Politics: J'accuse!

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
What pisses me off is that Rice told a fucking bold-faced lie with Bush's "I don't want to swat at flies" crap. Completely made up. Whole cloth. Conversation never happened. Of course, no one will ever prove that, but I'm more pissed off about that lie --- which I am absolutely 100% convinced was a lie --- than anything that came up previously before the Commission.

Where are you getting this?

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by bilmore
And the idea that OBL would have been handled by Clinton if only Clinton had not been bothered by those pesky problems over his lying under oath doesn't fly, in my mind. I see nothing that indicates that he would have been willing to do such a thing, even with a clear schedule and more widespread support.

Definitely agree, except I'm not sure what you mean by "more widespread support" -- if 9/11 had happened two years earlier? But in general, I agree.

I like and admire the Bush/Powell willingness to use the force necessary to do the job and to limit American casualties -- the "overwhelming force" doctrine. That same mindset may serve the admin poorly in the diplomatic arena, but in the military arena it is the right call.

In contrast, while I supported the intervention in Kosovo, which I think was remarkably successful, I was disgusted by the unwillingness to use Apache helicopters because the Clinton Admin was apparently worried that this would look too much like a ground war. So what? It was a ground war -- people were being slaughtered by tanks, and the Apache is the best tank-killer invented. Use the damn thing.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
In contrast, while I supported the intervention in Kosovo, which I think was remarkably successful, I was disgusted by the unwillingness to use Apache helicopters because the Clinton Admin was apparently worried that this would look too much like a ground war. So what? It was a ground war -- people were being slaughtered by tanks, and the Apache is the best tank-killer invented. Use the damn thing.

I wish I was sure, but I think Clarke discusses this, too, as another example of the Pentagon dragging its feet when Clinton wanted them to do something.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Where are you getting this?

Um, the transcript?

• President Bush understood the threat, and he understood its importance. He made clear to us that he did not want to respond to Al Qaeda one attack at a time. He told me he was tired of swatting flies.

Mark my words: that conversation never happened.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
What pisses me off is that Rice told a fucking bold-faced lie with Bush's "I don't want to swat at flies" crap. Completely made up. Whole cloth. Conversation never happened. Of course, no one will ever prove that, but I'm more pissed off about that lie --- which I am absolutely 100% convinced was a lie --- than anything that came up previously before the Commission.

I don't know why you think this. It rings true to me. It's of a piece to deride whatever Clinton was doing as insufficient or misguided, and to look for a different approach not because of the specific facts of the situation, because we ought to be doing something different? What should we be doing? There's no direction there, so the Administration ends up doing nothing for a long stretch of time. Foreign policy by reaction formation.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Um, the transcript?

• President Bush understood the threat, and he understood its importance. He made clear to us that he did not want to respond to Al Qaeda one attack at a time. He told me he was tired of swatting flies.

Mark my words: that conversation never happened.

No, I mean what makes you believe it was a lie? Or is this another variation of the "Bush Lied" mantra?

[Not Me]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Or is this another variation of the "Bush Lied" mantra?

Bingo!

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Um, the transcript?

• President Bush understood the threat, and he understood its importance. He made clear to us that he did not want to respond to Al Qaeda one attack at a time. He told me he was tired of swatting flies.

Mark my words: that conversation never happened.

Why do you think this? It sounds like the language of a Bush quote, it sounds like a Bush way of thinking, and Rice fails to strike me as a liar. There had been much conversation earlier concerning the need for asymetric response in order to shut down the terrorism that was occurring. The idea that you react with X force when confronted with X violence allows the terrorist to make investment decisions that are rational and efficient, while the asymetric response says that your pain might be horrid and disproportionate, but you won't know until it comes, and that's a great deterrent to measured risk aversion. Isn't that what "no more swatting flies" means?

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
I wish I was sure, but I think Clarke discusses this, too, as another example of the Pentagon dragging its feet when Clinton wanted them to do something.

One example (discussing snatches, or "extraordinary renditions" for those of us who cannot discuss snatch and Clinton without giggling):

Whether it was catching was criminals in Yugoslavia or terrorists in Africa and the Middle East, it was the same story. The White House wanted action. The senior military did not and made it almost impossible for the President to overcome their objections. When in 1993 the White House had leaned on the military to snatch [Warlord] Aideed in Somalia, they had bobbled the operation and blamed the White House in off-the-record conversations with reporters and Congressmen. What White House advisor would want a repeat of that? Often though, we learned, senior military officers let the word spread down the ranks that the politicians in the White House were the ones reluctant to act. The fact is, President Clinton approved every snatch that he was asked to review. Every snatch CIA, Justic, or Defense proposed during my tenure as CSG chairman, from 1992 to 2001, was approved." (p. 145)

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
I wish I was sure, but I think Clarke discusses this, too, as another example of the Pentagon dragging its feet when Clinton wanted them to do something.

