RIP Paul Johnson Jr.

[RB26powered74zcar]

deleted

[johnc]

An anonymous "Letter tot he Editor" that I think makes sense:

 

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"THE WRONG LESSON:"

 

"People out there are learning the exact wrong lesson from the shortfalls of intelligence about Iraq. The failure of our intelligence organizations to correctly assess the status of Saddam's WMD programs is actually a powerful argument IN FAVOR of preemptive - or even preventive - national security doctrine.

 

Sure, it's fair to hold the CIA accountable for this "intelligence failure," and I don't argue that the intel community could have done better. But think about it this way: The question of Iraqi WMD was one of the most critical national security issues for the United States for over a decade, and the US, our allies, and the UN directed vast intelligence collection and analysis resources against it. Regardless of what particular mistakes were made, the degree to which the CIA came up short reveals a larger truth: This type of intelligence problem is fundamentally impossible to solve with the precision necessary to support a security policy based on traditional "imminent threat" criteria. Whether Saddam's WMD capabilties were overestimated or underestimated is a peripheral issue. What is essential is that we didn't - and probably couldn't - know for sure what those capabilities were.

 

Contrary to the assertions of many who opposed war in Iraq, this epistemological limitation does not argue for the abandonment of a preemptive doctrine. In fact, it argues for yet greater urgency in the preventive (yes, preventive) elimination of regimes that have the potential to use WMD or supply them to other actors. The definitive intelligence issue for this doctrine is not what specific weapons programs, terrorist links, or ill intentions a certain state might possess, but rather the nature of that state. That is a question that is readily answerable and is therefore a more valid guide to ethical decision-making on issues of war and peace.

 

Just war doctrine has long rejected this line of reasoning, as it could provide pretexts for endless wars of agression. But times have changed. The civilized world can no longer safely permit governments like Saddam's to exist. The precise status of WMD programs (especially bio and chem) in countries like Iraq, Iran, and North Korea are practically insurmountable intelligence problems. The solution lies not in trying to improve the intelligence, but in getting rid of the problems."

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As my mom and stepdad told me, "9/11 IS another Pearl Harbor and if this country does not understand that, many more people will die." During WW2 my stepsdad served on destroyer escorts in the north Atlantic and my mom drew maps for the USGS.

[VRJoe]

Ok, I held out as long as I could......

 

1) As far as Paul Johnson Jr., he unknowingly sacrificed his life for others. Due to his murder the Security Force was able to find and kill his captors and murderers. This will save numerous lives. Pauls' sacrifice will save lives and help curb terrorism in that area. He's a hero.

 

2) As far as the invasion of Iraq, Saddam was in violation of numerous UN sanctions. He basically thumbed his nose at the rest of the world and told the UN to go screw themselves. He had already proved he would use chemical weapons and had a program for manufacturing those weapons. Since the inspectors were not allowed in, there was no evidence that those programs were shut down. These issues alone were reason for the invasion.

 

3) As far as politics, we've become a country focused on differences rather than similarities. (Side Note - that's what makes Hybridz so great, we focus on similarities and celebrated differences). Politicians routinely lie about their opponents records and are never called on it. People listen to the media and never do any of their own research. The parties are more focused on keeping power then they are on serving the people (hence the groundswell for term limits). Do you really think a career politician has ANY IDEA what daily life is like?????? If people are going to act like sheep don't complain about the sheep herder. Pick up the phone and call your elected officials, write letters, go to town halls and put them on the spot. TAKE BACK the control of the country. Pres. Bush is getting reviewed by good old 20/20 hindsight, do any of them think they would have done better ?????. Yea Right. Wake up, it's about power, not us. Quit complaining and do something about it.

 

Sorry for the rank, it just sorta boiled over.

