Friday, May 12, 2017

Thoughts of the day

Dan Hanegby died suddenly in a freak accident. He had an enviable life - beautiful successful wife, 2 young children, Brooklyn Heights home, affluent job - that was cut short randomly in its prime. Although an experienced bicyclist, he somehow was struck by a passing charter bus. Hanegby fell under the bus's rear wheels and was run over.

The butterfly effect lends to activist theory.

President George W. Bush gave a speech in NYC about the "Spirit of Liberty: At Home, In the World" with a "call to action [that] seeks to affirm our values of freedom, to fortify the institutions that secure these values at home, and to help catalyze a 21st century consensus that it is in America’s interest to lead in their strengthening worldwide". Transcript. Working paper.

Dean Awn has stepped down.

Ohm Youngmisuk ESPN article, quoting from Randy Foye's podcast with Jeremy Lin, about the racism that Lin experienced as a Harvard basketball player. It makes me ashamed for not being stronger for my interpersonal competitive challenges. Learn, evolve, and be better. Mastery learning orientation.

Jeremy Lin's hurt again. This time he tore his right patellar tendon, which connects the kneecap to the tibia. I imagine much of his thoughts from this update last season about his recurring left hamstring injury apply again. Joining the Nets last year for his age-28 season was supposed to be Lin's time to shine, in his prime, ready to lead his new team as its starting PG. The situation was tailor-made. Instead, he played in only 36 games in his 1st season as a Net due to the recurring hamstring injury. His 2nd season is over in game 1. With D'Angelo Russell on the team, it appears unlikely Lin will regain his starting PG role next season, even assuming he fully recovers from an injury other pro athletes were not able to fully recover from.

This mini-course interested me in John Stuart Mill's On Liberty.

I don't drink Gatorade, but the message of this commercial is correct: The "secret to victory" is failure, or more precisely, investing failure constructively to inform and fuel the mastery learning process by which victory is an effect.

Collin and Ashley Buzzy McHugh look like they have a romantically ideal dyadic relationship. They met as high school seniors, started dating a year and a half later in a long-distance relationship, then married at age 22 when she was a recent college graduate and he was early in his minor-league baseball career. They recently celebrated their 8-year anniversary and they have a nearly 2-year-old son. Apparently, however, she suffers from depression (her "hole") that miscolors their relationship:
I meet a good man who wants to fill my hole more sincerely than anyone I've ever met, and I marry him. He is incredibly strong and truly dedicated - he carries many buckets of cement to the hole and I see the sweat dripping from his brow. But no, the hole is still much too deep for this to be working. Now, because he's dedicated so much time to this pursuit, when I see another strong-looking man approaching I have to send him away. What a shame. He may have had a giant truck, but I guess I'm not allowed to ask.
That's a threatening statement, but from the outside, one can't know a dyad's depth of resilience. From all apparent indicators, he loves his wife. I imagine he understands that depression is a miasma that alters personality and perspective. Even when her view is miscolored, she expresses a high opinion of her husband, including that he's "strong", which is essential for women. She's seeing a counselor. I've conceived an elemental benefit of a dyadic relationship to be a man or woman's partner being strong for them when he or she is weak or troubled, and in turn, that man or woman being strong for their partner when there's need. I hope they have that kind of relationship. Right now, she needs her husband to be strong for her and their marriage.

Add simple machines to the list of basic man knowledge. It's important to understand the physical math of mechanical advantage as well as the theory.

Sal Licata and Pete McCarthy on the Sports Zone at WOR 710 AM are good on their own and good together as co-hosts. I was unhappy when the Mets left WFAN, but the dedicated Mets pre- and post-games at WOR are a better listen on WOR with McCarthy and sometimes Licata than their predecessor on WFAN.

Wow. WFAN morning show host Craig Carton was arrested this morning by the FBI on wire and securities fraud and related conspiracy charges for a fake concert-ticket resale Ponzi scheme, allegedly to pay off Carton's gambling debts. The SEC has filed parallel civil charges (copy, copy) against Carton and a partner. In a pitiful pretense, Carton texted his morning-show teammates last night and this morning that he was "under the weather" (Esiason), indicating he knew last night he was being arrested and may have arranged to be arrested at home rather than at work.

I'm a Mets fan, but I would rather have been a baseball New York Giants fan for their rich New York baseball roots and uniform design and colors.

Thorough ESPN article on the NBA's G (for Gatorade, formerly D for Developmental) League.

The Sandman: Overture, a prequel to the series, is fine work by Neil Gaiman and his teammates.

La La Land (2016); Night of the Comet (1984); Collateral Beauty (2016); Passengers (2016); Batman: Gotham Knight (2008); Operation Chromite (2016); The Hateful Eight (2015); Flight 7500 (2016); Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016); Weiner (2016); The Lego Batman Movie (2017); Kubo and the Two Strings (2016); Kong: Skull Island (2017); Gattaca (1997); back 2/3 of Sing (2016); Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016); back 3/4 of xXx: Return of Xander Cage (2017); back 6/7 of Logan (2017); Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016); Shattered Glass (2003); The Lost City of Z (2016); The Lost Village (2017); Life (2017); Don't Breathe (2016); 47 Meters Down (2017); After Porn Ends (2012); front 1/3 of After Porn Ends 2 (2017).

I felt bad for Huma Abedin in Weiner. She comes across as a normal wife who sincerely wanted to encourage, support, and stand by her husband. Anthony Weiner was glib, selfish, and self-centered in the movie, but that may be normal for a political candidate of his then-stature. There is a hint from Weiner in the movie in the Rodney Dangerfield joking scene with Barbara Morgan in the cab that his wife was frigid, his friend-partner more than a lover. Weiner has a petty shameful habit, sexting, that he denies yet barely covers up ("Carlos Danger"), which has multiply blown up in public and been seized upon by the tabloid press due to his high-profile political life. It's unclear why Sydney Leathers chose to blow his cover and embrace the sordidness of it all. His wife and professional teammates trusted him, and his stigmatization tainted their efforts. The lowbrow scandal trapped his politically important, image-conscious wife in a squalid public indignity. As of May 2017, Weiner's petty shameful habit has made him a felon. There isn't an obvious indication in the movie Weiner would have been a bad mayor. Nor was he a bad Congressman. With his personal idiosyncrasies, he seemed like a typical politician who glad-hands and gaslights, but over-all, approached his official duties seriously. I don't believe he was ever accused of official misconduct as a Congressman. I can empathize with an otherwise talented man whose talents propel him onto professional, social stages where he's painfully felled by an enduring personal flaw. The movie also showed there's a blurry distinction and perhaps overlap between constructive intuition and instinct, and self-destructive impulsiveness. Campaign staffer Jessica Provenz fills some gaps in the movie narrative.

A political takeaway from Weiner is the overwhelming tide of a narrow-minded narrative judgement of a media gang-up. The movie shows seasoned politicians and their media handlers anxious, fearful, and defensive with the press, and continually warping their own plans and actions in reaction to the press. All considerations factor the press narrative, which takes precedent over integrity, fairness, actual truth, and what's ethically and morally right. The movie offers insight on elite political workings since Weiner's camp, including his wife, was drawn from top-line Democratic operatives from the Clinton faction.

I enjoyed Kong: Skull Island. It's not thoughtful fare, except I object to its anti-military ethos. Otherwise, the movie was tightly made and reined in a cohesive plot. Its grasp doesn't exceed its reach. A little scene at the end of the credits implies there'll be a sequel, which I hope to see. I was surprised to find out it's in the same series and universe as the worse, loosely made 2014 Godzilla.

Logan is moving. It's human. It speaks on the thin ephemeral line, inevitably crossed with temporal degradation, between life and death, health and decay, comfort and poverty. Once again, a story returns to the bottom line of familial love and the fleeting illusion of everything else, including higher social purpose. 47 Meters Down is barely a B-level movie, more like a scifi channel-level movie, but it's baited well: recognizable name actors and a new twist in a mostly reliable genre.

I watched the animated Batman The Dark Knight Returns, part 2 (2013) and didn't remember I already watched it in 2014 with part 1 until I was reminded by my comments.

This year's Hudson Riverflicks, Big Hit Wednesdays (7/5-8/16) line-up is Moonlight, Keanu, Arrival, Lego Batman, Hidden Figures, La La Land, and Logan. The Hudson Riverflicks, Family Fridays (7/7-8/18) line-up is The Secret Life of Pets, Trolls, Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory, Kubo and the Two Strings, Sing, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and The Karate Kid (1984).

Uncle Vanya's story of bitter disillusionment and economic reality over a hopeless aging speaks to me as red-pill personal and social truth, but it's diagnostic with no prescriptive cure for me. Its prescription as such is a beautiful and/or gentle wife, children, and family. Romantically idealized work (farm labor, teaching and helping the poor, medicine, reforestation, political activism, art criticism, academic scholarship, music) is shown to be a sop that's actually bereft of depth and personal fulfillment. Everyone except the doctor depends on Sonia and Uncle Vanya's economic toil yet they're desperately unhappy and the least appreciated and rewarded. It's revealed by Vanya that Sonia owns the farm when her father presumes to sell the property to serve his own comfort. In the play's commentary on the professor, Yelena, and Vanya's mother on one hand, and Waffles on the other hand, the political values of the play presage Communism.

3-day GI cycle - May24AM-27AM-30AM-Jun2AM-5AM-9AM-13AM-16PM-17PM(D)-21AM-24PM-27PM-29PM-Jul3AM(D)-6PM-7AM(D)-10?AM(D)-12?PM-13PM-16AM-19AM-20AM(D?)-25AM-29AM-Aug2AM-5AM-5PM(D)-8AM-11PM-13AM-18AM-19AM(D?)-22AM-26AM-28AM(D)-31AM-Sep4PM-7AM-9PM-13PM-15PM-17AM-19AM-22PM-?-28AM-Oct2AM-5PM-6PM(D)-10PM-14PM-18PM-23AM-26PM-31AM-Nov2AM-6AM-11PM-12AM(D)-17AM-19AM-23PM-27AM-Dec1AM-5AM-6PM-8AM-11AM-16AM-20AM-23AM-27AM-29PM-Jan2PM.

My stomach has hurt for a week, and it seems to be better now, but not completely. There's still some pulsing and welling of dull pain. Baking soda and water has helped at least as a temporary pain reliever. Drinking water and eating has provided shorter-lived relief. The prime suspect is a few spoons worth of uncooked brownie batter I impulsively ate ranger pudding-style, which I've suffered for doing before, because the eggs I used for the batter were older, thick, and cloudy. A 2nd suspect is some 3+ years old Premio hot sausage I took out of my freezer that taste off. Update: I don't believe it's the sausage. I've finished off the 6 pack of sausage, but while the flavor is still off and my stomach still isn't all right yet, my stomach has been gradually improving. I think the cause was diseased brownie batter.

Eat mostly brownies and bannock for dense, hard, cement-like stool. Eat a bunch of yam, and it's softer.

This bug in Google Chrome browser version 61.0.3163.100 hurt the OIF FAQ and related posts because they rely heavily on # anchors using the "hr id" format. If I understand the thread correctly, the "hr id" bug will be fixed in the version 63 update. Chrome updated from version 61 to 62 today.

My Toastmaster burner now heats up when it's plugged in and the switch is set at off or 0 degrees. I wonder whether the other temperature settings are off kilter, too. 21 0000 JUN17 RIP: The Toastmaster 6420 burner just died. It emitted loud clicks, then puffs of white acrid coppery-smelling (toxic?) smoke, then no more heat. For a while, the burner had stayed warm in the off position, but otherwise worked normally. I guess it was a sign that some part of the heating element, likely insulation, was breaking down. The Toastmaster was the workhorse in my kitchen for 3+ years. My general cooking devices are now down to my 2nd Salton rice cooker, bottom burner only Proctor-Silex toaster oven, George Foreman grill, and Sharp Carousel microwave.

Based on this review, I bought a Continental CE23309 single-burner hot plate for $9.99, $10.88 including tax. I'm not certain yet it heats up below the MED setting, but it's worked MED and up. The Mirro fits better on the Continental than the Toastmaster because the Continental's heating element is smaller diameter. The review didn't say anything about durability. It's relatively cheap, but it's new, so I hope the burner lasts. Update: 12JUL17-04NOV17. I was making rice, which usually takes about 30-35 minutes, mixed with pinto beans, which usually take about 40 minutes or plus-5 to 10 minutes to soften enough (which is why beans don't cook well in the rice cooker). I set the timer for 40 minutes. When it sounded, the rice was done but the beans were still on the hard side, which tells me the burner stopped working about 30 minutes into the cook time. The burner coil heats up and turns off with a red light, then cycles on and off according to, I assume, an internal thermometer. The red light was on and stayed on, but the burner coil was not heating up, which tells me that sometime during the rice cook at about the 30 minute mark, the burner broke mid-cycle. Since then, joggling the burner coil, which can be lifted in order to clean the metal plate underneath it, has sometimes enabled the burner coil to heat up on the 1st cycle, but after it turns off, it won't heat up again for the 2nd cycle. The last time I tried joggling the burner coil, though, it did heat up on subsequent cycles for 15 minutes before I switched off the burner. The burner has a 1-year manufacturer's warranty, but I have to pay for shipping to and from their factory. If the burner I have now can't be saved, I'll call their hotline and decide whether it's worth using the warranty. If not, I'll bite the bullet on buying a more expensive and hopefully long-lasting burner.

