Weapons-hunters are spending more time on base, intelligence experts have been reassigned to work on the counterinsurgency, and the man leading a search for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons is thinking of bowing out.
The conventional wisdom is that no one in the electorate cares anymore. Saddam's been caught! "The war's going great!":http://gallup.com/poll/releases/pr031219.asp But they should care, because -- and this will come as no surprise, but I have to say it -- this war was fought using the American people's tax money and their sons and daughters. Since March 20, 548 troops from Coalition countries "have died":http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx, at the average rate of 1.6 a day. Citizens should care because they were lied to. There's really no polite way to say it, but the White House lied about the threat of Saddam's WMDs to get the American people to support the war. And it worked. Now, $87 billion and almost 550 dead soldiers later, the hunt is almost played out. "It's probably time to call it quits," said Hans Blix, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector, whose teams were given one-third the time the United States has spent looking for weapons. "The U.S. and the U.K. are so wedded to the idea that the Iraqis were hiding things that they are not willing to explore the possibility that they're wrong," Blix said. If there's anything good that came out of the campaign of mass deception, I'd like to think that the American people won't be fooled twice. Perhaps that realization hit Karl Rove, too, and may be another reason Washington and London chose to believe Col. Muammar al-Qadhafi when he said he would give up his WMDs and allow UN inspectors in. Because the White House couldn't cry wolf twice, Qadhafi is now a man the West can do business with instead of a lyin', theivin', treacherous dictator, like Saddam Hussein. But perhaps my faith in the common sense of the American people is misplaced. I mean, according to a recent Gallup poll, "53 percent of Americans think Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks":http://gallup.com/poll/releases/pr031219.asp, _up_ 10 points from a similar poll take in September. The American people were lied to -- they should be angry. Instead, they're still willingly believing lies.
53 percent of the American people are freaking retarded.
Didn’t we already uncover plenty of proof that Iraq has weapons programs? In a nutshell I thought the basic reasoning for war was “Iraq has active weapons programs, probably has some weapons already, and has intentionally tried to keep the truth from the international coommunity. Post 9/11 the USA is not willing to let this go on any further.” It was, afterall, precisely because we didn’t know for sure what Iraq had that we were so concerned. If you didn’t like how the current conservative/right government phrased this or didn’t like MSNBC’s pre-war “WMD” headlines, well I can understand, but the actual text of 99% of the adminsitration’s policy speeches do support interpretation. There is a lot to criticze regarding the USA’s Iraq adventures, but the WMD issue in 2002/3 is on the periphery.
Besides, I’m wondering what exactly would satisfy everyone who doesn’t think we’ve found anything on WMD. We have found plenty of evidence of chemical weapon programs. Many people apparently have the feeling that these programs somehow “don’t count” because we haven’t found hundreds of armed warheads, and that’s just absurd considering that the USA’s WMD concern was a weapon being used in the USA or against Western interests via a “dirty” attack or similar. That capability has been clearly discovered.
On top of this we’ve found plenty of evidence that Iraq was flouting UN sanctions. And we’ve found evidence of a fascist regime’s human destruction that went well beyond expectation. We’ve seen that clearly Western/UN programs like Oil For Food were failures and the money was building government palaces instead of buying food. If you think this war was unustified based on WMD claims, you’d better be prepared to argue that maintaining the previous status quo was somehow preferrable to the USA, the West and to Iraqi citizens.
53% of the public is indeed retarded, but i’ve never heard Bush or anyone in the administration blame saddam for 9/11, or even allude to that. and i agree with mike. maybe we haven’t found “the smoking gun,” in the WMD search, but i believe the political situation that is developing now is preferable to the pre-war status quo. also, there will be alot of inoformation that will come out in the years to come, so it may still be too early to say “Bush lied.”
Well Mike, many Iraqis feel they were better off compared to what is happening. And no, there was no evidence and there is still no evidence of WMD that could go more than 150 miles. Our intelligence agencies told the president this prior to using it as an excuse. There are many countries and regimes that do not treat their citizens very well and that do not have a Jeffersonian democracy. Should we be attacking all of them in the name of terrorism prevention? The text of the president’s speech says that Iraq has WMD weapons of long distance that can be triggered upon the world within 45 minutes and delivered to far away places including the USA. George new that was also not the truth when he said it. The WMD issue is conveniently now on the periphery because there isn’t any to speak of and none was used on us.
I have done some research and found plenty of long range nuclear WMD missles in Turkey! There are three air bases there, with the missles ready to launch. They are owned and operated by the USA.
There is no evidence, even today, that Iraq was exporting terrorism. There is evidence that Saudi Arabia was and is. Conveniently, the USA withheld disclosure of Saudis’ demand that we get out of their country until after we invaded Iraq. Might there be a connection to the need for new US military bases in the region that are outside of Saudi Arabia to the invasion of Iraq? If you don’t think so, why are we then moving full speed ahead with the building of three very large US bases in Iraq? This effort began the minute we hit the ground in Iraq. Funny no one is mentioning the continued building of them these days! I guess it blows the argument that we didn’t and don’t intend to stay in Iraq for a very very long time to come.
