Posted on 02/03/2004 6:51:56 AM PST by Dave S
Why No WMDs? Saddam Was Playing A Shell Game
A key question raised in the big political brouhaha over the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: Why didn't Saddam just come clean? Had he opened up fully to U.N. inspections and proved he had no WMDs, he would still be in power rather than behind bars facing the gallows.
There is a simple, one-word explanation: stupidity. Saddam thought he was playing quite a clever game with the funds he derived from the United Nations oil-for-food program, namely by purchasing support from France and Russia. He believed their vetoes in the Security Council could save him from a U.S. attack. He guessed wrong, just as he had in 1990 when he went plowing into Kuwait assuming he could get by with it.
So he misjudged American resolve not once but twice. You might call that stupidity, and no one ever said that that Saddam was a genius. He held power through sheer ruthlessness, meanwhile destroying a once fertile country and terrifying and impoverishing its people. His incompetence may explain the collapse of his WMD programs, although don't assume he wasn't trying his best. Not long before the invasion, he was attempting to buy missile technology from North Korea, according to former U.S. chief weapons inspector David Kay.
And give Saddam this: He had good reasons for thinking he could continue to game the U.N., having succeeded in doing so for so many years. With a little help from his friends in the U.N. he was able in 1996 to break the 1990 U.N. embargo. The U.N. wrapped its cave-in in a euphemism: "oil-for-food." Iraq could ship oil, supposedly under U.N. supervision, and the money would be used for reparations to Kuwait and urgently needed food and medicine for the Iraqi people.
The Clinton administration, after some initial reluctance, gave the deal its approval, with U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright enthusing, "It's an excellent day for the people of Iraq." Republican Bob Dole, running against Mr. Clinton for the presidency that year, had another view. He said that the Clintonites had sent "a signal to despots and terrorists around the world: Inflexibility will be rewarded with American concessions." U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali hoped that the program would encourage Iraq "to implement all the other" U.N. resolutions, something which of course never happened.
What in fact did happen is that Saddam turned oil-for-peace into a money-making and influence-buying scheme. Claudia Rosett revealed in the Journal in late 2002 that it had became a giant scam in which the U.N. had developed a vested interest because of the huge commission it was earning on the multibillion-dollar sales of Iraqi oil. Saddam feathered his own nest by demanding kickbacks (politely called "surcharges") on the oil. No wonder Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the coalition forces in Iraq, renamed the program "oil-for-palaces."
U.N. bureaucrats were not the only ones Saddam rewarded with oil money. Saddam saw to it that his friends in France, Russia and elsewhere got juicy contracts. He may have provided even more direct baksheesh. Al-Mada, a newspaper established in Baghdad after the war, last week published a list of more than 260 influential people, including politicians and journalists, from 50 countries who allegedly received revenues from oil sales in return for supporting Saddam. The Iraqi governing council said it would investigate the disclosures from documents reportedly found at the Iraqi oil ministry.
In recent days, a cottage industry has developed among the people named as denying that they were paid for using their influence on Saddam's behalf. One revealing denial came from a Canadian oil company that, according to a press report, said it had participated in oil-for-food, but dropped out when the Iraqi government demanded kickbacks.
Well, who knows? Maybe everyone is innocent. Maybe the list was just made up by Saddam along with the myth he propagated that he had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. And why did he propagate that myth? For the same reason Kim Jong Il, the Iranian ayatollahs and assorted other tyrants have spread the word that they are dangerous or about to become so. It's called nuclear blackmail.
Mr. Kay, the former CIA man who conducted the postwar search for weapons in Iraq, raised a furor last week when he told a Senate committee that he doesn't believe any WMDs will be found. Enemies of the Bush administration immediately jumped at the opportunity to charge the Bush administration with having gone to war under false pretenses. The respected Mr. Kay wasn't buying into any of these political games, pointing out that not only was George Bush deceived, but practically everyone else in the world, including Jacques Chirac. As he noted, Saddam's own generals were fooled into believing that the units on either side of them had WMDs.
Mr. Kay rightly called for an investigation of how U.S. intelligence capabilities can be improved. Some critics lament the latter day reliance on technical means over "humint" or human intelligence. But if Saddam's own generals were misled, even a highly placed agent most likely would have been as well. There of course is also the possibility that Saddam ridded himself of WMDs before the attack. Chemical and biological agents capable of causing death to thousands could be stored in a hole not much larger than the one Saddam occupied when he was found.
The bottom-line conclusion has to be that Saddam was remarkably devious. He turned the U.N. inside out by converting oil-for-food to his own purposes. He collaborated with terrorists both openly and on the sly. By refusing for years to comply with U.N. inspections, he persuaded just about everyone who mattered that he had secret WMD stockpiles. He played a clever shell game, convincing inspectors that he could move or hide his stockpiles at a moment's notice.
But of course, he was too clever by half. By giving the impression that he could put anthrax or other lethal poisons into the hands of terrorists, he left George Bush and Tony Blair little choice but to either put him out of commission or risk the security of many thousands of people. In the end, he became the chief victim of his own duplicity. Stupid.
Opposing President Bush puts you on the side of those who oppose America.
What did I or the author say that suggests to you that I oppose Bush in any way? Or that I opposed moving Saddam or favor UN rule over our forces?
Stupid like a fox. If you listen to the democrats (and the French, Germans, and Russians) today, that would have been the correct action. No invasion, just more inspections!
Sorry, guess I'm a little thin skinned today. What book / movie is the quote from. It seems familar but I cant place it?
However, I find it difficult to believe that the British, French, Germans, Israelis, the UN, etc. were all wrong as well. Occam's razor still argues that Saddam had WMDs that are either still hidden, were moved, or were destroyed in the earliest stages of the war.
Ricin and anthrax are both easily produced. Anthrax is even naturally occuring. No one ever said that Saddam never had a few envelopes full of either substance, nor that he couldnt produce same. Kay and others are questioning whether he has had huge stockpiles of the materials in warheads of shells. BTW, Al Qaeda already has both Ricin and Anthrax. Bunch of Al Qaeda folks were arrested last year in England producing Ricin.
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