Chicken liver, usually $1.99 per pound, is flavorful, filling, and versatile to cook. I bought about 4.5 lbs on sale for $1.28/lb and I wish I bought more. It doesn't make tasty jus for canned pink salmon, though.

Chicken gizzards need to be boiled over an hour to be passably tender, otherwise eating it is like biting into chunks of hard rubber. They're not filling and don't taste like much, either.

Canned pink salmon, marinated in a tasty pork shoulder jus, spread with sour cream on bannock is tasty. The same salmon's flavor is lost when spread on bannock with mayonnaise. In contrast, cheaper mackerel retains its flavor when spread on bannock with mayonnaise. Indeed, mackerel can be canned with tomato sauce, whereas tomato sauce overwhelms canned salmon flavor.

One area store sells chicken liver for $1.79 per pound as the regular price, and I caved in and bought a $2.12 pack. Price per pound is the standard way to count cost, and that's how I've made purchasing decisions. Another, more suitable way to count cost is price per meal which is usually the same as price per day. (I usually eat 1 big meal a day and otherwise impulsively snack 1-3 times in a day with the snacks sometimes bordering on meal size.) For example, a usual sale price for chicken thigh is .99/lb, but I usually eat 2 chicken thighs for a meal, which together usually account for roughly a pound or 99 cents. Whereas $1.99/lb italian sausages and $1.79/lb chicken livers will work out to about 70 cents worth of amount (eg, 2 sausage links) consumed in a meal despite the higher dollar cost per pound. A $1.99 can of 14.75 oz pink salmon will usually be consumed over 1 proper meal and then 2-3 snacks over the next 2-3 days, usually half or more of the can consumed at the 1st sitting with rice, then the rest of the can more frugally portioned as a spread on bannock with sour cream or as an extra flavor besides another meat. A $1.25-1.50 can of mackerel will be consumed over 1 meal, maybe 2 meals. Of course, variety matters, so sticking to the most cost-efficient-per-meal meat is not a pleasant way to live.

Chicken breast, at $1.79-1.99 a pound on sale is one of the best-tasting meats I eat, but also the most expensive per meal, since it's not filling, so I'll eat a ~1-pound breast for 1 meal, maybe 1 meal + 1 snack.

Rich eating is canned salmon ($1.50), sweet sausage ($3.60), and chicken breast ($7.30) over 30Aug-05Sep.

A good deal is Sugardale Prestige shank-portion hickory-smoked ham for .99/lb. It normally costs $3.49/lb. Pros are the sale cost, the ham is fully cooked and ready to eat, thick smoke flavor, it tastes good with mayonnaise like regular ham, and it doesn't need to be frozen to prevent spoilage. I've kept the ham in the refrigerator for over a month, though the smell does turn some after a few weeks. Cons are its thick smoke flavor is artificial and leaves some icky after-feeling like processed food, it has a lot of fat, and heating reduces its flavor. In contrast, Cook's brand shank-portion hickory-smoked ham, with the same sale and regular price, is exceptionally flavorless, and remains flavorless whatever flavoring I add to it, but doesn't leave the same icky after-feeling. The Sugardale ham didn't leak any fluid while the Cook's ham leaked a good deal of fluid.

I brought a 10-pack of chicken legs on sale for .69/lb. I cooked 3 on my George Foreman grill, microwaved 2, baked 2 in my bottom burner-only toaster oven, and boiled 3 while making rice. The worst outcome was the George Foreman grill, where the meat was either overcooked dry or undercooked, plus hard to scrape off burned-on bits stuck to the cooking surface. Baking was okay; the meat was tender and the skin crisped but took too long to cook - over an hour. Microwaving and boiling with rice worked about the same - tender meat, no crispy skin.

I microwaved a 4.01 lb Springer whole chicken for about 40 minutes (or 10 minutes per pound) starting with 70% power, following these directions. When I checked the chicken at about 20 minutes, parts of the chicken still felt cool to the touch, which may be partly due to the chicken wasn't completely defrosted, so I raised the power to 80%. It worked. The meat was moist. I ate the chicken over 5 days. The downside of microwaving the chicken is I couldn't add ingredients for a chicken stew, like I can when I boil a chicken using the 3-quart mixing bowl or the Mirro deep pan.

Chicken breast is best microwaved on high for about 7 minutes per pound. Then allow it to cool so the meat fibers contract, which enables thinner cut slices. That way, you get the same chicken breast flavor and texture per mouthful, but the chicken breast lasts longer since you eat less meat and more rice or bannock per mouthful.

Tasty sweet sausage: Cooked by boiling with rice, then browned in the bottom-only toaster oven at 400 degrees in the 1-quart mixing bowl for about 15 minutes. Better tasting: Boiled with rice, then browned by pan-frying in hot corn oil.

I've had three packs of different kinds of 4?-year-old Premio sausage in my freezer for which I paid 99 cents each. In addition, I had a pack I paid $1.99 that's maybe 3 years old. I was loath to eat the Premio sausage because I bought them on such a good deal. I've occasionally used slices mixed in scrambled eggs or on bannock pizza. I recently decided to cook whole sausages from the packs. The whole sausages tasted off. Some of it tasted gross, a mix of leached Styrofoam flavor, curdled spices, and stale meat, which possibly made my stomach sick (though I believe the culprit was more likely uncooked brownie batter with old clotted eggs). I finished off the $1.99 pack and one of the 99-cent packs, and half the 99-cent pack that's been open for slices. My discovery is that the old sausage tastes okay as slices mixed in scrambled eggs or on bannock pizza, but does not taste good eaten whole.

Short of funds and hungry for meat, I bought a 12-oz 8-pack of turkey hot dogs for 99 cents. Which doesn't pass the price per weight test, but does pass the price per use test. If each use is pegged as a typical day's worth of eating with 1 main meal and 1-2 snacks included, then the 8-pack comprises 3 uses, maybe 4 uses at a stretch. They taste okay, but they leave an artificial off after-feeling and a possible upset stomach. So while the price is right, it's an if-needed resort, not a regular option. Best cooking method is baking it along with bannock which crisps the skin, though it seems to shrink the meat. Boiling it is okay, too.

Green cabbage, which I've bought on sale for 49 to 59 cents per pound, is tasty and can be stored unrefrigerated for quite a long time, although it does eventually grow mold on cut portions.

The George Foreman grill bakes a decent bannock pizza when the front legs are propped up to un-tilt the grill and the lid is propped up so its held up off the bannock pizza.

I scavenged a box with a 3-ounce tin of Crown Prince naturally smoked oysters. I don't know what "naturally smoked" means, but the smoked flavor of the oysters is thick. The olive oil is also flavorful. The oyster texture is mealy, somewhat like canned salmon. The oysters are best eaten by breaking off bits and spread thin on bannock.

I scavenged a bag of Beigel brand individually plastic-wrapped whole wheat bread and white bread slices. There were no artificial ingredients in the ingredient list printed on the whole wheat bread wrapping. The white bread slices didn't have ingredients and nutrition info printed on their wrapping. One whole wheat slice had a mold patch inside the sealed bag so I scarfed down all the wrapped slices over 4 days. Every application with the whole wheat and white bread slices was worse eating than bannock except the white bread worked better for a peanut butter and grape jam snack.

Duncan Hines milk chocolate brownie tastes like a cheap hot chocolate or an artificial flavored creamer for coffee. Baking with strawberry and sour cream is tasty. It works a la mode with Avenue A rum raisin-flavored and coconut-flavored ice cream, which I bought on sale for $2 per 48-oz box. I previously bought a box of Avenue A cookies-and-cream-flavored ice cream on sale for $2.50, which tasted right but shouldn't be combined with brownie since the oreo cookie flavor is somewhat neutralized by the brownie flavor. The rum raisin and coconut flavors provide a good contrast with brownie.

Pillsbury chocolate fudge tastes more like a proper brownie. Interestingly, its listed ingredients are the same as Pillsbury dark chocolate (chocolate fudge has more sugar: 18g vs 17g per serving), yet they don't taste the same. I prefer the chocolate fudge flavor. The tag price on the box is 90 cents cheaper than Duncan Hines milk chocolate brownie mix, but I prefer the more proper brownie-tasting Pillsbury chocolate fudge. Pillsbury milk chocolate brownie tastes proper, too.

At the same 300 degrees in the bottom-burner-only toaster oven, the Pillsbury chocolate fudge brownie batter was still mostly sludgy liquid after 10 minutes baked using the stainless steel 1-quart mixing bowl yet burnt at the bottom after 7 minutes baked on the aluminum tray. The best baking method is 5 minutes in the George Foreman grill.

Aunt Jemima artificial maple syrup drizzled onto Pillsbury chocolate fudge brownie after baking tastes good. I haven't experimented with mixing the syrup into the batter before baking.

Bannock dough can be boiled as dumplings. But brownie batter breaks down into barely tasted foam when dropped into boiling water.

The foil cover of a 6 oz mango 1% milkfat La Yogurt opened in the bag on my way home (I hope it opened in the bag and wasn't opened and poisoned before purchase), so I decided not to eat it from the container. Instead, I mixed about 2/3 into bannock dough with baking soda and some corn oil in the 1-qt mixing bowl. I added 3 or 4 sliced fresh strawberries with the remaining yogurt as filling in the pocket in the middle and baked it at about 370 degrees in the bottom-burner only toaster oven for 45 minutes. It baked acceptably. The bottom was burnt, but the sides and top were baked through and light brown. The strawberry-and-yogurt filling was nearly tasteless, so I added sour cream and Aunt Jemima pancake syrup for flavor. The yogurt-added bannock's texture was more interesting - soft like cornbread and a bit creamy - in contrast to the more biscuit-like crumbly and oily texture of mayonnaise or corn oil-added bannock and the more French bread-like drier water-only bannock.

A decadent dessert is milk chocolate brownie (with ginger chips and extra flour) + chunky peanut butter + grape jam + sour cream + coconut-flavored ice cream. Interestingly, the real dairy flavor of the real dairy sour cream helped offset the artificial taste of the much artificial ice cream. Omitted ingredients were ripe banana and Dole frozen sliced strawberry in sugar. Add: I added strawberries and banana. It was good, still decadent, but the strong tartness of the strawberry dominated more than worked with the other flavors.

Dole frozen sliced strawberries in sugar works well as a lone topping on a brownie because its tartness dominates rather than complements other flavors. The Dole frozen strawberries are significantly more tart than fresh strawberries.

Frozen whole-milk coconut La Yogurt is not an a-la-mode substitute for ice cream with brownie. It's different. It adds a mild yogurt flavor. Aunt Jemima artificial maple syrup adds an interesting flavor to brownie, but the syrup comes with an uncomfortable after-feeling.

Pillsbury chocolate fudge brownie with La Yogurt guava yogurt is interesting, tasty.

Pillsbury milk chocolate with ginger flakes in the batter, baked in the George Foreman grill for 5 minutes, topped with Stone Ridge Creamery Real Ice Cream Cinnamon Cookie Swirl, ripe banana, Dole sliced strawberries in sugar, and Everyday Essentials extra crunchy peanut butter. Icy cold whole milk. Yum.

Junk food, either sweet (eg, chocolate candy cookies) or salty (eg, Doritos), is not a meal replacement. I can, and usually do eat an excess, but then I feel compelled to eat a real meal to make up for the queasy after feeling as the heavy sugar, salts, oils, chemicals, and other unhealthy ingredients are processed by my digestive system.

Nature's Garden (Cibo Vita) pitted dates are a tasty sweet natural snack. The older one gets, the more one gravitates to natural foods because the older body responds worse to junk food while natural foods process more comfortably.

I scavenged a large bag with boxes of gluten-free pasta, made from corn and rice flour instead of wheat flour, and granola-type snack bars. Eating the gluten-free pasta with pasta sauce (standard Ol' Joe Marina sauce) makes my stomach hurt. The pasta looks like Chinese noodles in its texture and semi-translucence, but Chinese noodles don't make my stomach hurt. The snack bars seem to feel okay, though they're not filling. Mixing the pasta into white rice or bachelor stew seems to feel better, if not wholly okay, though I'll experiment with those uses again and note my body's reaction. I guess that's why someone ditched a big bag of what otherwise looks like unopened boxes of edible dry food. If I verify the gluten-free pasta hurts my stomach with other uses, I'm ditching them, too.

I scavenged a Chef's Choice 460 kitchen knife sharpener. PDF instructions. Video instructions with the similar Chef's Choice 450. It worked to sharpen a Farberware 5-inch utility knife that I also scavenged. According to bushcraft knife videos, normal kitchen knives are made from soft steel, in contrast to the hard steel used to make knives designed for fieldwork. The trade-off is kitchen knives lose their edge quickly but they also can be sharpened quickly and easily.

Eric

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Sunday, April 30, 2017

Large ALICE pack

I own a large ALICE (All-purpose Lightweight Individual Carrying Equipment) pack. User manual. More here.

It's not an ALICE pack I was issued as a soldier, but rather one I purchased on eBay for a schoolmate who was a Marines officer candidate having trouble with the ruck march portion of the qualification course. He stopped practicing with it because one of the shoulder straps would slide and lengthen under load due to insufficient grip by the blunt teeth on its adjustment buckle. After he returned the ALICE pack to me, I found out that when the adjustment buckle is squeezed into the strap, it grips enough for the shoulder strap to be usable. The shoulder strap will still gradually slide when the pack is under load and needs to be periodically tugged to shorten it, and if I were a soldier, I'd DX the ALICE pack. For a civilian, it works acceptably adequately.