Yes, the american people were lied to. Rose colored lenses are needed to think otherwise. But , sorry to say, many americans are very willing to be lied to some more. I, for one, am not.
Amazing isn’t it!! Perhaps if they would remove those rolling empty beer cans from the back of the pickemup they would think more clearly.
Everytime I see a poll from the American People all I can do is shake my head. No wonder George W. Bush was elected.
People prefer simplistic ideas and solutions. Of course, I never dreamed we would elect Ronald Reagan. Life is getting stranger and sranger.
Best from the West Coast
Connie
Mike/Andy - I do not say this with a mean spirit. I am genuinely shocked at your admissions of ignorance. Why didn’t you just save your considerable breath and print “I am one of the blind 53%”? I cannot believe how many people have conveniently forgotten the many and varied excuse phases Washington D.C. went thru attempting to justify their zeal to bomb and play GI Joe in Iraq (from their warm, safe armchairs, of course.) Why didn’t we extract Saddam just the way we set him up years ago? Why didn’t we bomb the hell out of the rest of the ME? Why didn’t we declare war on Libya, since they admittedly had/have WMD – why don’t we do that now? How about North Korea? How about all of the rest of the “evil, wicked” human rights abusers in the world?
Please do this: run a google search of “human rights abuse” and check the news articles that appear. Of interest to you, perhaps, is a list of the top 100 countries appearing in The Guardian and quoted by many other periodicals: the figures are obtained by multiplying a weighted score of abuses by the Human Development Index. Surprise: the U.S. is only 24 positions below Iraq.
I hope somebody isn’t deciding to declare war on the U.S. for their own holy reasons. Oh yeh, that’s what the terrorists claim they’re doing, isn’t it? In my opinion it is never alright to kill innocent people just to further a political power, no matter how godly that power claims to be. We don’t like it when other nations do it to us; why is it alright for us to do it to them?
To those who despair at the collective intelligence of the American people: you can’t and shouldn’t expect people to be able to be properly informed, let alone make reasoned decisions, if they lack the time, energy, and incentives to make knowledge of domestic and world politics an ongoing project in their lives. Why don’t they have the time or energy? Because the first priority in most American’s lives is making a living, and the conditions for making a living in this country have been decaying for more than two decades. Hours spent at work have been increasing, worker protections have been eroding, and even skilled, so-called knowledge labor is being exported. A person under constant stress from the immediate matters of making a living is not someone who can reasonably expect to gather information dispassionately and disinterestedly about foriegn affairs; in fact, the only sort of “information” that stands a chance of cutting through their immediate concerns is fear-mongering, jingoistic propaganda.
The enervated state of the populace isn’t the only factor at work here. The corporate news media consistently failed to do its job: provide people with all the pertinent facts. Prior to the war, there were a number of readily available and incontrovertible facts that should have ended the stupid chatter that Saddam Hussein was a threat to world or even regional stability. Among them were the military budgets of Iraq and its neighbors (available on-line at the CIA world factbook), the semi-autonomous Kurdish state in northern Iraq, our on-going bombing raids in the no-fly zones, etc. But what were the “talking points” repeated ad nauseam in the mainstream media? That Saddam gassed his own people; that he was a madman; that he wanted nuclear weapons, etc. Of these, only the use of chemical weapons was a fact, and it ALWAYS went unmentioned that he had not used them since 1988. The rest was opinion or speculation. And it was on all the damn time.
I always used to remember my dad telling me that there is no such program of WMD, it was only a move in the big game of politics, and we may have our own judgments about what we see and hear, but in most cases the truths are different, an old saying of an old man I know he used to call it as the garbage humanity, and when you open it you will get all the bad smells and looks, the problem with the political equations is that they are never regular, they may seem to people going in a direction, and on the other hand it is going somewhere else, I bet now that American administration is in the middle of nowhere try to find the solution for the fact that there is no WMD, and for what will Saddam say about American administrations when they supported him in the eighties, and gave him these weapons, I don’t say he will be saying the truth but he will say some of it.
Currencia, I think you are attributing some comments to the Bush Administration which didn’t quite happen. Yes there were claims that Iraq had some WMD, but most of the time these claims were citing evidence of WMD, not proof and that’s quite a different thing. In the end, the overall argument for going to war was that the USA should act before Iraq or its surrogates could effectively utilize its WMD programs against the USA or other Western countries. In other words, it was a premptive war as far as WMD were concerned. There is much to debate for going to war on this basis, but claiming “No WMD = Bush Lied” adds little to the discourse.
I’d like to comment on some of your other points too…
many Iraqis felt better off before. Ok, well, how do we know this? Are you reffering to “man on the street” quotes from the BBC or is there some meaningful polling going on? And even if you are indeed correct, I have to wonder what the significance of that is. I mean, what is a realistic expectation for citizens of a country like Iraq? Afterall, if you read LIFE magazine from the late 40’s you’ll see lots of evidence that “life was better” in Germany ten years prior.
there is no evidence that Iraq was exporting terrorism. Perhaps your definition of “exporting” is the key here. There is no doubt Saddam was supporting Palestinian terrorism. And the waters are pretty murky after that. But I ask you, if you have a state openly praising terrorism in Israel, and there’s an international terrosit organization targeting America who also supports Palestinian terrorism, wouldn’t you be a little concerned?
