UPDATE: After posting the above questions I thought to ask the suave and mysterious ex-Bloggerfeller if he had any thoughts on what he might have seen in the Polish press. He very kindly tracked down and translated a couple of pertinent articles that addresed my curiosity. (Is that service, or what?). First, from Thursday's Gazeta Wyborcza:
"Poland was misled regarding the presence of WMDs in Iraq," said President Aleksander Kwasniewski on Thursday at a meeting with journalists."I recognize that Iraq today, without Saddam Hussein, is indeed better off than with Saddam Hussein, but obviously I'm also uncomfortable that we were misled by the information about WMDs," said the president.
That Iraq had WMDs ready to use was one of the arguments put forward by the United States and Great Britain for the war with Iraq. Until now Poland has not cast any doubts on these arguments. No such weapons have been found in Iraq- AFP reminds us.
However the president stated that withdrawing Polish soldiers from the Iraqi coalition would make no sense.
"We're in mid-March and I ask the question: if withdrawing troops meant the return of war, ethnic cleansing, aggression against neighbouring countries, what would be the sense in such a withdrawal?" he said.
"If we were to protest against the excessive role of the United States in world politics and at the same time we were to withdraw our soldiers knowing they would be replaced by American soldiers, what sense would that make?" continued Kwasniewski.
During a visit to Fort Campbell in Kentucky US President George W. Bush on Thursday refused to comment on President Kwasniewski's statement- reported CNN.
Meanwhile American State Department spokesman Adam Ereli stated on Thursday that Washington did not believe that Poland was starting to waver.
"We have no reason for any questions or doubts about the unstinting support of Poland for the mission in Iraq"- the State Department spokesman said. "It's not something we're worried about"- he added.
"Only a few days ago the Poles made it clearly understood that they are standing alongside us in our efforts to bring stability, prosperity and democracy to Iraq" - stated the spokesman.
Relations between Washington and Warsaw, one of the United States' closest allies, not only in Iraq, but also in Eastern Europe and NATO, are "close and strong"- added Adam Ereli.
At the same time he claimed that not finding WMDs was a "surprise" for the United States themselves and considered that Iraq nevertheless had the "intention and the ability" to produce them.
Poland is in command of a multinational division of about 9000 in the central-southern stabilisation zone in Iraq. 1300 of them are Spaniards, whose withdrawal at the end of June has been announced by the future socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. There is every indication that Spain's lead will be followed by the Latin American countries which make up the Plus Ultra brigade with her.
According to AFP, Kwasniewski said that the Spanish socialists from the PSOE party, who won the parliamentary elections on 14 March, had come out against the war in Iraq "because their success in the elections had been highly unlikely."
He added he was "very disappointed" and "disillusioned" by the announcements from the Socialist leader Zapatero about withdrawing Spaniards from Iraq.
"We cannot change our stabilisation mission in Iraq into a destabilisation mission," stressed Kwasniewski. "We'll see what the Spanish government says but passivity gets us nowhere."
Kwasniewski once more stated that Poland would like increased NATO involvement in Iraq.
Today he sent along another translation of an article from Friday's edition of the same paper, with the following comment:
I think the whole issue is cleared up in the article below (read the last few paragraphs in particular). It appears the confusion was the result of: (a) an inadequate translation (from Polish to French to English) which exaggerated Kwasniewski's statement, changing "misled" into "taken for a ride"; (b) misinterpreting Kwasniewski's statement that Polish troops might be withdrawn from Iraq in early rather than mid 2005 by omitting the condition "only if the situation was stable enough to allow this". (NB I've given Wolfowitz and Rice's in the original English, but the rest is my translation).
Translation:
Bush wants to speak to Kwasniewski but Rice isn't worried:On Friday President George W. Bush is going to have a conversation with President Aleksander Kwasniewski - said the "Washington Post", which also said that the US administration was disturbed by Thursday's statement by the Polish president that Poland was "misled" regarding Iraqi WMDs.
The chancellery of the Polish president said that on Friday at 14.00 there will be a briefing in the Presidential Palace after a telephone conversation between Kwasniewski and Bush.
In a CNN interview Bush's national security adviser Condoleeza Rice stated she had spoken with the Poles and "they think they were a bit misinterpreted here, because there's been no stronger ally in this than the Poles."
However the US viceminister of defence Paul Wolfowitz questioned President Kwasniewski's description that he was "misled by information about WMDs."
"I use the word 'misled' when somebody knows a fact and tries to persuade you of a different fact. When somebody tells you their best estimate of a situation and it turns out to be wrong, that's life. That happens often", said Wolfowitz in a television interview.
Meanwhile the chancellery of the Polish president issued an announcement around midnight on Thursday to counter the "commentaries and overinterpretations surrounding the statement of the Polish president during his meeting with the press on the 18th of this month."
The announcement stressed that the "essence of the statement and its main premise" was "a renewed presentation of the motives and a justification of the appropriateness of Polish engagement in the stabilisation process and fostering Iraqi democracy."
Kwasniewski's words were also quoted in the announcement: "Iraq today, without Saddam Hussein, is indeed a better Iraq than it was with Saddam Hussein."
The announcement adds that "the president of the Polish Republic recalls that Saddam Hussein did try to create the impression that he had WMDs and was capable of using them, which was the basic reason for undertaking the mission in Iraq."
Kwasniewski's statement on Thursday caused great commotion in the USA. It was reported in the headlines in newspapers, radio and television.
Kwasniewski's statement became the subject of an opinion piece in the "New York Times" from the pen of Paul Krugman who cited it as an example of the results of the breakdown in the USA's credibility because no WMDs had been found in Iraq.
The uproar over the Polish president's statement arose partly because it arrived after going through two translations. The Americans took it from the French press service AFP and translated Kwasniewski's words as "we were taken for a ride", which literally means "nabrano nas" [instead of "Polska byla zwodzona"="Poland was misled" - blogger's note].
It was this, stronger version of Kwasniewski's statement that Krugman quotes, as well as the American author of an e-mail to the office of PAP in Washington, who wrote: "If the Poles are saying we took them for a ride, let them take their troops out of Iraq. We don't want them alongside our brave soldiers."
On Thursday the State Department spokesman Adam Ereli, asked to comment on Kwasniewski's words, replied that the American government had "had no signals" that Poland was going to withdraw her military support for the USA in Iraq.
However some people have drawn attention to another statement by the Polish president which said that Poland might withdraw her troops from Iraq at the beginning of 2005 if the situation in the country allowed. The media recalled that previously the Polish government spoke of withdrawing troops only in the middle of next year.
On Thursday a fax arrived at the Polish embassy in Washington, the author of which, Mark I. Klein - ignoring the conditional nature of Kwasniewski's declaration- wrote: "I was very disillusioned when I read President Kwasniewski's criticism of the war in Iraq and his plans for a premature withdrawal of Polish divisions. Considering what America did for Poland and Europe during World War Two and after, it's clear that we have no real friends on this continent."
Thanks again to Mr. Cassian the erstwhile C. Bloggerfeller for his amiable translation labors.
Related commentary here.
He was quoted this AM as pledging that Polish troops would remain "as long as needed and then one more day".
Posted by: J. on March 19, 2004