As far as I can see, the Right seems to be winning the scandal wars just at the moment. I didn’t follow the Plame-Wilson scandal the first time around, so I can’t really tell how damaging or otherwise the latest claims from US and British intelligence may be to Wilson’s credibility. Similarly, although it seems clear that Sandy Berger has made a fool of himself , I have no idea what this means for anything that might possibly matter. Finally, it appears that last Thanksgiving in Iraq, Bush posed not with a fake turkey, but with a display turkey, never intended for carving but to adorn the buffet line. I’m glad that’s been cleared up.
All this confirms me in the view that the kind of “smoking gun” or “what did X know and when did s/he know it” scandal that has dominated politics since Watergate is a waste of everybody’s time. The real scandals are those that are, for the most part, on the public record.
Looking specifically at Iraq, I’m amazed at the continuing focus on intelligence reports about WMDs. It seems to me as if people on both sides of the debate have excised from their memories everything that happened between December 2002 and the outbreak of the war, with the exception of some speeches given by Bush, Blair and Powell. In particular, it seems as if judgements about the threat posed by Saddam’s regime depended primarily on intelligence reports from places like Niger.
To remind anyone who might have forgotten, from December 2002 onwards, anyone who watched the news could acquire all the evidence they needed to conclude that Saddam did not have nuclear weapons and was not close to getting them, and that he probably didn’t have a germ warfare program either. This is because UN inspectors had (with trivial exceptions) unhindered access to any site that US or British intelligence reports indicated might be suspicious. In particular, they were able to visit old nuclear sites like Tuweitha where both Blair and Bush claimed that suspicious rebuilding activity had gone on. They found nothing, for the very good reason that nothing was happening. A more thorough search would have been needed to rule out the possibility of a stockpile of poison gas, but we now know it would have come to the same conclusion.
Of course, this was not enough to convince those who were bent on war in any case. But even for these people, the intelligence reports should have been irrelevant once the inspections commenced. At this point it became clear that whatever was in the intelligence reports, it was not information that could be given to the inspectors to say go and look at place X, take up the floor and you’ll find the evidence you need. I saw various more or less desperate explanations of why this might be the case during the leadup to the war, but I find it hard to believe that anyone actually relied on intelligence reports, as opposed to longheld beliefs, in concluding that Saddam must have WMDs.
Either way, it doesn’t matter much whether and how the intelligence reports were cooked, over-egged, sexed up or whatever. The main question is how, with the world having agreed on a UN resolution that required either inspections or war, we ended up with both1.
1 I can’t stop people posting absurd legal quibbles about the meaning of “active compliance” and so on, but I won’t respond to them.
I don’t think voters have really forgotten this. I think the US media have “forgotten” this, in a display of great athleticism, and in a desperate attempt to gin up some either-or controversy they can still replace catastrophic reality with. This independent of political leanings: you have to gull the punters to get your story and your hat filled with benjamins.
The US media is currently ranked 27th in the world, behind Burkina Faso. We were pipped at the post.
Yeah, it’s pretty bloody easy to win the scandal wars when only you have supboena power and you use it in a nakedly partisan way.
What is disturbing about the WMD issue is that if they really believed that Saddam had WMD’s where’s the worry, stress and concern when they didn’t find them? If they weren’t sure, then it merely underscored the need to continue inspections. If they were so sure they should be very worried.
The timing for the war had everything to do with the election cycle. Because the administration drank the Chalabi-Wolfowitz-Perle Kool-Aid, they probably really believed that they would be greeted as liberators which they expected would lead to the president running in 2003 on the basis of a stable democratic Iraq instead of inspections showing that the administration’s hyping of the WMD issue was so just that.
Erm, now I may be missing the wider point, but I thought one of the real big issues in the whole debate is that precisely no UN resolution “requiring war” had been agreed on. It was either inspections, or another resolution, which never came.
Sorry if I’m quibbling or just repeating the obvious but well, I just was a bit puzzled by that last phrase.
