JOHN KERRY MAKES THE CASE FOR MISSILE STRIKES

Slippery slope: "The bottom line, as Kerry outlined in his speech, is that the White House believes inaction, after conclusively determining that Bashar al-Assad’s regime is behind the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack in Damascus, would open the possibility of other countries or groups concluding that they could use such weapons in the future without fear of retribution."

National security: (There is no alternative): “Make no mistake, in an increasingly complicated world of sectarian and religious extremist violence, what we choose to do or not do matters in real ways to our own security. Some site the risk of doing things. But we need to ask, ‘What is the risk of doing nothing?’,” Kerry said.

WMD!: “Our high confidence assessment is the strongest position that the U.S. Intelligence Community can take short of confirmation,” the government said in the brief.

The plan: The White House is reportedly considering limited air strikes on military targets as retaliation for the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons. Senior administration officials also repeated that the administration is not aiming to achieve a regime change in Syria.

Syria's chemical arsenal is less of a threat to the US than the arsenals of other despots around the world. Saddam gassed the Kurds, but we didn't launch the Iraq war for that reason.

Kerry makes much of the children who were killed by gas, but what of children killed in drone attacks?  We're to weep over pictures of children killed by gas, but we never see the pictures of children blown apart by drone missiles. The airstrikes will almost certainly cause collateral damage (the ultimate euphemism for dead and wounded people!), which will include children and other innocents.   I weep for all the children.

What if Assad continues his defiance after we flex our muscles with the limited airstrikes? What do we do next?

I'm not buying Kerry's argument. I've heard it all before when we have undertaken deadly, misbegotten military adventures.  Obama and Kerry have pretty well boxed themselves in with their chest-thumping and red line on Assad's use of gas, but I hope and pray the president will have the courage and humility to turn away from inflicting more violence on the Syrian people, who are already suffering.  

Quotes above from Talking Points Memo.

SHOCK AND AWE - TEN YEARS LATER

I will never forget my growing alarm as the war drums for invading Iraq beat louder and louder.

I will never forget my embarrassment at Colin Powell's speech at the UN.

I will never forget that the UN inspectors who asked for a couple of months more to continue the search for WMD, but were instead driven out of Iraq on the run, by the beginning of the Shock and Awe invasion.

I will never forget the pillaging of the ancient and priceless holdings of the museums and libraries in Iraq, because there was no plan to protect them.

I will never forget the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA secret agent and the persecution of Plame and her husband, Joe Wilson, by the Bush administration because after his investigation, Wilson said that Niger did not sell uranium to Saddam.

I could go on and on with my list.  I began to lose a friend when I continued to suggest that there were no WMD in Iraq and that there was no connection between Saddam and al Qaeda.  I finally lost that friend on May 1, 2003, when I mocked George W Bush's "Mission Accomplished" moment.

How could I, way down in the swamps of Louisiana, know that the chances of finding WMD in Iraq were slim to none, and the members of Congress not know, especially the Democrats who voted for the war?  How could I know that Cheney/Bush were lying, and the members of Congress not know?

How could the major media outlets fail so miserably in their responsibility to inform us of the truth in the run-up to war?  A small number of journalists expressed doubt about WMD, but few paid attention.  As my friend Doug, to whom I owe credit for the video, said on Facebook, "Shocking and awful."   

Image from Wikipedia.

ARCHBISHOP TUTU PULLS OUT OF SUMMIT WITH TONY BLAIR

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has pulled out of an international summit, because he doesn't want to share a platform with the "morally indefensible" Tony Blair it emerged yesterday.

The retired archbishop, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his campaigning against apartheid, said that he had withdrawn from the event because he believed the former Prime Minister had supported the invasion of Iraq "on the basis of unproven allegations of the existence of weapons of mass destruction."
....

Archbishop Tutu has long been a critic of Mr Blair's stance on Iraq – even before the invasion.

In 2003 the archbishop said Mr Blair's support for the Bush administration was "mind-boggling". "I have a great deal of time for your Prime Minister, but I'm shocked to see a powerful country use its power frequently, unilaterally," he said.

Archbishop Tutu is correct that the invasion of Iraq was illegal and based on false information.  A full explanation by the archbishop for his withdrawal may be found at the Guardian.

If leaders may lie, then who should tell the truth? Days before George W Bush and Tony Blair ordered the invasion of Iraq, I called the White House and spoke to Condoleezza Rice, who was then national security adviser, to urge that United Nations weapons inspectors be given more time to confirm or deny the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Should they be able to confirm finding such weapons, I argued, dismantling the threat would have the support of virtually the entire world. Ms Rice demurred, saying there was too much risk and the president would not postpone any longer.
....

On these grounds alone, in a consistent world, those responsible for this suffering and loss of life should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in the Hague.

The weapons inspectors from the UN had nearly completed their work and asked for a short delay in order to finish, but their request was refused.  They were close to a conclusion that Iraq had no WMD, and it's possible that Bush and Blair rushed the invasion, in part, to avoid the disclosure from being made public.  The two leaders were determined to bring down Saddam, WMD or no.  The inspectors had to rush out of Iraq in order not to be caught in the invasion.

I won't ever forget observing the process with horror, aghast that Blair would go along with Bush and crew in the madness.  There was an air of inevitability about the coming invasion, and it was plain that no new information would get in the way.

H/T to Juan Cole at Informed Comment.

VALERIE PLAME AND JOE WILSON - NO APOLOGY YET

From The Huffington Post:

Seven years after top officials in the Bush administration turned their world upside down in an attempt to convince the public to support the war in Iraq, Amb. Joseph Wilson and outed CIA agent Valerie Plame said they still have not received an apology from anyone involved.

"No, in a word," Plame laughed and told The Huffington Post when asked if she or her husband had heard from any Bush officials. She said the closest thing she has received to an apology is when Richard Armitage, the former No. 2 at the State Department, publicly said it was "foolish" of him to leak Plame's undercover CIA identity.

Apparently Valerie Plame 'deserved' to be outed as a covert officer in the CIA's counter-proliferation division, because her husband's report which followed his investigation of the claim that Saddam had purchased enriched uranium from Niger did not line up with the Bush administration's contention that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, including materials for manufacturing nuclear weapons.

"One of the things that we have always tried to say is that whatever has happened to us as a consequence of the battles we've been involved in over the last seven years, and however painful it may have been for us, it is nothing compared to what has been done to our country -- and particularly the service people and their families -- by the ill-conceived war in Iraq and by confusion of what the mission was in Afghanistan," Wilson told The Huffington Post in an interview on Friday.

Yes, indeed. No good deed went unpunished for those who did not hew to the party line in the feverish atmosphere within the Bush administration as it prepared to invade Iraq.

Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson are patriots in the truest sense of the word. I was outraged by Plames' outing, and I'm still outraged today that this sort of dastardly deed was done in the name of pursuing a war which should never have started, a war that was justified on the basis of lies and misleading information. As Wilson describes the situation in Baghdad today, we will leave behind a sad legacy, which cost us and the Iraqi people dearly, but it's way past time for us to go.

Valerie Plame's picture from Wikipedia. Joe Wilson's picture from Military Religious Freedom Foundation.