Posted on 04/26/2006 5:48:20 AM PDT by SJackson
The great mystery of the 2003 war in Iraq - What about the WMD? has finally been resolved. The short answer is: Saddam Husseins persistent record of lying meant no one believed him when he at the last moment actually removed the weapons of mass destruction.
In a riveting book-length report issued by the Pentagons Joint Forces Command, Iraqi Perspectives Project, American researchers have produced the results of a systematic two-year study of the forces and motivations shaping Saddam Hussein and his regime. Well written, historically contexted, and replete with revealing details, it ranks with Kanan Makiyas Republic of Fear as the masterly description of that regime. (For a condensed version, see the May-June issue of Foreign Affairs.)
It shows how, like Hitlerian Germany or Stalinist Russia, Saddamite Iraq was a place of unpredictably distorted reality. In particular, Saddam underwent a change in the mid-1990s, developing a delusional sense of his own military genius, indeed his infallibility. In this fantasy land, soldiers faith and bravura count far more than technology or matériel. Disdaining the U.S. military performance from Vietnam to Desert Storm, and from Somalia to the Balkans, the tyrant deemed Americans a cowardly and unworthy enemy.
Also about this same time, Saddam began insisting on only good news, further isolating himself from often harsh realities. As ever-fewer underlings dared contradict the bosss perceptions, his determined self-deception wreaked havoc outward from the presidential palace to the entire Iraqi government and beyond. The lead author of Iraqi Perspectives Project, Kevin M. Woods, and his four co-authors note that, By the mid-1990s, most of those near the regime inner circle recognized that everyone was lying to everyone else. Deceits were reinforced and elaborated; in the words of an air defense officer, One [officer] lied to another from the first lieutenant up, until it reached Saddam.
That no one really knew what was going on was symbolized by the widespread credence in the wartime nonsense spouted by the Iraqi minister of information (mockingly dubbed Baghdad Bob by Western reporters) as he regaled the world with glowing accounts of Iraqi victories; from the point of view of Iraqs leaders, Baghdad Bob was largely reporting what they were hearing from the front. A militia commander confessed to being absolutely astonished on encountering an American tank in Baghdad.
The same situation extended to the military-industrial infrastructure. First, the report states, for Saddam, the mere issuing of a decree was sufficient to make the plan work. Second, fearful for their lives, everyone involved provided glowing progress bulletins. In particular, scientists always reported the next wonder weapon was right around the corner. In such an environment, who knew the actual state of the WMD? Even for Saddam, when it came to WMD there was always some element of doubt about the truth.
Iraqs strategic dilemma further complicated matters. Realizing that perceptions of Iraqi weakness could invite attack, from Iran in particular, Saddam wanted the world to think he possessed WMD. But eventually he realized that to fend off the coalition, he needed to convince Western states that his regime no longer possessed those very weapons. As coalition forces geared up for war in late 2002, Saddam decided to cooperate with the United Nations to establish that his country was clean of WMD, as he put it, so as not to give President Bush any excuses to start a war.
This lucid moment, ironically, fell victim to his long history of deceiving the U.N.; Iraqi steps to comply with the inspections regime had the paradoxical effect of confirming Western doubts that the cooperation was a ruse. For example, intercepted orders to remove all traces of previous WMD programs were misinterpreted as yet another ploy, and not the genuine effort they really were.
Saddam's belated attempts at transparency backfired, leading to what the report authors call a diplomatic and propaganda Catch-22. Monumental confusion followed. Captured senior Iraqi officials continued for many months after the 2003 war to believe it possible that Iraq still possessed a WMD capability hidden away somewhere. Coalition intelligence agencies, not surprisingly, missed the final and unexpected twist in a long-running drama. Neither those agencies nor Western politicians lied; Saddam was the evil impostor whose deceptions in the end confused and endangered everyone, including himself.
A small gun is still a gun if it is pointed at one of your family members. Saddam had used that gun against his own citizens (the Kurds) for which he is on trial for right now. There is no doubt he was trying to get bigger guns and had flouted that he would use them against America.
The evidence is overwhelming that he supported Terrorism ($25K to each Palestinian Suicide bomber), Harbored Terrorists (such as Abu-Nidal) in his own county and had extensive contacts with Al-Queada were clear violations of U.N. Resolutions he agreed to abide with.
Saddam was a smoking gun in the WMD issue.
To harp that there was not enough WMD to justify the war just shows that one is not capable of understanding the WMD issue in this century and not able to defend the country.
While I generally doubt much of anything coming from agenda-driven Daniel Pipes (who wants to convince us that there is such a thing as "moderate" Muslims), I think it is likely that So Damn Insane is nuts and perpetrated the notion of "only good news" that extended to the WMD. That said, however, it doesn't explain the WMD that HAVE been found and (relatively) quietly removed from Iraq, nor does it explain the suspicious activity that occurred on the Iraq-Syria border just before the invasion. It also does not explain the Russian "technicians" whose car was shot up by American aircraft shortly before the invasion.
So to me, at least, there remains a large intel gap that Pipes is conveniently ignoring. What were the Russians doing there and did they, possibly, get some (or all) of Iraq's WMD? What was going on at the Iraq-Syria border when So Damn would replace the normal border guards with his own and send several trucks acroos into Syria?
Until/unless we get answers to those questions, I don't believe that it is entirely possible to lay the WMD issue completely to rest. They were there once. So Damn used them. What happened to them?