Ps - but yeah I do get and agree with the wider point.
I also don’t think much of all these intelligence reports. Sounds like diversion tactics to me, if not whitewash. All these transatlantic acknowledgements that mistakes were made and failures happened but the blame is spread out so vastly that no one is blamed. The usual.
(This is not just about Iraq but also the 9/11 report - today on the news I heard a reporter saying “intelligence services were found guilty of failures, even innocent ones” - I suppose they meant unintentional, but wow, you’ve just got to love that, “innocent guilt” is a genius new step forward in oxymoron-driven policies!)
John,
You wrote (in the link you include in your piece) “The sites in the photos have been inspected and found to be innocuous.” Kenneth Pollack, in the June 28, 2004 issue of The New Republic, wrote, “The absence of an aggressive, threatening Iraqui WMD program … would have been extremely difficult to recognize … before the war. … There was a consensus among the governments of the world and a virtual consensus among the experts about the basic threat from Iraq; the great debate was over whether a war was necessary to remedy it. Few claimed that Iraq had no WMD programs … and they argued with less evidence than could be mustered in support of the mainstream position” (pg. 21). Now, in the link you include, you don’t deny that there might have been chemical weapons programs, and so your claim in that post isn’t necessarily at odds with what Pollack writes there. But I’m just wondering: is what Pollack writes correct? Was there a near consensus among experts about the existence of WMDs, and if so, did that consensus collapse during the UN inspections of 2003?
It was either inspections, or another resolution, which never came.
Yes, thank you. The Azores are, at the very least, too beautiful to go down the Memory Hole.
I blame it on selective amnesia. RR gave us the “I do not recall” mantra. Just keep repeating it until the problem goes away.
Depends on your definition of “consensus among experts” is. From everything I’ve read and heard, most “experts” in the West expected there to be more in the way of WMD and WMD programs than we actually found. But then, the average high school hooligan has more WMD than what we’ve actually found. There was certainly not a consensus that Iraq had WMD that were a meaningful threat to any Western country - impartial observers (IAEA, etc.) disputed all such claims early and often. But in the US media, at least, such disputes were swept under the rug, and when George Bush cited a nonexistent IAEA report as bolstering his position, this bald faced lie went unnoted except around the blogs.
Once Blix actually got on the ground in Iraq, the very notion of “expertise” came under attack by the war’s political supporters, who assailed Blix, the IAEA, and anyone who pointed out that absence of evidence should, at least, be thought to point towards evidence of absence.
In short, Blix said that Saddam was, essentially, cooperating, and that he found no evidence of active weapons programs. Impartial observers took this to mean that no threatening weapons or programs existed. War supporters took this to mean that Blix was a lying, anti-American weasel who was concealing the facts to advance his evil agenda, and that the weapons were there.
In a just, rational world, those who held the latter position would no longer be asked their opinions on matters of interational import. Alas, the era of personal responsibility is not yet here.
“Was there a near consensus among experts about the existence of WMDs”
I have seen the “consensus” analyzed to show why a German mid-level intelligence analyst, not having complete information, has nothing much to lose by saying “Well, Iraq probably has some WMD’s”, and being proved wrong.
Whereas if said analyst said “Iraq has none”, not only would he have had Rumsfeld and Cheney all over him to prove it, but if they had found any, his career would have been over. The incentives were all on one side. In other words, they were not wrong, they lied.
…
“no UN resolution “requiring war” had been agreed on”
The administration claims that the first resolution was adequate. This interpretation, hotly disputed, would assert that Syria voted yes on a possible war.
OK, despite the disclaimer, it’s worth noting that Resolution 1441 was one of those cases that Kissinger might call “constructive ambiguity.” It was written in such a way that the French could say “Voila! On doit avoir une autre resolution, si les inspecteurs trouvent quelque chose de mal!” And the DoD could say, “We are authorized to attack, attack, attack!” And Colin Powell could claim unanimity.
