From Baghdad to Benghazi

By Charles Krauthammer
Washington Post, 4/3/11

Blair: Bush world view had 'immense simplicity'

Simon Hooper
CNN, 1/9/10

Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways

The Situation Room


WOLF BLITZER: The Bush administration says Iran, with its suspect nuclear program, may be the greatest challenge facing this country. But just today, the president counseled some patience.

BUSH: It's important for our citizens to understand that we have got to deal with this issue diplomatically now. And the reason why is because, if the Iranians were to have a nuclear weapon, they could blackmail the world.

BLITZER: But there are times when the United States should strike first to prevent terror attacks or to blunt a threat by weapons of mass destruction — at least, that's the argument that the Bush administration makes.

The administration's own national security blueprint says, that option is absolutely necessary for America's self-defense. The Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz takes up the issue in his latest book. It's entitled "Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways."

Alan Dershowitz is joining us live now from New York.

Alan, thanks very much for joining us.

ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Hi, Wolf. Thank you.

BLITZER: What does that mean, a knife that cuts both ways?

DERSHOWITZ: Well, preemption should never be taken off the table. We only wish that Britain and France had preempted Nazi Germany in the 1930s and avoided the Second World War.

… It may be necessary to use preemption against Iran. It's possible that we picked the wrong target to preempt, when we went after Iraq. But these are some of the issues that I discuss in "Preemption."

And I try to come up with a jurisprudence, a framework for analysis, when we should preempt, when we shouldn't preempt.

BLITZER: So, what is — what are some of the moments when the United States — or any country, for that matter — has the moral, the legal, the political right to launch a preemptive strike? Give us a few examples.

DERSHOWITZ: Well, primarily when the people who are threatening to attack us can't be deterred, when they're suicide bombers. And you can't deter a suicide bomber by threatening to kill him or imprison him.

So, we may have to go after suicide bombers preemptively. And I think everybody agrees with that, the Clinton administration and the Bush administration. The question really is whether you go after a nation preemptively. And a nation like Nazi Germany, yes. A nation like Iran, perhaps. It's a very, very complicated issue.

I think any government that could have prevented 9/11, or the subway attacks in London, or the Bali attacks outside of — killing many Australian citizens, would have preempted, if they could have. So, it should never be taken off the table.

When your previous guest, Helen Thomas, says she's against preemptive war, that's like being against punishment, or being against any concept. You can't be against preemptive war. You can be cautious about it, and say it should rarely be used, but everybody will agree that, on certain occasions, a preemptive attack to prevent imminent harm is not only desirable, but lawful, under international law.

BLITZER: Here's what you write in your book: "No one can be certain what the effects of a successful or failed preemptive strike on Iran, for example, would be, except that the law of unintended consequences would rear its always unpredictable and often ugly head."

In other words, let's get to the issue of Iran right now, which is in the news. Under what circumstances would the U.S. be authorized to launch a preemptive strike against Iran's nuclear reactors, facilities, along the lines of what the Israelis did at the Iraqi Osirak reactor back in 1981?

DERSHOWITZ: Well, I think the United States already is lawfully authorized, as is Israel, to attack Iran. The leaders of Iran have said that, if they develop a nuclear bomb, they will use it to wipe one of the United States' allies, Israel, off the face of the Earth.

And we can't ignore that kind of threat made by the leader of a country. The question is not whether it's lawfully authorized, but whether it is wise. Right now, it would not, in my view, be wise, because there is a strong dissident movement in Iran.

And the one thing all Iranians agree about, whether they want regime change or not, is, they do agree that Iran should be able to get nuclear weapons. So, we would probably end the dissident movement at this point, which is why I agree with the president that diplomacy has to come first, every option, short of preemptive war.

Moreover, the Osirak model doesn't work. Osirak was a one-shot attack, only one casualty. Israel managed to disable virtually all of the Iraqi nuclear capacity. That is not true now.

In Iran, there are many nuclear facilities buried underground, some of them perhaps under schools in Baghdad (sic). It would take a multifaceted attack on Iran to set back their nuclear program by perhaps 10 or a dozen years.

