Russia and Georgia is America and Iraq: Everybody Knows That!

I heard one of the talking heads on a business show say, in passing, that America couldn't complain about Russia's invasion of Georgia, because America invaded Iraq.

He even paraphrased "everybody knows."

His assumption isn't as crazy as it seems. At least, quite a few people agree with him. Their line of reasoning seems to be this:

• America invaded Iraq
  • Unilaterally
  • Along with a couple dozen other countries
• Based on intelligence about WMD programs in Iraq
  • Which was, apparently, wrong
• So America was wrong to unilaterally invade Iraq

You can't argue with logic like that.

My guess is that what's stirred up this month's 'invasion of Iraq was based on lies' enthusiasm is the upcoming American presidential election, exacerbated by a new book.

• "Message From Russia - Bush, Why Don't You Shut Up?"
  ThePeoplesVoice.org (August 15, 2008)
• "After Ron Suskind Reveals Bush Admin Ordered Iraq-9/11 Fakery, House Judiciary Chair John Conyers Opens Congressional Probe"
  Democracy Now! (August 14, 2008)
  (Yes: That is the title of the show/article/post)
• "CIA concocted fake letter to justify Iraq invasion"
  Pakistan Daily (August 14, 2008)
• "Author claims White House knew Iraq had no WMD"
  MSNBC (August 5, 2008)
• "General: Israelis exaggerated Iraq threat"
  USA Today (December 4, 2003)

I know: That last item is almost five years old. The point is, this assumption of faked intelligence is nothing new. It may even, to some extent, be true.

Or, we could be looking at Monday morning quarterbacking on a massive scale.

Why the Coalition Invaded Iraq

It's easy now, years after a brutal tyrant has been deposed, to say that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. Particularly since no weapons of mass destruction have been found. So far.

However, back then, leaders from a significant fraction of the world's nations saw credible evidence that Saddam Hussein was developing, or already had, biological weapons: and was developing nuclear weapons. Quite a number of Kurds had found out, the hard way, that Hussein had chemical weapons: and a willingness to use them.

Those leaders had choices:

1. Wait and see
   • What's the worst that can happen?
     • A few cities get vaporized
     • A plague or two sweeps a few countries
2. Act before
   • Hiroshima and Nagasaki have company
   • We find out what biological warfare on a grand scale is like

America, and the rest of the coalition, decided to take option 2.

The intelligence may have been wrong.

We See No WMD, So There Are No WMD?

Or, it may have been correct. Iraq is a big country: much larger than Massachusetts or Maryland. A lot of it is desert. A comparison may be useful:

I grew up on the edge of North Dakota, a state which has miles and miles of miles and miles. Trucks and snowmobiles stranded between towns generally get found: but the drivers want to be found.


(from U.S. Geological Survey, North Dakota Water Science Center, used without permission)
That photo is of Edmore, a town in one of the cozier parts of North Dakota. Most of the state isn't that densely populated.

The next photo shows a very large petroleum terminal in Iraq. I'm quite sure that if railroad-car-size containers with weapons of mass destruction inside were hidden inside that terminal, coalition forces would have found them by now.


(from U.S. Army Quartermaster Center and School, used without permission)
'Okay, men: there are a dozen cargo containers buried out there. Go find them!'

Whether containers buried somewhere in the lands beyond the horizon would have been found by now is another question.

Why Russia Invaded Georgia

Russia had a pretty good reason for invading Georgia.

• Some people in two northern provinces of Georgia said they wanted to be part of Russia
• Some of them were acting violently
• Georgia moved troops into one of the provinces

Russia, naturally, rolled troops and tanks in, destroyed Georgian military supplies, sank or took much of the Georgian navy, took over a major highway, and the Georgian city of Gori.

It seems to me that there are some none-too-subtle differences between Russia's invasion of Georgia, and the coalition's invasion of Iraq. Or, as it's usually called, America's unilateral invasion of Iraq.

An Expert Wrote a Book

As I said earlier, some of this month's 'Bush Lied' talk seems to stem from a recently-publicized book: "The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism" by Ron Suskind.

Ron Suskind is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. That's impressive, but it doesn't make him right. Janet Cooke won a Pulitzer Prize, too.

Suskind could be right, "that in 2003 the White House ordered the CIA to forge and disseminate false intelligence documents linking al-Qaeda and Iraq." (Democracy Now!)

It's possible that America has been embroiled in a web of lies and deceit, and that "America's" invasion of Iraq was just like Russia's invasion of Georgia. But I don't think it's likely.

Any more than I think it's likely that the Ames strain of anthrax was really developed in a secret slave-labor lab under Crawford, Texas.