{"id":9118,"date":"2007-05-25T10:10:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-25T17:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=9118"},"modified":"2007-05-25T10:10:00","modified_gmt":"2007-05-25T17:10:00","slug":"modus-operandi-updated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=9118","title":{"rendered":"Modus Operandi (UPDATED)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Addressing the new report set to be released today by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence—including, tangentially, how it is likely to be framed by the media—Dan Collins, in an email, parses this<\/a> MSNBC story, which (predictably) begins thus:<\/p>\n

\n


\n
\n“In a move sure to raise even more questions about the decision to go to war with Iraq, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will on Friday release selected portions of pre-war intelligence in which the CIA warned the administration of the risk and consequences of a conflict in the Middle East.\n<\/p>\n

\n“Among other things, the 40-page Senate report reveals that two intelligence assessments before the war accurately predicted that toppling Saddam could lead to a dangerous period of internal violence and provide a boost to terrorists. But those warnings were seemingly ignored.”<\/tt>\n<\/p>\n

\nCould.  Seemingly.\n<\/p>\n

\n“In January 2003, two months before the invasion, the intelligence community’s think tank \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the National Intelligence Council \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u009d issued an assessment warning that after Saddam was toppled, there was \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201ca significant chance that domestic groups would engage in violent conflict with each other and that rogue Saddam loyalists would wage guerilla warfare either by themselves or in alliance with terrorists.\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d <\/tt>\n<\/p>\n

\nWell, isn’t that interesting?  And what prompted the suspicion that it might be in alliance with terrorists?\n<\/p>\n

\n“[...] Both assessments were given to the White House and to congressional intelligence committees.”<\/tt>\n<\/p>\n

\nOh.  So you mean Congress had them?\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cThese should have been very sobering reports,\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d says Michael O\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2Hanlon, military analyst at the Brookings Institution. \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cThe administration should have taken them very serious in preparing plans for a difficult post-Saddam period. And yet the administration did not do so.\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d<\/tt>\n<\/p>\n

\nOh.  Should Congress have “taken them very serious”ly?  Who else should have, Mr. O’Hanlon?\n<\/p>\n

\nSeems to me that, for whatever reason, we’ve not had the inevitable next 9-11 in this country.  Seems to me, perhaps that is because militant Islamists have had to refocus their resources.  Seems to me that people are forgetting what Bush said about this war, that it would be long and arduous, and that much of what was accomplished would be accomplished out of sight of the American people.<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\nSeems to me that elements within the CIA, with the support of people such as Mr. O’Hanlon, believe that they ought to, if not actually do, constitute a shadow government.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

[My emphasis.]<\/p>\n

\nDan issues an important reminder of what Bush (and Rumsfeld) actually said<\/i> about the war.  Which—again, and predictably—the NBC report goes out of its way to avoid addressing.  Instead, it gives us this:<\/p>\n

\n

None of those warnings were reflected in the administration’s predictions about the war.\n<\/p>\n

\nIn fact, Vice President Cheney stated the day before the war, \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cNow, I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d\n<\/p>\n

\n[…]\n<\/p>\n

\nIt is likely that Democrats and Republicans on the Hill will question how the administration could have predicted a short, easy war given these warnings and why it has taken more four years for them to surface.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nThe war to depose Saddam was, in fact, remarkably short.  And yes, warnings about post-Saddam Iraq—all couched in qualifying CYA language of “could” or “might”—have proven true, though it is NOT true that Iraqis want us out of the country now.\n<\/p>\n

\nEventually, yes.  Inevitably, yes.  But not now—not while they are still vulnerable.  At least, if you can believe the polls—which, again, the US and international press have gone out of their way to spin negatively.\n<\/p>\n

\nExamine, if you will, what the anti-war press has done here in trying to shape the overarching narrative of Iraq.  First, it has placed the blame on the Administration for its failure NOT to dismiss CIA intel about WMDs—shared by virtually every intelligence service in the world, and backed to this day by several reports (the “stockpiles” have never been found, but the ability to quickly make and mobilize weapons has)—spinning that, with the help of furiously backpeddling and cowardly Democrats (with certain exceptions, Bob Kerrey and Joe Lieberman notable among them), into the suggestion that Bush, having weighed the bulk of the intelligence, “lied” about WMDs and “misled” us into war.  Of course, Congress had access to that same intelligence—and it was a Democratic administration that, too, was certain about Saddam’s danger—but that fact is consistently bracketed from the Iraq war narrative as it has been consistently pushed by Democrats and the press.\n<\/p>\n

