Stardate 20030128.2001

(On Screen): Oog. That was not what I expected. I hoped others would be blindsided, not that I would be.

When I call a situation as wrongly as I did this one, and miss the mark this badly, then it means I'm missing something deep and fundamental. There is something major, something important, something really critical that I don't know about.

If I were a drinker, I'd be getting drunk right now. Since I'm not, I just went to my favorite chocolateer and bought four truffles. (When I go on a binge, I use only the best drugs.)

I have been assuming all along that the real goal of the Bush administration was to actually remove Saddam from power, and that disarmament was being used as an excuse to justify a war of conquest for that purpose. And there seemed to be a lot of evidence that the US was preparing for that eventuality. But I'm beginning to wonder whether maybe it really is disarmament that they're after. If so, they have their heads up their asses and we are in deep shit. Tonight's State of the Union address managed to be deeply ambiguous on that.

Leading up to this, Australian Prime Minister John Howard declared that Iraq was in material breach. United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Jack Straw declared that Iraq was in material breach.

Bush didn't use those words, but the SOTU speech contained an extended section listing weapons which were unaccounted for, and outlining various ways in which the government there clearly is still attempting to lie, delay and deceive. In the quotes which follow, I will highlight some key points, some key phrases, which needed to be said and which were said.

Almost three months ago, the United Nations Security Council gave Saddam Hussein his final chance to disarm. He has shown instead utter contempt for the United Nations and for the opinion of the world.

The 108 U.N. inspectors were sent to conduct--were not sent to conduct a scavenger hunt for hidden materials across a country the size of California. The job of the inspectors is to verify that Iraq's regime is disarming.

It is up to Iraq to show exactly where it is hiding its banned weapons, lay those weapons out for the world to see and destroy them as directed. Nothing like this has happened.

In the last few days, too many people have been trying to shift the terms of discussion to try to pretend that the inspections process can and should proceed on the basis of trying to find weapons even as the government of Iraq continues to try to conceal them and deny that they even exist. And it was essential to emphasize that Res 1441 was a final chance. No chances come after the final chance.

So that part was fine. Then came a litany of weapons or components known to have existed in Iraq when the inspectors left in 1998 which the government there has not accounted for. All of what was listed was from open sources; none of it was news. It included huge amounts of growth medium for culturing anthrax, other growth medium for culturing botulinum toxin, thousands of shells for delivering chemical weapons, and several other things of that kind. I was a little surprised to see that he mentioned the aluminum tubing, given that this particular claim has been disputed. (The tubing was real, but there was a claim of semi-legitimate use for it; it seemed unnecessary to include it because the claim will be a magnet for criticism.)

There were familiar claims of resistance and deception and deliberate subversion of the inspection process, including threats against anyone in Iraq who helps the inspectors out.

Then there was this:

And this Congress and the American people must recognize another threat. Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaida. Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own.

Support for Palestinian terrorism is public knowledge. The Iraqi government has always done that openly and has boasted about it. There's also the Ansar al-Islam group operating in northern Iraq. The question is whether this is a reference to something beyond that, and if so whether the Bush administration actually intends to reveal more about that.

There's also been an attempt by many to try to cast the US as the villains of the piece, and try to make Saddam seem like an innocent victim of brutal American aggression. To counter that, there was a demonization of Saddam and his government, emphasizing torture of men and women and children. All of that was important to include, but again none of the charges were surprising. All those claims have been made long since.

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?

If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.

OK, this part is fine, too; what he's defending is the ideal of doing unto them before they do unto us. It's an attempt to make clear that we're willing to attack others because we have good reason to believe that they're planning something awful for us, and the only way to stop that is to get them first.

And tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq: Your enemy is not surrounding your country, your enemy is ruling your country. And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation.

That part's fine, too; there's a strong implication that the real goal here is to depose Saddam. That's good; it's not just about getting rid of the weapons. Only it may not really mean that.