 

- Joe

[Guest Phil1934]

My complaint is everything our Pres. does has repercussions and he can't fathom them. Did you know polio is again on the increase in N. Africa since the Muslims think the vaccine is a way of sterilizing them? And his comment about the axis of evil was rebuked by Carter, but now Iran is refusing to dismiss their nuclear program and N. Korea is making noises. And while his war may not bring democracy to the Middle East, it certainly has brought socialism to most of Europe as the voters protested their countries' involvement in Iraq by voting against the ruling parties and the contenders were mostly Socialists. And the hypocricy of this whole WMD. We know they had them because Rumsfeld sold them. A 35 year old Georgian went to prison for loaning Saddam 8 billion. He claimed our gov't authorized it, but they simply said there are no records of such a deal. They could have simply said No. Americans and foreigners are being held without trial and tortured. Bush had said they were not POW's but enemy combatants not entitled to convention rules. Four times Pres. Bush has been asked if enemy combatants were being tortured during press conferences and not once did he simply answer No. Now privates are being jailed as the masterminds. That's like saying a lieutenant colonel has enough authority to arm a Contra army. And wire taps in the name of anti-terrorism now outnumber those against crime. Do you feel safer?

[Heavy Z]

People listen to the media and never do any of their own research.

 

Couldn't be truer VRJoe, lets have a look at the points you made in #2 as an example:

 

As far as the invasion of Iraq, Saddam was in violation of numerous UN sanctions(1). He basically thumbed his nose at the rest of the world and told the UN to go screw themselves(2). He had already proved he would use chemical weapons and had a program for manufacturing those weapons(3). Since the inspectors were not allowed in, there was no evidence that those programs were shut down(4). These issues alone were reason for the invasion(5).

 

 

(1) The media has been telling us this all along as a reason to go for Saddam, who is in violation of 17 resolutions, and that serious consequences should face countries that go against UN. As a result, Saddam got hit with one of the strongest embargos in history. Compare that treatment with our ally, Israel, currently in violation of three times that number, who despite this we gave $10 billion in US aid last year. What does this say about how seriously we take UN resolutions?

 

(2) UNSCOM wasn't kicked out of Iraq, read what the chief weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, had to say. He went to his boss three times complaining that the inspection teams were being used to spy on Iraq rather than inspecting weapons thus compromising the security of his team, so he quit. A week later, our team was pulled out by Clinton and cruise missiles went in. If we weren't kicked out of Iraq according to the inspectors, what would make you think otherwise?

 

(3) Read CIA agent Pelletierre's article in my last post. No mention of the fact that Iraq's 12,000-page weapons declaration shows our government and 24 US corporations facilitated Saddam's WMD programs in the 80's, illegally I might add. Don't we share some responsibility here?

 

(4) First, UNSCOM concluded in 1998 that 98% of the programs were eliminated. Second, you forget that last year we allowed a UN inpection team under Hans Blix to look for WMD's. They didn't find anything and said they needed more time. Rather than giving them time, the US, Spain, and UK met in the Azores and decided that Saddam was too much of an "immediate" threat to wait any longer. According to Blix, we stopped the inspections, not Saddam.

 

(5) Need I say more? Our own intel brings much of the argument you present into question.

 

As for your point about the media, on one hand you express a need to be suspicious of the media and to do your own research, in this I totally agree. What I found ironic was then seeing you then use the same case for war that has been pounded into us by the mainstream media. You guys are like family so I hope I didn't offend anyone here, just showing it's important to listen closely to our own intel and less to rhetoric.

[Pop N Wood]

As the greatest general of the last century said' date=' General Vo Giap of North Vietnam,

[/quote']

 

Have to admit, you made me choke on my coffee with that one.

 

Gen. Giap felt that technology was irrelevent and essentially developed the modern multi-modal warfare concept

 

He sure didn’t seem to mind all those Russian surface to air missiles' date=' anti-air craft guns and Russian intel on where the next B52 strike was going to occur.

 

Mohammed Farah Aidid defeated us in Somalia withough very many shots simply by brutalizing the bodies of dead American soldiers and using the press to broadcast it.

 

Maybe you aren’t aware of why we went to Somalia in the first place. We were there on a humanitarian mission, trying to feed starving people because a corrupt bunch of criminals in the cities were high jacking the UN food meant for the rural areas. When your mission changes from feeding starving victims of a lawless society to machine gunning “cowboys†in an urban area, then you pretty much have to rethink why you are there. If anything it points out what the Rhodes scholar hadn’t learned, that you don’t put troops in harms way without adequate support and a commitment to a well defined set of goals.