I don't remember how much I paid for it. I believe I bought the cheapest complete large ALICE pack, which includes the frame, shoulder straps, and lower back strap, listed on eBay at the time because it was meant for my schoolmate to practice ruck marching, not for general use as a backpack. It's worn. ALICE packs are described as water resistant, not water proof, and soldiers are issued dry bags to use in their rucksacks. My ALICE pack hardly resists water at all. In a rain storm, it takes in water like it's made from cotton. The OD green paint on the frame has many chips exposing the aluminum. The rivets on the frame are loose, so the crossbars squeak and clack under load. One of the metal keepers on the top of the frame is bent. There's a roughly centimeter square hole on the top of the main flap and multiple patches spread over the pack. The tie down straps are frayed and thinned. The edges of the frame attachment webbing are frayed. The strap for the inner compartment and draw cords for the 2 side large outer packets are missing. There's a hole at the bottom of the inner compartment where the stitching is missing; the hole might have been made on purpose. Some stitching is also gone, likely worn away, on the edges of the large outer pockets. The envelope that fits the pack onto the frame is stretched and worn like the rest of the pack. The velcro on the main flap pocket is weakened. The snap is missing on one of the quick-release straps; it's secured with a piece of 550-cord sheath. But for all its wear and tear, the integrity of my ALICE pack is sound. It's a rugged piece of equipment.

The bottom of the main flap pocket is white mesh with traces of faded dark greenish coloration, which is different than the rubberized plastic at the bottom of the main flap pocket in the ALICE packs I used as a soldier. I wondered whether the plastic was stripped out or whether the ALICE pack I bought on eBay is real military surplus. Then I saw this video by a former USAF SERE instructor featuring a medium ALICE pack he's owned since 1986 as a 16-year-old. Its main flap pocket also has a white mesh bottom. I guess his medium ALICE pack was manufactured sometime between the mid 1970s and early 1980s while the ones I used in the Army were a later version. My ALICE pack looks like it could have weathered hard use for 20+ years before I bought it.

I added a handle fashioned from cobra-stitched 550-cord to the top of the frame tied on with plastic fishing line, replacement draw cords for the 2 side large outer packets fashioned from 1/16-inch kernmantle accessory cord tied with poacher's knots into compression knots, a replacement inner compartment strap using a plastic mesh sleeve that held garlic bulbs, a pair of used shoe insert pads to the shoulder side of the shoulder pads tied on with shoestring, and shims fashioned from egg carton styrofoam at the base of the vertical cross bar tied on with dental floss. Hopefully, the shims will solve the creaking and clacking from the vertical crossbar when the ALICE pack is under load due to the loose rivet at its base.

Mitch Mitchell from season one of Alone has an interesting series on youtube in which he modifies a new large ALICE pack by removing the 3 small pockets and then sewing on a large center pocket in their place that he removed from his old large ALICE pack. His series provides insight on how the ALICE pack is stitched together. His old large ALICE pack has a white mesh bottom in the lid, like mine, and the mesh also appears to have some faded dark coloration. He says the waterproofing has worn out from the lid. His ALICE pack took in water in a rainstorm like mine and he treated his ALICE pack with silicone.

Eric

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Saturday, April 29, 2017

VELCRO coins

I bought a 15 pack of 5/8-inch VELCRO coins priced at $1.97 for a total of $2.14 with tax. The alternative to the VELCRO was 3M Command hanging strips, which are more expensive.

I'm using the VELCRO coins to adhere hooks to my window frame as anchor points for a curtain line. The hooks I'm using didn't come with the VELCRO coins. They're from a pack of peel-and-stick plastic hanging hooks I bought for $1.40 at a 99¢ store for my 1st attempt to mount the curtain line on the window frame. The combined cost of the VELCRO coins and the 99¢ store hooks ($2.14 + $1.40) is about the same as the price for a pack of 3M Command hooks and hanging strips. Oh well.

The 99¢ store hooks failed to hold the curtain line. Their adhesion seemed firm enough when I stuck them onto my window frame and waited more than a day to load them, but the hooks fell off the window frame and dropped the curtain after less than a day.

For the left and right-end anchor points, I removed the used stick-on pads from 2 of the failed hooks; I stuck 4 VELCRO coins in a diamond pattern onto the left-hand hook; I stuck 5 VELCRO coins in a square box+1 pattern on the right-hand hook. The curtain line is 1.5-millimeter or 1/16-inch kernmantle accessory cord, probably 100-pound strength. The left end of the curtain line is tied to its anchor point with a Siberian hitch. The right end is tied to its anchor point with a taut-line hitch, which means the curtain line is tensioned from the right side. The kernmantle accessory cord stretches under load, so I stuck 2 hooks between the anchor points to help distribute the load, guide the pull more across the line rather than down, and reduce the curtain sag to an acceptable amount. Unlike the load-bearing anchor hooks, the interior support hooks should be able to stay stuck on the window frame with just their original stick-on pads.

The product description lists a shear strength of 14.0 (I assume pounds) per square inch (avg.) and a peel strength of 1.2 per square inch (avg.). However, VELCRO's "Hook 88/Loop 1000, with 72 Adhesive System" technical data sheet lists a shear strength of 12.0 PSI.

I'm most interested in the shear strength, rather than the peel or tension strength, because almost all the load on the hooks should pull across the tensioned curtain line. I figure the shear strength should be about 21.875 PSI ((2*5/8)2 * 14.0) or 18.75 PSI ((2*5/8)2 * 12.0) for each hook. I believe there is also a peeling load from the weight of the curtain pulling down on the curtain line and the curtain line is a 1/4-inch off the VELCRO coins due to the structure of the hooks.

When the curtain line is tensioned with the taut-line hitch on the right side, the left-hand hook slides right 2/16 inch and the right-hand hook slides left 3/16 inch along the hook and pile of the VELCRO coins. I offset the right-hand hook 3/16 inch to the right to compensate for the 3/16-inch slide left when the taut-line hitch is tensioned. The result of offsetting the hook and pile coins seems to be a better aligned, tighter fit between the pile coins on the right-hand hook and hook coins on the window frame after the right-hand hook slides. I didn't offset the left-hand hook 2/16 inch to the left to compensate for the slide right. The next time I loosen the curtain line, I'll offset the left-hand and right-hand hooks before I re-tension the curtain line. I don't believe the adhesive is creeping.

The application instructions on the package say the VELCRO coins are ready for use 15 minutes after they're peeled and stuck on. However, product websites recommend, "for 0172 adhesive, allow the full curing time of 24 hours before loading or cycling" and the pressure-sensitive pre-coat "achieves full bond strength in 24 hours". I loaded and cycled the square box on the right-hand hook at about 23 hours after peeling and sticking on the VELCRO coins. I only waited about 45 minutes to load and cycle the +1 5th coin which I added as an adjustment to the right-hand hook after initially loading and cycling the square box. I wonder whether I lost bond strength, especially in the +1 coin, because I didn't wait for the 0172 adhesive to cure for 24 hours before loading and cycling the VELCRO coins on the right-hand hook. I'm waiting a full 24 hours before I load and cycle the diamond on the left-hand hook.

The loops - or pile - easily shed from the VELCRO coins. I hope that doesn't indicate a defective product with a weaker than expected shear, peel, and tension strength or cycle life. The cashier said I can return the purchase within 90 days if I'm not satisfied even if the product is opened and used, which I'm not sure about because her assurance isn't the same as the store's printed return policy. If the VELCRO coins are holding up the curtain fine at the end of the return period, I'll call it good.

The origin of the VELCRO brand name is "[Inventor George d]e Mestral decided to name his revolutionary invention an amalgam of the French words “Velour” (velvet) and “Crochet” (hook) hence the name of the brand."

13MAY17 update: Failure. The first observed sign of failure was the right middle support hook popping off the window frame at night. The next observed sign of failure was infrequent mysterious single or double-staccato ripping sounds. The following day, with the ripping sounds becoming more frequent, I examined the curtain line. The left middle support hook was hanging loose with its adhesive back partially torn from the top. The left anchor hook was crooked on a left-up, right-down diagonal with the left side of the hook raised off the coins. The left anchor hook was barely connected to the right half of the top middle coin of the diamond and maybe still the right lower border of the diamond. I expected to find the hook and pile had disconnected, but was more disappointed to find the left anchor hook had torn loose from the adhesive. The coins were still connected firmly to each other and the window frame. Meanwhile, the right anchor hook with the square+1 coins appears to be working fine. I thought there would be greater strain on the right anchor hook since I tensioned the curtain line from the right side, but it was the left anchor hook that failed. About 1/5-1/4 of the later-added +1 coin protrudes from the left edge of the right anchor hook; I wonder if that has helped level the hook against the tension while perhaps the left anchor hook tipped over on its right edge and thus placed greater strain on the left side of the hook. The coin of the right tip of the diamond on the left anchor hook was placed on the edge of the hook, but it did not protrude from the hook. Another difference is on the right anchor hook, I placed the pile coins on the window frame and the hook coins on the right anchor hook. On the left anchor hook, I placed the pile coins on the left anchor hook and the hook coins on the window frame. I'm disappointed. Back to the drawing board.

Eric
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Thursday, March 09, 2017

Decision Points suggests President Bush has not read key fact findings on Iraq carefully

I finally read the Iraq-related sections of President Bush's memoir, Decision Points (2010). That's not an oversight. While Bush's post-presidency reflections are interesting and worth reviewing for their corroborative and background value, they're not essential for an issue-rule, fact pattern-type analysis of the Iraq issue which refers to primary source material from his presidency.

Most of what President Bush wrote about his UNSCR 678, Gulf War ceasefire compliance enforcement with Iraq in Decision Points aligned as expected with my research.

However, I was surprised by several statements that suggest President Bush has not read key fact findings on Iraq's "material breach" (UNSCR 1441) — namely, the UNMOVIC, Iraq Survey Group (ISG), and Iraqi Perspectives Project (IPP) reports — carefully. I guess he's read summaries of the WMD-related fact findings rather than the reports directly. Based on Bush's characterization of Saddam's terrorism, I believe he hasn't read the IPP report at all.

I block-quote President Bush's suspect statements and respond to them. I may have overlooked suspect statements on the Iraq issue, but these should provide a representative sample.

Bush:
Later, many of the assertions in Colin's speech would prove inaccurate.

President Bush is incorrect. In fact, nearly all the main points of Secretary of State Powell's 05FEB03 case presentation to the UN Security Council are substantiated.

Many of Powell's points on Iraq's WMD weren't "assertions" (Bush) at all but rather reiteration of the operative enforcement procedure and the fact record established by UNSCOM/UNMOVIC and IAEA in the decade-plus course of the UNSCR 687 disarmament process.

When I say "substantiated", I don't necessarily mean the intelligence-estimated details Powell presented were proven to be predictively precise, but rather that the substantive element in Powell's point was validated.

For example, the Iraq Survey Group did not find “mobile production facilities used to make biological agents” (Powell). However, ISG confirmed "secret biological work in the small IIS [Iraqi intelligence service] laboratories discovered by ISG" and “The UN deemed Iraq’s accounting of its production and use of BW [biological weapon] agent simulants—specifically Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus lichenformis, Bacillus megaterium and Bacillus thuringiensis to be inadequate … the equipment used for their manufacture can also be quickly converted to make BW agent.”

Moreover, ISG did not conclusively determine the extent of Saddam's BW program. Rather, ISG was unable to account for the fate of much of Iraq’s BW agents, stocks, and equipment due to Iraq’s “denial and deception operations” and “concealment and destruction efforts” in breach of UNSCRs 687 and 1441. ISG also noted "fragmentary and circumstantial" evidence of greater WMD-related activity, including BW production.

The only part of Powell’s speech that falls down in hindsight, knowing what we know now, is the extent to which the Saddam regime sought fissile material for the ISG-confirmed Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) modernization program.

Bush:
Kay conducted a thorough search of Iraq and found irrefutable evidence that Saddam had lied to the world and violated Resolution 1441.

The second part of Bush's statement is correct. By procedure, Iraq's violation of UNSCRs 687 and 1441 established casus belli.

However, the first part of the statement was the first thing in Decision Points that made me suspect President Bush has not read the ISG report firsthand.

In fact, the Iraq Survey Group was not able to conduct a "thorough search of Iraq" (Bush). As David Kay informed the Senate Armed Services Committee on January 28, 2004:
I regret to say that I think at the end of the work of the [Iraq Survey Group] there's still going to be an unresolvable ambiguity about what happened.
A lot of that traces to the failure on April 9 to establish immediately physical security in Iraq -- the unparalleled looting and destruction, a lot of which was directly intentional, designed by the security services to cover the tracks of the Iraq WMD program and their other programs as well, a lot of which was what we simply called Ali Baba looting. "It had been the regime's. The regime is gone. I'm going to go take the gold toilet fixtures and everything else imaginable."
I've seen looting around the world and thought I knew the best looters in the world. The Iraqis excel at that.
The result is -- document destruction -- we're really not going to be able to prove beyond a truth the negatives and some of the positive conclusions that we're going to come to. There will be always unresolved ambiguity here.
ISG was able to corroborate UNMOVIC's confirmation of Iraq's WMD-related "material breach" (UNSCR 1441) of the Gulf War ceasefire. But as a "thorough" account of Saddam's WMD, the ISG report falls short. The Iraq Survey Group's findings are heavily qualified with caveats about significant limitations to the reach and scope of the post hoc investigation, including that the Saddam regime was expert at hiding proscribed items and activities, much evidence was lost prior to, during, and after the war, key regime officials were not forthcoming, statements conflicted, suspect areas were found "sanitized", and other practical factors, such as the terrorist insurgency, impaired the ISG investigation. As such, ISG's findings constituted a floor, not a "thorough" account of Saddam's WMD.