Might the US have bases in Iraq? Yes they likely will, and perhaps the US can get out of Saudi Arabia in the process. Is this not a development which would be preferable to the status quo? This is of course much, much different than the US conquering Iraq and running the country. Does anyone think the USA is running Germany? South Korea? When Bush says “we won’t stay in Iraq” he is speaking of staying as an occupying force. Also, I would note that there are many white papers out there from Administration figures which note that moving US bases to a democratic Iraq could help reshape the region in a positive light. I don’t think the Administration has adopted this as an official policy, but it’s no secret this is a likely scenario pending the outcome of the reconstruction and return to sovereignty of Iraq. Again, there is much to debate on the merits of this. In fact, this is an example of a much more important issue the country should be concerned about if the innaccurate and unproductive “No WMD = Bush Lied” chorus would ever subside.
Regarding mike’s assertion that the Administration was only saying there was evidence:
“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”
Dick Cheney
Speech to VFW National Convention
August 26, 2002
“Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.”
George W. Bush
Speech to UN General Assembly
September 12, 2002
“If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world.”
Ari Fleischer
Press Briefing
December 2, 2002
“We know for a fact that there are weapons there.”
Ari Fleischer
Press Briefing
January 9, 2003
“Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.”
George W. Bush
State of the Union Address
January 28, 2003
“We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more.”
Colin Powell
Remarks to UN Security Council
February 5, 2003
“We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons — the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.”
George W. Bush
Radio Address
February 8, 2003
“If Iraq had disarmed itself, gotten rid of its weapons of mass destruction over the past 12 years, or over the last several months since (UN Resolution) 1441 was enacted, we would not be facing the crisis that we now have before us … But the suggestion that we are doing this because we want to go to every country in the Middle East and rearrange all of its pieces is not correct.”
Colin Powell
Interview with Radio France International
February 28, 2003
“So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad? … I think our judgment has to be clearly not.”
Colin Powell
Remarks to UN Security Council
March 7, 2003
“Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.”
George W. Bush
Address to the Nation
March 17, 2003
“Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly … all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes.”
Ari Fleisher
Press Briefing
March 21, 2003
“There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. And … as this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them.”
Gen. Tommy Franks
Press Conference
March 22, 2003
“I have no doubt we’re going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction.”
Defense Policy Board member Kenneth Adelman
Washington Post, p. A27
March 23, 2003
“One of our top objectives is to find and destroy the WMD. There are a number of sites.”
Pentagon Spokeswoman Victoria Clark
Press Briefing
March 22, 2003
“We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.”
Donald Rumsfeld
ABC Interview
March 30, 2003
“Obviously the administration intends to publicize all the weapons of mass destruction U.S. forces find — and there will be plenty.”
Neocon scholar Robert Kagan
Washington Post op-ed
April 9, 2003
“But make no mistake — as I said earlier — we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about. And we have high confidence it will be found.”
Ari Fleischer
Press Briefing
April 10, 2003
“We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them.”
George W. Bush
NBC Interview
April 24, 2003
“There are people who in large measure have information that we need … so that we can track down the weapons of mass destruction in that country.”
Donald Rumsfeld
Press Briefing
April 25, 2003
“We’ll find them. It’ll be a matter of time to do so.”
George W. Bush
Remarks to Reporters
May 3, 2003
“I’m absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We’re just getting it just now.”
Colin Powell
Remarks to Reporters
May 4, 2003
“We never believed that we’d just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country.”
Donald Rumsfeld
Fox News Interview
May 4, 2003
“I’m not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein — because he had a weapons program.”
George W. Bush
Remarks to Reporters
May 6, 2003
“U.S. officials never expected that “we were going to open garages and find” weapons of mass destruction.”
Condoleeza Rice
Reuters Interview
May 12, 2003
“I just don’t know whether it was all destroyed years ago — I mean, there’s no question that there were chemical weapons years ago — whether they were destroyed right before the war, (or) whether they’re still hidden.”
Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, Commander 101st Airborne
Press Briefing
May 13, 2003
“Before the war, there’s no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical. I expected them to be found. I still expect them to be found.”
Gen. Michael Hagee, Commandant of the Marine Corps
Interview with Reporters
May 21, 2003
“Given time, given the number of prisoners now that we’re interrogating, I’m confident that we’re going to find weapons of mass destruction.”
Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff
NBC Today Show interview
May 26, 2003
“They may have had time to destroy them, and I don’t know the answer.”
Donald Rumsfeld
Remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations
May 27, 2003
“For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.”