\nToo, what the press fails to mention, in the wake of all this backpeddling by Congressional Democrats, is why<\/i> we, as an electorate, should trust them on national security if they can be so easily “misled” by intelligence they themselves had access to (which they most certainly did, though they will cavil and squirm about certain intel they didn’t<\/i> have access to that the President did, as if the President was poring through raw intel data).\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd the reason the press avoids the topic is because no one with any access to the intel truly believes<\/i> that Bush “misled” us into war—though the Democrats have managed to get their anti-war contingent and allies in the press to parrot these assertions, without risk of having it pointed out that were such true, the Democrats have, as a group, proven themselves either inept or unserious, and ill-prepared to defend the country.  Instead, it is precisely because the Congressional Democrats believed the CIA’s pre-war intelligence assessment about WMDs<\/i> that so many Democrats made so many strong statements regarding the danger Saddam posed.\n<\/p>\n

\nRemember, John Edwards, vice-presidential candidate in 2004 and current anti-war presidential hopeful, was explicit:  he was NOT misled<\/a>, and the intel absolutely supported the Administration’s assertions about WMD. \n<\/p>\n

\nWhich he either admitted to because he wanted to appear strong on security (while he didn’t really believe what he was saying, which would make him an opportunist and a liar); or else he was certain that the WMDs would eventually turn up, and he—and the Democrats who authorized the use of force—could not afford to be caught on the wrong side of such a find, which would have left them marginalized completely on national security issues (making him either a supporter of the war, or a political opportunist and a liar).\n<\/p>\n

\nHere, I’d normally add that the Democrats can’t have it both ways, but it’s apparent that such an assessment is based on the old rules of rationalism, and an old Enlightenment paradigm in which epistemology was based on internal consistencies in reasoning.  Which is no longer the case, evidently.  Because they CAN have it both ways, and indeed they continue<\/i> to have it both ways—thanks, in large part, to the aid of the press in shaping the Iraq narrative, and to the willingness of “progressives” and anti-war types to either completely ignore the contradictions, or else to internalize them and conclude that they don’t matter, so long as the goal of regaining power is met.  The linguistic turn; the ability of the receiver to control meaning; the will to power.  Sound familiar?\n<\/p>\n

\nIn short, this coalition of the like-minded have decided to pretend<\/i> that the logical problems within its mise en scenes<\/i> don’t exist in order to push a particular narrative that it hopes will sell its world view to the American people.\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd it is working, sadly—again thanks to a press that is either complicit or else completely incurious and pre-disposed to believe whatever happens to track with their own ideological biases, coupled with an electorate that is not very politically engaged, and that continues to get the majority of its information from a mainstream media that has consistently framed that information in a way that foregrounds disaster, conflict, scandal, and failure, using the rhetorical tropes of emotional appeal and appeal to (selective) authority.\n<\/p>\n

\nSecond, we are being asked—in light of all this—to believe, in the wake of today’s report, that the same CIA whose intelligence assessment Bush should have dismissed in the run-up to the war<\/i> is now heroic for its prediction of post-war events, and that the Administration was somehow derelict, and didn’t take those predictions “very serious”.\n<\/p>\n

\nBut if this is true—and on what basis (other than hindsight and a desire to spin events to make our difficulties in post-Saddam Iraq an error of hubris rather than a tactical and strategic blunder brought about by a desire to fight a “clean” war and to establish, immediately after Saddam’s fall, a civilian authority) can this be said to be the case, without devolving into insulting conspiracy theories?—why did Bush and Rumsfeld go out of their way to note, after the fall of Saddam, that we were in for a long hard slog?\n<\/p>\n

\nThe answer is, as far as I’m concerned, because the Administration did indeed<\/i> take the CIA reports “very serious,” but thought—having also<\/i> accepted the CIA’s assessment on intel about WMDs (and given the “inevitability,” as many were saying, of subsequent attacks here at home)—that the risk was a necessary one, and that a post-Saddam guerila war was the price we might have to pay for deposing a despot who everyone believed (and that intel now shows) was an unstable actor with a history of animus toward the US, one who, armed with WMD, was a prime candidate to wage a proxy war against us using an alliance of convenience with terrorists.\n<\/p>\n

\nOnly by consistently imputing bad-faith motives to the Administration—and by covering for the opportunism, cynicism, and inconsistencies of the anti-war Democrats—can the press even run stories such as this one, whose main intent seems to be to suggest, yet again, that Bushco, in the wake of terrorist attacks and an anthrax scare, should have been prescient enough to know in advance everything we’ve now learned through hindsight.\n<\/p>\n

\nWorse, this suggestion is often accompanied by the (incongruous) intimation that the Bushies were<\/i> just this prescient, but that they went ahead with the war anyway—duping the Democrats in the process—so that they could, uh, find themselves in an unpopular war, with gas prices the highest in memory?  Put themselves in a position to lose both Houses of Congress as well as the Presidency?
\n
\n
\n
\nAll so that Bush could avenge his daddy and enrich his oil buddies.<\/i>\n<\/p>\n