So we have Saddam being given a final chance last November, and not really accepting it. We have him clearly in "material breach", even if those words weren't used. We have lots of weapons materials unaccounted for, which were not included in the December 7 report, which Iraq denies any knowledge of, and has made no satisfactory accounting of. We have a claim that he's cooperating with terrorists, explicitly including al Qaeda, and an expression of concern that he might accidentally slip some of those weapons to the terrorists who might smuggle them in to our nation or those of our allies. (We don't have any indication of whether that means "close allies" or "weasel allies", but let that pass.) We have a claim of a right to preemptively attack others in order to prevent them from attacking us. And we have mentions of Iraqi liberation, a hand held out to the Iraqi people to try to get them to think of themselves as being on our side, against Saddam.

So what is the payoff? What's the grand plan? What happens next?

More fucking around with the UN. That's what. The grand plan is to try to pass yet another bozo Security Council resolution. The war in Iraq will be fought in New York.

The United States will ask the U.N. Security Council to convene on February the 5th to consider the facts of Iraq's ongoing defiance of the world. Secretary of State Powell will present information and intelligence about Iraqi's--Iraq's illegal weapons programs, its attempts to hide those weapons from inspectors and its links to terrorist groups.

We will consult, but let there be no misunderstanding: If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm for the safety of our people, and for the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him.

That's it? Consultation with allies? More horseshit in the UN building? That's the grand plan?

I've given up trying to guess what the hell is going on. I don't have a clue as to what that new UNSC resolution will actually say.

I know what I want it to be. I know what I hope happens next. I hope that more supporting evidence is released, and not simply more rehashing of information from open sources. We need at least one shock revelation. And then I want to see a request for an authorization for war. And a refusal to negotiate on the terms, a refusal to water it down, a refusal to delay, a refusal to "give more time for the inspections to work".

What I hope that this does is to pin both Germany and France against the wall. Germany doesn't matter, France is the problem. Russia is now making noises like it might not oppose war after all, and if everyone else is in favor I don't think China will want to be the odd man out. Their only reason to want to oppose the resolution would be in hopes of trying to get something from us in exchange for a "yes" vote; they have no direct interest in the issue at all. France is the problem.

And that's one of the things I'm afraid of here, because I'm afraid that one of the possible answers here has been that the government of France has been doing a bit of a back-channel auction. We could convince the French government to change its mind by promising to honor the oil deals France made with Saddam even after Saddam is gone. But if it comes out that the Bush administration really does make that deal, I'm going to be severely pissed off.

At this point I wouldn't even be slightly surprised if the new marvelous resolution is yet another demand for Iraqi cooperation again threatening unspecified consequences and offering yet another deadline. Just like the last sixteen times over the course of 12 years.

But if the actual detailed case against Iraq which gets revealed really is damning, and if the resolution in turn does not turn out to be yet another "last chance" but rather is a straightforward authorization for war, and if we hold firm to it, then it has a chance of redeeming the situation. Anything less and the weasels win.

The second paragraph above seems to be yet another threat to act even without the UN, but it also talks not about deposing Saddam but of disarming him. So what if Saddam actually does declare tomorrow, "OK, I admit it; you can find the anthrax over there and there's some uranium buried in the back yard, and here are the records we've been hiding." The chance of that is damned near negligible, but if he actually does do that, then what of the "brave and oppressed people of Iraq"? Do they get to have Saddam stay in power after all?

Is the goal taking Saddam out, or disarming him? Is disarmament a means or an end? Are we being Machiavellian, or are we idiots? I'm not sure I even understand anymore just what the hell they think they're trying to accomplish. I'm not even convinced that they know. Bush was supposed to make a real decision; I'm not sure it's actually happened yet.