Paul Wolfowitz
Vanity Fair interview
May 28, 2003
“It was a surprise to me then — it remains a surprise to me now — that we have not uncovered weapons, as you say, in some of the forward dispersal sites. Believe me, it’s not for lack of trying. We’ve been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they’re simply not there.”
Lt. Gen. James Conway, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force
Press Interview
May 30, 2003
“Do I think we’re going to find something? — Yeah, I kind of do, because I think there’s a lot of information out there.”
Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, Defense Intelligence Agency
Press Conference
May 30, 2003
As you can see, mike, the statements start out totally definite. There are weapons there, and they’re very bad. It was only after the WMD hunt turned south they started going wobbly. So please, don’t try to spin the administration of this. Their own words work against them. (thanks to Billmon for http://billmon.org.v.sabren.com/archives/000172.html — the comprehensive quotes. he’s also got links to the original source material.)
Jan, did I claim that Iraq had a part in 9/11? I didn’t think I did…
That said, I think it all comes down to how you feel the USA should act post 9-11. In that sense, yes, 9-11 and Iraq are related, but it’s not necessarily a case/effect relationship.
Right or wrong, Iraq had been held in contempt by the rest of the world for about the last 15 years. On that point the UN Security Council would agree. The question was always what to do about it. Until 2001, the voices pushing for military action we drowned out by the voices calling for diplomacy and/or sanctions. Iraq didn’t change on 9-11, but the USA did. Or, at least, the perceptions of people like me did. And the conclusion a lot of people have reached is that a policy of exclusively deterring and containing is not enough, that the USA must take a stronger stand against terrorism and avowed enemies.
I’m not writing as a complete defense of the Bush Administration. But I do believe quite strongly that the substance of the reasons given were generally accurate, even if the hyperbole involved in “selling” the war was uneccessary. And I think the reason support for this war has remained is because Americans, for all their faults and ignorance, see that after all is said and done the USA is doing something morally and stategically commendable.
I understand that many people reassessed the post 9-11 situation and came to different conclusions. I certainly respect that and would agree that a vigorous debate is imperitive — the future of US policy is at stake, and certainly much more as well.
Also, I did a Google search as you suggested — what am I looking for? That the USA is doesn’t have an unblemished human rights record? I see that, and what conculsion should I make of it? It doesn’t change the fact that the Iraq rwegime was a huge human rights cataspohpe for Iraqis. And trying to improve that situation is something that, regardless of everything else, does not seem like a basis for which to criticize US action.
I wrote about Chris Mattews on Hardball confronting Peggy Noonan with the Saddam Hussein/9-11 question. She refused to give a direct answer. Feel free to read the transcript people. It’s hysterical.
That quotation list says it all (and it’s our officials who aresaying it!). Thanks Chris, that was a great find.
Of course our search for WMD is winding down and quietly so: The intelligence that lead us into this war in the first place was gourmet, four-star, Michelin-approved, and cooked from scratch. And Mmmmm, mmmm, mmmm, was it ever good!
From the usurpation of the National Intelligence Community by Secretary Rumsfeld and Assistant Secretaries Wolfowitz and Feith to the desperate attempt to pass off some barrels of pesticide as the holy manna of the overwhelming, clear and present danger WMD threat that propeled us into war, there have been nothing but questions at every juncture with the only answers, we are told, to be had “at a later date.” If your questions have truthful, honest answers, screw your later date. Answer and answer now and be not ashamed.
Moving on to the argument that WMD no longer matter because the removal of Saddam Hussein is justified for some many more reasons…greater security for Israel, greater regional security, saving his own population from the ravages of his leadership…some or all of these are true. But none of them, no matter how true, absolves the Bush administration via moral equivalence from the deceit that brought us into war and removed Saddam Hussein. They lied. Americans and Iraqis died.
The Republican Party is always quick to take the moral initiative on everything from flag burning to religion in school to the Pledge of Allegiance when it suits the party leadership and President Bush. “Partial birth abortion? Horrid, ban it. Gay marriage? Flee! Flee! We need Constitutional protection from those fearsome homosexuals!”
Moral leadership is not something you pick and choose like a grab bag of candy. You either exhibit moral leadership by acting morally and ethically in all situations or you cede your title as a moral leader.
George Bush is just another President, just as immoral and unethical as Bill Clinton. Simply because we now find ourselves in an environment where we can re-shape the destiny of one country does not in any way absolve our President and the administration he is responsible for of their lies and deceit that brought us here. If you want to take credit for where we are now and where we might be in 10, 20, or 30 years, you have to first take credit for the lies that started all of it.
That Iraqis have been liberated from Saddam Hussein no more absolves President Bush and his advisors and cabinet from their immorality and unethical ruse than the “victimless” nature of President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky and his subsequent perjury absolved him of his immorality and unethical behavior.