\nThis is what we are being asked to believe—and people like Joy Behar<\/a>, already predisposed to hating Republicans (having been raised to believe Democrats are always the good guys, as was I), lap it up and regurgitate it on cue, so assured in their outrage that they find no need to carefully examine the facts.\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd this is precisely the template upon which today’s progressives operate—just as Behar is precisely the kind of useful idiot that will weaken our political system out of sheer intellectual laziness.\n<\/p>\n

\nBecause she has learned to equate, falsely, the heat of her indignation with both the strength of her arguments and the rigor of her thinking.  And, like her compatriot Rosie O’Donnell, she seems to believe that being loud and blustery and self-righteous is enough to justify an aversion to facts.\n<\/p>\n

\nCall it an embrace of the “fallacy of proof,”<\/a> I suppose.\n<\/p>\n

\nPersonally, I’m not at all surprised this is where we’ve wound up.  But then, I’m a bit of a scholar of culture, and I had the great forture of watching it crafted, packaged, and sold while spending nearly a decade in a Humanities department.\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd I’ve concluded that until we are able to take back the press—something I would do that by forcing them out into the open about their biases and embracing a media that didn’t pretend toward objectivity in their analysis<\/i>—and find some sort of market alternative to the current acadamy, we are in for a long hard slog, one that will become increasingly difficult if a Democratic President is able to place liberal activists on the Supreme Court.\n<\/p>\n

\nI know—not the best way to start off your day, is it?\n<\/p>\n

\nBut hey, if you think that’s<\/i> bad, you should try it with a pulled rib cage muscle…\n<\/p>\n

\n****
\n
\nupdate<\/i><\/b>:  Shockingly, Tbogg sees things differently<\/a>.  After quoting this portion of my post:<\/p>\n

\n

The war to depose Saddam was, in fact, remarkably short. And yes, warnings about post-Saddam Iraq\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u009dall couched in qualifying CYA language of \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201ccould\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d or \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cmight\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u009dhave proven true, though it is NOT true that Iraqis want us out of the country now.\n<\/p>\n

\nEventually, yes. Inevitably, yes. But not now\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u009dnot while they are still vulnerable. At least, if you can believe the polls\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u009dwhich, again, the US and international press have gone out of their way to spin negatively.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

—Tbogg cites a number of poll results that, well, spin the findings to make it appear Iraqis want an immediate US withdrawal, before adding the quip:<\/p>\n

\n

Obviously the “otherness” of the Iraqis prevents them from seeing how these poll questions have been “framed” and therefore their responses are epistemologically suspect.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nWell, not really.  Iraqi leaders have made it a point to ask the US to stay, and while there is a growing disconnect in the messages being sent<\/a> by the Iraqi government and the populace<\/a>, (see also, here<\/a>) many recent poll results suggest that Iraqis want the US to leave “within a year”, with half that number wishing us to leave with 6 months (taken Sept 2006).\n<\/p>\n

\nWhich is, of course, different from immediate withdrawal (or, as I put it, “now”)—and is different, too, than having the US withdraw on a timetable tied to benchmarks for progress.  Meaning that Tbogg has made my point for me:  I noted that Iraqis wanted us to leave eventually and inevitably, just not now.  For his part, Tbogg spins this into a suggestion that they do, in fact, wish up to leave immediately—then throws in some snark to try to discredit me with readers who believe all this talk about “framing” and “epistemology” and “otherness” is just so much hogwash.\n<\/p>\n

\nWhich, sadly, is not a position these same folks take when it comes to their academic work.\n<\/p>\n

\nHowever, I will say this:  if the Iraqi parliament votes to ask US troops to leave immediately—which would mark a departure from some of the Iraqi government’s previously expressed wishes—we should certainly respect the request.  But let’s not forget this<\/a> story, which presents a caveat that we haven’t heard trumpeted by the mainstream media:<\/p>\n

\n

Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman said he had backed the draft but only on the condition that the withdrawal timetable be linked to a schedule for training and equipping Iraq\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s security forces.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cBut the sponsors of the legislation did not include our observations in the draft. This is deception,\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d he said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nDeception, spin—you say tomato, I say bias by omission.\n<\/p>\n

\nHope that clears things up.\n<\/p>\n

\nAlthough I doubt it:  tbogg, not being a warmongering conservathug himself, is in no position to understand what I’m saying.  And I’m outraged that he would even presume to do so.  I mean, he’s like that presumptuous Bernard Lewis, only with a fraction of the education and an employee discount at the food court\n<\/p>\n

\nStop trying to colonize me, tbogg.  Your hegemony is showing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Addressing the new report set to be released today by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence—including, tangentially, how it is likely to be framed by the media—Dan Collins, in an email, parses this MSNBC story, which (predictably) begins thus: “In a move sure to raise even more questions about the decision to go to war with Iraq, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will on Friday release selected portions of<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":9196393,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9196393"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}