Where’s My WMD II
In earlier entries here and here I discussed weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Fred Kaplan has an interesting article in Slate about Colin Powell’s speech to the UN in February regarding Iraq’s WMD. He goes through all of the evidence presented by Powell and shows how virtually none of it has not held up. The only remaining bits to support the existence of WMD in pre-war Iraq are the wire intercepts discussing moving or hiding WMD. Kaplan surmises that this evidence may have been faked (like the Nigerian uranium document) or planted. Disappointingly, there was no mention in the article of the point The Cultural Elite has been making about errors in the transcription of those intercepts.
Another interesting tidbit in Kaplan’s article is a link to the LA Times story yesterday about the chaos that reigned in Iraq’s military in the waning days of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Regarding WMD, the story says this:
Commanders interviewed for this article said they were issued no orders regarding chemical or biological weapons. And they denied that Iraq ever possessed such weapons.
Now that sounds convincing.
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August 13th, 2003 at 3:08 pm
Iraq never possessed such weapons? That’s news to me.
August 14th, 2003 at 8:19 pm
Iraq had WMD in 1998. They admitted that they had produced large stocks of nerve gas and had purchased large amounts of culture media, and had built a special plant (with ssophiscated ventilation systems) for working with them.
Iraq admitted this.
People who believe Saddam was innocent of possessing the weapons at the beginning of this war must believe that after kicking out the weapons inspectors in 1998, he told his army: “Now we can go about unilaterally disarming.”
I don’t think that is likely.
And we must also remember this: Saddam was required (by the terms of the Gulf War ceasefire) to prove that he had destroyed all of his weapons.
There was to be no sneaking around. No “cat and mouse” games with inspectors.
Saddam was to bring it all forward and prove it was gone.
He did not do that. And he paid a price for this failure.
Iraq, and the world, is better off without him.
August 15th, 2003 at 12:12 am
I suppose I have to agree with you about Iraq having these weapons. Thanks to CulturePimp and Steve Martin for helping me to see what you were getting at.
Actually, I do agree with you that Iraq had the weapons at some point in time. I think the fact none have been found to this point indicates that the weapons inspections following the Persian Gulf war worked. Or maybe they were buried in the desert or transported out of the country sometime between 1998 and 2002 when the inspectors returned. Either way the weapons weren’t capable of being used and couldn’t serve as justification for a preemptive war–Jay
August 15th, 2003 at 4:45 am
Whether Saddam had fully functional weapons is not relevant. He may not have, but by not making that point clear, he was playing a dangerous game: It is the equivalent of robbing a bank with an unloaded gun. He was relying on everyone thinking he had the weapons (and he was required to prove he did not have them).
Someday we will know what happened to them. They may be used (hopefully not), they may have been given to Syria, it may turn out that Saddam’s own scientists were lying to him about how much they had managed to make, and it may even turn out that Saddam decided to unilaterally disarm without telling anyone (perhaps he really did believe in peace and love and he was too embarrassed to tell anyone).
I think that this is important, but it was not the only reason to ivade Iraq.
No one knows how Iraq will turn out.
Our actions after WWII were vital: the democracies that took root in Japan and Germany were pillars of their respective regions. Each country, through peaceful trade and stability, caused two chaotic regions to become a lot more peaceful and wealthy.
I’ve heard enough people say, in effect, that there is no chance of that happening in Iraq (but they have to admit that they don’t know the future and that this is really one big experiment).
But if Bush succeeds, and Iraq becomes the next Germany - a light to the region, an economic powerhouse that inspires imitation thorughout the Arab world - would not the war have been proven worth it?
I say so. In fact, it would make the Iraq war the most important war we’ve fought since WWII (with very few casualities when viewed in that light.)
Bush has set his goals very high (I think that deserves praise). He did not merely promise a better government for Iraq (that would have been easy). He promised a capitalist democracy.
Truman made no such promises in 1945, because the idea was so ridiculous he would have been laughed out of town (little yellow Japanese people living in aJeffersonian democracy?Ha!).
But it happened anyway: It took time, blood, sweat…
Liberals scoff that it’ll never happen, but they have backed themselves into a cynical box. This is their problem: foreign policy, and the people who run it, must GOALS and IDEAS.