Analysis of the Kaye report on WMDs

Great Debates
21

It appears that some folks must have missed the part about trying to make this an impartial discussion about the Kay report, Or perhaps, they are simply not respecting my authoritay as the OP

Section 3 Conclusions

I would say that Kay has made a strong case for an ongoing clanestine bioweapons “program” in this report.

The assertion about mobile bioweapons labs made by the administration preliminary to the commencement of hostilities appears to have been a bad one. Whether or not this is the result of a good faith error based on bad intel, or a deliberate hyperbole orr falsehood remains unproven.

However, I beleive that the strength of the assertion made by the administration in this area strongly indicates irresponsibility at the very least, and it would be fair to say that the integrity of those making the statement is faily called into question because of it.

Prior to hostilities this was not a question. Presumably Kay is privy to the information that lead the administration to come to their conclusion. Seeing as kay has been unable to corroborate it with this information, it appears logical that the original statement was made in haste, again whether through dishonesty, or mistake remains a question.

This is probably the second most telling blow to the administration’s stance. Had the chemical weapons the administration argued were there and ready to be used at a moment’s notice one would reasonably conclude that they would be somewhat available. It’s not like Iraq did not have warning that an attack was imminent. There remains the possibility that Iraq had the weapons ready and as hostilities approached made them hard to find and unavailable counter to intuitive logic though this may be.

I am not going to quote the next section about nuclear weapons. The adminstration asserted that Saddam wanted them and would like to get them. The evidence Kay presents suggests this is true, and presumable most people would accept the statement that Saddam would have liked nuclear could he have gotten them.
The desire for nuclear weapons is not germaine to the context of this discussion and the report, as we are focussing on current capabilities.

Similarly Kay makes a strong case for missiles and missile development beyond allowed ranges as well as delivery systems. By themselves however these do not indicate posession of WMDs as such missiles can and have been loaded with conventional explosives.

Codicile:
The linked report is not the actual report delivered to Congress. That remains classified. What we are looking at is testimony made by Kay summarizing his findings as detailed in the report. In order for this testiony to be useful to us in this discussion we are forced to assume that the testimony is credible and borne out by the findings found in the report.

I am operating under the assumption that what Kay asserts as fact is indeed a fact. I do this because Kay appears to be careful in his conclusions and qualifies his evidence and statements where possible. I find his opinions credible. Others may have different and equally valid interpretations

My conclusions:

The statement made by the administration of the imminence of the threat posed by Iraq is false. At this stage, even assuming something was found that made the threat legitimately imminent it would appear reasonable that the administration did not posess knowledge of it, else it would have been divulged in the report. If they find a nuclear bomb tomorrow that would be akin to accusing someone of shoplifting under mistaken or false pretenses and getting lucky on a search of the person. An accusation should not stand by dumb luck.

The assertion of ongoing deception and hiding of WMD and other prescribed activity by the administration appears to have been borne out by kay’s report.

The assertion of bioweapon related activity appears to have been born out. I find this to be a strong and credible finding.

The assertion of chemical weapons appears to be disastrously inadequate. Kay’s assertion about the difficulties in doing a comprehensive search are credible and no conclusion can be drawn about whether such stocks exist or not. However, their readiness and deployability should they exist certainly does not meet with prewar assertions.

What kind of stance then is reasonable to take with regard to the administrations stance before the war, and the current finding?

I’ve been trying to give this a lot of thought and present an unbiased conclusion.

The difficulty in making such a stance is that it’s going to be largely subjective. This does not mean that it is exempt from logic or defensibility, though.
There are some arguments to be made on the side of the administration. The assertion of ongoing weapons and programs in Iraq has been the default stance of the two previous administrations and is well borne out by the evidence.

When one is evaluating statements made by the administration in this regard one needs to pay attention to political considerations and understand that the adminstrations prewar statements paint a general overall picture. To make a fair asessment one needs to see how that general overall picture is borne out by the evidence. By necessity in such a circumstance the administration and intelligence assets are not going to have access to a firsthand inventory of what Iraq has and doesn’t have. They must deduce it. One would expect that in a good faith effort these deductions would differ considerably in specifics from what is borne out by the evidence.

