Replies

I heard 'em talking about it on the radio and now Mr. Hanson's fine article.

What I am not seeing is comments about

the MSM employees screaming about Reagan-Bush administration "giving" the weapons to Saddam.

"On June 9, 1992, Ted Koppel reported on ABC's Nightline, 'It is becoming increasingly clear that George Bush, operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam's Iraq into the power it became', and 'Reagan/Bush administrations permitted—and frequently encouraged—the flow of money, agricultural credits, dual-use technology, chemicals, and weapons to Iraq.'"

-- from an Internet source. (Be prepared for the screaming that Reagan gave Saddam WMDs to go 24/7 again).

The truth us much closer to the following; it is from a www.un.org report.

6. The chemical weapon programme required access to foreign technology, equipment and raw materials because, in the early 1980s, Iraq did not have indigenous capabilities to manufacture chemical process equipment and precursors for the production of chemical warfare agents. A convincing legitimate cover story was needed to engage outside contractors and suppliers. Therefore, the chemical weapon programme began to operate under the facade of the State Establishment for Pesticide Production (SEPP).

"7. In the 1970s and 198Os, the production of a second generation of agricultural pesticides, in terms of technology, equipment and raw materials, most closely corresponded to the requirements for the production of chemical warfare agents. In addition, Iraq had legitimate needs for pesticides for its growing agricultural sector."

8. In general, Iraq did not develop its own methods for the production of chemical warfare agents. At the beginning of the programme, its main concept was to replicate, at an industrial scale, known foreign methods and techniques of the production of chemical warfare agents using commercially available technology, equipment and raw materials. Later, however, for some agents, such as VX, Iraq applied modified processes to suit its own capabilities.

9. Training in foreign institutions, open publications, foreign patents, international conferences and forums were major sources of information on basic chemical weapon production technology for Iraq. The information was first tested by Iraq at laboratory level to identify and adjust unknown parameters of the synthesis of chemical warfare agents thatcould not be found in open sources, such as the kinetics of chemical reactions, combinations of catalysts, equipment specifications and scaling-up procedures.

10. During the Iran-Iraq war, the Iraqi chemical weapon programme was not able to produce weapons of sufficient quality that could be stored as operational and strategic reserves. To overcome this limitation, after the end of the war, the chemical weapon programme was focused on the improvement of previously produced agents and on the development of more powerful agents and better quality agents suitable for long-term storage. Those activities included efforts to produce binary weapons and the chemical warfare agent VX. Iraq also initiated several projects to build indigenous capabilities for the production of critical chemical warfare agent precursors after 1988. These efforts were interrupted by the 1991 Gulf war. 11. According to declarations made by Iraq, in the period from 1981 to 1991 the chemical weapon programme produced approximately 3,850 tons of the chemical warfare agents mustard, tabun, sarin and VX . . . .

Overview of the chemical weapon programme of Iraq

This is only an annex to a report. I did not read the whole annex and a search did not reveal anything about our Dept. of Agriculture or anyone else in the U.S. government supplying chemicals to Saddam. Though I do recall that our Ag Dept did send agricultural chemicals to Iraq and other countries.

I suspect the Obamans orchestrated the WMD story to justify no boots on the ground. Just wouldn’t be prudent to risk our troops like that (sending them to surely get Ebola is different...).

I think Bush did exaggerate WMD because he did not want to present the geopolitical case for war against Saddam, for three reasons:
1) Public too ignorant to follow.
2) Fear motivates more readily than prudence. Nowhere is this more true than in Congress.
3) The neocon’s geopolitical case was weak and based on some loopy assumptions. Many people would question why it was that freedom and democracy would fill the void and spread across the middle east; why democracy is an Islamic sea of rival sects wouldn’t lead to theocracies and failed states; who would contain Iran; why wouldn’t Iraq spin into warring factions; etc.

None of this is to say that WMD was not present. But it was not the eminent threat Saddam wanted others, like Mosni Mubarak, to think, or at least say, it was.

The real key to the constantly changing narrative is that the media do it because they can get away with it, because they have committed to an ideological stance and will post anything from its sources uncritically and absolutely everything from its opponents with a dismissive disdain. That latter is probably why Bush declined to engage in this particular arena or perhaps why Rove told him not to if that is indeed the case.

There is an infuriatingly smug "we knew it all along" subtext to the current revelations that indicate to me that they really did, a truly damning proposition and an open admission of manipulation and betrayal of the public.

There is good and bad in the increasing influence of the Internet on global reporting. It is, to be sure, a conduit for misinformation from time to time, but it is also a permanent record of that misinformation that cannot be remedied by such activities as a newspaper closing its archives to the public. And so this "we knew it all along" trope should be, and is being, countered by "then why did you state otherwise?" and proof that the media did. The reaction so far is