Even if ISG had been able to conduct a thorough post-war search of Iraq, it still would not have been a reliable account of Saddam's WMD because the pre-war UNSCR 687 disarmament process was not like a crime-scene forensic investigation that searched for evidence while guarding carefully against the contamination or loss of physical evidence in a controlled area. Carrying the burden of proof, Saddam was in effect allowed by the UN weapons inspections to hide, alter, or destroy evidence of proscribed armament — which ISG confirmed happened. Iraq's known denial and deception only hindered Iraq from meeting its burden to prove it disarmed according to the “governing standard of Iraqi compliance” (UNSCR 1441). For that matter, the OIF invasion and post-war occupation also were not designed to scour for, guard, and preserve evidence.

Bush:
But there was one thing Kay did not find: the WMD stockpiles everyone expected.
...
I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it.

The common international basis of "the WMD stockpiles everyone expected" was the fact record established by UNSCOM/UNMOVIC, e.g., "With respect to stockpiles of bulk agent stated to have been destroyed, there is evidence to suggest that these was [sic] not destroyed as declared by Iraq" (UNMOVIC). However, no matter how widespread the expectation of "the WMD stockpiles everyone expected", the expectation that the Iraq Survey Group would find them was incongruous with the operative enforcement procedure and practical circumstances. Again, the UNSCR 687 disarmament procedure was designed upon Iraq's burden of proof to provide a total verified account of its proscribed armament with no obligation on the US and UN to demonstrate it. Therefore, the UN weapons inspections that preceded the ISG investigation were not designed to guard carefully against the contamination or loss of physical evidence. Neither were the OIF invasion and post-war occupation designed to scour for, guard, and preserve evidence.

Case in point. Although the ISG account of Iraq's WMD stocks is usually represented as unequivocal, it is in fact heavily qualified in the ISG report:
With the degradation of the Iraqi infrastructure and dispersal of personnel, it is increasingly unlikely that these questions will be resolved. Of those that remain, the following are of particular concern, as they relate to the possibility of a retained BW capability or the ability to initiate a new one.
ISG cannot determine the fate of Iraq’s stocks of bulk BW agents remaining after Desert Storm and subsequent unilateral destruction. There is a very limited chance that continuing investigation may provide evidence to resolve this issue.
• The fate of the missing bulk agent storage tanks.
• The fate of a portion of Iraq’s BW agent seed-stocks.
• The nature, purpose and who was involved in the secret biological work in the small IIS laboratories discovered by ISG.
...
ISG’s investigation of Iraq’s ammunition supply points—ammunition depots, field ammunition supply points (FASPs), tactical FASPs, and other dispersed weapons caches—has not uncovered any CW [chemical weapon] munitions. ISG investigation, however, was hampered by several factors beyond our control. The scale and complexity of Iraqi munitions handling, storage, and weapons markings, and extensive looting and destruction at military facilities during OIF significantly limited the number of munitions that ISG was able to thoroughly inspect.
• ISG technical experts fully evaluated less than one quarter of one percent of the over 10,000 weapons caches throughout Iraq, and visited fewer than ten ammunition depots identified prior to OIF as suspect CW sites.
• The enormous number of munitions dispersed throughout the country may include some older, CW-filled munitions, and ISG cannot discount the possibility that a few large caches of munitions remain to be discovered within Iraq.
I appreciate that Bush "had a sickening feeling" over the Iraq Survey Group not finding battlefield-ready WMD stockpiles. And I could understand if he made a strategic choice to deemphasize the shortcomings of the ISG investigation while President. But not acknowledging the qualified nature of the ISG account in his memoir, despite the potential political impact, strikes me as an oversight rather than a purposeful choice.

Bush:
While the world was undoubtedly safer with Saddam gone, the reality was that I had sent American troops into combat based in large part on intelligence that proved false.

I agree with the first part of Bush's statement. On the second part, yes and no.

I address this issue in the OIF FAQ answer to "Did Bush lie his way to war with Iraq". Note especially parts 5 to 7 of the answer.

President Bush is correct that the pre-war intelligence estimates were predictively imprecise, and the intelligence community is fairly criticized concerning its tradecraft but with the understanding that demonstration of WMD to match the pre-war estimates was not an element of the "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441) that determined casus belli, the effectualness of Iraqi counter-intelligence denial and deception was known, and ISG's non-findings — the basis of criticism — are heavily qualified, so it's indeterminate how much the estimates were off the mark. The political demand to prove that pre-war estimates of Saddam's secret inventory were predictively precise was inapposite of and practically incompatible with the UNSCR 687 disarmament process and an abnormal treatment of intelligence in general.

At the same time, Bush is not correct to say the "intelligence ... proved false". ISG's heavily qualified non-findings do not make for a proven disposition and the pre-war intelligence correctly indicated Saddam was illicitly reconstituting Iraq's conventional armament and WMD capabilities in violation of UNSCR 687 for casus belli. Much of the underlying data of Iraq's "material breach" (UNSCR 1441) was sound: the baseline fact of Saddam's WMD established by UNSCOM and IAEA, the ISG-confirmed data of Iraq's illicit procurement and activities, and the UNSCR 1441-inspection findings that triggered enforcement.

Bush:
That was a massive blow to our credibility — my credibility — that would shake the confidence of the American people. No one was more shocked or angry than I was when we didn't find the weapons.

The President should not have been shocked. The notion of demonstrating that Saddam's WMD matched the pre-war intelligence estimates was always unrealistic since the UNSCR 687 disarmament process, OIF invasion, and post-war occupation were not designed for that kind of proof. If the Iraq intervention's legitimacy pivoted on proving the pre-war estimates were predictively precise, then of course it likely would be de-legitimated given that Saddam's forces had a long, practically free hand to conceal, alter, and destroy evidence before and during the ISG investigation.

Nonetheless, the UNMOVIC and ISG findings are rife with UNSCR 687 violations. With the burden of proof on Iraq to cure the "continued violations of its obligations" (UNSCR 1441), the pre-war intelligence estimates should not have been positioned politically to overshadow Saddam's evidential categorical breach of the "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" — including the UNSCR 687 WMD mandates — in Iraq's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441).

Bush blames the "intelligence failure on Iraq's WMD" for the political controversy, but President Bush should blame himself for enabling the political controversy by deviating from the standing precedent of President Clinton's presentation of the case against Saddam. In accordance with the operative enforcement procedure, Clinton cited to Iraq's noncompliance as "clear evidence of a weapons of mass destruction program". Clinton didn't cite to the intelligence at all when justifying his Gulf War ceasefire enforcement. Yet inapposite of the compliance-based enforcement that Bush faithfully carried forward from Clinton, Bush officials improperly characterized speculative estimates as "evidence" of Saddam's secret inventory. The intelligence, if cited at all, should have been properly characterized as indicators of Iraq's "material breach" (UNSCR 1441). In some cases, such as records of Iraq's illicit procurement, the intelligence did qualify as evidence in hand of the Saddam regime violating UNSCR 687.

In Decision Points, President Bush compounds the "massive blow to our credibility" enabled by his presentation error by fixating on "Kay did not find: the WMD stockpiles everyone expected" at variance with the actual case against Saddam, overlooking the qualified nature of the ISG account, and barely crediting the raft of UNSCR 687 violations reported by UNMOVIC and ISG that confirmed Iraq's "material breach" (UNSCR 1441) of the Gulf War ceasefire.

Bush:
If Saddam didn't have WMD, why wouldn't he just prove it to the inspectors?
...
Saddam still had the infrastructure and know-how to make WMD.

Bush answers his question by referring to Saddam's policy of bluffing Iran and Saddam wrongly evaluating the US-led threat of regime change. Which is correct, but incomplete.

A more complete answer is Saddam wouldn't prove he didn't have WMD to the UNSCR 1441 inspections because he couldn't — Iraq was in fact heavily violating the UNSCR 687 WMD mandates.

The notion, "Saddam didn't have WMD", assumes a narrow definition of WMD proscription inapposite to the US-enforced "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441) that Saddam violated to trigger Operations Desert Fox and Iraqi Freedom. Yet on September 12, 2002, President Bush reiterated the (paraphrased) UNSCR 687 standard to the UN General Assembly, "If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately and unconditionally forswear, disclose, and remove or destroy all weapons of mass destruction, long-range missiles, and all related material."

UNMOVIC verified Iraq's "continued violations of its obligations" (UNSCR 1441) to establish casus belli, and then the Iraq Survey Group, notwithstanding its practical limitations, was able to confirm Saddam was guilty of many UNSCR 687 violations:
Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of [U.N.] Resolution 1441. Resolution 1441 required that Iraq report all of its activities -- one last chance to come clean about what it had. We have discovered hundreds of cases, based on both documents, physical evidence and the testimony of Iraqis, of activities that were prohibited under the initial U.N. Resolution 687 and that should have been reported under 1441, with Iraqi testimony that not only did they not tell the U.N. about this, they were instructed not to do it and they hid material. [Kay, 28JAN04]
Bush's phrasing, "Saddam still had the infrastructure and know-how to make WMD," connotes a holdover quality. But ISG found more than retained Gulf War-vintage infrastructure and know-how, although that would have been sufficient by itself to violate UNSCR 687 and corroborate Iraq's "material breach" (UNSCR 1441). The chiefly sanctions-based 'containment' was de facto neutralized by 2000-2001, and "[a]s UN sanctions eroded there was a concomitant expansion of activities that could support full WMD reactivation" (ISG) even before UNSCOM failed in 1998 with "military reconstitution efforts starting in 1997" (ISG). ISG confirmed Saddam was applying the funds from the Oil For Food scandal to illicitly reconstitute a broad array of conventional arms, military infrastructure, and nuclear, biological, chemical, and missile research, development, and production capabilities with a "large covert procurement program" under cover of "denial and deception operations".

Saddam was bluffing, which by itself violated UNSCRs 687 and 1441 for casus belli. But Saddam wasn't only bluffing, and it's not clear how much he was bluffing. Iraq was hiding many UNSCR 687-proscribed items and activities, including IIS and production capabilities. When viewed with the operative lens of the "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441), the facts show Saddam was rearming. Due to the ISG investigation's practical limitations and evidentiary gaps that Bush doesn't acknowledge in Decision Points, the Iraq Survey Group can offer a guess, but ISG can't be sure about the fate of all Saddam's secret stores and the extent Iraq's WMD program was reconstituted. For example, the CW munitions missed by ISG and confiscated under Operation Avarice bore out ISG's caveat "ISG cannot discount the possibility that a few large caches of munitions remain to be discovered within Iraq."

Regarding the casus belli for OIF, the Iraq Survey Group is sure that "the Iraqis never intended to meet the spirit of the UNSC’s resolutions" and "ISG judges that Iraq failed to comply with UNSCRs".

Bush:
Saddam could have turned to Sunni terrorist groups like al Qaeda — a marriage of convenience, not ideology — as surrogates in an attempt to match Iran's use of Shia terrorist groups like Hezbollah.

President Bush appears not to have read the IPP report. His statements on Saddam's terrorism in Decision Points seem to be grounded in the pre-war assessment of Saddam's terrorism, which to be fair, was already sufficient to satisfy the counter-terrorism element of OIF's casus belli.

However, the post-war analyses by the Iraqi Perspectives Project and UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) show pre-war assessments underestimated Saddam's "regional and global terrorism" (IPP) in breach of UNSCR 687 and "widespread terror" (UNCHR) ruling Iraq in breach of UNSCR 688.

Bush is correct to say that "Saddam could have turned to Sunni terrorist groups like al Qaeda" because there is ample evidence that Saddam was already deeply engaged with Sunni terrorist groups including al Qaeda. Jim Lacey, who authored the IPP report, concluded based on the IPP and ISG findings, "Given the evidence, it appears that we removed Saddam’s regime not a moment too soon."



President Bush's suspect statements in Decision Points look like the popular yet misleading summaries that conceal that the UNMOVIC and ISG reports are rife with disarmament violations, and the often-cited ISG conclusion, "it appears that Iraq, by the mid-1990s, was essentially free of militarily significant WMD stocks", is more equivocal than it's usually portrayed. In fact, the ISG report's non-findings are heavily qualified due to the procedural and practical character of the UNSCR 687 disarmament process and other factors that impaired ISG's post hoc investigation. As such, the ISG findings of UNSCR 687-proscribed armament constituted a floor only, not a complete account of Saddam's WMD.

It's possible that Bush was simply trying to be unsparing in his memoir. But his harsh self-recrimination can only misinform the public by obscuring that the burden of proof was on Saddam, which Bush does reiterate in Decision Points, the UNSCR 1441 inspections verified Iraq did not disarm as mandated, and the Iraq Survey Group found many UNSCR 687 and 1441 violations. The UNSCR 660 series' enforcers were not obligated to find anything to justify enforcement: by procedure, "[r]ecognizing the threat Iraq’s non-compliance with Council resolutions and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles poses to international peace and security" (UNSCR 1441), casus belli was established with UNMOVIC's confirmation of Iraq's "material breach" (UNSCR 1441) of the Gulf War ceasefire.

The political fallout enabled by his presentation error with the pre-war intelligence estimates doesn't negate that President Bush's decision on Iraq was substantively correct on the facts, procedurally correct on law and precedent, and justified on the policy. As Saddam was in violation of the spectrum of essential international norms that defined the Gulf War ceasefire, President Bush's decision on Iraq was also essentially correct for the sake of liberal international order.

