[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Learned about this from the Drudge Report. The Time system seems to be overloaded this morning! Graphics not loading at all for me!

[BOBTHENAILER]

REPORTED BY PERRY BACON JR., TIMOTHY J. BURGER, JAMES CARNEY, JOHN F. DICKERSON AND MARK THOMPSON/WASHINGTON AND J.F.O. MCALLISTER/LONDON

Guests of honor at the upcoming Crow feast.

[livius]

The U.S. does appear to have one solid argument on its side:

The biggest argument is that Saddam would not let inspectors have unrestricted access, within the terms of the agreement, to his sites and materials. He was hiding something, and everybody knows it. With his stalling, he probably managed to get much of it out of the country, but I'd bet the large underground compounds that have been discovered (and are still being investigated - by robots, because they're booby-trapped) are going to turn up some interesting stuff.

Bush/Blair et al. would not have lied about or exaggerated this because the risk would have been just too great. The stuff is out there, I'm sure we'll find it or track it to wherever it was sent.

And as for adopting the worst case scenario, what's wrong with that? In dealing with an unstable dictator who could take out a large part of his region upon a mere whim, going for the worst case seems, to me, to be the most prudent thing to do.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Bush Doctrine Unfolds :

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[kesg]

If one cuts through the BS -- such as the unnamed sources who (if they exist) have obvious axes to grind against the Bush Administration (or Republicans or conservatives generally), or the selective quotes from people who will never understand that evil exists in the world and that we are not immune from another 9/11 -- the point of this article seems to be that at least some of the intelligence was ambiguous about the nature and extent of the WMD threat. The article doesn't claim that the threat unambiguously did not exist. No one has claimed that, either before or after the Iraq war.

Well, if at least some of the intelligence is ambiguous, then shoudn't the President, in interpreting the intelligence, be assuming the worst (and reacting accordingly) rather than hoping for the best? When the consequences of error -- of understimating the threat posed by WMDs in the hands of terrorists supplied by Saddam's regime (including Saddam's regime itself, which was a terrorist organization in its own right) -- include another 9/11 (or worse), shouldn't the margin of error be very small? Shouldn't the President err on the side of protecting national security rather than leaving it at greater risk? Why doesn't this article ask this rather obvious question, which would put this entire issue in its proper perspective?

[Semper Paratus]

The clymers were willing to give the UN inspectors months if not years.
Now they want the evidence yesterday.

[AntiGuv]

I posted these remarks earlier today, but they would seem most applicable here (with slight modification).

Prior to the war, I had no doubt that WMDs would be found - in fact, I fully expected them to get utilized during the war itself. At the very least, I would not imagine that intelligence would be fabricated that could be so easily disproven. The fact of the matter, however, is that the prewar WMD thesis is strictly defunct. There's simply no way to pretend otherwise at this juncture.. (Whether there will be genuine political ramifications is another question altogether, and I'm doubtful there would be for various reasons.)

Whatever the case, here's a concise summary of the prewar thesis as described elsewhere:

Saddam Hussein had extensive, active, advanced, clandestine chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. UN inspectors couldn't find WMDs because they were inept, or corrupt, or because Saddam played the shell game so masterfully. US intelligence pinpointed dozens of high-value target sites, hundreds of intermediate-value sites and thousands of low-value sites. Chemical and perhaps biological weapons were deployed to commanders in the field, who had orders to use them against invading Coalition forces. Special Forces teams were dropping in to secure and neutralize high-value sites in advance of the ground assault, with high-tech analytic Mobile Exploitation Teams (MET's) close on their heels.

Anyone who would claim that this was not the public impression created in the buildup to war is a dissembler, IMHO; anyone who can now seriously suggest that anything remotely resembling that scenario could have been the case needs to check in with their nearest reality, ASAP...

These were the allegations as I distinctly recall them: 15,000 to 30,000 chemical munitions; thousands of tons of weaponized chemical arms; hundreds of gallons of biological agents; a reconstituted nuclear program with procurement of uranium & missile cores; a fleet of remote-guided WMD drones; dozens of mobile biochem laboratories; dozens of Scud missile delivery systems.

Where is all this extensive panoply of prohibited, unconventional armament? Where are all the scientists & engineers & military personnel & just random facility workers that put them together and maintained them? Where are the research & production facilities themselves? Did all this just vanish into the desert? Somewhere? Somehow?

If you want my personal opinion, our intelligence services - and by extension Bush and Blair - were misled by the Iraqi opposition groups. I remarked several times prior the war that these were the people least credible in their claims about the Ba'athist regime and Iraqi sentiments. They had a vested interest in encouraging the war which would see them returned into the locus of power in Iraq and they played their cards to the hilt. Evidently, they found a receptive audience willing to accept whatever casus belli they fortuitously provided.

Trumped up 'intelligence' from Iraqi dissidents is what the evidence at this juncture mainly points toward and that the Iraqis had indeed abandoned their WMD programs appears the inescapable conclusion, in my view. I have no problem if I'm eventually proven incorrect in this assessment. We shall see. This issue needs to get confronted on FR sooner or later because it's not going to just go away...

[The Great Satan]

Oh Saddam had WMD alright. He still does, which is why he survived again -- just as he did in 1991. The WMD weren't the real reason we had to go to war -- they were just the reason we had to lie about why we went to war.

Remember...

WMD mean never having to say you're sorry.

[Wild Irish Rogue]

Tony Blair was one of the most vocal world leaders insisting that Iraq had WMD.In 1997,Tony Blair addressed the House of Commons and said that it if Saddam did not allow inspectors back into Iraq, " we will simply face this problem,perhaps in a different and far worse form,in a few years time." Blair gave interviews,throughout the late 90s saying he had seen the British intelligence reports on Saddam's WMD.In 1998, Clinton told the nation,in a televised address, that Iraq had weapons of WMD and needed to be disarmed. We know he had WMD because he gassed the Kurds.The left said that they did not oppose Kosovo,because it involved genocide. The thousands of mass graves being uncovered in Iraq shows that Saddam practiced genoicide on a grand level.Apparently, the only way to make the left happy,will be to restore Saddam as the leader of Iraq .

[Eldorado431]

Several current and former military officers who saw all the relevant data through this spring charge that the Pentagon took the raw data from the CIA and consistently overinterpreted the threat posed by Iraq's stockpiles. "There was a predisposition in this Administration to assume the worst about Saddam," a senior military officer told Time. This official, recently retired, was deeply involved in planning the war with Iraq but left the service after concluding that the U.S. was going to war based on bum intelligence. "
All of the above holds no Water in my Glass. Anytime an Article has un-named Officials or other un-named People that are Quoted, I take the entire article and throw it in the garbage where it belongs.

[TLBSHOW]

Last October, when I spoke at the Labour conference in Blackpool, I supported the efforts of President Bush and Prime Minister Blair to renew efforts to eliminate Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction,

Bill Clinton

http://www.labour.org.uk/clintoniraq180303/

[k2blader]

Bump for later read and browse.

[BagCamAddict]

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