“In particular, it seems as if judgements about the threat posed by Saddam’s regime depended primarily on intelligence reports from places like Niger.”
No. Judgments were about Saddam’s desires—scary, and the interface of those desires with the unwillingness of the international community to commit to long-term containment policies. In early 2002—which is to say BEFORE inspectors went back in—France, Germany and Russia were trying to get sanctions lifted without linking it to any duty on Saddam’s part. So after 4 years of non-inspections, which had ended after Saddam had confined inspectors to their rooms for some time, the world community was willing to just pretend nothing had ever happened. I won’t apologize for wanting to get rid of Saddam instead of trusting the pathetic UN and the rest of the so-called international ‘community’ to contain him for the rest of his life. The Niger reports suggest that Saddam’s intentions never changed. The non-actions of the international community suggest that long term containment was impossible. And ‘non-actions’ is being generous. If the UN Luxurious Palaces-For-Oil thing is as it appears, they were actively undermining the effectiveness of containment.
The UN can be as pathetic as one can possibly imagine and then some, but they are the official international dispute resolution seat, and as long as they exist as such and as long as the US are a member, whenever they go to the UN to give their case an official UN seal, they can’t suddenly decide the UN are no use just because they’re not handing them what they want on a plate.
The only resolution that was agreed on was indeed ambiguous enough for it to mean anything and it was indeed interpreted in very different ways, so to say the whole world agreed it “required war” is not really true. Whatever one thinks that resolution said. It’s exactly what the whole world was arguing about. I don’t think this little detail is what should go down the memory hole.
France, Germany and Russia were trying to get sanctions lifted without linking it to any duty on Saddam’s part
Economic sanctions were killing thousands of Iraqis a month, and the US had belligerently suggested that they would only be lifted once Saddam was gone. In other words, no matter what Saddam did (short of stepping down), the sanctions would not be lifted.
In other words, Iraqis, including many children under 5, would continue to die due to a combination of inadequate food and medical supplies (and, arguably, the long-term effects of the depleted uranium munitions used in Gulf War I, and incidentally in all US-led wars since then.)
Which just goes to show (and John’s pieces reinforce this) - the US wasn’t particularly interested in the WMD mirage they cooked up for public consumption. They were interested in regime change, only.
Saddam’s futile efforts to appease the US by capitulating to nearly all their inspection demands, were a desperate last attempt to avoid war, but it was always unlikely to have any effect. As with the similar case of Milosevic, the US wanted war and would do the polar opposite of diplomacy (making very sure that the opponent would do something that could be described as “non-compliance”) to get it.
Fairly OT but it’s worth recording that, as Kevin Drum and others have noted, Joe Wilson’s credibility has little bearing on the Plame scandal. It’s illegal for someone with security clearance* to expose a CIA agent even if her husband is a liar, and we are not relying on Joe Wilson for the information that Plame was indeed a CIA agent under non-official cover.
Agree with the rest of the post, and also with Katherine (as ever).
*Or something like that, the point is that Joe Wilson has nothing to do with the legal questions.
In response to Robin’s claim that “Saddam’s futile efforts to appease the US by capitulating to nearly all their inspection demands, were a desperate last attempt to avoid war, but it was always unlikely to have any effect,” that same Kenneth Pollack artice in TNR reads, “Over the last year, the debriefings of senior Iraqi officials captured during the invasion have revealed that, even with roughly 100,000 ground troops massed on the Iraqi border, Saddam convinced himself that the United States would never actually launch a war and, therefore, he could continue to play games with weapons inspectors” (pp. 21-22). I don’t know that this undermine’s Robin’s broader point, but I thought I should bring it up.
All the “scandals” you can name just cloud the basic fact that the Bush Administration has failed miseably at everything it’s tried except fund raising. In a sane country we would have fired them long ago. In the US our right to bear assault weapons and our burning need to prevent gay marriage is far more important than mere competence.