There are some relevant external events, and I've been hearing some hints. First of all, I massively underestimated how important Turkey was considered to be. I was thinking of it as a means of attacking the Iraqi forces (which we don't need, or so I thought), but it may be seen as a way of moving forces in to defend the Kurds and possibly to deal with Ansar al-Islam. Whatever it is, it seems to be worth a lot because we just greased their palms big-time, or at least offered to if they cooperate in the war. And given that we haven't even made a deal with them yet, let alone deployed forces there, then it's evident that military preparations are not considered to be ready. If so, another week or two of diplomatic wrangling doesn't hurt the military process because the troops won't be ready anyway.

But once they are, I don't want them sitting around any longer than absolutely necessary. It increases the risk of them becoming targets of some sort of surprise attack, and it keeps them from their families.

I've been getting hints from other places that in general the deployment of forces is not going as fast as planned. My own thought that they would actually do a phase-deployment, with forces moving in after others had moved out, in order to avoid a fat target for WMDs looks to have been wrong, too.

At least I hope I'm wrong. Because another possibility here is one I touched on last Saturday:

If American and British intelligence have come to believe that Iraq has one or two working nukes which can be fit into a Scud, then it means that attempting to induce an Iraqi coup or surrender is much, much to be preferred over a straightforward military conquest. If they think that there's still a significant chance of inducing a coup and surrender, then they may have decided it's worth taking a bit more time to bring that about.

At the time I dismissed this, but maybe I shouldn't have. There's this report from last year which says there is one. There's an American named Tierney who was one of the inspectors in the 1990's who's convinced it is true. For one thing, we can't dismiss the possibility that North Korea sold one to Iraq.

And if that's the case, then that "message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq" is actually Bush on his knees begging someone in Iraq to stage a coup.

But if this is really what is worrying him, then why would we concentrate forces in Kuwait to make exactly such a fat target for a nuke? And if that's not it, then what the fuck is really going on? Could it really be nothing more than the fact that the deployment is going slowly?

What we got tonight was strange. He made a case for kissing off the UN and moving, and then decided not to do so.

There may be other things going on, too. There appears to be a power struggle going on in Europe within the EU, with France and Germany on one side and the UK and Spain and Italy on the other. It's being played right now on the field of decisions about Iraq, but it's not really about Iraq, and it may be that Blair is afraid that if we did kiss off the UN that it would mean winning in Iraq but losing in Europe, which would be bad for us and catastrophic for him.

So maybe the idea is to use the request for the second UNSC resolution as a way of aiding Blair in the European power struggle by shoving Germany and France into a corner and forcing them to unequivocally decide whose side they are on. If a formal resolution authorizing combat is proposed, and if we refuse to delay a decision, and if we refuse to let it be amended, then eventually they have to go on the record as to whether they support Saddam or support us. If the promised presentation about Iraq to be made by Powell is much more damning than what was intimated tonight, then it could allow us to cast the argument in terms of "supporting a vile torturing dictator" instead of "opposing war because war is always wrong". And in that case they're damned either way, because if they vote for a resolution after all their rhetoric they'll look spineless, but if they vote against then they can be painted as supporting a murderous torturing dictator.

I hope that's the case, but I'll be damned if I have any idea whether it will be.

What I hoped for tonight was another Bush masterstroke, which recast the entire debate. I didn't get it. What I got was a cogent case for action, followed by...

Well, not much of anything. No clear statement of policy. No real commitment. No principle. Mixed signals; lots and lots of mixed signals. Expressions of resolve that don't seem to actually resolve to do anything. Tough talk but no apparent follow-through. (And no weasel pelts hanging from the wall.) It looked like someone talking tough and hoping not to have to actually fight. It felt uncomfortably like the extended exercise in "tightening the diplomatic pressure" which was so unsuccessful in Yugoslavia over the course of several years. It felt like listening to Bill Clinton.

It sounded as if Bush desperately wants there to be a coup in Iraq, or some other miracle which would save him from actually having to order an attack.

We will consult, but let there be no misunderstanding: If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm for the safety of our people, and for the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him.

Let there be no misunderstanding: if there are no American soldiers patrolling the streets of Baghdad on May 1, we are all royally fucked.