Chris,
Thanks for the quotes, but perhaps I’m coming to a different conclusion. The official policy of the Administration was that there were WMD, that were were WMD programs, and that there were some very scary unknowns — especially with regard to nuclear materials and delivery mechanisms. These quotes support that, and some certainly do go beyond that to claim there are “large stores” and the like. Perhaps I am discounting some of the more extreme quotes because, well, lots of very smart people pro-war and anti-war alike believed them and because it’s my recollection that the Administration backtracked from many of their most aggressive statements. While some of this stuff was obviously spin or even propoganda, Bush’s actions and major policy speeches generally refrained from making such definitive claims in favor framing WMD as only part of the argument. I think it’s disengenuous to retroactively claim WMD as the only thing that mattered. And that’s not even considering the fact that the last David kay report did conclude there were some WMD activities in Iraq and that the regime strived to mislead the world about them. For me, that’s enough to consider serious concerns about WMD justifiable.
In the end, there are several other aspects of this Iraq war which are vastly more important and more open to criticism. “No WMD” is a non-starter because it’s subjective and, most importantly, doesn’t reflect the reality that it was only part of the reason for this war. It all comes down to whether the world should have tolerated Saddam and his mix of tyranny/charades/terrorist support/public hatred of the USA after 9-11. I can accept different answers to that question, but telling me that we need to find a few tanker trucks full of botulism somewhere in the Iraq desert to justify this war is just plain childish. It’s a simplification that gives short shrift to a dozen other reasons for this war and undermines all of the other, more important debates going on. Isn’t the doctine of “premption” a much bigger issue? Post-war planning? The role of the UN? The role of the USA? The reshuffling of Cold-War alliances? The reconstruction going forward?
and all this from a nation which bailed out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty many years ago…..
One of the advantages I share with the anon poster’s father is decades of watching current history. If you care, after a while you can sense bullshit in real time.
There was never any wepons of mass distruction and they didn’t care if they were there or not.
What the Bush Bunch created was wepons of mass distraction. They worked. They got their war. Daddy’s enemy was chased into a hole and routed.
But one of the other things long observation tells you is purveyors of bullshit often get theirs.
Johnson left in disgrace. Nixon raised disgrace to a new level. Agnew, Newt, McCarthy, et.al. all became footnotes and icons of political evil.
Bush will get his too. Bullshit does not make good foundation material. It will catch up to him.
“…but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
— A. Lincoln
Howdy Mike,
A couple of comments about your last post:
I have to disagree with you on this point. “No WMD” isn’t a subjective statement or goal; “No WMD programs” isn’t a subjective statement or goal. Both are objective and measureable. The facts as I understand them are that there are no WMDs but there is evidence of WMD programs.
This gets back to the tangible question at hand: Was this war promoted as a necessary mission to disarm a regime that has WMD in hand and was a clear and present danger to the security of the United States at that very moment or was it promoted as a mission to remove Saddam Hussein because he crushed his own people with events like the Anfal campaign against the Kurds in the late 80s and because he might be doing things that could be a threat to us down the road?
It was promoted as a necessary campaign to remove a clear and present threat to U.S. national security. The important part in my mind and what I consture to be the important part in the selling of this war is the “clear and present threat” implication. That Saddam was a clear and present threat is nothing more than pure fiction and the basest of fabrications. If he indeed was such an imminent threat then we would have already found a preponderance of evidence indicating this threat. You cannot have a transcontinental delivery system (the laughable continental-dusting drone idea) and enough of an abundance of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons to be an imminent threat and then stealthily hide it all.
The intelligence on this was cooked up Cajun style…a nice slow boil of anything and everything skittering around the floor that could even remotely support the idea Saddam was a clear and present threat. And in the end it ended up about as nasty as an overcooked pot of gumbo.
It’s my contention that the administration never would have had support for this war if it hadn’t been sold as a clear and present threat. No one wants to invade another country because they might be working on something that would be bad down the road and because they’ve done nasty things to their citizens and neighbors in the past (the list of countries that would qualify under this rubric is quite long and has many of our “allies” on it). The administration, at its highest levels, understood that there would not be adequate public support for a war without a clear and present danger mandate. So they created one with fabricated intelligence cooked up in the Pentagon since the predominant CIA view did not support their goals.
I think it’s a perfectly legitimate question to ask why we tolerated Saddam for so long. I think it’s also a perfectly legitimate question to ask why we have tolerated Kim Jong Il for so long, Robert Mugabe for so long, and the SLORC junta for so long. When framed in the context of this list, Saddam is at best #2. No way he challenges Kim Jong Il for the top spot. What that little runt has done in North Korea Saddam Hussein never thought of attempting on his most ruthless day. Yet we find it acceptable to find a diplomatic solution for our tensions with North Korea, a country that poses a far greater and far more direct military danger to us and a leader who is directly responsible for the genocide of his own people unlike anything Saddam ever dreamed of. What Saddam tried to do to the Kurds under the Anfal campaign Kim Jong Il successfully has done to his own populace twice over. Yet Kim Jong Il is treated to the kid gloves of diplomacy, after his country has repeatedly ignored ASEAN, U.N., and IAEA resolutions and mandates. This is precisely the behavior the the Bush administration, from President Bush on down through the policy-setting apparatus, repeatedly emphasizes to justify why we had to take decisive military action against Saddam Hussein’s regime instead of continuing to refine our diplomatic approach. In ethical terms, why is North Korea different? It isn’t.
