Burnt Orange Report

I hope the capture of Saddam leads to a prompt withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq with no additional casualties.
But we've lost more service people since May 1st ("Mission Accomplished") than we did during the "official" war. So only time will tell what effect this capture will have on the conflict.

If Dubya had any brains, he would declare victory and leave Iraq ASAP. But we all know that's not going to happen.
Brace yourselves for another well choreographed photo opportunity featuring the nation's chief executive in military garb.

Now what do you do with Hussein? Any sense of legitimacy requires that he be tried by an Iraqi court system. The US cannot try him because he did not commit crimes against the US- he committed crimes against his own people. Currently, there is no independent Iraqi government - we are running the show. Any attempt to try him in a Iraqi system before it is completely independent will just look like a sham.

God forbid we just kill him. Then he will become a Martyr, and we will look like international jackases for fighting for the rule of law, and then completely disregard the rule of law.

If we turn him over to the Iraqis at this point we will see a replay of what happened to Ceaucescu, where a Romanian mob literally tore the former Dictator and his wife limb from limb. No rule of law there.

The best we can do is just detain him for an indefinite amount of time until the Iraqi political & judicial infrastructure is independent and then turn him over to the Iraqis.

Of course, there will be an enormous amount of pressure (particularly, but not exclusively, from the Right) to "do something," and "act quickly."

I actually would not be surprised if the US Gov holds him for a while and then, due to irresistable political pressure, he is "prematurely" turned over to the Iraqis and we see a repeat of the Ceaucescu scenario.

From a political angle, Bush will get a short term boost. However, as time goes by, people will likely realize that we still have the terrorist threat, ergo Husssein was not behind the terrorist threats. In the long run, capturing Saddam will do more to show that the reasons for attacking Iraq had NOTHING to do with stopping terrorism.

It will be interesting.

By the way, do not expect any slow down in the Iraqi resistance. The capture of Hussein will likley mean nothing. Hussein was not leading or masterminding any movement from a 6' x 8' hole in the ground. It is beyond one man.

I think it's really doubtful that the US will turn him over quickly. He's an intelligence goldmine so I predict we will see several months of interrogation before any turnover occurs. The Iraqi war crimes tribunal was ready to hold his trial with him absent anyway.

Concerning the interrogation / intelligence angle, I am skeptical that he will provide anything useful. Quite frankly, I would not believe a word Hussein says about anything, especially if he knows that, sooner or later, he is going to be killed, whether by the mob or after a conviction by some sort of tribunal / court. The only incentive to talk is to save his own ass, and sooner or later, he will be killed. If you were him, why should you tell anything truthful?

Whome?

From Time: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,561472,00.html

"Along with the $750,000 in cash, two AK 47 machine guns and pistol found with Saddam, the U.S. intelligence official confirmed that operatives found a briefcase with Saddam that contained a letter from a Baghdad resistance leader. Contained in the message, the official said, were the minutes from a meeting of a number of resistance leaders who came together in the capital. The official said the names found on this piece of paper will be valuable and could lead to the capture of insurgency leaders around the Sunni Triangle."

A bit more than just hiding away in a hole, I would say.

Sherk

Yeah, let me quote more of that article that you posted sherk

"The official is doubtful that the U.S. will get a significant amount of intelligence from Saddam’s interrogations. “I would be surprised if he gave any info,” he said. Other high-ranking regime members, he said, have by and large remained mum. “Tariq Aziz [former deputy prime minister] hasn’t really spoken,” he said, “and Abid Mahmoud [Saddam’s former personal secretary] hasn’t really given any information.'"

"The official said it may soon be clear how much command and control over the insurgency Saddam actually had while he was in hiding. “We can now determine,” he said, “if he is the mastermind of everything or not.” The official elaborated: “Have we actually cut the head of the snake or is he just an idiot hiding in a hole?'"

To continue:

It seems like no one that we have captured from the "deck" has been pretty helpful trying to find the WMD or anything else.

