I took some time to read back over the postings since the beginning of Fun In Baghdad. Fortunately I have been wrong on many fronts, especially predicting the resistance of the Iraqi Army or the potentialities of Weapons of Mass Destruction use.
The Iraqi Army, the various Republican Guard variants, Secret Police goons and Guerrillas all dissipated faster than a Nun Fart in a wind tunnel. The WMD nightmares have not played out and that is one that I am really happy I got wrong.
The reason the Iraq military just ran away is an understandable one: Confronted with a highly technical enemy who prefers to fight at night and enjoys dropping very accurate ordinance on your forces, while all you have is artillery and some AK rounds, means you are essentially screwed. If you were drafted at the point of a gun, you haven’t been paid, haven’t had rations, have seen your buddies executed by the Secret Police just for giggles and the Commander In Chief says Die for Me, your response would probably be a simple: Hell, No. I can appreciate that. It’s sensible.
The WMD deal is more problematic. The entire conflict was based on two factors: One, Saddam Hussein has poison gas and nerve agents, with a high likelihood he either has nukes, or is so close to having nukes as to make no never mind. Two: Saddam Hussein is so insane and brutal that Hussein having anything like biological or nuclear weapons is worse than an unmediated pyromaniac at the Zippo lighter factory in Bradford, Pennsylvania.
So, we’ve solved Factor Two. Hussein is off the statue plinth. He’s probably at Allah’s door, saying, “Uhhh, sorry, dude” Factor One is difficult. Until we see a hollowed out mountain full of nerve agents and nuclear material, like in 007’s Goldfinger, we might not be convinced. The arms caches in schools, hospitals and mosques are seedy and disgusting, but not the outrageous over-the-top madness we were expecting.
Will the American people accept that maybe Factor One didn’t pan out like they said it would? Intelligence sources told Bush and Powell that there were nukes and nerve gas piled four deep in the streets, a wild-eyed Republican Guard sitting on the top of it with a Bic just waiting for the word to blow everything up.
If the Intelligence Sources are wrong, or misguided, or couldn’t interpret a Xerox of their own ass, then Bush has some hard choices. The CIA, NSA, DIA, NIA, FBI and a bunch of other guys have some very serious explaining to do.
I’m not going to let George and Colin off the hook, as their chairs are the places where the final decisions are made. Reality dictates that their decisions are made on the basis of the information provided to them. As honourable men, George and Colin should make it public that they were wrong and take the public kicking they will deserve. Resignation is about the only route available.
Now, on to the purveyors of the data: The security analysts.
History has shown that those who give bad data or styled data, or groomed data and get caught, usually wind up at government think-tanks, or Bechtel, or Brown and Root, or SAIC, or EC&C. Surf up those names on the web and you find sizeable companies with long traditions of government contracts in areas that are not the regular run-of-the-mill jobs. Scope out the careers sections at some of those companies and you’ll see requirements for all kinds of “analysts” These places are where the spooks go when they don’t want to, or can’t, play in the government any more.
If (and this is a big if, compounded on some other assumptions) the data that George W. and Colin were given was reality-modified, then those responsible should be not merely demoted, private-sectored, or left to retire early.
My vote is to strip them naked and take them out into the Rose Garden at noon for a televised public flogging. Make them wear a ball-gag, dog collar and Size 12 Butt Plug for a week, paraded up and down the Washington Mall, on hands and knees for anyone to piss on, beat up, or violate in every way possible. Head of the line treatment for the families of any soldier wounded or killed in the war. The rule is you can’t kill the guilty ones, but imagine your sickest, most emotionally scarring, violent, humiliating nightmares, double it up and make it real for these bastards. If that includes Rosie O’Donnell and Bea Arthur, then so be it.
I’m 98% certain that it will turn out that there are sizeable stashes of nerves and nukes in Iraq. I’m 98% certain that the information that George and Colin got was accurate as neither person impresses me as someone who would take a decision as big as going to war without double and triple checking.
It is that nagging 2% that will make the next few weeks nerve wracking for the security analysts.
RoadDave 