All the “scandals” you can name just cloud the basic fact that the Bush Administration has failed miserably at everything it’s tried except fund raising. In a sane country we would have fired them long ago. In the US our right to bear assault weapons and our burning need to prevent gay marriage is far more important than mere competence.
I can’t understand Robin’s claim that “Economic sanctions were killing thousands of Iraqis a month”. Did you miss the Oil for Food scandal? Remember when Iraq was caught smuggling infant formula out of the country under the sanctions regime (presumably to sell)?
One of Bush’s first diplomatic efforts, his first spring in office (before Sept. 11) was to try to reform the Oil for Food program to make it easier and more efficient for Iraqis to get food, medical supplies, etc., but France, Russia and China opposed it. If France had been more concerned about Iraqi children than about Iraqi bribes, why would they have opposed that effort? (And, if Bush and Cheney only wanted oil, why didn’t they just make a deal with Saddam to drop the sanctions rather than strengthen them, in exchange for contracts?)
On the UN inspections, did you really find those convincing? I can remember listening to Blix’s report to the UN, which listed steps such as ‘we’ve heard rumors of mobile weapons labs, so we asked the Iraqis to turn over any labs that may have been used for WMDS. Then we tested what they gave us, but they were clean. We’ve heard rumors about underground weapons labs, so we’ve asked the Iraqis to give us a list of all underground areas that we can inspect, and when we get it, we’ll check them out…’
There was also the problem that the Iraqis knew in advance about virtually every “surprise” inspection (the UN inspectors admitted this). And there were the stories that Iraqi scientists had been sent their own death notices (so and so was killed in a car accident yesterday…). But, when the UN inspectors heard of the death notices, they told Iraq to stop, so I guess that wasn’t a problem after all.
There was also Blix’s attitude towards dual-use. If an item had any other conceivable use, then he took it as proof that it would never be used as a weapon. For a good discussion of Hans Blix and the UN inspections, go to the Wisconsin Project website (www.wisconsinproject.org)and look under publications for the article “Hans the Irrelevant”, which appeared in the Wall Street Journal in Jan., 2003. (The Nov. 2002 article, “Hans the Timid” is pretty good also).
Even at the time, Blix was saying that Iraq hadn’t yet decided to disarm: “Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament which was demanded of it.” Given the nature of the inspections, how could anyone have been thoroughly convinced if inspections had been given another 3 months and still had not found anything? Absence of evidence does not prove absence, especially given Saddam’s lack of cooperation on substance (which Blix noted at the time, even as he complimented them for their cooperation on “process”).
Absence of evidence does not prove absence, especially given Saddam’s lack of cooperation on substance (which Blix noted at the time, even as he complimented them for their cooperation on “process”).
It weighs much more heavily towards the absence side than it does the existence side, unless one believes in magic.
Absence of evidence does not prove absence, especially given Saddam’s lack of cooperation on substance (which Blix noted at the time, even as he complimented them for their cooperation on “process”).
It weighs much more heavily towards the absence side than it does the existence side, unless one believes in magic.
To clarify the last sentence in my post, the original UN Resolution said Saddam had to open up to inspections or take the consequences, meaning war. Before any invasion, a second resolution was supposed to confirm either that Saddam had refused to allow inspections or that he had obstructed them, as he did the previous time around. Since he did neither, the UNSC was unwilling to pass a second resolution, but Bush and Blair went to war anyway.
There was some creative ambiguity, but nothing that was said publicly at the time could have given anyone grounds for envisaging the actual outcome, which clearly had no basis in the UN resolution.
Oh, I think I remember Ann.
Ann -
Your paraphrase of Blix is not quite accurate.
As I noted on the 14th of February, intelligence authorities have claimed that weapons of mass destruction are moved around Iraq by trucks, in particular that there are mobile production units for biological weapons. The Iraqi side states that such activities do not exist.Several inspections have taken place at declared and undeclared sites in relation to mobile production facilities. Food-testing mobile laboratories and mobile workshops have been seen as well as large containers with seed-processing equipment. No evidence of proscribed activities have so far been found.
