Every new (and newly remembered) revelation about the mess Dubyanocchio’s Praetorians have made of nearly everything they touch makes me increasingly encouraged about the prospects of ousting these guys a week from today. Not, however, gleeful. Because, partisan advantage aside, this stuff extends well beyond the foolhardy and inept. The gentlest criminal charge that could be laid against them would be “reckless endangerment.” That, I suppose, is not something on the list of charges likely to stir much interest at The Hague.
Sunday came the news that while we were hunting for weapons that didn’t exist, we let weapons that did exist evaporate into the hands of people whom we can assume are now using them to kill Iraqis and Americans. (Adding insult to these injuries were some
pathetic rightwingers who say that those disappeared tons of high explosives don’t amount to all that much in the larger scheme of things. Just as some of their ilk have implied that 1245 dead Coalition soldiers don’t amount to all that much compared with other wars.)
If the news about the lost explosives set off little bombs in the brains of some of the voters still undecided over whether George W. Bush is the right man at the right time, perhaps a reprise of the March 2004 NBC News exposé will nudge a few more into the Kerry column:
Avoiding attacking suspected terrorist mastermind
By Jim Miklaszewski
But NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill [Abu Musab] Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger.
In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.
The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.
“Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn’t do it,” said Michael O’Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.
Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.
The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.
“People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey. ...
Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.
The Wall Street Journal finally got around to developing this story a little further on Monday:
Questions Mount Over Failure to Hit Zarqawi's Camp
By Scot J. Paltrow
Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, who was in the White House as the National Security Council's director for combatting terrorism at the time, said an NSC working group, led by the Defense Department, had been in charge of reviewing the plans to target the camp. She said the camp was "definitely a stronghold, and we knew that certain individuals were there including Zarqawi." Ms. Gordon-Hagerty said she wasn't part of the working group and never learned the reason why the camp wasn't hit. But she said that much later, when reports surfaced that Mr. Zarqawi was behind a series of bloody attacks in Iraq, she said "I remember my response," adding, "I said why didn't we get that ['son of a b-'] when we could."
Administration officials say the attack was set aside for a variety of reasons, including uncertain intelligence reports on Mr. Zarqawi's whereabouts and the difficulties of hitting him within a large complex.
"Because there was never any real-time, actionable intelligence that placed Zarqawi at Khurmal, action taken against the facility would have been ineffective," said Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman for the NSC. "It was more effective to deal with the facility as part of the broader strategy, and in fact, the facility was destroyed early in the war."
Another factor, though, was fear that a strike on the camp could stir up opposition while the administration was trying to build an international coalition to launch an invasion of Iraq. Lawrence Di Rita, the Pentagon's chief spokesman, said in an interview that the reasons for not striking included "the president's decision to engage the international community on Iraq." Mr. Di Rita said the camp was of interest only because it was believed to be producing chemical weapons. He also cited several potential logistical problems in planning a strike, such as getting enough ground troops into the area, and the camp's large size.
These guys defunded the anti-terrorism budget and shrugged off threats before 9/11. Then they assured the American people after 9/11 that they would bring the terrorists to justice wherever they were. Then they failed to go after someone who everybody agreed was connected to al Qaeda because it might bollix their 18-month-long propaganda campaign to gin up support for a war in Iraq. And they did this even though the suspected target was in Kirma, Northern Iraq, Kurdish-held territory in the no-fly zone.
Some day I think the needle will hit the top peg on my fury gauge so hard that it will break right off.