T. Friedman convinces me that if a Bush Pres. was going to invade Iraq, the wrong one invaded. We invaded Iraq not too soon, but 10 years too late.
The Suicide Supply Chain
Thomas L. Friedman
The New York Times
December 9, 2004
From what I can tell from the new organizational flow chart for U.S. intelligence that Congress adopted yesterday, it is a god-awful combination of new titles and jobs at the top, without clear lines of authority to the people on the ground. One thing I've learned from 25 years in the newspaper business (which is just another form of intelligence gathering) is this: Whenever you add a new layer of editors on top of reporters, and don't get rid of some of the old layer of editors, all you get is trouble. You get less intelligent.
The right way to improve U.S. intelligence is to get more people on the ground who speak the languages we need and who can think unconventionally. If that sounds blindingly obvious to you, it is, but it is precisely the shortage of such people that explains to me America's greatest intelligence failure in Iraq - a failure we are paying for dearly right now. You see, we didn't invade Iraq too soon. We actually invaded 10 years too late.
Let me explain: America's greatest intelligence failure in Iraq was not the W.M.D. we thought were there, but weren't. It was the P.M.D. we thought weren't there, but were. P.M.D., in my lexicon, stands for "people of mass destruction." And there were far more of them in Iraq than anyone realized. The failure of U.S. intelligence to understand what was happening inside Iraqi society during the decade-plus of U.N. sanctions that preceded our invasion is the key to many of the problems we've encountered in post-Saddam Iraq.
The U.N. sanctions pulverized Iraqi society - a society already beaten down by an eight-year Iran-Iraq war, the war over Kuwait and some 30 years of Saddam's tyranny. As Saddamism and sanctions chewed up the Iraqi people during the 1990's, many people of talent left. Before the war, the Bush team told anyone who would listen that Iraq had the most talented secular elite in the Arab world. And it was right. The only problem was that during the 1990's many in that elite moved to Amman, Damascus, Beirut, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Cairo, where they worked as professors, music teachers and engineers.
Meanwhile, back in Iraq, those who had no access to Baath Party privileges got steadily ground down. Many Iraqi youth, unable to connect with the outside world and unable to find jobs at home, turned to religion. Saddam encouraged this with a mosque-building program. By wrapping himself in an aura of Islam, Saddam also hoped to buttress his own waning legitimacy. So Wahhabi religious influence flowed into the Sunni areas from Saudi Arabia, as Iranian religious influence flowed into Shiite regions.
You know all those masked Iraqi youth you see in the Al Jazeera videos, brandishing weapons and standing over some foreigner whose head they are about saw off? They are the product of the last decade of Saddamism and sanctions. Those youth were 10 years old when the U.N. sanctions began. They are the mushrooms that Saddam and the sanctions were growing in the dark. The Bush team had no clue they were there.
These deracinated, unemployed, humiliated Sunni Iraqi youth are our biggest problem today. Some clearly have become suicide bombers. We can't say what percentage, because, unlike the Palestinians, the Iraqi suicide bombers don't even bother to tell us their names or do a farewell video for mom. They not only are ready to commit suicide on demand, but they are ready to do it anonymously. That bespeaks a very high level of commitment or psychosis, or both.
I would estimate that U.S. forces have been hit with over 200 of these human missiles, and we still are not sure how they are recruited and deployed. What we are facing, I think, is a crude underground suicide supply chain - a mutant combination of Wal-Mart and Wahhabism.
Its organizers appear to use word of mouth, and the Internet, to recruit suicide bombers from Iraq and the wider Muslim world. These bombers are ferried down the supply chain to bomb makers in the field, who get them wired up and deploy them against U.S. and Iraqi targets tactically.
This is not haphazard. These bombings are timed for maximum effect. That means the insurgents are quite confident about their supply of bombers. It's just like Wal-Mart's supply chain: you buy an item in a Wal-Mart in Arkansas, and another one is immediately made in China. In Iraq, you deploy a suicide bomber in Baghdad, and another one is immediately manufactured in Mosul or Riyadh.
When we have people in U.S. intelligence who can explain how that organizational flow chart works, I'll feel safer.
_______________
The foregoing on invading Iraq not too soon but rather ten years too late reminds me of something I wrote in a 10-05-04 post:
I have tried unsuccessfully to get what I am fixing to relate to Sen. Edwards' campaign prior to tonight's Vice Presidential debate. It concerns something Dick Cheney said while he was a private citizen on the lecture circuit about halfway between his service to Bush I as Secretary of Defense and becoming part of the Bush II team as Vice President.
What I heard I feel certain was said over and over as Mr. Cheney was on a lecture across the country. Some of the same thoughts are in Bush I's book, but dern if you hear anyting about it from the Kerry camp.
The lecture was at the Florida Theater in Jacksonville, Florida, as part of something called the Florida Forum Series. This series seeks to bring some of the world's most widely known public figures to Jacksonville, Florida, with the series benefiting Wolfson Children's Hospital.
