Posted on 04/12/2006 12:01:03 PM PDT by Caleb1411
Among the allegations leveled at President Bush by his critics, probably the most serious is that he took the United States to war in Iraq on false pretenses. He told the American people that Saddam Hussein had a collection of dangerous weapons of mass destruction when Mr. Hussein did not. In retrospect it is clear that the weapons did not exist, although they had in the past, and Hussein had used them against his enemies. But what is also clear from captured documents now coming to light is that Mr. Bush had every reason to believe they still existed at the time he launched the military campaign in Iraq. Not only did US and allied intelligence agencies assert that the weapons were there, but Hussein himself played a dangerous game of convincing enemies such as Iran, and even his own generals, that he had such weapons, while protesting to United Nations inspectors that he did not.
While Bush may have been badly misled by his own intelligence and other sources, he did not lie. He believed, and had good reason to believe, that the weapons existed.
From thousands of official Iraqi documents captured by American forces, and dozens of interviews with captured senior military and political leaders, a picture is now emerging of the world of delusion in which Hussein lived when he was in power. It is being chronicled in magazines such as the Weekly Standard and a forthcoming issue of Foreign Affairs and books such as "Cobra II." Written by New York Times reporter Michael Gordon and Gen. Bernard Trainor, the book is being hailed as one of the most comprehensive accounts of the war in Iraq.
Hussein was much more concerned about an internal coup, or a rebellion by dissident Shiites, or even an attack by Iran (with which he had fought a long war), than he was with an invasion by the US. Though he had largely disposed of his stocks of chemical and biological weapons in the 1990s, he encouraged the Iranians to believe he might have a hidden cache of them, a strategy called "deterrence by doubt." He did not take seriously a military threat from the US because he believed France and Russia would block the US diplomatically at the UN, and that in any event the Americans had little stomach for taking heavy casualties.
The Americans, however, took seriously the probability of confronting Hussein's WMD. When the president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had close ties with Hussein, told Vice President Cheney that Hussein did not want war but would use chemical weapons if attacked, Mr. Cheney did not blink. The Americans, said Cheney, would deal with them.
Bush ordered that, when the US assault started and the anticipated stockpiles of WMD were seized, they must be publicized. Gen. Tommy Franks, his military commander, arranged for specially trained public affairs camera crews to document the discoveries.
Initially it was planned that seized samples of WMD would be shipped to Kuwait for analysis, but when Kuwait balked at this, the 75th Field Artillery Brigade headquarters at Fort Sill, Okla., was assigned the task.
Messrs Gordon and Trainor say in their book that German agents in Baghdad tipped the American military to Hussein's plan for defending his capital. Concentric rings were to be manned by Iraqi units of varying trustworthiness. One of the circles was called the "red line." This was to be the final barrier, manned by Hussein's elite and most reliable troops. US military intelligence reasoned that as American troops reached this defense line they would be met by poison gas or germ weapons.
But within Hussein's war council, the story was very different. In December 2002, Hussein called his generals together for a surprising announcement: Iraq did not possess WMD. The generals were stunned. They had long assumed that they could count on a hidden cache of chemical or biological weapons. Iraq had used such weapons in the war with Iran. Hussein had convinced his generals that it was the threat of WMD that had enabled him to stop the Americans moving on Baghdad after the 1991 war.
According to "Cobra II," Tariq Aziz, Iraq's deputy prime minister, told American interrogators after the 2003 war that Hussein's stunning admission to the generals "sent morale plummeting."
The Bush critics can argue that the president was too gullible in accepting the conclusion of his intelligence agencies. But the evidence does not suggest that he knowingly lied to the American public about the existence of WMD.
• John Hughes, a former editor of the Monitor, is editor and chief operating officer of the Deseret Morning News.
"What I'd like to know is why?"
Why Bush doesn't prove they were there????
Diplomacy and stratergery.
President Bush believes he can win the war of words without proving his critcs wrong.
Seriously, From Bill Clinton on down to the most junior democrat congressman they all know that Saddam had WMD's, only their useful idiots are complaining about it.
the part i like best?
i doubt there are more suitable men for the job then bush and rumsfeld. rumsfeld has a few shitslinging detractors... all one trick ponies. bush has more slingers, some from the opposition, some withinn his owm party and then there is the media, lefties and sandpeople... again singularly critical. From a global perspective, both these men are unparralleled.
the part i like best? forward assault bases in iraq. 25 years in the coming!
I'd find it a lot easier to support the Iraq effort at this point if Bush showed us he really cares about the security of OUR OWN country by securing OUR BORDERS - NOW !!
hahahaha....Bush winning a war of words....classic. Please, this war is based on lies of this administration. Those Downing St Memos pointed out the fact that Bush was going to invade if there were WMD or not.
troll. see ya later.
Maybe they were made by our so-called allies, France and Russia, and we can't confront them on it yet.
If Bush knew there WERE NOT WMD then he is the smartest man in the world and a psychic.
He would have been the ONLY person to have believed it and subsequently called naive.
If you read UN Resolution 1441 you can see the whole world on paper agreeing with President Bush.
From thousands of official Iraqi documents captured by American forces, and dozens of interviews with captured senior military and political leaders, a picture is now emerging...
What is emerging is more than a picture, actually, it is irrefutable evidence. And a number of newspapers - this one and the Washington Post, for example - are starting to feel a credibility pinch on the matter. We'll see more of this sort of apologia as the "picture" becomes clearer. The difference is Bush's poll numbers don't matter and the papers' circulation numbers do.
Jveritas, thanks for your very real contribution to this.
The so-called WMD issue is just an excuse to demonize Bush. Doesn't matter. Documented WMD wouldn't get in the way of the left wing/media BUSHHITLERHATE. Nothing else matters to them. Really.
Yep, not publicly anyway.
There are things that we the public aren't going to know for a very long time.
This document below will not only back up the President side but it will destroy all the lies of liberals and their media regarding Saddam Regime WMD issue.
September 1998 Document: Secret Research Programs Related to WMD http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1613509/posts
This is yet another document that proves without any doubt that Saddam Regime never stopped working in his WMD programs and Research and they were just waiting for the opportune moment to produce these WMD again on a large scale. Also please remember that in September 1998 the UN inspectors were still in Iraq and they were kicked later on that year after some US air and missile strikes. So most definitely these Secret Research Programs related to WMD were still in existence and may have reached a more advanced stage from late 1998 to late 2002 where during this period of time there were no UN inspectors in Iraq. This document is another proof that we could have never trusted Saddam and that we had all the right to remove his brutal and terrorist regime after 9/11/2001.
This document will be the antidote to the Washington Post latest LIE that there were no biological programs and it is a very powerful proof against all the lies spewed by liberals and their media for the last three years.
Thank you very much Bill; just doing my duty Sir :)
You know you're all right for an engineer :).
A liberal explained it to me this way:
Liberal: "Bush lied about WMD so he could steal Iraq's oil."
Me: "But we didn't get Iraq's oil."
Liberal: "I know, and that's another Bush failure."
Me: "What failure?"
Liberal: "Bush failed to steal their oil, so now we have high gas prices."
I kid you not! That is the brain of a liberal. It's impossible to have a rational discussion with a brain like that.
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