Of Dirt and Tents

On Sept. 12, 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was ready to let the largest terrorist attack in American history go unpunished. Instead of either retaliating or finding and capturing the culprits, Rumsfeld wanted to drop bombs on a completely innocent country.

Why?

Because you couldn't blow up anything cool in Afghanistan.

I'm serious.

Rumsfeld told the Sept. 11 commission there was no plan to bomb Afghanistan in response to previous al-Qaeda attacks when coming into office because, "You can hit their terrorist training camps over and over and over and expend millions of dollars in U.S. weapons against targets that are dirt and tents and accomplish next to nothing."

The obsession with Iraq dates back to the first Gulf War, when those same advisors: Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith could not convince former President George H.W. Bush to go to Baghdad and topple Saddam.

Richard Clarke, the former counter-terrorism advisor in the headlines this week because of his book and testimony, describes those beliefs about Iraq as "frozen in amber" since their last time in power.

The more we learn about "9/11 - The Day That Changed Everything," we find out that almost nothing changed.

There was a little blip of military activity in Afghanistan, but the plan was clear from the beginning: roll back as many economic protections as possible, shift the tax burden from the rich to the middle and lower classes, destroy a century's worth of programs that benefited working Americans and on top of all that, finally topple Saddam.

When you let your politics dictate your view of policy, it doesn't matter what goes on. A surplus, a slowing, a recession and a recovery all call for tax cuts. Similarly, anything Iraq does is grounds for attack.

One of the more "eclectic" voices to that point is author Laurie Mylroie. I have to use "eclectic," because "insane" and "delusional" are too shrill. Her books, endorsed by Wolfowitz, proclaim that Saddam Hussein is behind every bad thing that happened in the last dozen years - from Sept. 11 to anthrax to that time your mom walked in on you and your girlfriend.

I'm only exaggerating slightly, as none of those events showed any relation to Saddam Hussein, but that did not stop Mylroie from going on CNN in October of 2001 (Oct. 29, go read the transcript, it's scary) and saying that we should let bin Laden off the hook and shift the focus.

Starting Labor Day 2002, Bush rolled out the Iraq product - sold on weapons of mass destruction and terrorist connections. It did not matter that both of those claims were false. The product had two goals: win control of the Senate and allow for an invasion that the administration had been salivating over for the last decade.

So why does this matter now?

In addition to the damaging implications that the Bush administration fabricated a threat in order to kill innocent people while wanting to let an actual criminal go free, there are the lessons that are never learned.

The reason that American troops did not go into Baghdad last time was fears that it would ignite a civil war.

Four years ago, then Gov. Bush attacked former President Bill Clinton's Kosovo action for lacking an exit strategy. "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is," he told the Houston Chronicle.

So there's the rub. There's a civil war between Kurds, Shiites and Suunis on one hand, and failing your own standards toward defeat on the other.

And these guys are supposed to be strong on defense?