For example, whether or not Saddam had 3 bioweapons trailer or not is not really the point. Whether or not he was 78 tons of Sarin gas is not exactly the point. One would expect errors.

One must also understand that the adminstration was arguing a stance it felt necessary rather than attempting to present an impartial argument.

Finally, I am inclined to present the benefit of the doubt to the administration in the face of ambiguities.

That’s quite a lot of leeway.

Having extended the bounds of what leeway is to be given one must then decide whether those bounds have been met.
My personal expectation within these bounds is that specifics may vary considerably yet one would expect that the general picture would tend to be borne out.

The general picture as painted by the administration has not been borne out, IMO.

It fails most basically by the test of scale. Iraq, IMO did not have WMDs anywhere near approaching the scale presented to the American public. At the time of the war Iraq did not posess a widespread usable WMD inventory.

Such a failure in asessment demands a very good reason. There does not appear to be one.

What actually explains it is open to speculation. Personally I think several things occured.

The first is selective evaluation. If one firmly believes something to be true and goes looking for evidence to support it, one will almost assuredly find it. This is a well-known phenomenom and the reason scientists seek double-blind testing. Desires and beleifs tend to influence results.

I beleive the adminstration never doubted that they would find extensive WMD evidence. There were other arguments that could have been made for the war, and were made. There was no reason to harp on WMDs if the adminstation knew they weren’t there and they would be proved wrong.

One does not knowingly propogate a falsehood that they know they are going to be caught on, as a general rule.

While this selectivity, and propagation of default stances is a reason, a reason is a different thing from an excuse.

As I’ve said, selective perception is a well-known phenomenom, and one both intelligence and adminstration officials were surely aware of. If one applies the “Prudent man” standard, the public should have the expectation that the stance presented to them would be self-evaluative in terms of selectivity.

I think therefore that it is merited to suggest that the administration failed to present the WMD situation in a fashion consistent with reasonable expectations.

Whether or not this was done in good faith or in bad faith is to me a moot question. The President is simply responsible for the decisions and stances he takes.

On the question of WMDs in Iraq, the President and administration have failed to act responsibly and prudently with the assertions presented to the American public and world community.

Now some people may be expecting something from me on Thanksgiving. Now that I’ve seen the report from Kay, I see no reason to delay sharing my changing opinion. I too, would like to think that I am trying to paint a general picture with my stated beleifs and obviously these should be subject to continued evolution with incoming evidence.

I think that the conclusion that I’ve reached here is logically consistent and responsible given the current state of infortmation at hand.

I welcom any questions or suggestions or the pointing out of flaws or innacuracies.

However, I reserve the right to not waste my time on careless or clearly partisan statements.

22

gasps, and faints dead away…

23

I’ve got a bit of a bug up my ass about the bioweapons claims Scylla. It’s can be hard to tell the difference between public health related microbiology and bioweapons development programs. Both involve culturing pathogens. As I cited above, brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever are health concerns in Iraq, as is Botulism. Rumor has it that the botulinum in the scientist’s freezer was a reference culture, i.e. something used to check wild-type samples against, for identification purposes. We’ll have to wait for further evidence from Kaye on that little issue. But keep in mind as more information comes out, that pathogens do have legitimate uses, even in Iraq.
When you consider the crap that American Scientists who work with these organisms can be put through, it’s not hard to see how the corresponding Iraqi scientists could have a secretive attitude, even if they lacked evil intentions. I don’t mean to imply here that all the recent Iraqi bacteriological work was innocent, only that it’ll be very hard to tell whether it was innocent, or not.

24

Grey:

Well, much media commentary focused on the assertion that even in his international relations, speeches to the UN as so forth, Bush was playing more to the home audience than he was to the foreign audience, so my sense is that he was purposively oversimplifying to convince the folks back home, even when speaking abroad.