 

I think you are also vastly overstating the impact of the videos. The dead Americans were page 3 news because of something else (I forget exactly what) that happened on the same day. I would be willing to bet if the movie “Black Hawk Down†had never been made Somalia would have as much significance to the average American as the war cry “Remember the Maine!â€

 

Also, last I heard Adid was killed some years ago, victim of his own ways. I guess you could look upon him as some great tactician. Kind of a David and Goliath type. I see him as just another criminal who “escaped†justice by having little to no regard for human life. Maybe the truth is somewhere between those two extremes.

 

 

but doesn't it disturb you that thousands of Iraqis who said they would defend Saddam to the death simply vanished into the desert? What we have here is a group of people who have carefully studied and planned for assymetric warfare over the past 12 years.

 

The history channel has done some incredibility informative biographies of Saddam’s life. It is hard to imagine what an iron hand Saddam used to rule Iraq. Thousands pledged to defend Saddam to the death simply because that is what they' date=' and their entire families, would have been subjected to had they not. Our whole invasions was predicated on the hunch that the Iraqi troops would cut and run like they did. No one would over extend their supply lines and leave their flanks as exposed as we did otherwise.

 

I also think you are over romanticizing the notion that the Iraqi army faded into the background to wage a guerrilla war. The average Iraqi soldier is just some poor conscript who has spent years being jerked around by a one manipulative regime after another. IMO the average Iraqi has no more desire for world domination than the average American. All they really want to do is to be left in peace to live their lives and raise their children. Maybe watch a little MTV. Who knows?

 

And who are the “insurgents†in Iraq? The interim Iraqi president said it himself. We roll into Iraq, disband the army and fail to secure the borders. Now Iraq is full of foreigners who are hell bent on causing us to fail. They have absolutely no regard for Iraq or it’s people. They just want to wage war on Americans. Give the Iraqi government some time to get established and THEY will be the ones to deal with the insurgents. Surely your parallels to the Vietnam war will help you see the validity of that plan. People have a right to self determination. That is what George W is hoping for.

 

 

but they will continue to blow up American soldiers one by one until we get tired of it and leave.

 

You use the word “we†rather loosely. Don’t include me in your plans. But you are right. If enough Americans get “tired†of it and that causes us to cut and run, then I don’t know if they will so much have won as we will have failed. But while the average American may or may not believe we should be in Iraq, I am reasonably certain the majority of Americans think we should finish what we started.

 

Sorry to look like I was picking out your statements above all others. I have read quite a number of you posts and respect your opinions. But any posting calling Giap the “greatest general of the last century†is bound to illicit a response from somebody.

[johnc]

And his comment about the axis of evil was rebuked by Carter,

 

I wouldn't be using Carter as an authority for anything except how to build cheap housing.

[VRJoe]

Heavy Z, I don't want to this thread to degrade in to a discussion of whether we should have invaded or not, it's too late for that discussion. What I find most interesting is that if you study the information chronologically you'll find that the stories have have changed over time. People have backpedaled to downplay the threat, people have changed their story to increase the threat, others have changed their story for personal or political reasons. There are intelligence reports that will never see the light of day for any number of reasons, that were provided to the decision makers. Hindsight is always 20/20, the decision to invade must be reviewed based on the information at the time, not what was available later, or what someone said after the fact. Too often these issues are used for political purposes instead of reasons to improve the process, just watch the outcome of the 911 commission, I fear it'll become a political issue, not a procedure failure issue.

 

The UN is a completely different issue that would get a whole new thread started that would probably set the server on fire. I'll stay away from that.

Israel is another unique case I'll stay away from for the same reason.

 

 

But, this is a different subject than this thread was started about. It started out about Paul Johnson Jr., let's get it back to that, the person, not the politics.

 

- Joe

[Scottie-GNZ]

Paul Johnson Jr was a fellow employee. May he R.I.P.

 

Please do not turn this into an ugly political debate.

[Heavy Z]

Enough said Scottie, I get your point.

 

The info I referenced in my last post, to be fair, was taken from articles that were all written before the start of the war. I am not interested in revisionist history either, just for the record.

 

RIP paul Johnson.

[johnc]

Luckily the thread stayed civil but I'm as guilty as anyone for hijacking it. Sorry. RIP Paul Johnson Jr.