Hey Sherk,
No WMDs in the Saddam bunker?
To Saddam, $750k is chump change.

Even if Hussein was aware of resistance operations, one does not lead them from a 6' x 8' in the ground with no appreciable guards around him. Simply put, he was beaten down. The worst we could do is declare victory now that the "leader" has been captured.

The biggest threat in Iraq since the US invasion has not been Hussein, but rather the power vacuum his ousting has caused. The US had no compelling basis for invading Iraq. (Ah yes, he was a ruthless dictator and committed crimes against his people, but so has the House of Saud, and with them we at least know they provided substantial assistance to terrorists through the Mullahs- yet we did not invade Saudia Arabia).

HOWEVER, now that we are there and have created one big freekin mess, we have no choice but to clean it up, or the aftermath will be far worse to US interests than Hussein ever was. While we would all like the "Iraq thing" to go away, we are in it for the long haul. As Thomas Freedman said, we broke it and now we have to fix it. The worst thing we could do is declare victory and go home.

WhoMe?

Speaking of the Saudi's, I am all for adding them to the Axis of Evil and toppling the Royal House of Saud ASAP. I take it you wouldn't object if Bush did so, or are all American wars morally objectionable by definition?

Sherk

Of course not all American wars are morally objectionable by definition. War is a last course resort to protect vital American interests when all other avenues of resolution have failed.

America was certainly justified in acting in WWI, WWII, Kuwait in 91', Afganistan in 92', etc.

What is not justified is attacking a country (Iraq) that has not attacked us, which had NO ties to the 9-11 attacks, no evidence of WMDs, and no evidence of planned beligerence against the US. Even if Hussein is one evil mo' fo', (which he is), such fact alone does not justify War, especially when the American people were outright deceived as to the reasons therefor. There is a reason, albeit tragic and misfortunate, that Europeans and the rest of the "civilzed world" consider George Bush THE greatest threat to international peace. Yes, greater than Saddam Hussein, Osama Ben Laden, etc. What a sorry state when our leader is so despised - BY OUR FRIENDS!!!

How sullen your response is. Not a happy word about a tyrant being gone. As for how confidently you assert he had nothing to do with the terrorists who attacked us, I'm wondering if you've seen the Telegraph's piece this week about Abu Nidal refusing to train Atta and getting four bullets for it.

Saddam is going to talk. Everybody talks after a while. There is not going to be a trial for at least another year giving plenty of time for an Iraqi tribunal to be convened. You guys sound ridiculous. But anything he says about Al-Qaeda, WMDs to Syria I'm sure you'll dismiss as merely being what his captors wanted to hear. 'hear no, see no, speak no'...

Even Bush & Cheney admitted, when under pressure from the press, that Hussein had NOTHING to do with 9-11.

Hussein is an anethma to Ben Laden, and vice versa. Ben Laden wants to see a theocracy. Hussein was a lot of things, but clearly not a theocracy - he was a secular dictator, and hence an infidel.

Likewise, Hussein had no interest in supporting religious fanatics, because to do so is to cede some power. The last thing a dictator who rules by brute force is going to do is cede one iota of power to anyone. In such a political structure, you might as well cut of your head.

The bottom line is do not allow yourselves to buy into the entire cult phenomenon that Saddam Hussein had built for himself. The situation in Iraq is far bigger than one man (Saddam), although he, most of anyone, would like you to beleive "it's all about him."

Other than pure symbolism, the fact that he was captured is a non-event. Yes, that's right, a non-event. The real event is being able to create a lasting political infrastructure that will last once we leave. This event is far more complicated that digging someone out of a hole in the ground.

"How sullen your response is. Not a happy word about a tyrant being gone. As for how confidently you assert he had nothing to do with the terrorists who attacked us"

A) Saddam is a scum bag, good riddance, yippee!
But Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus, and the bloody junta in Burma (Myanmar) are all deplorable violators of human rights. Why haven't we gone after them?
A$k Haliburton...

In any event, when did the United States get the right to unilaterally overthrow whatever régime it doesn't like?

