Comments

You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name

Your e-mail (optional)

Website (optional)

	My Original Nic Pic-a-Nic Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Foto

Submit your comments on this article

Arabia

S Arabia âreal reason for warâ

2004-04-03

FORGET Iraqâs weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The real reason the United States invaded Iraq was Saudi Arabia, according to a US intelligence analyst.

You're not supposed to tell, dammit!

Dr George Friedman, chairman of the United States private sector intelligence company Stratfor, said the US had settled on WMD as a simple justification for the war and one which it expected the public would readily accept. Dr Friedman, in Australia on a business trip, said the US administration never wanted to explain the complex reasons for invading Iraq, keeping them from both the public and their closest supporters.

Revealing the grand plan to the public ahead time has its problems.

"That, primarily, was the fact that Saudi Arabia was facilitating the transfer of funds to al-Qaeda, was refusing to cooperate with the US and believed in its heart of hearts that the US would never take any action against them," he said. Dr Friedman said the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the US prompted the strategy to hunt down al-Qaeda wherever it was to be found. But that proved exceedingly difficult. "The US was desperate. There were no good policy choices," he said. "Then the US turned to the question - we canât find al-Qaeda so how can we stop the enablers of al-Qaeda."

We got to that question pretty quickly, too.

He said those enablers, the financiers and recruiters, existed in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. But the Saudi government variously took the view that this wasnât true or that they lacked the ability and strength to act, he said. Dr Friedman said in March last year, the Saudis responded to US pressure by asking the US to remove all its forces and bases from their territory. To their immense surprise, the US did just that, relocating to Qatar.

Hearts seized up all over the Magic Kingdom, they did.

He said Saudi Arabia and al-Qaeda shared a number of beliefs including that the US could not fight and win a war in the region and was casualty averse. There was a need to change that perception. But close by was Iraq, the most strategically located nation in the Middle East, bordering Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Turkey and Iran.

So much for the theory that Wolfowitz just threw a dart at the map.

"If we held Iraq we felt first there would be dramatic changes of behaviour from the Saudis," he said. "We could also manipulate the Iranians into a change of policy and finally also lean on the Syrians. It wasnât a great policy. It happened to be the only policy available."

For a policy that wasn't so great it seems to be working pretty well.

Dr Friedman said US President George W Bush faced the difficulty of explaining this policy, particularly to the Saudis. Moves to link Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda failed completely. "They then fell on WMD for two reasons," he said. "Nobody could object to WMD and it was the one thing that every intelligence agency knew was true. We knew we were going to find them. And we would never have to reveal the real reasons. The massive intelligence failure was that everybody including Saddam thought he had WMD. He behaved as if he had WMD. He was conned by his own people."

Wonder if the Dims will ever figure this out? They've bought the ultimate con.

Posted by:tipper

#5 Yup. And I'll bet it wasn't very hard to figure it out, either, was it?

Posted by: Dave D. 2004-04-03 5:40:04 PM

#4 I also figured this out, back in May or June, and sent a congratulatory email to President Bush on his unbelievably cunning plan. Of course, I never got an answer...

Most people just can't seem to figure out that Iraq is the key to the entire Middle East. It sits at the top of the Persian Gulf, touches all the major players, has enough oil to act as a spoiler to OPEC's shenanigans, and has a tremendous military infrastructure that can be used as the basis for attacks from Libya to Pakistan. Combined with Afghanistan, it puts virtually every Middle Eastern country in a vise:
Iran between Iraq and Afghanistan
Pakistan between Afghanistan and India
Syria between Iraq, Turkey, Israel, and the Med
Jordan between Iraq and Israel
Saudi Arabia between Iraq, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and LOTS of empty sand

We've already seen changes in behavior in Libya, Qatar, several of the United Arab Emirates' sheikdoms, Saudi Arabia (although limited, and one step back for every two forward), Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Bahrain, Yemen, and Oman. Some of the changes are minute, but the people on the top are beginning to understand that change HAS to come - that we demand it, and we won't be satisfied with cosmetics.

Can you imagine the impact a democratic Iraq would have, with an indigenous army of a half-million men, with five or six fully-manned US Air Force bases and a couple of Army and one Marine division on hand? Could you imagine what would happen if the next diplomatic coup would be the establishment of a full naval basing structure in one of the nearby African countries, such as Tanzania (Dar es Salaam), or if we helped the Somaliland tribes firmly establish control of their area, and base half a fleet or more at Djibouti?

The "game" is up. The only thing left to do is grind down the last of the players until they're removed. This doesn't mean the war is "over" - we're about at the place now where we were at Guadalcanal and Torch during World War II. We've stopped the advance. Now the long, miserable slog to rid the world of every bastion of the enemy begins. But the expansion is over, and the rats know it.

Posted by: Old Patriot 2004-04-03 4:14:42 PM

#3 Iraq is like North Africa in Operation Torch in WW2. It is a place to start. We are not ready to go into Saudi, so Iraq is the site to begin the ME terrorist breakup. The enemy knows it and is putting a lot of resources into Iraq to make us fail.

Dr. George Friedman is right on about Saudi Arabia. THEY are the REAL enemy we are fighting. The petrodollars we give them are transformed into explosives that they give back. That is the long and the short of it.

Posted by: Alaska Paul 2004-04-03 12:43:49 PM

#2 I think the guy's got it almost figured out, though he misses the biggest reason for the pre-war emphasis on Saddam's WMD: our desire to get the U.N. signed up.

There's a pattern I've noticed since Bush began turning the public's attention toward Iraq back in mid-2002.

On the one hand, people who start out with an inherent distrust or dislike for Bush have an extremely difficult time figuring out what the hell we're doing over in Iraq; they can't grasp even the most obvious of the ways in which ending Saddam's regime helps move the WoT forward, even to the point where they whine that it's a "distraction."

And on the other hand, people who start out with the assumption that Bush is a competent executive who knows what he wants to achieve, and is taking steps calculated to achieve it, seem to have very little difficulty discerning the overall strategy.

During the run-up to the war last year, I set out to see how many ways I could think of that "doing" Saddam would help the war against Islamic totalitarianism. I set out to see if I could list five ways, but at the end of an hour I'd jotted down more than a dozen. I still update the list every now and then, and I'm now working on Reason #36.

Not hard at all, really.

As for Bush's not telling the American public exactly why we needed to go to Iraq, it seems to me very simple: anything he were to say to us, would also be heard throughout the Muslim world.

Just as in boxing, it's bad form to telegraph your punches.

Posted by: Dave D. 2004-04-03 12:41:20 PM

#1 Not sure that I agree with the "deliberate deception" angle, but the geopolitical reasons for hitting Iraq are the very ones I have been touting since we went in.

Posted by: OldSpook 2004-04-03 12:18:24 PM

00:00