Iraq is expected to assist in the development of credible ways to conduct random checks of ground transportation.
Inspectors are also engaged in examining Iraq’s programs for remotely piloted vehicles. A number of sites have been inspected with data being collected to assess their range and other capabilities of the various models found, and inspections are continuing in this area.
There have been reports, denied from the Iraqi side, that proscribed activities are conducted underground. Iraq should provide information on any underground structure suitable for the production or storage of weapons of mass destruction.
During inspections of declared or undeclared facilities, inspection teams have examined building structures for any possible underground facilities. In addition, ground-penetrating radar equipment was used in several specific locations. No underground facilities for chemical or biological production or storage were found so far.
I should add that, both for the monitoring of ground transportation and for the inspection of underground facilities, we would need to increase our staff in Iraq. I’m not talking about a doubling of the staff. I would rather have twice the amount of high-quality information about sites to inspect than twice the number of expert inspectors to send.
That last bit is a thinly disguised dig at the US for its public claims that it had specific WMD intelligence that it refused to turn over to UNMOVIK.
As for the rest, are you seriously arguing that the Iraq that Blix was inspecting was in any way a sufficient threat to the US to justify an unprovoked invasion?
Are you seriously arguing that?
I think we can safely ignore the fact that some people insist on interpreting an ambiguous document one way while those who disagree on the underlying merits insist on interpreting it quite differently. What else would we expect?
But I’m struck that one could only think as John says anyone who watched the news from December 2002 on would have if one hadn’t bothered to follow the news from 1990 to 12/02. Only in that circumstance could one believe that the inspectors were sent to Iraq to find weapons rather than to confirm Iraq’s compliance with UN resolutions requiring disarmament. Or that Iraqi insistence that it was cooperating was evidence for the proposition that Iraq was cooperating.
Or, to take the singular example that John offers, the fact that inspectors had found nothing suspicious at Tuweitha. When had they? Never, not even when such activities were in fact—unless John now wants to quibble over facts settled decades ago—occuring. If IAEA had never detected activity there, despite the fact that activity had in fact occured there, why would the fact that IAEA couldn’t find evidence in 2002 be particularly meaningful?
Thomas is right on point about one thing. If the international community had ever taken inspections seriously, we wouldn’t be at this point now. The international community had 10 years to show its intentions. It did so. The intentions were not to care about Saddam as a threat except when the US whined about it.
“Or, to take the singular example that John offers, the fact that inspectors had found nothing suspicious at Tuweitha. When had they? Never, not even when such activities were in fact—unless John now wants to quibble over facts settled decades ago—occuring. ”
Thomas, my recollection is that UNSCOM found and destroyed a substantial weapons program at Tuweitha in 1992.
Oh yeah, NOW we should stop talking about these scandals, jhust when they are getting really interesting — and happen to be putting the heat on the Dems. Trousergate is as funny as hell (at least to Bill Clinton) but it has raised very serious questions about possible tampering with documents related to the security of the state.
So far the explanations have been so risible as to make the whole thing seem much more sinister.
Dave F, if you follow the links in the post, you’ll find that I criticised scandals as a distraction from the main issues in October 2003, when the Plame-Wilson story was being run hard by Democrats.
John, your recollection isn’t in accord with mine. My recollection is that the Iraqis declared portions of their nuclear program, and those portions were destroyed under the supervision of IAEA inspectors, but that the inspectors didn’t in fact discover the material. Further, the Tuweitha site, as I recall, had been the subject of IAEA inspections for more than a decade by that point, and yet the inspectors had never discovered the materials destroyed in 1992.