Perhaps I'll read the book, but I don't buy that. Maybe initially it was Pentagon foot-dragging, but the Apache issue was huge, and hugely public, for a long time -- long enough to be featured in weeklies such as the Economist. It's hard to imagine that with an issue so public, the Prez (and CinC) could not give a clear directive.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
I don't know why you think this. It rings true to me. It's of a piece to deride whatever Clinton was doing as insufficient or misguided, and to look for a different approach not because of the specific facts of the situation, because we ought to be doing something different? What should we be doing? There's no direction there, so the Administration ends up doing nothing for a long stretch of time. Foreign policy by reaction formation.

Concur. This fits in very well with the general orientation of Bush-Foriegn-Policy-As-Patella-Reflex*. Whatever its other faults, the commissions' hearings have shown us that we didn't get the comprehensive response that Bush's statement might've suggested, but that doesn't lead me to believe that Bush never said it.

Gattigap


* Plus, you get the added benefit of a great line to use in the upcoming, kick-ass DHS TV show. What could be better?

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
The fact is, President Clinton approved every snatch that he was asked to review.

Never mind. That's just too easy.

[Not Me]

Can't they make an RPG-proof tank?

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Not Me
Can't they make an RPG-proof tank?

Probably, but I suspect that the armor required would make the tank essentially immobile, which kinda defeats the point.

(If this doesn't channel Patentgreedy, I don't know what will).

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
Perhaps I'll read the book, but I don't buy that. Maybe initially it was Pentagon foot-dragging, but the Apache issue was huge, and hugely public, for a long time -- long enough to be featured in weeklies such as the Economist. It's hard to imagine that with an issue so public, the Prez (and CinC) could not give a clear directive.

This is from a piece by Lawrence Kaplan (originally published in The New Republic but I found it here) about how the Army moved away from the Powell Doctrine.

• When President Clinton declared: "I do not intend to put our troops in Kosovo to fight a war," Army leaders proved eager to oblige--even after his resistance to the idea softened. The most memorable example came when Army Chief of Staff Dennis Reimer opposed General Wesley Clark's request to employ Apache helicopter gunships against Serb forces. According to The Washington Post, Reimer "worried that the Army's Apaches would be a step toward the use of ground forces, something the Army leadership did not favor." And indeed, when Clinton ultimately authorized the dispatch of 24 Apaches to Albania, the Army dragged its feet--taking one month to deliver them, and then only in the company of more than 5,000 Army personnel, 15 tanks, a mechanized infantry company, an engineer company, and an air-defense battery. None were ever used. The saga embarrassed the United States and humiliated the Army. Of his service's performance in Kosovo, then-Army Secretary Louis Caldera remarked, "We seem to be more willing to suffer casualties in training than in real operations."

Or see this, from an article in the US Army War College Quarterly about Operation Allied Force (the name of the Kosovo operation):

• Allied Force, though it deliberately eschewed a ground combat option, also shed a harsh spotlight on the Army's intellectual and structural inadequacy in the post-Cold War international security environment. The depressing saga of the 24 Apache helicopters testified in part to a continuing professional apprehensiveness sired by the Army's soul-wrenching experience in Vietnam and reinforced by the Army's embrace of the now scarcely relevant Weinberger and Powell use-of-force doctrines. The Army leadership wanted to have nothing to do with what it wrongly--but predictably--perceived as a potential Vietnam in the Balkans. (I say wrongly because the impossibility of repetition should have been obvious in both tiny Serbia's small, poorly equipped, and professionally inexperienced army and Belgrade's complete political and military isolation; in contrast was the superb fighting power of the Vietnamese communists, who had uninterrupted political and material support from the Soviet Union and China. Serbia chose to cease hostilities after less than three months of initially desultory NATO bombing, whereas communist forces in Vietnam ultimately prevailed in an eight-year war against over 500,000 US troops and under the weight of three times the total bomb tonnage dropped by all Allied forces in World War II.)
  
  The Army dragged its feet in response to SACEUR's request for an Apache deployment; the helicopters were deployed at a glacial pace and with a ponderous 5,000-man contingent of support troops, including ground defense forces and MLRS batteries designed to suppress possible Serbian artillery attacks on the Apaches. Additionally, the Apaches' potential effectiveness against fielded Serbian forces, certainly when compared with the US Air Force's A-10s and the Royal Air Force's Tornadoes and Harriers, was problematical, and the Army was in any event unwilling to place its Apaches under the control of those running the air campaign.[2] Nor could the Apaches pass the no-air-crew-risk test of conducting attack operations from a minimum altitude of 15,000 feet. It also seems that the Apache crews were not sufficiently trained for night operations.
  
  In fact, it was never clear why the Apaches were deployed at all or whether they would have been employed absent US infantry on the ground. Ironically, the Army suffered the only American air crew losses associated with the war when two Apaches crashed on training flights in Albania.