Lileks has a devastating case against those who say that Bush had a plan to invade Iraq before 911 (hint, he wasn't the first, or only president...)

?If Saddam isn?t stopped now,? the AP story said, quoting Clinton,?He will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And someday, someway, I guarantee you, he?ll use that arsenal.?? Thus spake Clinton in 1998. He went on to note that the strikes planned could not possibly destroy Saddam?s arsenal, because A) they didn?t know where everything was, and B) they didn?t want to kill Iraqis by unleashing clouds of toxins. And it gets better: a sidebar noted that this war plan ? Desert Thunder ? had been prepared weeks before, in case Saddam stiffed in the inspectors.

Bill Clinton had a plan to go to war before the crisis flared! What does that tell you? Obviously, he was looking for any excuse! Halliburton! We all know about the ties between Clinton and Halliburton ? he gave them a sweet no-bid contract after his Balkans war, you know.

You'll have to scroll through some blogging about (potentially apocryphal) ancient racist popular music first, though.

I never understood why this was news in the first place. A president with a contingency plan? My God, it must be a right wing corporate fascist conspiracy!

Failing to have a plan to go to war with a country that we were technically still at war with would be the height of stupidity.

A couple of things

Operation Desert Thunder was the executed 1998 buildup to put pressure on Iraq;
Desert Viper was the mid-November '98 strike that was aborted with 8 minutes to launch
Desert Fox was the mid Decemeber '98 strike that did happen.

None of these represented an invasion plan.

The Pentagon probably has invasion plans for Canada. The difference was that the early Bush adminstration planning regarding Iraq was taking place in the White House itself.

To clarify, by "White House" I mean appointee level officials within the adminstration.

i.e at the policy level as opposed to operations level. Invasion, or the threat of invasion of Iraq was never, so far as I know, the policy of the Clinton Administration.

Despite the fact that the subject may have been discussed in the White House instead of across the river, there's no evidence to indicate that it was the formal policy of the second Bush administration, either, until mid-September, 2001.

Rand,

I know I shouldn't rise to the bait of commenting
on one of your foreign policy posts, as that is
one of the main reasons why I more-or-less
abandoned the sci.space.* newsgroups, but I feel
that I need to point something out.

This post, like most of your others assumes that
the person supported what Clinton did too. While
there are many people who are currently denouncing
Bush who would be cheering the Iraq War if a
Democrat were running it (and there are probably
a bunch of Repulbicans who'd be denouncing it if
Gore were running it, regardless of if the results
had been identical), there are also some people
who are more consistent than that.

On the one hand, there are some people who don't
seem to have ever met a war they didn't like, who
don't care if bombing or invading some other
nation actually makes America weaker, poorer,
less free, less respected, etc, just so long as
we can kick some foreign backside and show how
"morally superior" we are. On the other hand,
there are people like me who have disagreed with
wars coming from both sides of the political
aisle. I didn't support Clinton in his stupid
pre-emptive attacks on Sudan and Afghanistan,
or in his bombings in Yugoslavia and Iraq, nor
do I support Bush in his wars around the world.

None of them has hade us safer, all of them have
made us numerous enemies, have cost us tons of
money, many good lives, killed many innocent
people, and generally have tarnished America's
reputation around the world. While many people
think that our government can keep doing this
indefinitely without any consequences, they are
IMO wrong. Evil means, even for a supposedly
"good" end always end up biting the doer in the
end.

~Jonathan Goff

Rand,
I am pretty sure any adminstration containing a PNAC-vintage Paul Wolfawitz would have been planning for invasion. I am pretty sure any adminstration containing a post-Halliburton Cheney would have been angling for economic access to Iraq . I am pretty sure any adminstration containing a Powell-doctrine advancing Powell would have been trying to wash America's hands of the mess.

The biggest problem I have with this administration - multiple personality disorder. Occassionally the policy stars align (as Wolfie's and Cheney's did post 9/11).

BTW, I never mentioned "formal" policy, which rarely has a link to reality with the Bushies - their current expresion of formal policy, the budget, includes reducing the deficit by half in five years while passing massive tax cuts and enormous new drug benefits, and waging a war on terror without including operating funds for said war (for the second year running).

This just says Clinton wanted to attack Iraq this does not negate Bush's plans.

Nobody ever said that it negated Bush's plans. If you read the whole thing, you'll see that it's in reference to the people who, today, state that G.W.'s plans for invading Iraq, and the subsequent invasion, were not justified by the reasons he set forth. Yet Clinton set forth almost PRECISELY the same reasoning in 1998, and people ate it up. And then, of course, the UN struck a deal, which fell apart, which led to a blaise response from Clinton, which put us right back at square one.

The blog points out the lunacy and blindness of the people who are decrying Dubya for not having enough proof, when the proof and reasoning had existed for 5 years prior to the engagement (and 3 years prior to his inauguration).

John,
"War" does not equal "invasion"
Clinton never called for, mentioned or hinted at an invasion.

If you think he did, I want the phrase "grave and gathering threat" redefined as "imminent".

War is not invasion is illogical since invasion is a strategy of war not in a state by itself.

Clinton did threaten all out war in a speech to the Pentagon in 98. After this speech Tom Daschle and gang rallied around him with all kinds of threats against Iraq.

The Powell Doctrine is nothing more than Clausewitz redux and has nothing to do with what he said in the quoted statement.

The reason he said that because of the well known Bush policy of aggressively containing Saddam, while fostering internal forces against him and making the ineffective santions more viable. The reason Bush could do no more was simply no political will to do so. In the modern Nation-State in the era of Total War one must have the political will to carry out large military operations that did not exist before 9-11. The parallel is FDRs before 12-7-41. There was no political will by americans to involve themselves in europe's war until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. This gave FDR the political will to launch a war against Germany and Italy. And if you do the research you will find a small political debate did occur on why we were going to war against Germany and not solely against Japan.

Powell was amongst a group of officers that came out of Vietnam realizing it was not the "Western Way" of war that was defeated but LBJs way that was defeated. The Powell Doctrine mirrors basically the "Western Way".
1) You must want to win
2) You must have an offensive will, defensive won't give you victory.
3) The force must be overwhelming in firepower and fast.
4) You must have political will. You must call up reserves etc..(remember total war)
5) Do it with allies if you can.
6) War is politics by other means.

Saddam should have been toppled in '98. Unfortunately, Clinton was politically hobbled by the consequences of his own uncontrolled appetites. How many bodies in those mass graves in Iraq are there because of the President's "private life"?

I'm glad that, whatever else trouble we might get into, we aren't going to have to deal with him & his sons for the next half-century, like we have had to do with the Peacock Commissar in Korea.

Dr. Clausewitz:

Please read this timeline. FDR declared war on Japan in December 8 1941 after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Not Germany and Italy.

http://library.thinkquest.org/15511/timeline/1941.htm

Being an Axis alliance power, by treaty, when the USA declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy were obligated to automatically declare war on the USA. Which they did. Then the USA simply attacked the nations which declared war against it. Seems pretty clear cut to me.

Previous to the German declaration of war the USA only provided logistic support. No manpower.