B) There's still not the slightest bit of evidence that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11. Members of the administration continue to use cute rhetorical gymnastics to give the impression that 9/11 and Iraq are somehow linked.
Even the Iraqi agent who was supposed to have met with Mohammed Atta in Prague has told U.S. interrogators that the meeting never took place. And he probably has much to gain by trying to prove it did. There was a long piece in the NY TIMES about this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/13/international/europe/13INQU.html
The key excerpt being...

But the C.I.A. and F.B.I. eventually concluded that the meeting probably did not take place, and that there was no hard evidence that Mr. Hussein's government was involved in the Sept. 11 plot.

That put the intelligence agencies at odds with hard-liners at the Pentagon and the White House, who came to believe that C.I.A. analysts had ignored evidence that proved links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Eventually, the Prague meeting became a central element in a battle between the C.I.A. and the administration's hawks over prewar intelligence.

We all know who was really behind 9/11.
And Osama and Mullah Omar are still freely frollicking around the Pakistan-Afghanistan border while over 130,000 U.S. troops are bogged down over in Iraq performing the neocon version of nation building.

At any rate, the insistence that 'so and so is secular' and the others are 'Islamist' just shows how little you actually know about the Mideast compared to the realities. The fact is, the 'secular' Syrian Baath Party created Lebanese Hezbollah, the Party of Allah. So it is not as if there is no precedent of cooperation along these lines. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and recall that Saddam hated the House of Saud and us, as did Al-Qaeda. Besides Al-Qaeda is not a strictly heirarchal organization, if Osama called him an infidel that doesn't mean Al-Zawahiri and the others had nothing to do with him. Neither can you assume that Osama, someone who slaughtered 3,000 people, or Saddam who has murdered hundreds of thousands are incapabale of a little white lie. As it is, Slate had a story last month unnoticed by the press that the FBI's claim on Atta's whereabouts in the U.S. at the time of the Prague meeting could no longer be verified. And the Czechs stand by their story. But Prague is only one piece of the puzzle, and it is funny how you guys zero in on that and ignore Al-Qaeda affiliate Ansar Al-Islam's assistance from Saddam (Hitchens), the circumstances of Abu Nidal's death (yesterday's Telegraph), the record of Saddam-sought meeting with Al-Qaeda in Sudan in 98' (Telegraph captured document) and the entire dossier the CIA had basiclly poo-pooed leaked to the Standard last month. You guys have to ignore all of that. The other thing I find troubling is that you insist that if Bush and Cheney say there's no DIRECT LINK with 9/11 that therefore that's the same thing as saying no links between Saddam and Al-Qaeda at all. That's a cop out, slick way of manipulating what Bush actually said, which is what that there were links. Powell said the same thing in February at the UN. You keep refering to the CIA, CIA director George Tenet said the same thing in his prewar testimony to Congress, that there was a relationship. Still you play pretend. Why should we trust you with our nation's foreign policy, whatever the Bush shenanigans, when you willfully ignore evidence right in front of you?

But we'll see. Maybe Saddam won't crack, but I think he will. You just wait and see what he knows. It probably won't all come out for months, and you'll say it was released conveniently before the election, Saddam only told us what we wanted to hear etc.

The comment about Halliburton is typical of the myopia that hinders any serious thought on foreign policy in the left wing of the Democrat Party. Apparently Alcatel or Lukoil making ham over fist with Saddam is fine, Halliburton making a single dime after Saddam is gone is not. Don't you see any difference? No?

Lieberman is right to rip Dean this week. It's time for some seriousness in the the Democrat Party on foreign policy. I'm glad Kerry's campaign is proving good for something.

Here's what the Iraqis are saying
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/12/14/wterr14.xml

From:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63921-2003Dec14.html

Washington Post Associate Editor Robert G. Kaiser was online Sunday, Dec. 14 at Noon ET, to discuss the capture, the ramifications for U.S. strategy in Iraq and likely effects on resistance faced by coalition forces in Iraq.
...........................
Annapolis, Md.: Will the Post be looking into the story reported by the Telegraph about connections between Abu Nidal, Mohammad Atta and Saddam Hussein?

