Charles Bukowski once wrote “The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting.” Cynical, no? This came to mind when I watched Donald Rumsfeld on the air with Jon Stewart. They discussed why Americans trusted their elected officials in the decision to go to war with Iraq. More specifically, they debated how and why the US President decided the timing of when to go. I found it not only confirms what I wrote in 2007 about Curveball, but adds a whole new dimension to the debate. Here is my quote from Vagabond Scholar in 2007.

Psychologists have long known that typically, human beings tend to look for evidence to support their views, not for evidence to contradict them. This dynamic makes the thorough vetting of critical intelligence all the more crucial.

And here is what I wrote in 2006 about Risk Homeostasis:

The synopsis of Wilde’s theory is that if you perceive a change will make you safer, then you actually may be prone to take more risk, thus negating the actual risk reduction. However, if you want to be safer than you will make real tangible reductions in risk.

Today I can point you to Rumsfeld himself who talks about his October 15, 2002 “Parade of Horribles memo” (see part 2 below). He openly admits that while the President and his men were full of uncertainty in private, they felt Bush was required to put on the appearance of certainty for the public…so certainty was provided to the public for the purpose of appearing to have certainty. Rumsfeld says this is the need for a leader to show confidence. I agree with the last step in his argument, a leader should show confidence. However, I strongly disagree that a leader should show confidence only for the purpose of showing confidence. The missing link to private confidence seems to be lost on Rumsfeld.

In all fairness, Rumsfeld is stuck in a tough logical corner. If he argues there was confidence in private, then he makes the Administration look like fools for being wrong and believing bad intelligence information. The German intelligence experts and many in the CIA, for example, were not so easily fooled. That clearly would be a tougher position to defend. Thus, he takes the other argument. They had no confidence in private. Now he has the tough job of explaining why they were so confident in public. Saying it was a requirement of the role is weak. He needs a better explanation. A democratic leader should never trade in false confidence, which is basically where his story ends up. This leads Stewart to continually ask why the Administration worked so hard to get Americans to believe that Iraq was in possession of WMD.

Rumsfeld’s response to Stewart centers around the point that he and the Administration did not “rush” in their decision. That fits well with his argument about their private lack of confidence. Unfortunately, while he may say there was no rush, it just begs the question why they acted when they did. Who set the time line to decide, if not President Bush? A no-rush decision means to me they could have taken far more time evaluating the risks before advocating a decision to invade.

Updated to add: A new investigative story says a US Army General gave orders to troops to direct propaganda methods (designed to influence enemy combatants) against congressional delegations to get their support for the war…

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in “psychological operations” to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned – and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators.

I guess the General thought he found an easy way to skip Congress right past the voting and into taking orders.

Al Masry Al Youm has posted an update from Libya delivered via Egypt, since Libya’s Internet access has been cut.

Suleiman Saghir, a Libyan who made it to Egypt’s Marsa Matrouh through Salloum, described the current events back home as “atrocious and unimaginable.” He said hunderds of Libyans have sought refuge in Egypt since the violence erupted.

Saghir added that some eyewitnesses of the developments in Libya fled to Egypt so their voices can reach Arab and world media outlets. Some photographs and video clips brought across the border show Libyan authorities committing crimes against unarmed women and the elderly, he said.

Several news outlets are reporting hundreds of Libyans dead from fighting with the government and hundreds more fleeing through Egypt’s Salloum border terminal, which recently was destabilized by violent protests.

On 28 January, now known as the “Day of Anger,” bloody clashes took place in the city that resulted in the burning of all police stations, the state security headquarters, and three buses.

The clashes led to the injury of 13 police officers.

Salloum is the north-west corner of Egypt, bordered by Libya and the Mediterranean coast, only 150 miles west of Marsa Matrouh on a modern highway. I suppose there is a touch of irony to these developments. Libya used to criticize Egypt for restriction of trade and movement from Egypt through Salloum and demanded the border be more open. Now that the government has lost its grip over the border post the Libyans not only can more easily escape to Marsa Matrouh and bring goods home but Egypt can increase its export of revolution to Libya.

In related news, the Libyan military seems to be making emergency flights to Malta, about 600 miles northwest.

Two Libyan fighter jets with four military personnel on board who said they had escaped Benghazi air base after it was taken over by protesters landed in Malta on Monday, military sources told AFP.

Two civilian helicopters also landed on the Mediterranean island around the same time, carrying seven people who said they were French nationals working on oil rigs near Benghazi, although only one had a passport, the sources said.

The helicopters were given permission to land in Malta but had not been given clearance to leave Libya, indicating that they had escaped, they added.

Malta has had friendly intelligence relations with Libya, so it is little surprise military pilots would head there. It reminds me that Maltese Prime Minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici (given prior notice by Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi) in 1986 sent advance warning to Libya to try and foil Ronald Reagan’s plan to assassinate Qaddafi. He sounded the alarm when some of the 100 US military aircraft used in Operation El Dorado Canyon flew over water towards Libya (France, Spain and Italy had refused airspace).

The warnings were of little help to stop the attack due to incompetence in the Libyan military and technology like the F-111F’s terrain-mapping radar and laser-guided weapons (Pave Tack) that allowed for high-speed low level standoff attacks even at night. However, Qaddafi was able to run and hide to survive, which is probably what he is doing again now.

Updated to add: Reuters and the BBC say the Libyan jet pilots, both colonels, defected after they were ordered to bomb civilians.