Note that the above criticisms of President Bush's memoir apply as well to Prime Minister Blair's response to the Chilcot report. Regarding Blair's statement, also see my criticism of his "apology" and my commentary about the post-war setbacks.



PREFACE: On October 19, 2017, President Bush announced the George W. Bush Institute Human Freedom Initiative's The Spirit of Liberty: At Home, In the World, a new project advocating "freedom, free markets, and security". I e-mailed the following recommendation to Ken Hersh, the George W. Bush Presidential Center President and Chief Executive Officer, Holly Kuzmich, the George W. Bush Institute Executive Director and Senior Vice President, and the Human Freedom Initiative's general contact. Reference.

from: Eric
to: [Ken Hersh], [Holly Kuzmich], humanfreedom@bushcenter.org
date: Thu, Oct 19, 2017 at 5:45 PM
subject: You must clarify the Iraq issue to effectually advocate the spirit of liberty at home, in the world

Mr. Hersh, Ms. Kuzmich, and the George W. Bush Institute Human Freedom Initiative,

I support your campaign to champion the revival of American leadership of the free world that President Bush heralded today in New York City.

However, your political effort will be constantly undermined by the prevalent conjecture, distorted context, and misinformation that have obfuscated the Iraq issue and stigmatized Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). The prevailing OIF stigma, in addition to shading President Bush and his namesake organization, is purposefully applied as keystone premise in the politics to degrade the essential international norms and neutralize the vital enforcement principles that embodied with the paradigmatic US-led compliance enforcement of the UNSCR 660 series with Iraq. The "Spirit of Liberty" campaign advocates the same fundamental set of norms and principles that are purposefully degraded and neutralized by the OIF stigma.

For your political effort to be effectual, your team must publicly clarify — relitigate — the pivotal Iraq issue in order to re-lay the foundation of the politics at the premise level. The People at home and in the world must be made to understand that President Bush's decision for OIF was correct on the law, justified on the policy, and right on essential principle. That the US and our allies demonstrably were right on Iraq. And OIF opponents demonstrably have been revisionist and wrong.

To equip you for that contest, here is my explanation of Operation Iraqi Freedom's law and policy, fact basis: https://learning-curve.blogspot.com/2014/05/operation-iraqi-freedom-faq.html.

The OIF FAQ post synthesizes the controlling law, policy, and precedent and determinative facts that define the OIF decision. Its FAQ-style framework is oriented on the usual main talking points of the revisionist anti-OIF narrative. Hewing to the bedrock of the primary source authorities is the most effective way to correct the prevalent conjecture, distorted context, and misinformation that have obfuscated the Iraq issue.

In other words, the OIF FAQ is essentially the relitigation of the Iraq issue that Governor (Jeb) Bush should have undertaken when he was confronted with the Iraq issue during the 2015-2016 presidential campaign. "Knowing what we know now", President Bush's decision on Iraq demonstrably was correct on the law and facts.

You're trying to do the right thing, and it's needed. But to make headway, you must re-lay the foundation of the politics by clarifying the Iraq issue to the public. If you have questions about my work, please ask.

[See 2015 advice to Republican presidential candidates, How Republicans should talk about the Iraq issue.]



Also see Criticisms and suggestions for "International Law and the War in Iraq" (John Yoo, 2003) and Rebuke of and advice to Charles Duelfer.

Eric

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Monday, December 12, 2016

Rebuke of and advice to Charles Duelfer

PREFACE: Charles Duelfer directed the Iraq Survey Group after David Kay. He advocates for restoration of sufficiently competitive, robust American liberal leadership with Iraq of a kind with the intensive peace operations that President Obama cut off. Yet Duelfer self-defeatingly also upholds the keystone premise in the politics disqualifying the fundamental policy course correction he advocates: namely, the demonstrably faulty assertion that the Iraq intervention was unjustified in the first place. Here, I advise him on the change he must make for his advocacy to be politically effectual.



from: [Eric]
to: info@charlesduelfer.com
date: Mar 17, 2024, 8:30 AM
subject: Critique of Charles Duelfer's "Things to Consider: Iraq War at 20"

Mr. Duelfer,

I clarify the Iraq issue at Operation Iraqi Freedom FAQ. My critique of your 20th anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom post is very belated, but at least it's in time for the 21st anniversary. I also posted it as a comment at "Things to Consider: Iraq War at 20".

Duelfer:
Everyone (and their dog) is writing/commenting about the Iraq war 20 years later. I doubt more accuracy is achieved in these tales after 20 years.
... TV Experts
Experts in think tanks, universities, etc., all derive stature by being in the media. Just look at their resumes. They list the various media outlets on which they have appeared. (I have been guilty of this.) If they are on some television or other media, does that imply credibility? Or do they just generate clicks? Being controversial and of deep conviction is better for media, than nuance. Being good on TV is a separate talent from Iraq expertise. Cable networks particularly tend to sustain their preferred narrative. When Iraq (or anything else) is hot, their bookers need to fill time and their talking heads may know no more than what they read in their morning internet feed.

Indeed. From the start, revisionist experts have misled the public with faulty premises and historical distortion about the Iraq intervention. Fortunately, the primary sources of the mission, i.e., the basic law and facts that define the actual justification of Operation Iraqi Freedom, provide a reliable litmus test for the "accuracy" of anyone's "writing/commenting about the Iraq war".

Primary source authority precedes and outranks secondary expert authority on merit, and applies equally to layman and expert alike. When the Iraq issue is properly aligned with OIF's primary sources, we can accurately assess where "Everyone (and their dog)" credibly accord with the operative law and facts and where anyone, no matter their resume, has misinformed the public contra the operative law and facts.


Duelfer:
“I told you so…”
Bear in mind when you hear the next, “I told you so”, even if the actor really did, so what? Why should a top-level decision maker believe them or me? There are always plenty of “experts” who warn of pending threats.

In the case of Iraq, the President's belief in Saddam's threat followed the controlling law and policy of the Gulf War ceasefire compliance enforcement. Saddam's manifold standing threat was definitively established with the Gulf War and thereafter presumed until Iraq proved it was no longer that threat in accordance with the purpose-designed Gulf War ceasefire "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441). The Saddam regime never came close to resolving its standing threat via the mandated compliance. As you confirmed, Saddam never intended to comply with the ceasefire terms.

In fact, we know now that Saddam's violations of the UNSCR 687 terrorism and UNSCR 688 human rights mandates, which defined Saddam's threat along with his UNSCR 687 WMD violations, were substantially underestimated.


Duelfer:
Who should a president believe?
The intelligence community? Maybe, but they certainly have gotten things wrong in the past. The national security team? What do they know really? And they disagree in fundamental ways. Do you listen to other world leaders? They have their own spin and may be completely wrong. Iraqi oppositionists? They may sound knowledgeable, but they haven’t been in Iraq in decades. The UN weapons inspectors (UNSCOM)? They were in Iraq for many years, but couldn’t verify that Saddam disarmed…or not.

That's easy to answer. President Bush by procedure, like Presidents HW Bush and Clinton, believed the UN weapons inspectors who constantly verified that the Saddam regime failed to disarm in accordance with the "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441). (Your "…or not" contradicts the UNSCR 687 standard and fact record.)

President Bush was "still very new to the office when 9-11 happened". But the controlling law and policy that enforced the Gulf War ceasefire UNSC resolutions pursuant to UNSCR 678, the determinative fact status of Iraq's "material breach" (UNSCR 1441) of the Gulf War ceasefire not limited to WMD, and the governing procedure that Bush inherited were already mature. The "very new" President followed the very established governing procedure for Iraq.

President Bush believed the UN weapons inspectors by procedure because the controlling mandate to "bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations" (Public Law 105-235) meant that the UNSCR 687 compliance-based UN inspections were determinative for US action on Iraq.

The intelligence community, which as you point out, itself depended on the UN inspections, was ancillary in the compliance-based UNSCR 687 disarmament. Belief or disbelief in the intelligence was not determinative for a US-led UNSCR 678 action.

The national security team was beholden to the US law and policy that enforced UNSCR 687 pursuant to UNSCR 678, same as their boss. Other world leaders were beholden to UNSCRs 678 and 687, same as the American president.

While Iraqi oppositionists did contribute some to the intelligence, they were relevant in the context of UNSCR 688, which the US enforced alongside UNSCR 687 pursuant to UNSCR 678. The Saddam regime's extreme violation of the UNSCR 688 human rights mandates, "the consequences of which threaten international peace and security in the region" (UNSCR 688), is confirmed.

For Iraq's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441) with UNSCR 687, UNSCOM established, the UN Security Council decided, and UNMOVIC confirmed Iraq's "continued violations of its obligations" (UNSCR 1441). When the UNMOVIC Clusters document's "unresolved disarmament issues" established casus belli like the UNSCOM Butler report did in 1998, President Bush properly followed the governing procedure pursuant to UNSCR 678. You yourself corroborated that President Bush's decision was correct as "ISG judges that Iraq failed to comply with UNSCRs" and "the Iraqis never intended to meet the spirit of the UNSC’s resolutions" (Iraq Survey Group).

The procedural record of the Gulf War ceasefire compliance enforcement is straightforward, including the Presidential decisions that plainly responded to the compliance-based UN inspections in accordance with the compliance-based US law and policy pursuant to compliance-based UNSCR 678. So I'm disappointed that in your "writing/commenting about the Iraq war 20 years later" you've misinformed the public about President Bush's decision on Iraq by asserting a revisionist ambiguity that contradicts the operative law and facts.


Duelfer:
While inspectors would not confirm the disposition of Iraq’s full WMD programs, they nevertheless provided a continuous presence that limited uncertainty.

The UN weapons inspectors provided the President with full certainty from 1991 to 2003 that the Saddam regime was noncompliant with UNSCR 687, which was determinative. (The Saddam-induced absence of UNSCOM/UNMOVIC in Iraq between UNSCR 1205 and UNSCR 1441 meant that Iraq was ipso facto noncompliant with UNSCR 687 with its status effectively stuck on the UNSCOM findings that triggered Operation Desert Fox.)

However, the UN weapons inspectors did not limit uncertainty about the "disposition of Iraq’s full WMD programs" because, one, the very design of UNSCR 687 meant that only verification of Iraq's mandated compliance with UNSCR 687 could do that. In that regard, as you confirmed, "the Iraqis never intended to meet the spirit of the UNSC’s resolutions...Outward acts of compliance belied a covert desire to resume WMD activities" (ISG). Two, the misconception that the UN inspections limited uncertainty about Saddam's WMD was conclusively dispelled in 1995 by the Hussein Kamel al-Majid revelation.

Furthermore, the Iraq Survey Group's ex post findings confirm that the idea that the UN inspections limited uncertainty was a dangerous misconception. For example, among the UNSCR 687 violations you found in Iraq, "ISG uncovered information that the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) maintained throughout 1991 to 2003 a set of undeclared covert laboratories...The network of laboratories could have provided an ideal, compartmented platform from which to continue CW agent R&D or small-scale production efforts...The existence, function, and purpose of the laboratories were never declared to the UN" (ISG).

You also discovered proscribed biological capability that was hidden by the IIS from the UN inspections.

In other words, ISG confirmed that in Iraq's "final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations" (UNSCR 1441), Saddam instead had ready and hidden at least terrorism-level WMD capability under the noses of the UN weapons inspectors. Keep in mind that the IIS also managed Saddam's world-leading "regional and global terrorism" (Iraqi Perspectives Project), which also breached the ceasefire for casus belli.


Duelfer:
The intelligence community still had to make assessments…but based on less data and growing uncertainty. Moreover, the stories of dubious defectors could not be checked by having inspectors on the ground. Fabricators got a much better hearing than they deserved.

Set aside the ancillary relevance of the intelligence community in the Gulf War ceasefire compliance enforcement. Set aside the UNSCR 687 violations you found which show an active WMD program in violation of UNSCR 687. Do we actually know that the "stories of dubious defectors" were wholly fabricated? The ISG report fails to definitively answer that question.

You emphasized in the ISG's Transmittal Message, Scope Note, and the report's various sections that Iraq's non-pareil "denial and deception operations" (ISG), which in and of themselves breached the ceasefire and continued after the regime change, substantially undermined not only the pre-war UN inspections and intelligence assessments, but also your ex post investigation.

The evidence you found in hand is definitive proof of an Iraqi WMD program in violation of UNSCR 687. However, ISG non-findings that are commonly characterized in the politics as definitive proof of Iraq's innocence are in fact heavily qualified in the ISG report due to "the unparalleled looting and destruction, a lot of which was directly intentional, designed by the security services to cover the tracks of the Iraq WMD program and their other programs as well" (David Kay, 28JAN04).

Therefore, the WMD evidence that you failed to find cannot be definitive proof of Iraq's innocence, even if we ignore the UNSCR 687 violations that you did find.

The Iraqi denial of evidence to the ISG investigation by "the unparalleled looting and destruction, a lot of which was directly intentional, designed by the security services to cover the tracks of the Iraq WMD program" (Kay) logically infers that "Iraq’s full WMD programs" were greater than the UNSCR 687 violations you discovered despite Iraq's "denial and deception operations" (ISG). We can't know how much greater "Iraq’s full WMD programs" actually were because Saddam's agents successfully kept that from you. But we can assume that Iraq had higher value items than what they left behind, and based on your findings on Iraq's proscribed procurement, we can presume there was a lot of it.