Very likely to be untrue, but would be immensely significant if true. And there's no mention on the Post's Web site about it yet.

Robert G. Kaiser: If we put every rumor and story in the British press (not to mention many others around the world) on the Web site, you'd be dizzy--and no wiser. The Post does not print other papers' uncheckable "exclusive" stories. And I can tell you that there have been dozens of bad--that is, wrong--ones over recent months. The Telegraph, Daily and Sunday, has not earned our respect for accuracy or careful reporting.

The Telegraph, a paper that's to the right of Rupert Murdoch's UK holdings as well as Fox News, has been one of the few "mainstream" outlets to mention this allegation. It's a lot easier to find the "memo" mentioned at RushLimbaugh.com and the Christian Broadcasting Network.

Very hypothetically, if it were true, it implies that Atta was able to sneak out of the US, spend some time chillin' with Abu Nidal in Iraq, and then sneak back into the US just a few months before launching the 9/11 attacks.
Just what does that say about how well the Bush administration was protecting the security of the United States against terrorism?

If such a document really exists, it may be an after the fact attempt by a Saddam sycophant to ingratiate himself with the boss.

In general, it's dizzying how the administration and its apologists flail about trying to justify the ill enterprise in Iraq.
The main excuses are: WMDs, alleged links to 9/11 terrorists, and the Bushies' utter devotion to human rights and democracy.

When Democrats criticize the Iraq operation, they are painted as weak on defense.
The fact is that this nation is stronger in the long run because of Democratic leadership. Democrats can kick butt when necessary.
The Manhattan Project was undertaken during two Democratic administrations. JFK did not cave in to Soviet intimidation in Cuba or Berlin. Jimmy Carter approved the development stealth technology. Bill Clinton TWICE stopped genocide in the Balkans with the assistance of NATO commander, Gen. Wesley Clark.

If Dubya wants to be known as "The 9/11 President", I'm all for it.
After all, it was his administration's failures that led to 9/11.

Tim there isn't much point in saying this again...the planning for the September 11 attacks began in the spring of 1996, according to interrogations with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Osama bin Laden explicitly stated that the hasty U.S. withdrawal from Somalia, among other reasons, was why he perceived the U.S. as weak, and likely to fall. The response to the USS Cole attack in Clinton's final year in office - lobbing a few cruise missiles into Afghanistan - certainly would not have convinced him otherwise.

But far more significant than all of these concerning the intelligence failures after 9/11 esp. in Iraq is the executive order Clinton signed that prevented the CIA from recruiting human rights violators. That basiclly ruled out recruiting anyone of signifcant position within the Baath Party heirarchy who would know about the true fate of Saddam's weapons (unless you believe Saddam, of course) and his ties to terrorism.

Tim, perhaps you've never heard about that, I understand. The next time former CIA officer Jim Olson (a visiting professor from A&M) comes to speak on intelligence and the war on terror, you can ask him about it after he gets to that part of his speech.

There is some irony about 'mainstream' news sources vs. those you would ascribe to the right wing netherland. Is the New Yorker a mainstream publication? They've been running a series of pieces from noted crackpot and serial liar Seymour Hersh. I have a documented case of where he libelled someone who is now a UT professor. Yet that same New Yorker ran pieces by one Jeffrey Goldberg BEFORE the war talking about Ansar-Al-Islam and its ties to Saddam's regime, all of them graduates of Bin Laden's camps. Not a word or peep about that since, all down the memory hole.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. --Carl Sagan 

I still haven't seen anything from any source (left, right, or center) which one would call credible that links Saddam to 9/11. Even members of the administration have been relatively quiet about the story in The Telegraph. Could this be some sort of trial balloon?
I'd be foolish NOT to investigate any serious allegations about this. But so far, many of the administration's reasons for invading Iraq have lost rather than gained credibility with the passage of time. Do y'all remember "yellow cake" from Niger?
If the administration came up with something it could tout as a "smoking gun" that could link Saddam with 9/11, they would have less to worry about politically after the glow of Saddam's capture starts to dim. But simply wanting something to be true doesn't make it so.