Pipes doesn't provide any answers.
Here's what I don't "get." The IAEA, UNMOVIC and UNSCOM all documented that Iraq had X amount of WMD's. These same groups could verify the destruction of Y amount of these WMD's, the difference (X-Y) yielding a positive number. Now, for silly little engineers like myself and I'm sure accountants around the planet, a statement like Iraq had no WMD's just simply doesn't make sense. Both sides can nuance the daylights out of statements to indicate they are correct, but neither side can change the mathematics of the situation. |
Bump for later read
The administration has a vested interest in not finding WMD at this point, or at least not disclosing their existence. Why? Because if we are going to send our boys into harm's way again, can you imagine the public outcry against it if they might be met with biological weapons and chemical weapons, or even nuclear weapons? It was in the interest of the administration to tell everyone they were in the process of making them, but not to actually find them.
I think the first gulf war showed that there may have ben Chemical weapons released into the oil field fires. Of course, I have no proof of this, but it makes me wonder if this is the reason the administration was too quick to admit that they did not exist.
Also, if they were taken to Syria, then this creates another pressure point in which the public would demand that we go into Syria to get them, but I don't think we are ready for that. After all, they would say that if we needed to get them from Iraq, then we need to get them from Syria.
Correct. And, that is why I voted for him twice and would vote for him again if I could.
I agree with your skepticism... It makes you wonder where the tens of billions of dollars in the "oil for food" scam went -- it couldn't have just gone into those stupid palaces. My guess is there is still substantial WMD buried somewhere in Syria. But even if these suspicions prove to be false, how can the John Kerrys and other Dem critics fault what was a generally held assumption given the decade of deception that WAS Saddam Hussein? The civilized world needed the removal of Saddam, and sadly, the US (along with Britain) was the only country with the ability and leadership to tackle that task.
Well, I've always said, if someone was lying about Iraq's WMD's, it wasn't W, it was Saddam.
Back to the future with CNN
http://www.cnn.com/US/9704/16/cia.gulf/
(Article deals with Kamisiyah ammo dump demolition in Gulf War 1, possible US exposure to nerve agents)
Right, and also Bush would be blamed for not getting them before they were shipped off to Syria, and every day since for the fact that they're still there, or who knows where, held by who knows whom, who will do who knows what with them - his political critics would have a field day.
At this point it's probably much better for national security purposes if the whole world (including Syria - I think they ARE there, btw) believes that we think they never actually existed. Bush takes a hit, but like a previous poster pointed out, he's more concerned about security than poll numbers. I think we'll get them eventually.
The President has given consistent reasons for invading Iraq from beginning to end. In short, take out a dangerous regime and replace it with a state that upholds the rule of law as part of transforming the Middle East.
The legal and moral bases for regime change were always unassailable and nothing has changed. WMD were cited as what was assumed to be a slam-dunk to curry support. The world's elite with such tremendous unity that it cannot be ignored has behaved ever since (I would say tendentiously) as if WMD stockpiles had been the only justification, and they will move the goalposts as much as they can because they think damage to US credibility is a good thing.
For Saddam, there was available a transparent way of disarming which other countries such as South Africa have shown. But Saddam's Iraq wasn't capable of it, and now they are gone. Good riddance to one of the worst regimes on the planet. The world in each region needs to hold countries with emerging capabilities to standards. The heightened 21st century danger of weapons and terrorists will not be addressed until it becomes the norm for emerging countries to uphold the rule of law and govern in a reasonably non-oppressive way.
With all that as background, my response to your post is that the President can't force the elites to see the bigger picture. He could not ignore the drumbeating about lack of WMDs, and chose to concede ground. History will be the judge.
bump
LOL! The hell he's not.
My sentiments exactly. And Iran had a hand in it as well.
Two things:
a) When our boys were marching
toward Baghdad. they were
ordered to wear their gasmasks
and outer protective garments.
Our Generals thought WMD were
at the ready.
b) Recall that huge storage facility
that was found out near the airport
loaded with sealed crates, tagged
with foreign (French and Russian names).
Three days later the facility was bone
bare and non one knew what happened to
to them. Our soldiers were blamed for
the "lost" contents.
I have never been able to buy the story
that NO ONE SAW ANYTHING being moved,
especially since it was reported that
the vast amount of supplies/crates would
have necessitated around the clock work
to empty the place. It was that vast.
All excellent overt reasons for dealing with Iraq. But as current events have shown, the larger strategic value of having large forces in Iraq -- right next to Syria and Iran -- cannot be ignored.
From a long-term strategy perspective, it has become obvious that something has to be done about the dangers posed by Islamic governments in the Middle East. It will inevitably mean military action. We had to grab a bridgehead someplace, and Iraq has a wonderfully strategic location for that, which just happened to coincide with the fact that Saddam's Iraq needed dealing with anyway.
Shaffer also told me that there is a "shadow government" inside the CIA---Bush's fault for not totally cleaning house in 2000---that continued to obfuscate, obstruct, and resist, and that overcoming them would have been difficult.
But put this in another context: we KNOW now that the Soviets orchestrated the "Nuclear Freeze" movements of the 1980s, but PROVING it in the 1980s would have been very difficult and detracted from some of Reagan's bigger issues like defeating the USSR. So he ignored it and focused on the head, and not the tail. I think Bush blew it in this case, but he still got the head.
Amen, bro. BTW, do you happen to know any WW II vets who flew off aircraft carriers?
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