The last lecture I attended there was in September 2002, and the lecturer was Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a fascinating evening program and presentation wise.
Anyway, when Cheney was in Jacksonville in the mid-90's, he had no reason to fabricate, exaggerate, etc. Bush I had been retired, and Bush II was still just a cowboy.
After a fascinating lecture, a person in the audience asked the following question: Mr. Secretary, after American troops and U.S. led forces liberated Kuwait, why did we stop at Iraq's southern border; why didn't we go on to Baghdad and take Suddam out.
I remember the respond as if it were this morning, someone having asked a question about which so many Americans such as myself had wondered.
Two reasons citizen Cheney said: First, the history of this region of the world and our own intelligence convinced us that as bad as Suddam was, his not being there would probably be worse. Without question the whole area could be rendered less stable, and just as surely civil war between the Shiites, Sunni and the Kurds would erupt, with more fighting and bloodshed that the liberation of Kuwait had involved.
And second and equally important reason he stated, was that the coalition was not with us; it strongly opposed and would not support going on to Baghdad. And just as was the case with the decison to retake Kuwait, having the coalition was deemed imperative.
But shift the clock forward several years, and Bob Woodward in his book Plan of Attack tells us that Cheney, unlike Powell, could not wait to get back to Iraq.
Thus if I were asking the questions tonight, I would ask the Veep how were things different in 1992 and 2002. If there were not WMD's and a link with bin Laden, had history changed; was having the coalition no longer important?
(In a 9-23-04 post I provided another theory of mine as to why we went in, something I don't really think is true because I don't want it to be, even though I feel I have blood on my hands. The post provided:
This whole thing sort of reminds me of something that happened in 1991 when the Vice President was Secretary of Defense, and is a pet theory of mine of providing at least part of the answer as to why Cheney was so bound and determined to invade Iraq and get Hussein, with or without supporting evidence, and with or without the coalition we had when we went in Kuwait.
After American troops and U.S. led forces liberated Kuwait and then stopped at Iraq's southern border, Bush I encouraged Kurds in northern Iraq and Shiite Muslims in the south to take matters into their own hands and get rid of Suddam.
Such groups, and especially the Kurds, did just that, rising in revolt against Suddam. But no help was forthcoming from America, as Bush I withheld American military support when their uprisings drew savage retribution from Baghdad.
It is something that I wish I could forget but cannot. I have never blamed Bush I for this per se; rather it is something I regard as America as a country getting blood on its hands.)
Thomas L. Friedman
The New York Times
December 9, 2004
From what I can tell from the new organizational flow chart for U.S. intelligence that Congress adopted yesterday, it is a god-awful combination of new titles and jobs at the top, without clear lines of authority to the people on the ground. One thing I've learned from 25 years in the newspaper business (which is just another form of intelligence gathering) is this: Whenever you add a new layer of editors on top of reporters, and don't get rid of some of the old layer of editors, all you get is trouble. You get less intelligent.
The right way to improve U.S. intelligence is to get more people on the ground who speak the languages we need and who can think unconventionally. If that sounds blindingly obvious to you, it is, but it is precisely the shortage of such people that explains to me America's greatest intelligence failure in Iraq - a failure we are paying for dearly right now. You see, we didn't invade Iraq too soon. We actually invaded 10 years too late.
Let me explain: America's greatest intelligence failure in Iraq was not the W.M.D. we thought were there, but weren't. It was the P.M.D. we thought weren't there, but were. P.M.D., in my lexicon, stands for "people of mass destruction." And there were far more of them in Iraq than anyone realized. The failure of U.S. intelligence to understand what was happening inside Iraqi society during the decade-plus of U.N. sanctions that preceded our invasion is the key to many of the problems we've encountered in post-Saddam Iraq.
The U.N. sanctions pulverized Iraqi society - a society already beaten down by an eight-year Iran-Iraq war, the war over Kuwait and some 30 years of Saddam's tyranny. As Saddamism and sanctions chewed up the Iraqi people during the 1990's, many people of talent left. Before the war, the Bush team told anyone who would listen that Iraq had the most talented secular elite in the Arab world. And it was right. The only problem was that during the 1990's many in that elite moved to Amman, Damascus, Beirut, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Cairo, where they worked as professors, music teachers and engineers.
Meanwhile, back in Iraq, those who had no access to Baath Party privileges got steadily ground down. Many Iraqi youth, unable to connect with the outside world and unable to find jobs at home, turned to religion. Saddam encouraged this with a mosque-building program. By wrapping himself in an aura of Islam, Saddam also hoped to buttress his own waning legitimacy. So Wahhabi religious influence flowed into the Sunni areas from Saudi Arabia, as Iranian religious influence flowed into Shiite regions.