I thought that the so-called "October Surprise" theory held a lot of promise. The main allegation there was that in 1980, the Reagan-Bush campaign promised Iran that if elected, a Reagan administration would covertly sell weapons and spare parts to the Islamic fundamentalist government there. In return, the Iranians would agree not to release the dozens of American diplomats they had been holding hostage since November of 1979 until after the presidential election here on November 4, 1980. It was believed that if the hostages were released before election day that incumbent President Jimmy Carter would get enough of a boost from their release to gain re-election. As it turned out, the hostages weren't released until minutes after Reagan was sworn in on January 20, 1981.
There's tons of circumstantial evidence that link Reagan operatives to the Iranians, but none of it can be proven. So I tend to regard "October Surprise" as just interesting historical speculation rather than solid fact.
This Saddam 9/11 stuff has a long way to go before it gets UP to the level of credibility of October Surprise.

The buck stops here! --Harry Truman

If George W. Bush isn't ultimately held responsible for laxity prior to the 9/11 attacks, then just who is responsible? The tired old tactic of blaming the previous administration just won't cut it. I'm not a great admirer of Herbert Hoover, but at least he didn't try to blame Calvin Coolidge for the Great Depression.
Using those standards, Bill Clinton could correctly blame Papi Bush for caving in to Saudi pressure and not finishing off Saddam in 1991. Although eliminating the Baathist régime would have had little effect on the rise of Al Qaeda, at least we wouldn't have the current mess in Iraq.
Bill Clinton DID manage to bring to justice those responsible for the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. And he did so without doing too much damage to the Bill of Rights. None of the bombers, I hope, will ever see the outside of a federal prison again.
Al Qaeda hideouts in Afghanistan were difficult to attack because Afghanistan is landlocked. And Gen. Pervez Musharraf, relatively friendly to the U.S., was not able to fully consolidate his hold on power in neighboring Pakistan until the period of our 2000 election and "post-election".
Sure, President Clinton did prevent those who were human rights violators from working for the federal government. That didn't mean that we didn't follow up on any credible information they may have provided to U.S. intelligence agencies.
But why do Republicans, who recently shed so many crocodile tears over human rights violations under Saddam, now say that we should have put the gassers of Kurds, the rapers of children, and the torturers of clergymen on Uncle Sam's payroll?
More intelligence on the ground IS needed. So why is the military still discharging badly needed Arabic and Farsi translators just because they happen to be gay?

Getting back to the matter of responsibility, it's telling what at least one insider thinks about this. Special Agent Colleen Rowley of the FBI, whose repeated attempts to warn FBI headquarters of possible terrorist activity were ignored in Washington in 2001, is thinking of running for the U.S. House of Representatives, as a DEMOCRAT.

Footnote, just for the record...

It turns out that the "document" mentioned in The Telegraph, which allegedly connects Saddam to 9/11 terrorist Mohammed Atta, is probably a forgery. This report from Newsweek cites FBI sources who cast grave doubts over any Atta trip to Iraq in 2001.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3741646/

Dec. 17 - A widely publicized Iraqi document that purports to show  that September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta visited Baghdad in  the summer of  2001 is probably a fabrication that is contradicted by U.S. law-enforcement records showing Atta was staying at cheap motels and apartments in the United States when the trip presumably would have taken place, according to U.S. law enforcement officials and FBI documents.
..........

While all of Atta's movements cannot be accounted for, enough is known to make it "highly unlikely" that the September 11 ringleader could have flown off to Baghdad for a three-day work program with Iraqi intelligence, a FBI official told NEWSWEEK. For similar reasons, the bureau has long since discounted claims by Czech intelligence—and widely promoted by some Iraq hawks in the Bush administration—that Atta had flown to Prague to meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent around April 8, 2001.

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