This gets back to my earlier post about the morality and ethics of leadership if you want to claim to be the world’s (and particularly the West’s) beacon for democracy and morality. We simply aren’t. Because the message the Bush administration is sending to the world by making all of these arguements of exceptionalism for Iraq versus North Korea, Zimbabwe, and Myanmar, is that the Iraqi people are more important than the citizens of these other countries. It says that having an Iraqi cigarette stubbed out on your cheek is more painful and worth more retribution than having a Burmese or Korean cigarette stubbed out on your cheek.
We are essentially saying to the world “we will bring you democracy, but only under certain conditions.” What kind of message is this? It’s a selective one, that’s what kind. It’s the message of an immoral and unethical administration weakly attempting to pass off unbridled avarice as high morality and unreproachable ethics.
Once more, I have to disagree on this point. The reason, the overriding reason in fact, that we went to war was that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq posed a clear and present threat to the national security of the United States. The other reasons that have been discussed here and elsewhere were riders, not main justifications. Would be United States public have gone to war if the main reason was Saddam Hussein’s human rights record? No self-respecting Republican administration would ever go to war over such a liberal issue. No American public would ever tolerate going to war over such a nebulous issue. This war was sold as a necessary campaign to remove a clear and present threat.
We were sold a bill of goods and we got screwed. End of story.
Here we agree 100%. In many ways discussion about why we are in Iraq is moot; this much of your argument I appreciate and understand. There is quite a lot that needs attention here and now, but so much of what forms our contemporary problems and what will inform our future problems is wrapped up in the legitimacy of the decision to go to war. The role of the United Nations, our international alliances, and the financial obligations of reconstruction all have very important characteristics that are governed (some would argue conditional on) the legitimacy of our decision to go to war.
For instance why should the United Nations help us in Iraq if we invaded the country and tore it apart getting rid of Saddam Hussein’s regime if our primary reason for going to war was illegitimate? They shouldn’t. Why should other countries forgive Iraqi debt for our benefit if our actions were taken for false reasons? Should we not be primarily responsible for righting the sunken ship of Iraq if we entered into this endeavor on false pretenses?
My argument is that we need to own up to the deceit that began this whole mess. Until we own up to the legitimacy of our primary reason for initiating this war and invading Iraq, our ability to function with the clarity of mission and with the resources we need from the international community to rehabilitate Iraq and to deliver on our promise to provide the Iraqi people with the system and the freedom to once and for all turn their backs on the repression of the Hussein regime we will consistently run into problems in reconstruction and rehabilitation.
We are faced with a myriad of complex issues in the reconstruction of Iraq, and if this administration cannot behave in any better manner than it did in the run-up to invading Iraq, I have grave concerns for the influences and decisions that they will make in their substantial role in shaping the new Iraq.
Mike, the point, since you have pointedly missed and/or ignored it, is that there are plenty of horribly wicked men running the world; we chose to annihilate the country of only ONE of them, and continue to ignore or even protect others. The point is also that there is no equity in doing this: if it wasn’t cool to obliterate Libya, why was it so to tank over Iraq? The answer is, of course, a myriad of clumsily hidden and stupidly lied about agendae. And another point is that a majority of Americans either fell for the stupid lies or don’t care enough to do anything about it. Still feel pointless?
Who are you, anyway? You write in circles like my ex-husband except that he has stopped trying to defend the Bush administration (way back, actually). He also doesn’t hang out at “truth and liberty” websites defending lies and idiocy, last I looked. Are you Hector in disguise with a new alias? Inquiring minds want to know. If you are Hector, go get your own blog already, please.
Mike, I think that the perspective problem here is rooted not only in a question of fact — did Iraq possess those weapons that numerous public officials, on numerous occassions, accused them of possessing — but in a question of form.
The question of form has to do with something that is more important than Iraq, actually. It has to do with the governance of this country. The Bush election itself was, obviously, not a triumph for democracy. However, in the end, the forms of our democracy — forms that involve an electoral college — allowed us to transition pretty smoothly, all things considered, through what I personally think was a corrupt process in Florida. Fine. But if the legitimacy of the Bush administration depends on literally keeping to the forms, then one expects that it would be especially careful not to deceive the American public on one of the most important of all the decisions that can be made by a president. I truly doubt your assumption that the Bush people were promoting the WMD threat in good faith. Your idea of deceit, here, is as legalistic as Clinton’s idea of sex. Deceit doesn’t require lying all the time — but it does require being misleading during prominent speeches; uttering assessments that are vague, but extremely threatening; answering questions by referring to intelligence that you don’t have, or that you know is controverted; and backpedelling afterwards. Your vocabulary betrays a certain naivete, which I don’t believe you really possess. You have to weight the occasions of deceit according to their prominence. If a car salesman told you that the car you were buying had 2,000 miles on it, and, at the last moment, he handed you a closely printed description of the car on which he said that the car had 200,000 miles on it, you would consider yourself deceived. The question is, did the occasions of deceit, and their use not only in pressing for an immediate, international reponse, but in stirring up partisan emotions against our Atlantic Partners, outweigh the intervals of honesty?