As far as "Fabricators got a much better hearing than they deserved", it stands out that the "extensive, yet fragmentary and circumstantial, body of evidence" (ISG) that you found in Iraq includes claims by officials that are similar to the "stories of dubious defectors". For example, "ISG has investigated claims by former IIS officials—a former IIS chemist and his former supervisor, the late Dr. Al Azmirli—that the IIS produced ricin until at least 1995 and possibly until 2003" (ISG). Notably, you did not disprove the claim like you did Secretary Powell's mobile BW labs. Instead, typically, you were stymied by "ISG could not confirm that ricin work had occurred there because of extensive looting" (ISG).


Duelfer:
While UNSCOM dogmatically uncovered virtually all his WMD between 1991 and 1998, we did not know how successful we were.

Set aside that Iraq was obligated to declare and present all its UNSCR 687-proscribed items and activities to UNSCOM, and UNSCOM was not mandated to uncover Saddam's WMD. The fact is you still don't know how successful UNSCOM was or wasn't. The Iraq Survey Group's heavily qualified non-findings mean that while you can guess, you can't really know that "UNSCOM dogmatically uncovered virtually all his WMD between 1991 and 1998".

I'm disappointed that in your "writing/commenting about the Iraq war 20 years later" you've misinformed the public by omitting both the heavily qualified character of ISG's non-findings, despite that it's a constant theme in the ISG report, and the UNSCR 687 violations that you did find.


Duelfer:
Saddam wondered if US intelligence was possibly correct.
Saddam and those around him, had occasional doubts about whether WMD was retained in Iraq. At one point, reacting to the strength of US WMD accusations, he asked his top advisors (at a Revolutionary Command Council meeting) whether there was something they weren’t telling him about Iraq WMD?

I guess you mean Saddam wondered "whether WMD was retained in Iraq" beyond the UNSCR 687 violations that you found, including the "extensive, yet fragmentary and circumstantial, body of evidence suggesting that Saddam pursued a strategy to maintain a capability to return to WMD" (ISG), and the mass of WMD evidence that was denied to you by "the unparalleled looting and destruction, a lot of which was directly intentional, designed by the security services to cover the tracks of the Iraq WMD program and their other programs as well" (Kay).


Duelfer:
[2] Later in detention Saddam said these comments were aimed at Iran. He assumed the US, with its great (expensive anyway) intelligence system, must really know the truth.

Again, setting aside the UNSCR 687 violations that you found and the heavily qualified character of your non-findings, this seems impossible but...Is it possible that Saddam really did not understand that since 1991, the American president's decisions on Iraq were made in accordance with the controlling law and policy that enforced Iraq's mandated compliance with the Gulf War ceasefire terms, including UNSCR 687, pursuant to UNSCR 678? And that in the ceasefire disarmament process, the role of the "intelligence system" was merely ancillary?

Since 1990-1991, the US law and policy on Iraq pursuant to UNSCR 678 was openly broadcast, public domain, consistent, reiterated, straightforward and plainly stated. Did Saddam really not understand that his intransigent flagrant "material breach" (UNSCR 1441) of the Gulf War ceasefire, which includes his self-incriminating comments, would eventually compel the UNSCR 678 enforcers to resume the Gulf War and this time complete it? The ISG report implies as much, but again, it seems impossible. Extremely, dangerously delusional on Saddam's part, if true.


Duelfer:
Iraq was a hard target.
Access to Iraq was very limited. It was like North Korea is today. Remember, Iraq did not have internet (except for a few senior officials). The data that came out of Iraq was limited and therefore the bits that did emerge often received out of proportion attention. The outsized role of bogus defectors like the one dubbed “Curveball” illustrates the problem. Judgements were made on very little real new data.
... [3] The fact that the intelligence assessments relied on such limited information and was such low confidence should have been emphasized. This was one of the terrible faults in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). It’s now on-line and worth reading to see how you would react to that intelligence judgment.

Hence UNSCR 687's compliance-based enforcement.

The burden or "onus" (UNMOVIC Clusters document) was on Iraq to prove it disarmed per UNSCR 687 as a necessary condition to forestall resumption of the Gulf War. There was no burden on the UNSCR 678 enforcers to prove Iraq was armed as estimated by the intelligence community, which obviated the "hard target" issue.

Your statement "Judgements were made on very little real new data" is incorrect. At the decision point of Iraq's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441), the determinative data of the Saddam regime's noncompliance with the Gulf War ceasefire terms was up to date. In fact, President Bush's 18MAR03 determination for OIF mainly cites to the 06MAR03 UNMOVIC Clusters document. Subsequent fact findings, including yours, have only piled on redundantly to the already dispositive evidence of Saddam's sweeping "material breach" (UNSCR 1441).

Casus belli was always Iraq's "continued violations of its obligations" (UNSCR 1441), whose determinative data was open to the public, not the intelligence estimates. While "Curveball" illustrates a problem for the intelligence community, it doesn't significantly affect the ceasefire disarmament process that established OIF's casus belli. Procedurally speaking, there's no relevant reason for "The fact that the intelligence assessments relied on such limited information and was such low confidence should have been emphasized".


Duelfer:
Diminishing flexibility as military prepares.
The political decision to prepare a military option to bolster a diplomatic solution is seductive. However, military preparations acquire their own momentum and before too long become virtually unstoppable. Once the military is instructed to begin to put in place a capability to achieve regime change by force huge things start to move. Tanks, munitions, repair and maintenance facilities, fuel, aircraft support and spares parts, hospitals, search and rescue capabilities etc., take months to deploy forward. It is a massive undertaking and once in place, cannot be held in abeyance or the capability begins to decay. The notion of putting all that military capacity in place and then wait “to give diplomacy a chance” is unfortunately impossible. “Use it or lose it” takes over. What may begin as an option to increase diplomatic leverage for a peaceful solution gradually becomes a factor that makes a peaceful outcome almost impossible. Somewhere in the Iraq build-up there was a “point of no return”. Unless, or course, if Saddam left. That was his choice.

You're misleading the public here.

First, there was no either/or. After 12 years of successful intransigence, particularly Saddam's victory over the diplomatic coercive alternative, i.e., sanctions, after 1996 and over UNSCOM and the UNSCR 678 enforcers in 1998, the viability of the "diplomatic solution" offered by UNSCR 1441 wholly depended on a military threat that was sufficient to compel Saddam's cooperation with the UNSCR 1441 inspections. In other words, the "massive undertaking...of putting all that military capacity in place" was the only way "to give diplomacy a chance".

Second, the diplomatic "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441) was given a full chance and then some. The “point of no return” moment for the OIF invasion force build-up coincided with the UNMOVIC Clusters document, which concluded the UNSCR 1441 compliance test with Saddam's utter failure to prove the required "full and immediate compliance by Iraq without conditions or restrictions with its obligations under resolution 687 (1991) and other relevant resolutions" (UNSCR 1441). In fact, according to the timeline spelled out in UNSCR 1441, President Bush technically could have ordered OIF based on Hans Blix's scathing 27JAN03 report. Instead, Bush opted to give Saddam more leeway to fulfill Iraq's ceasefire obligations, and Saddam threw away the extra chance.

In the end, even when the UNMOVIC Clusters document had established casus belli for the UNSCR 1441 "final opportunity to comply" and the OIF invasion force build-up was at the “point of no return”, the US and UK still tried to carve out yet another chance for Saddam to switch off the military threat with Iraq's mandated compliance. But Saddam and his accomplices on the UNSC rejected the attempt.

Three, Saddam leaving Iraq was not the only way, nor the way preferred by President Bush to forestall resumption of the Gulf War. To make the Gulf War ceasefire permanent and stay in power, Saddam only had to prove full compliance with the ceasefire terms that were purpose-designed to cure Iraq's Gulf War-established threat, which Iraq had agreed to do in 1991. But instead of choosing peace with Iraq's mandated compliance in his "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441), Saddam chose to resume the Gulf War by keeping Iraq's "continued violations of its obligations" (UNSCR 1441).


Duelfer:
So, before quickly concluding that you know Iraq was a huge avoidable mistake, take a moment to consider the circumstances at the time and whether a different decision would have been possible.
... I had the opportunity to provide my version of “lessons-learned” from Iraq for over 7000 new intelligence officers (mostly analysts) in the years since. It’s something I have spent many years considering and discussing with various participants—including Iraqis who by the accident of birth were in Saddam’s Iraq.

Yes, you should. First things first: Correcting the fundamental flaws in your own consideration of President Bush's decision requires that you step back and lay a proper foundation for the Iraq issue with the primary sources that define OIF's justification. The OIF FAQ is purpose-designed to teach you how to do that.

Once you've clarified the Iraq issue for yourself, you need to go back to the "over 7000...intelligence officers" and "various participants—including Iraqis" whom you've evidently misinformed and clarify OIF's justification for them, too.


Duelfer:
It is also worth considering whether regime change could have been done differently. But that’s a separate series of questions.
... I stayed in touch with Iraq and Iraqis up to and during the invasion of 2003. I saw Iraqis I had known for years—sometimes at their homes, sometimes in detention. It was not pleasant. Saddam was removed, but…did it really need to be that bad afterwards?

It's important to remember that for any highly competitive endeavor, it's normal for an initial plan, once engaged, to face setbacks that compel adjustment. History shows that pattern is normal for military contests, no less than when competing against vicious unbounded opponents like Saddamists.

We know now that the initial post-war plan, which was valid based on what we knew before OIF, failed in part because Western analysts severely underestimated Saddam's radical sectarian turn, extreme corruption of Iraqi society, and deep domestic, regional, and global terrorism. Outsiders, including Iraqi expats and UN personnel like you who'd been to Iraq, failed to understand how depraved the Saddam regime had become.

The initial post-war plan failed because at first Saddamists were better at killing and terrorizing Iraqis than we were at protecting the Iraqi people per Public Law 105-338, UNSCR 1483 etc.. As a product of Saddam's distinctive governance, Saddamists entered the contest as the world's top experts at inflicting genocide and terrorism on the Iraqi people, and they zealously carried over their expertise to the terrorist insurgency against post-Saddam Iraq.

But setback and adjustment are normal in any kind of real competition, no less in military contests. American leaders and the US forces mandated to defend the Iraqi people adjusted to the Saddamists' vicious opening advantage in relatively short order.

So, "Did it really need to be that bad afterwards?"

An accurate and precise pre-war assessment of the extreme character of the Saddam regime's UNSCR 687 terrorism violations, including Saddam's "considerable operational overlap" (IPP) with al Qaeda, and UNSCR 688 human rights violations might have helped.

Realistically, the solution is that the Iraqi regime change should have happened long before 2003, if not in Operation Desert Storm, then as soon as it became apparent that Saddam would not comply with Iraq's Gulf War ceasefire obligations. We should not have kept trying for over a decade(!) to convince a clearly intransigent Saddam to comply with the ceasefire terms as Iraq festered, all the while raising the cost and difficulty of regime change.

Knowing what we know now, the Iraqi regime change happened much later than it should have. But that's not President Bush's fault. It's mainly his father's fault. The lesson of Iraq is that a malignant cancer like the Saddam regime needs to be solved comprehensively as soon as possible. As is, it's better that the Iraqi regime change happened in 2003 than any later. The Saddam problem was already "far worse" (UN Special Rapporteur on Iraq, 18MAR04) than we knew, and it was only growing worse the longer we let it fester.


Duelfer:
I was also responsible for the Iraq Survey Group’s comprehensive report on Iraq WMD (so-called Duelfer Report) issued a month before the November 2004 presidential elections. That report has stood the test of time.

While the Iraq Survey Group is not technically a primary source of Operation Iraqi Freedom, as it's ex post to the President's determination for OIF, I cite the ISG report extensively and often as a 'chief corroborative source', more than I do many of OIF's primary sources.

That being said, the ISG report is not without fundamental flaws. Excerpt from the OIF FAQ retrospective #duelferreport section:

The whole ISG Duelfer report, including all 3 volumes, is worth reading. While doing so, it is critical for readers to take it upon themselves to apply the "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441) to the ISG findings because, although the Iraq Survey Group says it adhered to the UNSCR 687 standard, ISG fundamentally deviated from UNSCR 687 by inventing a distinction between WMD activities and "activities that could support full WMD reactivation" (ISG) that does not exist under the "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441).

According to UNSCR 687, Iraqi "activities that could support full WMD reactivation" (ISG), such as the IIS "large covert procurement program ... for conventional weapons, WMD precursors, and dual-use technology" (ISG), were WMD activities. Yet ISG's inapposite arbitrary distinction between WMD activities and "activities that could support full WMD reactivation" (ISG) enabled OIF opponents to claim the Iraq Survey Group found Iraq WMD-free when in fact ISG's findings are rife with UNSCR 687 WMD violations.

As well as inapposite of UNSCR 687, the arbitrary distinction between WMD activities and "activities that could support full WMD reactivation" (ISG) is also impractical since the Iraq-induced "degradation" (ISG) of the "extensive, yet fragmentary and circumstantial, body of evidence suggesting that Saddam pursued a strategy to maintain a capability to return to WMD" (ISG) made it impossible for ISG to parse that distinction.


I hope you find this critique useful. I look forward to your response, and I invite you to review my work at https://learning-curve.blogspot.com/2014/05/operation-iraqi-freedom-faq.html. If you have questions about my work, please ask.

