Posted on 02/20/2004 8:42:27 AM PST by TaxPayer2000
President George W. Bush has appointed a commission to examine the performance of US intelligence regarding Baathist Iraq, especially errors concerning weapons of mass destruction (WMD). David Kay, the retiring head of the team that has gone in search of such weapons, has testified before the US Congress that, despite pre-war administration claims and an international consensus to the contrary, “we were almost all wrong” about Iraq’s WMD stockpiles: There weren’t any. Given the time that the commission will have for its inquiry its report won’t be due until 2005 perhaps it can examine an aspect of this issue that apparently looms as a central mystery: Why, if Saddam had nothing to hide, did he act as if he did?
For example, when the UN asked Saddam’s regime for proof that it had destroyed the WMD that Iraq was known to have had in the past, Saddam failed to provide it. Instead, his government offered records that indicated it had destroyed some of these weapons, but left open the question of what had become of thousands of tons of dangerous materials. Journalist Timothy Garton Ash aptly pronounced the inconclusive Iraqi report to be “the world’s longest suicide note.” If Saddam had indeed destroyed all his old WMD, why did he make no serious effort to persuade the UN of it? Why did he send the UN a report that suggested otherwise?
When UN inspectors returned to Iraq in 2002, they sought to interview Iraqi scientists in private. In apparent fear of the regime, most of these refused any interviews unless a Baathist minder was present, or unless the interviews were taped. If the scientists had no knowledge of WMD caches, why didn’t Saddam allow private interviews? Kay and his team have since spoken to numerous Iraqi scientists, and Kay cites these interviews in his own conclusions. What prevented Saddam from enabling interviews that would have helped exonerate him of American and British charges?
Indeed, UN arms inspectors were frustrated by the regime’s behavior, as former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix complained. Blix, in his reports to the UN, was clearly skeptical about US and British claims about Iraq’s weaponry. But he was also openly critical of the lack of cooperation from Iraqi officials. “It is not the task of the inspectors” to find evidence of weapons destruction, Blix told the UN in February 2003. “Iraq itself must squarely tackle this task and avoid belittling the questions.”
In short, the US and Britain could not have succeeded with their WMD argument before the UN if Saddam Hussein had not behaved throughout the entire pre-war period as if those charges were legitimate. What lay behind Saddam’s actions? Of course, Saddam himself is in custody, but we’ve heard little from him. In the meantime, several theories have been floated to account for his pre-war behavior.
For example, there is the question of self-serving machismo. According to this view, which David Kay himself considered, Saddam’s public posturing was guided by regional expectations of “big man” behavior. As a self-styled champion of the Arabs, Saddam could not appear weak. If an open admission that he had destroyed his WMD was perceived (by, say, the “Arab street”) as tantamount to weakness, Saddam would risk his regional standing. Thus, he was compelled to act as he did. Does this make sense? A devious machismo is implied in the US charges against Saddam; it is consistent with secret stockpiles of proscribed weapons. But is it consistent with actually destroying your weapons and then pretending that you have something to hide? That seems less like machismo than what Ash called it: suicide.
Besides, who says Pan-Arabist machismo excludes weakness or even defeat? After all, Saddam was able to claim victory of sorts in the 1991 Gulf War simply because he survived it. That’s why he was still a “big man.” If Saddam had carefully timed a demonstration that he had no WMD, he could have revealed Bush as a liar.
Perhaps the pretense of having such weapons was a potential deterrent against attack. But the same problem arises: Having the weapons is a greater deterrent than pretending to have them. In Saddam’s case, revealing he didn’t have the weapons would have been the definitive deterrent.
Or perhaps Saddam thought he needed a deterrent not against Americans, but against Iraqis. He reportedly believed that Americans wouldn’t really attack, because they wouldn’t risk casualties. On the other hand, he may have thought that his own populace might attempt another uprising. But that restates the problem without resolving it. If he thought he needed protection against any threat, why actually disarm?
There’s the possibility that Saddam didn’t have any WMD, but thought he did. According to this view, Baathist underlings may have created a Potemkin arms-program edifice that somehow persuaded Saddam that he had stores of proscribed weapons, even though they had actually been destroyed.
Could something like this have happened? If so, it transformed Baathist Iraq into a murderous farce. Indeed, there’s some evidence that, militarily, it was a farce: Many Iraqi generals believed that, while they had not been issued WMD, other generals possessed them. This thesis may be favored within the US intelligence community, since if Saddam thought he had proscribed weapons, what were people in Washington to expect? One might add all sorts of variations. For example, Saddam’s actions could be interpreted as reasonable, at least from his point of view. That is, he refused to cooperate with inspectors because he believed them to be spies. As for the incomplete records of weapon destruction that he offered the UN, that was merely a common bureaucratic record-keeping screw-up.
Or maybe Saddam was just a disengaged lunatic, relishing the pretense that he was a great novelist and filling his palaces with unredeemable kitsch, and otherwise behaving irrationally. Yet there is evidence, such as the “resistance” communications found with him when he was arrested, suggesting he was reasonably engaged. Of course, there’s still the thesis that Saddam really did have WMD stockpiles after all, and that Kay is mistaken. Both Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have suggested this possibility. There are persistent claims from various sources that Iraq secretly moved its WMD to Syria, though Syria has steadfastly denied this scenario. If Americans were to announce the discovery of such weapons now, it would surely be analyzed in the context of Bush’s presidential campaign interests.
Finally, Saddam may have acted as he did because he was hiding something other than WMD. According to this thesis, “Iraq was in clear material violation of (UN Resolution) 1441. They maintained programs and activities, and they certainly had the intentions at a point to resume their (weapons) programs. So there was a lot they wanted to hide because it showed what they were doing that was illegal.”
Who thinks so? These are the words of David Kay, the same David Kay whose conclusion that there were no WMD stockpiles set off this flurry of conjecture. Thus, the very man who opened this “mystery” about Saddam’s behavior also offered a reasonably comprehensive solution to it. Yet while one conclusion (“we were all wrong”) is quoted ubiquitously, the rest of his remarks remain relatively obscure.
True, Kay’s conclusions among them, that “the world is far safer with the disappearance and the removal of Saddam Hussein” don’t exonerate bad intelligence, justify US overstatements, or address the damage that has apparently been done to US credibility. But they do provide an informed context for understanding and judging all these matters. Why, then, has there been such conjecture over a matter whose apparent solution lies in plain sight? Perhaps because Kay’s solution to this “mystery” like all the proffered solutions refocuses the issue of Iraqi weapons where it belongs: on Saddam.
Speaking of non-existent WMD, Saddam himself was a WMD; and his personal existence tells all about his as-yet-unfound WMD.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.