You know all those masked Iraqi youth you see in the Al Jazeera videos, brandishing weapons and standing over some foreigner whose head they are about saw off? They are the product of the last decade of Saddamism and sanctions. Those youth were 10 years old when the U.N. sanctions began. They are the mushrooms that Saddam and the sanctions were growing in the dark. The Bush team had no clue they were there.
These deracinated, unemployed, humiliated Sunni Iraqi youth are our biggest problem today. Some clearly have become suicide bombers. We can't say what percentage, because, unlike the Palestinians, the Iraqi suicide bombers don't even bother to tell us their names or do a farewell video for mom. They not only are ready to commit suicide on demand, but they are ready to do it anonymously. That bespeaks a very high level of commitment or psychosis, or both.
I would estimate that U.S. forces have been hit with over 200 of these human missiles, and we still are not sure how they are recruited and deployed. What we are facing, I think, is a crude underground suicide supply chain - a mutant combination of Wal-Mart and Wahhabism.
Its organizers appear to use word of mouth, and the Internet, to recruit suicide bombers from Iraq and the wider Muslim world. These bombers are ferried down the supply chain to bomb makers in the field, who get them wired up and deploy them against U.S. and Iraqi targets tactically.
This is not haphazard. These bombings are timed for maximum effect. That means the insurgents are quite confident about their supply of bombers. It's just like Wal-Mart's supply chain: you buy an item in a Wal-Mart in Arkansas, and another one is immediately made in China. In Iraq, you deploy a suicide bomber in Baghdad, and another one is immediately manufactured in Mosul or Riyadh.
When we have people in U.S. intelligence who can explain how that organizational flow chart works, I'll feel safer.
_______________
The foregoing on invading Iraq not too soon but rather ten years too late reminds me of something I wrote in a 10-05-04 post:
I have tried unsuccessfully to get what I am fixing to relate to Sen. Edwards' campaign prior to tonight's Vice Presidential debate. It concerns something Dick Cheney said while he was a private citizen on the lecture circuit about halfway between his service to Bush I as Secretary of Defense and becoming part of the Bush II team as Vice President.
What I heard I feel certain was said over and over as Mr. Cheney was on a lecture across the country. Some of the same thoughts are in Bush I's book, but dern if you hear anyting about it from the Kerry camp.
The lecture was at the Florida Theater in Jacksonville, Florida, as part of something called the Florida Forum Series. This series seeks to bring some of the world's most widely known public figures to Jacksonville, Florida, with the series benefiting Wolfson Children's Hospital.
The last lecture I attended there was in September 2002, and the lecturer was Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a fascinating evening program and presentation wise.
Anyway, when Cheney was in Jacksonville in the mid-90's, he had no reason to fabricate, exaggerate, etc. Bush I had been retired, and Bush II was still just a cowboy.
After a fascinating lecture, a person in the audience asked the following question: Mr. Secretary, after American troops and U.S. led forces liberated Kuwait, why did we stop at Iraq's southern border; why didn't we go on to Baghdad and take Suddam out.
I remember the respond as if it were this morning, someone having asked a question about which so many Americans such as myself had wondered.
Two reasons citizen Cheney said: First, the history of this region of the world and our own intelligence convinced us that as bad as Suddam was, his not being there would probably be worse. Without question the whole area could be rendered less stable, and just as surely civil war between the Shiites, Sunni and the Kurds would erupt, with more fighting and bloodshed that the liberation of Kuwait had involved.
And second and equally important reason he stated, was that the coalition was not with us; it strongly opposed and would not support going on to Baghdad. And just as was the case with the decison to retake Kuwait, having the coalition was deemed imperative.
But shift the clock forward several years, and Bob Woodward in his book Plan of Attack tells us that Cheney, unlike Powell, could not wait to get back to Iraq.
Thus if I were asking the questions tonight, I would ask the Veep how were things different in 1992 and 2002. If there were not WMD's and a link with bin Laden, had history changed; was having the coalition no longer important?
(In a 9-23-04 post I provided another theory of mine as to why we went in, something I don't really think is true because I don't want it to be, even though I feel I have blood on my hands. The post provided:
This whole thing sort of reminds me of something that happened in 1991 when the Vice President was Secretary of Defense, and is a pet theory of mine of providing at least part of the answer as to why Cheney was so bound and determined to invade Iraq and get Hussein, with or without supporting evidence, and with or without the coalition we had when we went in Kuwait.
After American troops and U.S. led forces liberated Kuwait and then stopped at Iraq's southern border, Bush I encouraged Kurds in northern Iraq and Shiite Muslims in the south to take matters into their own hands and get rid of Suddam.
Such groups, and especially the Kurds, did just that, rising in revolt against Suddam. But no help was forthcoming from America, as Bush I withheld American military support when their uprisings drew savage retribution from Baghdad.
It is something that I wish I could forget but cannot. I have never blamed Bush I for this per se; rather it is something I regard as America as a country getting blood on its hands.)
posted by Sid Cottingham | 8:00 AM
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