John, your recollection isn’t in accord with mine. My recollection is that the Iraqis declared portions of their nuclear program, and those portions were destroyed under the supervision of IAEA inspectors, but that the inspectors didn’t in fact discover the material. Further, the Tuweitha site, as I recall, had been the subject of IAEA inspections for more than a decade by that point, and yet the inspectors had never discovered the materials destroyed in 1992.
s_bethy -
Thank you for digging up the exact text from the time. I was loosely paraphrasing from memory. The main message that I got from listening to Blix at the time was that inspections wouldn’t work unless Iraq truly cooperated, a point that many experts seem to agree on. The question was whether Iraq was truly, whole-heartedly cooperating. It didn’t appear to me that they were.
Was it a serious enough threat to justify an invasion? First, I always felt that there were other good reasons for the invasion, besides WMD, although that threat was certainly part of the picture. Second, yes, I still believe that, given what we knew or should have known at the time, there was a substantial threat that needed to be dealt with.
And what do we know today? We know that Saddam was working hard to maintain programs and human capital, in order to be capable of gearing up WMD production once it was safe to do so. An alternative for the world would have been to keep up inspections for a few more months and then drop the whole thing, because Blix hadn’t found much. In this case, the nuclear network would still be operating, Iraq could gear up its programs and buy what it needed from Pakistan, Libya and North Korea (which might finally have delivered on the $10 million order), terrorist groups would have had a base from which to work, and the Iraqi people would have less hope than ever. That doesn’t sound appealing to me.
There are other possiblities - maybe the world, especially the French, would have remained diligent and would have kept Iraq from ever gearing up again. This might have been best for everyone except the people of Iraq, but it’s only one possible outcome.
What we know today reinforces the idea that Saddam would have been a threat sooner or later, unless inspections were maintained indefinitely, and eternal vigilance was unlikely. I’m still surprized that they didn’t find stockpiles of WMD but don’t see how Bush could have been sure, at the time, that they weren’t there. Bush administration officials said repeatedly at the time that they couldn’t be sure what Saddam had.
Yes, given the expectation that inspections would be dropped eventually, given Saddam’s track record, given that past WMDs were still unaccounted for, given the human rights violations, given Saddam’s links with terrorists - for many reasons, I think that the war was justified, even though the stockpiles turned out to be smaller than expected.
Ann -
I’m sorry, but you haven’t convinced me.
The key event that happened in Iraq prior to the invasion was the resumption of UN inspections. About this, Blix reported:
Inspections in Iraq resumed on the 27th of November 2002. In matters relating to process, notably prompt access to sites, we have faced relatively few difficulties, and certainly much less than those that were faced by UNSCOM [U.N. Special Commission] in the period 1991 to 1998. This may well be due to the strong outside pressure.
If, as you assert, “the question was whether Iraq was truly, whole-heartedly cooperating”, there were a number of alternatives to a full-scale invasion that might have resolved that issue.
Other reasons for the invasion ( Bush’s, not necessarily yours) :
You go on to say that “there was a substantial threat that needed to be dealt with.” If we had quashed Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and contained Saddam, I fail to understand the nature of the threat. Was he not contained? I give you Colin Powell in 2001, talking about sanctions:
And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq…
Now here’s you again:
“And what do we know today? We know that Saddam was working hard to maintain programs and human capital, in order to be capable of gearing up WMD production once it was safe to do so. An alternative for the world would have been to keep up inspections for a few more months and then drop the whole thing, because Blix hadn’t found much.”
But here’s Blix:
Neither governments nor inspectors would want disarmament inspection to go on forever. However, it must be remembered that in accordance with the governing resolutions, a sustained inspection and monitoring system is to remain in place after verified disarmament to give confidence and to strike an alarm if signs were seen of the revival of any proscribed weapons programs.
In the end, you say “I think that the war was justified, even though the stockpiles turned out to be smaller than expected.”
Stockpiles? Stockpiles? I must have missed that report. Damn liberal media.
We may be reaching diminishing returns on this, since neither of us is likely to convince the other. But I really appreciate your serious discussion.