---------------
Comment:

Dr. [Mr.] Duelfer,

You're incorrect that "the Iraq WMD assessments were wrong" in terms of the US presidential determination for Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). The controlling law, policy, and precedent for the OIF decision plainly show the determination for enforcement with the Saddam regime pivoted on whether Iraq proved it complied and disarmed as mandated, not whether the US proved Iraq was armed as estimated.

I recommend to you (again), your fellow advocates for reviving responsible American leadership, and to the Trump administration, my OIF FAQ explanation that sets the record straight on the law and policy, fact justification of the Iraq intervention by synthesizing the mission's primary source authorities.

Contrary to your assertion that "the Iraq WMD assessments were wrong", in terms of the US presidential determination, the actual "reality" is that UNSCOM to UNMOVIC to the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) as well as non-armament fact findings, such as the Iraqi Perspectives Project (IPP) and UNCHR, "broadly" corroborate your assessment "that Iraq failed to comply with UNSCRs up to OIF" (ISG).

The legally prescribed and practically necessary determinative measurement for Saddam's WMD-related threat was not rooted in the intelligence estimates but rather the UNSCOM and UNMOVIC findings on Iraq's "continued violations of its obligations" (UNSCR 1441), inasmuch the WMD-related intelligence estimates were not themselves rooted in the UNSCR 687 inspections.

On law and fact, President Bush and the US (with Prime Minister Blair and the UK) demonstrably were right on Iraq. The OIF decision is a straightforward fact pattern with an exceptionally well developed, decade+ law, policy, precedent, fact record. Iraq's categorical "material breach" (UNSCR 1441) of the Gulf War ceasefire is confirmed by you and other fact-finding authorities.

Beyond the correct US presidential determination for OIF, the US-led, UN-mandated peace operations with Iraq were succeeding before President Obama's deviation.

At the dawn of the Arab Spring, the UN Security Council (on 15DEC10) and President Obama (on 19MAY11) benchmarked the historic opportunity to build a generational peace in the Middle East with the hard-won cornerstone where “In Iraq, we see the promise of a multiethnic, multisectarian democracy … poised to play a key role in the region if it continues its peaceful progress” (Obama).

However, the window to build a generational peace evident in 2010-2011 required American leadership to stay the course with Iraq and the Bush Freedom Agenda.

Instead, President Obama radically changed course with Iraq and dropped the Bush Freedom Agenda. Obama's deviant rationale has been based on the demonstrably false notion which you promote, that with Iraq, "Political leaders made decisions based on ... broadly wrong assessments of reality".

Your basic law-and-fact error, exploited by President Obama, has had a catastrophic ripple effect. OIF stigma - comprised largely of conjecture, distorted context, and readily debunked dis[mis]information - has been the keystone premise for President Obama's critical choices that sabotaged nascent post-Saddam Iraq and doomed the Syrian people by disqualifying American leadership of the free world at the very historical moment where the steadfast American leadership epitomized by President Bush with Iraq was most needed. Avid actors such as Iran and Russia have accepted Obama's effective invitation to fill the vacuum and alter the international order in their expected illiberal manner.

The 1990-2011 Iraq intervention, especially OIF and its peace operations, is paradigmatic as it embodied the principles of American leadership of the free world. As long as the stigmatization of the Iraq intervention prevails in domestic and international politics, your current advocacy for reviving responsible American leadership with Iraq, Iran, Syria, and indeed the rest of the world, will continue to be disqualified at the premise level of politics and policy.

The viability of your advocacy fundamentally depends upon you first de-stigmatizing the Iraq intervention. Before you can advocate on current events effectively, you must establish at the premise level of the politics that in principle and policy, President Bush and America were fundamentally right and by the same token, President Obama has been fundamentally wrong to deviate from President Bush with Iraq and the Freedom Agenda.

The following points are included in my OIF FAQ explanation. But as an introduction to setting the record straight on OIF's justification, note:

Iraq's guilt of UNSCR 687-proscribed armament was established by UNSCOM and decided by the UN Security Council. Upon the UNSCOM-established fact of Iraqi WMD, "the threat Iraq’s non-compliance with Council resolutions and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles poses to international peace and security" (UNSCR 1441) was presumed until Iraq proved it complied and disarmed as mandated. In other words, noncompliant Iraq was ipso facto a proscriptively armed threat irrespective of the intelligence estimates. The operative enforcement procedure for the Gulf War ceasefire, including the UNSCR 687 disarmament process, was built upon the burden of proof on Iraq. There was no operative burden of proof on the US, UK, and UN.

Therefore, the principal trigger for Operation Iraqi Freedom was not and could not be the intelligence estimates. By procedure, casus belli was primarily established by the 06MAR03 UNMOVIC report confirming Iraq's "continued violations of its obligations" in "material breach" (UNSCR 1441) of the Gulf War ceasefire with the same operative enforcement procedure by which the 15DEC98 UNSCOM report triggered Operation Desert Fox in 1998.

The "assessments of reality" that established casus belli with Iraq from UNSCR 660 (1990) onward were the prescribed measurements of Iraq's compliance with the UNSCR 660 series, in particular Iraq's obligations under the Gulf War ceasefire pursuant to UNSCRs 687 and 688 and related resolutions.

The controlling law, policy, and precedent that defined the operative enforcement procedure plainly show that the moment that UNSCR 687 inspectors re-entered Iraq pursuant to UNSCR 1441, the intelligence estimates could not trigger enforcement to "bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations" (Public Law 105-235). Rather, the US-led, UN-mandated ceasefire enforcement with Iraq always pivoted on the prescribed measurement of Iraq's compliance with the "measures" mandated to satisfy "the need to be assured of Iraq's peaceful intentions [and] ... to secure peace and security in the area" (UNSCR 687).

Based on the determinative "assessments of reality" for the OIF decision, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair clearly were correct according to the operative context - eg, "The Security Council resolutions will be enforced -- the just demands of peace and security will be met -- or action will be unavoidable" (Bush at UNGA, 12SEP02), "Resolution 1441 gave Iraq one last chance, one last chance to come into compliance or to face serious consequences" (Powell at UNSC, 05FEB03), "ensure that Iraq abandons its strategy of delay, evasion and noncompliance and promptly and strictly complies with all relevant Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq" (Public Law 107-243), and "ensure full and immediate compliance by Iraq without conditions or restrictions with its obligations under resolution 687 (1991) and other relevant resolutions" (UNSCR 1441).

Contrary to your unfounded assertion that the OIF decision was based on "broadly wrong assessments of reality", the Saddam regime was evidentially in categorical breach of the "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441) for the Gulf War ceasefire in Iraq's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441), especially with the disarmament mandates of UNSCR 687, terrorism mandates of UNSCR 687, and human rights mandates of UNSCR 688. [FYI, it's evident the pre-war assessments significantly under-estimated the Saddam regime's human rights abuses in breach of UNSCR 688 and "regional and global terrorism", including Saddam's "considerable operational overlap" (IPP) with the al Qaeda network, in breach of UNSCR 687, which were also enforcement triggers.]

At the decision point for OIF upon UNMOVIC's 06MAR03 report, Saddam was far beyond the 'red line' with no intention of fully and immediately complying with the Gulf War ceasefire as was required to switch off the threat of regime change that enforced Iraq's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441) . As you found, "the Iraqis never intended to meet the spirit of the UNSC’s resolutions" (ISG) per paragraphs 8 to 13 of UNSCR 687, let alone the spectrum of ceasefire mandates, especially on terrorism per UNSCR 687 and human rights per UNSCR 688.

... The assessment of reality is you are responsible for the current events and degraded US foreign policy that you protest.

You've used your preeminent reputation to validate the plainly false narrative of OIF that America's rivals - Russia and France chief among them - have employed to stigmatize the Iraq intervention and thereby disqualify the American leadership needed for current events.

For your current advocacy to be effective, it requires the re-normalization of the particular "strong horse" American leadership of the free world that manifested with OIF. Which first requires your mea culpa while you disabuse the myth, "Political leaders made decisions [for the Iraq intervention] based on ... broadly wrong assessments of reality".

Once you've set the record straight on OIF's law-and-fact justification at the premise level of our politics to de-stigmatize the Iraq intervention in order to re-qualify the OIF-embodied principles of American leadership in our policy, then - and only then - can your current advocacy hope to become viable.

Re-framing the discourse by establishing that President Bush and the US (with Prime Minister Blair and the UK) were right on Iraq - and by the same token that OIF critics, including yourself and President Obama, have been wrong - lays the foundation needed for the only real path for your current advocacy to succeed.

---------------
Comment:

Mr. Duelfer,

Your premise that "Saddam didn’t have WMD" is clearly incorrect.

In fact, according to the operative definition or "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441) for an Iraq WMD program set by paragraphs 8 to 13 of UNSCR 687 and related resolutions, the Iraq Survey Group -- you -- uncovered an active WMD program in Iraq.

In terms of ISG's affirmative findings, you reported, inter alia, "we have clear evidence of his [Saddam's] intent to resume WMD" with "preserved capability" that amounted to a ready chemical and biological weapon capability with an IIS undeclared covert "ideal, compartmented platform from which to continue CW agent R&D or small-scale production efforts", "secret biological work in the small IIS laboratories", "Iraq also possessed declarable equipment for chemical production, which it had not declared to the UN...it would have been possible for Iraq to assemble a CW production plant", and "The UN deemed Iraq’s accounting of its production and use of BW agent simulants...to be inadequate...the equipment used for their manufacture can also be quickly converted to make BW agent" (ISG). And, "until he was deposed in April 2003, Saddam’s conventional weapons and WMD-related procurement programs steadily grew in scale, variety, and efficiency" (ISG).

In addition, the WMD munitions confiscated by Operation Avarice outside of the ISG investigation reinforced your caveat that "ISG cannot discount the possibility that a few large caches of munitions remain to be discovered within Iraq" and "ISG cannot determine the fate of Iraq’s stocks of bulk BW agents...[which is] of particular concern, as they relate to the possibility of a retained BW capability".

In terms of the ISG non-findings that presumably underlie your misstatement "Saddam didn’t have WMD", you made clear in the ISG report's Transmittal Message, Scope Note, and throughout its various sections that severe practical limitations significantly handicapped the ISG investigation. Conclusions such as "it appears that Iraq, by the mid-1990s, was essentially free of militarily significant WMD stocks" (ISG) that are commonly valuated as unequivocal fact in political and scholarly treatments alike are in reality no better than heavily qualified guesses.

Or, as your predecessor David Kay cautioned the Senate Armed Services Committee on January 28, 2004: "I regret to say that I think at the end of the work of the [Iraq Survey Group] there's still going to be an unresolvable ambiguity about what happened. A lot of that traces to the failure on April 9 to establish immediately physical security in Iraq -- the unparalleled looting and destruction, a lot of which was directly intentional, designed by the security services to cover the tracks of the Iraq WMD program and their other programs as well, a lot of which was what we simply called Ali Baba looting. ... we're really not going to be able to prove beyond a truth the negatives and some of the positive conclusions that we're going to come to. There will be always unresolved ambiguity here."

The heavily qualified character of ISG's non-findings infers that absence of evidence in the ISG investigation is *not* evidence of absence, but rather evidence of Iraqi "denial and deception operations" (ISG) that in and of themselves violated the Gulf War ceasefire for casus belli.

It also infers that ISG's affirmative findings constitute a floor only, not a complete account of Saddam's WMD. ISG found many UNSCR 687 WMD violations. Yet what you found were just the scraps left over after Iraq rid presumably higher-value evidence of UNSCR 687-proscribed items and activities with "the unparalleled looting and destruction, a lot of which was directly intentional, designed by the security services to cover the tracks of the Iraq WMD program and their other programs as well" (Kay).

Properly understood, ISG's non-findings do not infer that missing WMD stocks and program elements did not exist or "Saddam didn’t have WMD". Rather, they infer that you were unable to account for them as mandated by UNSCR 687 due to the same Iraqi "denial and deception operations" (ISG) that denied the mandated account of Saddam's WMD to UNSCOM and UNMOVIC.

We're compelled by Iraq's UNSCR 707 violations to speculate about the "unparalleled" (Kay) mass of evidence that Saddam's agents successfully kept from you. At the same time, the Silberman-Robb WMD Commission, CIA WMD retrospective, and other influential sources are wrong to misinform the public by pretending the "unparalleled" (Kay) mass of missing evidence never existed at all.

Whatever was in the evidence "sanitized" (ISG) by Iraq, in terms of a floor, ISG demonstrated that Saddam covertly possessed at minimum the terrorist-level WMD capability that chiefly concerned Presidents Clinton and Bush, if not a ready battlefield-level WMD capability.

In concert with your confirmation of a ready Iraqi terrorist-level WMD capability, the Iraqi Perspectives Project (the ISG-equivalent investigation of Saddam's terrorism) showed that Saddam's UNSCR 687 terrorism violations (which also violated the UNSCR 949 aggression and UNSCR 688 humanitarian mandates) were significantly underestimated by pre-war analysts, including notably Saddam's "considerable operational overlap" (IPP) with al Qaeda.

As a threat, Saddam didn't need to partner with bin Laden to stealthily deploy Iraq's ready terrorist-level WMD capability anywhere in the Middle East and the world. Saddam had developed a world-leading terror "cartel" (IPP) of his own, in which bin Laden's terrorists were in effect simultaneously Saddam's terrorists.

Worse, IPP's findings show that our intelligence agencies had significantly underestimated Saddam's terrorism at the same time that, as ISG's findings show, our intelligence agencies had failed to track Saddam's undeclared covert ready terrorist-level WMD capability.