BLITZER: That raises this other issues — and you discuss it in your book — a preemptive strike that you know is going to result, not only in the destruction of the target, but in what they call collateral damage. A lot of innocent civilians, women and children are going to be killed. When is that justified?

DERSHOWITZ: Well, actually, preemptive attacks have far fewer civilian, in general, than reactive attacks, because preemptive attacks are always directed against military targets. Israel, preemptive attack in Osirak, or the preemptive war in 1967 caused very few casualties.

When you retaliate, tit-for-tat retaliation — you bomb our city, we will bomb your city — you are targeting civilians. So, in terms of civilian casualties, preemption generally causes fewer civilian casualties.

But the downside, the reason it's a knife that cuts both ways, is that, when you preempt, you don't know whether you have prevented anything. You don't know whether or not there would have been an attack. You are always basing something on probabilistic inferences, whereas, whether you wait — when you wait to be attacked, you know you have been attacked, and you have to respond.

But, sometimes, the stakes are simply too high. The risk of a nuclear attack is too high. And if we could prevent it, if we knew it was imminent and relatively certain, we would have an obligation to do that, even though the law of unintended consequences could produce terrible, unforeseeable consequences, as they have in Iraq. So, use it with caution, if you're going to use it at all.

BLITZER: Does the world community, the international community, need new international law to codify, if you will, this whole issue of preemptive strikes?

DERSHOWITZ: Yes. And, in my book, "Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways," I talk about the U.N. actually now redefining the charter. …

Why the US went to war

Press Conference
The White House


Helen Thomas, Press Corps: … My question is, why did you really want to go to war? … You have said it wasn't oil — quest for oil, it hasn't been Israel, or anything else. What was it?

The President: … I didn't want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong, Helen, in all due respect. … No President wants war. Everything you may have heard is that, but it's just simply not true. My attitude about the defense of this country changed on September the 11th. We — when we got attacked, I vowed then and there to use every asset at my disposal to protect the American people. Our foreign policy changed on that day, Helen. You know, we used to think we were secure because of oceans and previous diplomacy. But we realized on September the 11th, 2001, that killers could destroy innocent life. And I'm never going to forget it. And I'm never going to forget the vow I made to the American people that we will do everything in our power to protect our people.

Part of that meant to make sure that we didn't allow people to provide safe haven to an enemy. And that's why I went into Iraq…

I was hoping to solve this problem diplomatically. That's why I went to the Security Council; that's why it was important to pass 1441, which was unanimously passed. And the world said, disarm, disclose, or face serious consequences and therefore, we worked with the world, we worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world. And when he chose to deny inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did, and the world is safer for it.

Examining the Continuing Iraq Pre-war Intelligence Myths

US Senate Republican Policy Committee

• Critics of the Iraq war continue to reissue their assertions/charges that the President “manufactured” or “misused” intelligence to justify the war.
• In the most egregious cases, they continue to promulgate misleading critiques involving:
  • Iraq’s procurement of high-strength aluminum tubes;
  • the source code-named “Curveball”;
  • claims that Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress (“INC”) tricked the United States into war; and
  • the State Department “dissent” holding that Iraq did not have a nuclear weapons program.
• When the facts surrounding these issues are examined, it becomes clear that it is not the President who is misrepresenting information; rather, it is the critics.
• The Department of Energy’s intelligence agency was in the minority when it assessed that the aluminum tubes were not destined for a nuclear program, and DOE still concluded, overall, that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program.
• Policymakers did not deliberately misuse Curveball’s information; they were never even made aware of hints that Curveball might be unreliable.
• Intelligence professionals concluded that the program by which they obtained access to information about Iraq through the INC was a valuable program. Moreover, the INC’s information was essentially irrelevant to the intelligence community’s pre-war assessments.
• The “alternative view” of the State Department’s intelligence agency, INR, was no alternative. It still concluded that Iraq was “pursuing at least a limited effort to maintain and acquire nuclear weapons-related capabilities.”

The Worst of Intentions

What Saddam's Iraq was up to.

By Daniel McKivergan
Weekly Standard

For the Iraqis, a Missile Deal That Went Sour

By David E Sanger and Thom Shanker
New York Times

A Decade of Deception and Defiance

The White House