If we look at it on that scale, there simply is not question — the most prominent speech a President can make is the State of the Union address, and we know that it included a falsehood, about nuclear materials, and that the falsehood was known as such to the relevant White House staffs. We have a pretty good flowline for the intelligence they received since the fall of Baghdad. We know they cherrypicked the most threatening intelligence. We also know how they acted. If the U.S. was really that concerned about active sarin, nuclear weapons and the like, would they have made the finding of these materials a lower priority than, say, guarding the Oil Ministry building? Of course not. I might believe that the Bush administration is corrupt — I don’t think it is criminally negligent. The investigation of Iraq’s WMDs was conducted in just the way you’d expect from parties who never really believed the intelligence they desseminated, and acted in accordance with that disbelief.
It seems to me that the defense of the Bush administration has to choose one of two unsavory options: either they believed the WMD, in which case the post-war investigation, and lack of action on mobile weaponry, is unforgiveable; or they didn’t believe, in which case the deceit that lead to the war is unforgiveable.
This isn’t a battle the Bushies can win. They can only hope we forget it.
This, I think, is more important as a guide to the contempt in which they hold the trust of the American people. It is the kind of behavior one expects from a military junta, not the kind of behavior one expects from an elected government, be it Republican or Democrat.
is not If the Bush administration was pumping the WMD threat to move the United Nations to act, then it is a little disingenous to accuse the United Nations of not actiin
Disregard the last two grafs. I thought I’d cut them. Sorry.
This debate is turning very silly indeed.
No WMDs? It’s not a lie, but an intelligence failure. You lefties are so desperate to nail Bush, you will do anything. If anything, selling of WMD was a PR failure. It’s doesn’t matter, Saddam has it coming, and everyday things are improving in Iraq. It will take time. Of course, deep down, you lefties hate Bush some much YOU WANT U.S. SOLDIERS TO DIE so he won’t get re-elected When I saw you were a former AP reporter, I thought you were probably a lefty – and I was right. Most reporters are.
I take offence at all of the people saying that we should help no-one, since there are so many bad men on this earth and it would be unfair on all the others.
The question should be: where would the $87 billion be best spent? The clean deposing of Saddam Hussein, and the installation of a democratic government, would have been a good thing — though from the results we can see that Bush was at best hopelessly naive in thinking the USA could actually manage this.
But is that the best that we could do? What could UNICEF do with eighty-seven billion dollars? What could Medicine Sans Frontiers do with eighty-seven billion dollars? Could we find a cure for AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis or cancer with eighty-seven billion dollars? How many schools could we build with eighty-seven billion dollars (and incidentally stop children ending up in fundamentalist Islamic schools)?
The Real Intelligence Failure
What if it turns out Saddam didn’t have weapons of mass destruction?
BY FRANCIS FUKUYAMA
Tuesday, August 5, 2003
Wall St Journal
The media has been focusing obsessively on the relatively minor issue of how an incorrect assertion about Iraq’s nuclear ambitions got into the president’s State of the Union speech. In doing so, it has missed the much larger issue, which is that of Iraq’s missing weapons of mass destruction. The inability to locate these weapons is vastly more consequential to American credibility than the fact that the White House staff failed to vet 16 words in a single speech. The missing weapons reflect a much more fundamental institutional intelligence failure.
The source of this failure does not lie in the political agenda of this administration. The Bush people are right in saying that their estimates of WMD stockpiles were no different from the conclusions of the Clinton administration. And the latter would say, if asked, that their assessment was drawn from Unscom, the U.N. weapons inspectors who operated in Iraq from 1991-98. The intelligence failure is thus ultimately traceable to Unscom, and deeply embedded in an intelligence process that in the 1990s was biased toward overestimation of threats.
I begin with a presumption that the coming weeks and months will not reveal a cache of chemical, biological, or nuclear materials buried somewhere deep in the desert. The reason is simple: After three months in which the U.S. has had every conceivable opportunity to threaten, bribe, and cajole Iraqi scientists involved in the WMD program to reveal their whereabouts, not a single one has done so. On the contrary, they have all stuck to the official line from before the war, that these weapons once existed but were disposed of sometime after the first U.N. inspectors arrived back in 1991. We have to confront the possibility that they are telling the truth.
Why then did Unscom and the U.S. intelligence community believe so firmly that the weapons programs continued big time long after 1991? It was because there was plenty of evidence indicating that the Iraqis were lying, in the form of documents, communications intercepts, defector reports, and other types of suspicious behavior. But this evidence may have been the product of a deeper deceit, and its importance overestimated by everybody.
