=========== More Short Articles Passionate anti-Semitism Ricin in the mail Poodle leaves sinking ship Army criticises Terror War strategy Iraq's WMD:  Case Closed Asymetric War in Iraq Information Operations Bad news for Bush Stripping Plame of cover Terrorists and Terrorism Experts Polycentric Iraqi Nationalism Bush flight suit mystery Thinking about the Iraqi resistance Public Baffled by Terror Alerts Normal Failures Bush in Free Fall INC and Blowback Google finds Weapons of Mass Destruction More Polls The Timothy McVeigh Finishing School Reinforcing an opinion Legitimacy Borderlands Orwellian Centenary Cognitive Dissonance Heaven and other things Polls, Polls, Polls Where are they now: Eugene Hasenfus More Mass Delusions WMD Trailers NOT NRA rules in Iraq:  Gun confiscation flops About that Anthrax... Another Fine Mess Chaos in Iraq

June 26, 2003

Warbaby writes:

The simplicity of the military mission in Iraq (kill people and blow stuff up) and the complexity of the political situation (trying to establish the legitimacy of our presence there) are working at cross purposes. 

The border incident with Syria is a clear indication that policy-making is slipping out of the hands of the civilians as military considerations begin to drive events.

We discussed the complexity of the situation in Iraq earlier this week. At that time, unbeknownst to the public or the media, a border incident with Syria demonstrates just how rapidly political aspects can be overpowered by military events.

Begining Monday, the story unfolded in a rather haphazard manner.  Early reports in the New York Times claimed that an armed predator drone fired on a convoy of vehicles thought to be carrying Saddam Hussein or other high-ranking Baathists.  As is often the case with breaking news that is under blackout, the Times got all the essential facts wrong.  The Times break on the story contained inconsistancies that slipped past the reporters and editors:  it was claimed the convoy was destoyed by a armed Predator drone firing Hellfire missles.  But the story also suggested there were more than two vehicles and a Predator only carries two rockets.  It is common for initial reports to be garbled and maybe this was just another instance.  But it has also been very common for the Times to be the leading source of administration disinformation.

Later reports amplified the lead on Hussein, saying that DNA testing of the charred remains of the victims was underway.  Some of this cycle of reports said the attack was by an AC-130 Specter gunship -- which at least made more sense than the lone Predator angle.  However, garbles were still evident.  Some of the second wave of reports said the vehicles were cars and others said trucks.  Likewise, there was no real detail in the second wave of stories, just another instance of our killing Saddam (for the fourth or fifth time now.)  This guy is as hard to kill as Castro and as hard to find as Osama Bin Laden.

The picture started to shift with the third round of stories.  Suddenly, there are disclaimers about the possibility it was Saddam.  And the attack was not primarily an air operation, it was led by Task Force 20, the "secret squirrel" special forces unit that has been tearing Iraq apart looking for WMD and not finding them.

Finally, the worm turned completely.  The action included an air attack on a village that killed civilians.  The fighting on the ground crossed over the Syrian border in "hot pursuit."  Syrian border guards were wounded -- "caught in the crossfire" in one statement although nobody has suggested that anyone other than the border guards were shooting at U.S. troops -- and five were in U.S. custody.  Oh, yes.  And it wasn't Saddam Hussein after all.  It was sheep smugglers.

It took a full week for the outline of what really happened to emerge in the press.  Even then, the events are smothered in a shroud of secrecy.  Frankly, it looks like an Elvis sighting gone bad.  And right in the heart of this mess is Task Force 20 -- which is supposed to be on the cutting edge of the search for the AWOL WMD.

And then to cap things off, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld had a press conference which set new standards for why do they even bother talking to the media.  It has to be experienced to be believed, but here are two passages of Rummy at his most uninformative:

Q: As it stands now, the American people do not know whether their
soldiers have encroached into the territory of a nation not directly
involved in the Iraq war. Will there be a formal report on this? And
will you tell us at some point what happened? And if so, can you tell
us when we'll know?

Rumsfeld: Sure. When the dust settles, we may very well -- I don't
know about a formal report. But when the dust settles, we'll know more
about what's been said, and the "senior defense officials" will have
drifted away with their inaccuracies, and everyone will know that
which is available to be known.

Q: But you'll tell us.

Rumsfeld: Isn't it a wonderful world?

====================

Rumsfeld: You know, in life, if you go down one avenue and it's a dead
end, some people would say that's a failure, some would say, "No light
was shed." I would say you've learned something: you've learned that's
a dead end. And in this business, that's what you have to do. You have
to go down a whole series of avenues. And you don't know which one's
going to be something other than a dead end. So I would not answer it
the way you have posed it.

Q: So they're dead ends so far? (Laughter, no response.)