Your IPP counterpart, Jim Lacey concluded when he weighed IPP and ISG's findings together, "Given the evidence, it appears that we removed Saddam’s regime not a moment too soon" (National Review, 14SEP11).

Again, your premise "Saddam didn’t have WMD" is clearly incorrect according to the operative definition or "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441) for an Iraq WMD program.

The upcoming landmark 20th anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom is a distinctive opportunity for you to set the record straight on the UNSCR 687 disarmament element of OIF's justification.

Your special stature as an UNSCOM and Iraq Survey Group leader means that it's essential that you in particular correct the prevalent misconception "Saddam didn’t have WMD" (Duelfer) to the public, especially anywhere it has metastasized with compounding harmful consequences. For example, the Silberman-Robb WMD Commission's widely influential analysis is corrupted at foundation by its false core premise, "In retrospect, as found by the ISG, it is clear that the [Iraqi WMD] stockpiles and programs were not there to be found", which contradicts that UNMOVIC and ISG's findings are rife with UNSCR 687 WMD violations and ISG's non-findings are heavily qualified.

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Comment (posted 311823ZDEC17 with a modified version, below, re-posted 061540ZJUL18; "Your comment is awaiting moderation"):

Mr. Duelfer,

The law-and-fact record belies your belief that "Worse were the US decisions to disband the army and condemn Baathists to having no future in Iraq."

First, the de-Ba'athification process simply carried forward the standing human rights policy for Iraq, which is referenced in the UNSCR 1483, "Affirming the need for accountability for crimes and atrocities committed by the previous Iraqi regime".

Second, I suggest you see this clarification of the de-Ba'athification process and the CPA decision to build anew rather than reconstitute Saddam's security forces.

Third, knowing what we know now, de-Ba'athification was necessary. The UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) post-war assessment of Saddam's Iraq found that the Saddam regime's "systematic, widespread and extremely grave violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law by the Government of Iraq, resulting in an all-pervasive repression and oppression sustained by broad-based discrimination and widespread terror" (19APR02) - already marked at the far end of the scale before the 2003 regime change - in fact "were far worse than originally reported to the Special Rapporteur in the past" (18-19MAR04). In other words, the Saddam regime's human rights violations were off the charts. As such, immediately incorporating Saddam's security forces, besides the practical obstacles of reconstituting them, would have been a diametric contradiction of the US-led, UN-mandated coalition's longstanding human-rights policies for Iraq per UNSCRs 688, 1483, etc, that were key components of the UNSCR 660-series compliance enforcement and set the guiding parameters for the occupation and peace operations.

In the same vein, we also know now that pre-OIF analysis vastly underestimated Saddam's "regional and global terrorism" wherein "[t]he predominant targets of Iraqi state terror operations were Iraqi citizens, both inside and outside of Iraq" (Iraqi Perspectives Project). IPP found Saddam's terrorism included "considerable operational overlap" with the al Qaeda network, which also carried forward to the terrorist insurgency. All of which of course breached the Gulf War ceasefire per UNSCRs 687 and 688 to add to OIF's casus belli on top of the UNMOVIC findings that by the operative procedure confirmed Iraq's "material breach" (UNSCR 1441) to trigger the OIF decision.

A case in point for the CPA's sensible decision to build anew rather than reconstitute Saddam's security forces is the 2003 assassination of UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello. Note that Vieira opted to retain the guards assigned by the Saddam regime in lieu of American military protection, a mistake that likely cost him and his team members their lives. I can imagine Vieira was swayed to his fatal choice by appeals like the April 2003 appeals described in your post.

Could the de-Ba'athification have been better calibrated and undertaken? Of course. But preemptive perfection in any complex endeavor is not the norm. Adjustment, including with necessary measures like de-Ba'athification, is normal.

Moreover, knowing what we know now, it's likely that the terrorist insurgency was principally a premeditated guerilla adaptation of Saddam's ceasefire-breaching, vastly underestimated domestic "widespread terror" (UNCHR) and "regional and global terrorism" (IPP) rather than a spontaneous post-war reaction to an over-broad de-Ba'athification process.

*** In nations, as well as in persons, curing an extreme malignant cancer is hard, even in the rare instance that doctors do everything right. Cancers are known to fight back. Even without understanding the far depths that Saddam had corrupted Iraqi society and the far extent of the terrorist danger he posed, the international community understood long before OIF that curing Iraq would be a generational endeavor. Yet in relatively short order, despite the zealous efforts of vicious enemies aided by cruel accomplices, the US-led peace operations responded resolutely to post-war setbacks with necessary adjustments on track with a normal pattern of competition.

If you're sincere about advocating your prescription for "Iraq - avoiding the next insurgency", then you must delineate the right track and the wrong track with Iraq. The wrong track is President Obama's disastrous, profoundly inhumane, radical course deviation that prematurely disengaged the vital US-led peace operations from Iraq. The keystone premise for Obama's deviation is the stigmatization of the Iraq intervention, for which you're complicit and which has been carried forward by the Trump administration. Therefore, to return the US to the right track with Iraq according to your advocacy, you must clarify in the politics that President Bush's decision on Iraq was correct in the first place and the US-led peace operations with Iraq were succeeding until President Obama deviated US policy onto the wrong track.

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Comment:

Mr. Duelfer,

Your equivalence of US decisions regarding Iraq's Saddam and north Korea's Kim is inapposite in that US policy on Saddam was based on the longstanding, well established, clearly spelled out UNSCR 660-series compliance enforcement whose "measures acting under Chapter VII of the Charter" (UNSCR 687) composed the purpose-designed "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441) which the "Government of Iraq", eg, the Saddam regime, was mandated to fulfill in order to satisfy "the need to be assured of Iraq's peaceful intentions in the light of its unlawful invasion and occupation of Kuwait" (UNSCR 687).

As such, the operative context for US decisions regarding Saddam was founded on "Recognizing the threat Iraq’s non-compliance with Council resolutions and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles poses to international peace and security" (UNSCR 1441). The set condition meant Saddam's threat, including his WMD-related threat, was measured by Iraq's "continued violations of its obligations" (UNSCR 1441) per the manifold ceasefire terms purpose-designed to resolve Saddam's Gulf War-established manifold threat. The continuing "threat [of] Iraq's non-compliance with Council resolutions" (UNSCR 1441) related to aggression (UNSCR 949), WMD and conventional armament (UNSCR 687), terrorism (UNSCR 687), and repression (UNSCR 688). At the decision point for OIF, the WMD-related "threat [of] Iraq's non-compliance" (UNSCR 1441) was confirmed by UNMOVIC's measurement of "about 100 unresolved disarmament issues" for casus belli. Today, with corroboration of Iraq's noncompliance piled high from the UNSCR 1441 inspections and post-war ISG, IPP, IIC, and UNCHR investigations - eg, "[i]n addition to preserved capability, we have clear evidence of his [Saddam's] intent to resume WMD" (ISG), "the Saddam regime regarded inspiring, sponsoring, directing, and executing acts of terrorism as an element of state power" (IPP), and "[t]he new evidence, particularly that of eyewitnesses, added another dimension to the systematic crimes of the former regime, revealing unparalleled cruelty" (UNCHR) - Saddam's threatening breach of the Gulf War ceasefire can now be seen as categorical.

The UNSCR 660-series compliance enforcement since 1990 meant US leaders were not positioned to guess at Saddam's motivations via diplomacy near or far. Making decisions regarding Saddam as you would have had US leaders make them would have been remiss since Saddam's "intentions" (UNSCR 687) were objectively assessed according to the fact measurement of Iraq's mandated compliance in the operative context of "the threat Iraq’s non-compliance with Council resolutions ... poses to international peace and security" (UNSCR 1441). As such, President Bush's decision on Iraq responded to the mandated measurement of Saddam's "material breach" (UNSCR 1441) in good faith with the decade+ controlling law, policy, and precedent that defined the operative enforcement procedure for the Gulf War ceasefire mandates.

When a recidivist convicted manifold felon, who for some reason has been allowed to fester in society, continually, categorically, and flagrantly violates his terms of probation, including in his "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441), with escalating intransigence, threat, and harm until lesser enforcement measures have been exhausted and the compliance enforcement is on the verge of defeat, there's no burden on the compliance enforcement authority to guess at the felon's motivations on top of the felon's evidential "material breach" (UNSCR 1441) in order to impose the originally suspended sentence. President HW Bush, 27FEB91: "Iraq must comply fully with all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions. ... If Iraq violates these terms, coalition forces will be free to resume military operations."

As far as I know, there isn't a clear-cut compliance test for Kim's motivations comparable to the Gulf War ceasefire mandates "Determined to secure full compliance with its [UNSC] decisions, Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations" (UNSCR 1441) by which US leaders objectively measured Saddam's "intentions" (UNSCR 687). There ought to be a comparable compliance test that can ensure the US decision on north Korea's Kim will be as plainly correct as the US decision on Iraq's Saddam. Perhaps if the Iraq intervention is de-stigmatized and publicly upheld, while Saddam's accomplices who've obfuscated the actual why of the Iraq intervention are publicly discredited, then a comparable compliance test can be effectuated for north Korea's Kim.

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Comment:

Dr. [Mr.] Duelfer,

Last week on Twitter (original tweet was July 6), @BrunoTertrais and @mraillet (Michel Miraillet) claimed that there is no evidence France was complicit in Saddam’s breach of the Gulf War ceasefire involving the Oil for Food scandal and UNSCR 687-proscribed procurement. Mr. Miraillet claimed insider diplomatic knowledge that UNSCOM found no evidence of French suppliers among Iraq’s WMD-related items. I cited the Regime Finance and Procurement section of the ISG report. They dismissed it out of hand. Mr. Tertrais says he’s a longtime friend of yours; I suggested he should ask you about French complicity in the Oil for Food scandal and UNSCR 687-proscribed procurement.

I doubt Mr. Tertrais will actually reach out to you over a Twitter argument. Nonetheless, what do you think of their denials of French complicity in Saddam’s breach of the Gulf War ceasefire?

...

Dr. [Mr.] Duelfer,

Thank you.

I don’t have a paper copy or paginated electronic copy of the ISG report. I refer to the on-line version of the ISG report at https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd_2004/, which isn’t paginated as such, so I can’t match pages 93 and 111 to content. Section title and key word to search should work.

Since the supplier data isn’t public, Mr. Miraillet had the advantage of me when he said UNSCOM found no WMD-related materials of French origin. As a layman without his access to the subject material, I could only retort on that count with the 2nd-hand report at http://www.iraqwatch.org/suppliers/Iraq-oped-nyt-2003.htm:
The [supplier] data was given to United Nations inspectors in the late 1990’s, and was reconfirmed in Iraq’s 12,000-page declaration last fall. But the statistical material on which it is based remained confidential until recently.
The data reveals that firms in Germany and France outstripped all others in selling the most important thing — specialized chemical-industry equipment that is particularly useful for producing poison gas. Without this equipment, none of the other imports would have been of much use.
I mainly cited to the suspect Iraqi-French diplomacy and, related, UNSCR 687-proscribed conventional and WMD-related procurement activity you described in the ISG report. I was particularly offended that France would trade anti-aircraft items to the Saddam regime in contravention of UNSCR 687 despite that American and allied craft enforced the no-fly zones pursuant to UNSCR 688 under threat of Iraqi anti-aircraft fire.

My understanding of French complicity with Saddam’s noncompliance, the casus belli for OIF, is grounded in France’s opposition since the mid-1990s to the “hyperpower” US-led enforcement of the terms of the Gulf War ceasefire that was carried forward from Operation Desert Fox to Operation Iraqi Freedom. As you have explained, the opposition by France, Russia, and others to the US-led enforcement of Iraq’s mandated compliance factored prominently in Saddam’s calculation for declining to comply as mandated with the UNSCR 660 series, including and especially UNSCRs 687 and 688.

I was moved to respond on Twitter because your friends and Ambassador Gerard Araud (who wrote the original tweet) were derisive of President Bush’s decision for OIF, and I was dissatisfied with Professor Eliot Cohen’s retort. The argument took on a different light when I clarified the casus belli was the Saddam regime’s evidential categorical breach of the Gulf War ceasefire and spotlighted French complicity with Saddam’s noncompliance which triggered enforcement with OIF.

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Comment:

Mr. Duelfer,

For your information and review, this link goes to my criticism of Jon Schwarz's 10APR15 article in The Intercept, "Twelve Years Later, US Media Still Can’t Get Iraqi WMD Story Right", which quotes you yet is based on stark misrepresentation of Iraq Survey Group findings: [Link].

Set aside Schwarz's fundamental misrepresentation of ISG findings about UNSCOM/UNMOVIC's actual control over the al Muthanna site and the actual effect of Saddam's order to cooperate with the UNSCR 1441 inspections. I was struck by your insistence, as quoted by Schwarz, that Saddam didn't know about the WMD munitions confiscated by Operation Avarice, because that speculation isn't backed up by your ISG findings. Contrary to Schwarz's quote of you, ISG findings emphasize that Iraq's "denial and deception operations" and "concealment and deception activities" continued up to and even beyond the regime change. By the same token, ISG's failure to uncover WMD stocks is heavily qualified in the ISG report by the substantial limitations of the ISG investigation, e.g., Saddam's agents systematically rid evidence practically unfettered even in the midst of the ISG investigation.

P.S. Comments no longer show on your blog, so please respond by e-mail. Or show the comments again.



Also see Decision Points suggests President Bush has not read key fact findings on Iraq carefully and Criticisms and suggestions for "International Law and the War in Iraq" (John Yoo, 2003).

Eric

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