We know for sure that the Iraqis had very ambitious chemical, biological, and nuclear programs in the ’80s. They used chemical weapons against the Kurds and Iranians, and evidently had more potent stocks of VX and sarin ready for use. The U.S. was surprised with the extent of these programs, including their progress on nuclear weapons, when they were revealed by Unscom after the first Gulf War. Unscom, backed by the implicit threat of U.S. power, was able to destroy many of these weapons and evidently motivated the Iraqis to get rid of others it didn’t find. After that point, with Iraq under U.N. sanctions, Saddam Hussein likely ordered that the programs be reconstituted, and some desultory efforts were made along these lines. But the extent of this reconstitution was vastly exaggerated by the Iraqis themselves…
[…..]
Unscom and U.S. intelligence faced skewed incentives of their own when interpreting these communications. Both investment bankers and intelligence analysts earn a living by making predictions about the future. The bankers face relatively balanced incentives: If they are overly optimistic, they may lose a lot of money. But if they are overly pessimistic, they will also lose by failing to get in on the next big thing. The intelligence community, by contrast, faces incentives strongly biased toward pessimism in periods following a failure to predict serious threats. The worst thing that can befall someone charged with responsibility for national security is to be the next Husband Kimmel, who was in command of U.S. Pacific Forces on Dec. 7, 1941. Before Pearl Harbor Kimmel had access to some intelligence data, in the form of Japanese “winds” codes, that in retrospect might have provided warning of the attack. He was subsequently cashiered and went down in history as the man who was asleep at the switch at this critical historical juncture. (Kimmel was eventually exonerated by the Navy, more than 50 years after the event.)
Both Unscom and U.S. intelligence were unpleasantly surprised by the extent of the Iraqi WMD programs uncovered in 1991. Thereafter, both had strong incentives not to be made fools of again. Unscom developed estimates of the extent of covert Iraqi research and stockpiles not accounted for, but whose existence could not be verified. The Clinton administration used the Unscom tallies as a baseline, and supplemented them with worst-case estimates based on intelligence it gathered. The Bush administration simply continued this process. Overestimation was passed down the line until it was taken as gospel by everyone (myself included) and used to justify the U.S. decision to go to war.
The media’s focus on whether President Bush or his advisors were lying is thus totally misplaced. Most in the administration honestly believed there were significant stocks of weapons and active programs that would be found, even if they let slip a false assertion about yellowcake in Niger. Why else would Centcom have been so concerned to protect U.S. forces against possible chemical/biological attack?
The scenario I have presented is obviously speculative. But it is more plausible than any of the alternative explanations. Assuming weapons are not ultimately found, the Iraqis must have disposed of them at some point. Some have suggested they were destroyed or secreted to other countries just before the war. But if so, why did Saddam not reveal this, and save himself from an invasion? And why have U.S. forces, with complete access to the country, not been able to find evidence of their recent disposal?
It is much more likely that the weapons were disposed of long ago, and that all of Iraq’s subsequent suspicious behavior was the product of half-hearted efforts at reconstitution that were ultimately fruitless but taken with utter seriousness by others. The failure is not one of dishonest politicians and officials, but of a broader institutional process involving multiple intelligence agencies and the U.N.
The systemic bias toward pessimism following an intelligence failure continues to influence our policy. As in the case of Pearl Harbor, someone was asleep at the switch on Sept. 11, and fingers have been pointing ever since (most recently, in the form of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report). Given the magnitude of the stakes (i.e., terrorists armed with nuclear weapons) it is understandable that people want to plan against the worst case. But worst-case planning bears certain costs as well, in terms of America’s relations with the rest of the world and the way it treats its own citizens.
What we need now is not more politicized debate over specific items in presidential speeches, but a careful review of what Unscom and the intelligence community thought they knew about Iraqi programs going all the way back to the end of the 1991 war. This is being undertaken currently by David Kay, the former U.N. weapons inspector, in a closely held process. What he finds needs to come out in the open soon. What is at stake is not the credibility of one administration, but of a system designed to protect the world against weapons of mass destruction.
President Authorizes Iraq Attack
by Sean Leasure - Posted 02-20-03
In a speech from the Oval Office, the President told the nation that he has ordered military strikes against Iraq.
“Saddam must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons,” the President said.
“Earlier today, I ordered America’s armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British Forces”.
“Their mission is to attack Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors”.
The President also went on to say that while other countries also have weapons of mass destruction, Hussein is in a different category because he has used such weapons against his own people and against his neighbors.
“Along with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Great Britain, I made it equally clear that if Saddam failed to cooperate fully we would be prepared to act without delay, diplomacy or warning”.
“…once more, the United States has proven that although we are never eager to use force, when we must act in America’s vital interests, we will do so”.
NOW FOR THE PUNCH LINE
This speech is completely true and delivered by the President…. President Clinton in 1998! Where where the outcries? Where were the Democratic/socialist political rats screaming to give the inspectors more time? Where were the millions of protesters in the streets? Where is the U.N. protesting the U.S. acting unilaterally without another resolution? Now I want ONE anti-American anti-war individual to look me straight in the face and tell me that their standpoint has nothing to do with politics and is simply to keep “peace”. It has everything to do with the fact that a Republican is in office and the Democrats still have no platform to stand on other than “we’re different from them”.
© 2003 theamericanjournal.org