TEAM W'S UNILATERAL DISARMAMENT
New York Post
The anti-war left says bad information led America into a war in Iraq it never should have waged. Meanwhile, an anti-war media steadily spreads negative stories that undermine confidence in America's ability to prevail in Iraq.
Clearly, the War on Terror - and specifically, the Iraq campaign - is more dependent on the use (or abuse) of information than most wars. And so it's truly astounding that the Bush folks seem to put so little emphasis on getting good information - and disseminating it to America's advantage.
Consider the reports filed by Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard (a News-Corp sister publication of The Post). Hayes notes that Coalition forces captured some 2 million "exploitable items" (documents, photographs and other textual material) in Iraq and Afghanistan - but Team Bush has actually "exploited" almost none of them.
Judging from just a few that have been made public, this material could bear significantly on the war in Iraq, as well as the broader War on Terror. Yet, nearly three years after America toppled Saddam Hussein, and more than that since the Afghani campaign, the feds have thoroughly examined and, where possible, acted on barely 50,000 of these "exploitable items." Fewer still (by far) have been made public.
Are the Bushies nuts? Some of these documents, Hayes reports, dispel fundamental beliefs about the situation in Iraq - e.g., about relations between Saddam's secular Ba'athists and the religious fanatics of the growing terrorist army.
Many folks claim the secularists never would do business with fundamentalists. The documents suggest otherwise.
Recently, a former weapons inspector, Bill Tierney, made public some 12 hours of tapes of Saddam and top aides, wherein the now-deposed Butcher of Baghdad talks of how to mislead weapons inspectors and how easy it would be to attack America clandestinely using biological or chemical weapons - and get away with it.
"We had boxloads of Iraqi Intelligence records - their names, their jobs, all sorts of detailed information," Hayes quotes a former military intelligence saying. "In an insurgency, wouldn't that have been helpful?" You bet it would.
This should be high-priority stuff.
And who knows what else is in the mountain of material yet to be "exploited"?
Beyond that, publicizing evidence that supports America's campaign seems critical to maintaining the backing of the U.S. public, particularly as an anti-Bush, anti-war press seeks to erode it.
That erosion, by the way, won't hurt just Bush - but the war effort as well, and ultimately America. Yet the administration has placed massive restrictions on the release of any material from this trove.
The American public is smart enough to do the right thing - when given the relevant facts. But it increasingly appears that the Bush folks aren't smart enough to do the right thing and release those facts. That's a big problem.
The anti-war left says bad information led America into a war in Iraq it never should have waged. Meanwhile, an anti-war media steadily spreads negative stories that undermine confidence in America's ability to prevail in Iraq.
Clearly, the War on Terror - and specifically, the Iraq campaign - is more dependent on the use (or abuse) of information than most wars. And so it's truly astounding that the Bush folks seem to put so little emphasis on getting good information - and disseminating it to America's advantage.
Consider the reports filed by Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard (a News-Corp sister publication of The Post). Hayes notes that Coalition forces captured some 2 million "exploitable items" (documents, photographs and other textual material) in Iraq and Afghanistan - but Team Bush has actually "exploited" almost none of them.
Judging from just a few that have been made public, this material could bear significantly on the war in Iraq, as well as the broader War on Terror. Yet, nearly three years after America toppled Saddam Hussein, and more than that since the Afghani campaign, the feds have thoroughly examined and, where possible, acted on barely 50,000 of these "exploitable items." Fewer still (by far) have been made public.
Are the Bushies nuts? Some of these documents, Hayes reports, dispel fundamental beliefs about the situation in Iraq - e.g., about relations between Saddam's secular Ba'athists and the religious fanatics of the growing terrorist army.
Many folks claim the secularists never would do business with fundamentalists. The documents suggest otherwise.
Recently, a former weapons inspector, Bill Tierney, made public some 12 hours of tapes of Saddam and top aides, wherein the now-deposed Butcher of Baghdad talks of how to mislead weapons inspectors and how easy it would be to attack America clandestinely using biological or chemical weapons - and get away with it.
"We had boxloads of Iraqi Intelligence records - their names, their jobs, all sorts of detailed information," Hayes quotes a former military intelligence saying. "In an insurgency, wouldn't that have been helpful?" You bet it would.
This should be high-priority stuff.
And who knows what else is in the mountain of material yet to be "exploited"?
Beyond that, publicizing evidence that supports America's campaign seems critical to maintaining the backing of the U.S. public, particularly as an anti-Bush, anti-war press seeks to erode it.
That erosion, by the way, won't hurt just Bush - but the war effort as well, and ultimately America. Yet the administration has placed massive restrictions on the release of any material from this trove.
The American public is smart enough to do the right thing - when given the relevant facts. But it increasingly appears that the Bush folks aren't smart enough to do the right thing and release those facts. That's a big problem.
posted by DiaperHead at 3/09/2006 12:01:00 PM
<< Home