have never worked.

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To say that we did not have a path to verification is just factually untrue.

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bullshite. Nobody believes this.

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Of course Blix couldn't have relieved him, because the decision was not based on this false narrative that we were concerned about imminent nuclear proliferation.

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Nice switch of words there. It wasn't based on "imminent nuclear proliferation." As I say over and over and over again, it was about preventing the collapse of regional system of non-proliferation.

You can't accept this. You don't want to accept this. But that is reason why the Bush Administration went to war. If you keep reaching for this "it was really about X" style of arguments, rather than face up to the actual strategy the U.S. was pursuing at that time (and had been pursuing full-bore as its primary focus since the early 1990s), then you're never going to understand the context of anything.

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waste of time Bengazi hearings.

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Are you on drugs?