I wanted to mention one aspect of your quote from Hans Blix - he said that Iraq was cooperating “in matters relating to process”. The Wisconsin Project article that I mentioned earlier, “Hans the Irrelevant”, points out that Blix himself differentiated between process and substance and said that Iraq was not cooperating on substance (giving a clear accounting of past weapons, as the UN had demanded). Blix was being diplomatic and lawyerly, complimenting Iraq’s cooperation on process (letting them visit various sites), but my idea of whole-hearted cooperation would include substance as well as process.
Blix said that, long term, there would be continued monitoring “to give confidence and to strike an alarm if signs were seen” - my interpretation of that (which you may not agree with) is that there would be a token force to make us all feel better, but I’m not confident that it would manage to see anything in the future. And what would we do if Saddam suddenly threw the inspectors out or confined them to their rooms, as he had done before (1998, I think)? The world (French) would have said “it’s safe now, so let’s forget the whole thing”.
On ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda (among other terrorists), I believe there’s more than you listed. For example, the 9/11 commission report says that Iraq offered Al Qaeda a safe haven (in 1999?), when it was having problems with the Taliban.
Granted, there probably wasn’t sufficient evidence of Iraq’s support for terrorism, by itself, to justify invasion. And there may not have been sufficient evidence of WMDs, by itself, to justify invasion. And Saddam being a “bad guy” (consistently, over more than a decade, as you pointed out) may not have been enough, by itself, to justify invasion. And certainly the UN doesn’t think that repeatedly flouting UN demands, by itself, could justify military action. But we weren’t facing just one of these by themselves, we were facing all at once, combined with the likelihood that failing to act now would lead to future (French and UN) demands that all sanctions be lifted against Iraq (as long as a token UN inspection team stayed in Baghdad hotel rooms indefinitely).
On stockpiles, the latest count I heard is at least 35 missiles with sarin or mustard gas, plus botulinum toxin. Granted, that may not qualify as even a small “stockpile” - I wasn’t trying to claim that and probably worded it poorly. But the programs were still in place, ready to start up again. And I don’t believe that Bush could reasonably have been expected to know at the time that the stockpiles weren’t there, when even top generals and frontline commanders in Iraq claim to have genuiunely believed that the Iraqi army had WMDs and were prepared to use them.
My bottom line on the invasion of Iraq is that the Iraqi people deserved a chance at a decent life, and now they’ve got it. Bringing democracy and human rights to many countries doesn’t mean invading each of them. There’s something to be said for making an example of one of the worst offenders (worst in terms of a combination of having used WMDs and invaded another country in the past, flouted UN sanctions, etc., not just human rights violations, although Saddam was a contender in that respect alone). The example has already had an effect on Libya and Pakistan. As Iraq develops into a peaceful, productive democracy, I think that seeing the change will have an effect on other countries, which will help us, long term, in the war on terror.
Well, this is more than I meant to write. Much of our disagreement is over estimates and opinions - how one weighs one risk against another or what probability one places on the inspectors’ likelihood of discovering what was there, etc. So, I still respectfully disagree but appreciate your opinions.
Ann -
Thanks for your reasoned reply.
I’m satisfied to leave it at that, but I’d very much appreciate seeing your source for the “at least 35 missiles with sarin or mustard gas, plus botulinum toxin” claim.
Best,
s_
The report on the missiles (and artillery shells, by the way - I couldn’t think of the other term when I posted before) was on Fox News Special Report a few days ago. This was the cumulative total from scattered locations, not just one find. So, in that sense, it’s hard to think of it as a stockpile. On the other hand, there are many missiles and artillery shells not yet tested, so the numbers could increase over time.
The botulinum toxin was found a while ago, in a scientist’s home refrigerator. All of it was old, so it doesn’t signal new production since the Gulf War but does indicate that the old stuff wasn’t entirely destroyed, as Iraq told the UN.
But again, I never meant to imply that even small “stockpiles” had been found yet. There are only traces, which still surprises me.
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