In addition, I’m not entirely convinced that the administration wanted the help of the UN, the international community, or the EU. Rather, I suspect they preferred to go it alone, or with a very few chosen allies, despite their rhetoric to the contrary. After all, this entire Iraq fiasco is, fundamentally, a PNAC/neo-con project. Neo-cons, in turn, are aggressively unilateral. They are extremely skeptical towards the UN and other international bodies. In addition, they are evangelical (they want to spread their version of democratic freedom across the globe), exceptionalist (they do not believe that the US should be beholden to the standards of international praxis that constrain other states), highly nationalistic market fundamentalists. They view the UN as ineffectual and Europe as backwards, fractured, and weak. They argue that with the end of the Cold War and the emergence of a “unipolar” world order (i.e., the US as sole super-power) America faces a unique chance to grab history by the balls and exert her influence across all corners of the globe. Since part of the neo-con strategy involves hindering the rise of any potential rival to US superiority, it seems logical that they would wish to cause troubles for any developing regional power block.

The Iraq invasion presented the power-brokers in Washington with an opportunity to further divide the European community and exploit its internal contradictions. They skillfully played Britain, Denmark, Spain and Italy off against Germany and France, precipitating a crisis within both the EU and NATO. I would argue that they even managed to weaken the burgeoning integration among EU member states by demonstrating EU’s complete inability to coordinate a single foreign policy response to US aggression. They also demonstrated to many, especially to conservatives in the US, that the UN was essentially toothless. As far as those operations go, the neo-cons were (unfortunately) pretty successful. This also the only reasonable explanation I can find for what must otherwise be regarded as among the clumsiest US foreign policy initiates this century. You are right, in my opinion, to label it “pathetic.” But why would such otherwise shrewd men engage in such pathetic rhetoric?
Scylla:

Hallelujah!

I’m glad in particular that you’ve included the observation I bolded and underlined. It has seemed to me for a long time the administration’s case was false, and I’ve made similar arguments elsewhere. You’ve been more willing than I to give Bush the benefit of the doubt, but it seems as if our conclusions are beginning to converge here, on this point.

I argued above that the administration’s justification for the invasion was not merely the banal point that Iraq constituted a threat of some kind, but that, due to its possession of “WMDs” (as well as its ties to terrorism), it constituted unique threat, one that required the US to engage in military action. Without “WMDs”, I submit that the administration’s case fails, and the invasion can no longer be considered justifiable.

I disagree here, and I think you’re jumping the gun. Several posters have intervened to provide credible explanations for at least some of the biological research apparently undertaken by the regime. Personally I find the reduction of bioweapons threat from “25000 liters of anthrax and 38000 liters of botulinum toxin” to “a 10-year-old vial of botulinum bacteria” particularly eye-opening, almost mind-boggling. I still find it hard to believe that Bush referred to this finding in his recent Milwaukee speech as evidence that his pre-war intelligence was accurate. He must think we’re total morons out here.

In a parallel thread you noted previously, regarding the administration’s decision to hold out for a September surprise, that:

I submit that the ISG did not find “oodles of good wmds.” By your own admission, then, that leaves option two: a bunch of wishy-washy stuff that’s harder to debunk.

What remains between us, then, is to decide whether the administration’s case was a matter of honest, defensible mistakes, gross incompetence, or flat-out lies. And here is where our opinions go in different directions:

I disagree that the issue of good faith is moot. On the contrary, for me it is central. If this was done in good faith, then perhaps the Prez can be excused; kicked out of office next election cycle because of negligence, maybe, and with all right. But if it was done in bad faith, knowingly, then in my opinion he should be impeached and thrown in jail.

I strongly suspect the latter case.

At any rate, just a few personal questions now, if you don’t mind – in what way will your conclusions influence your actual actions? Are you going to continue to support Bush, and his foreign policies, now? Are you going to vote differently come next election? Are you going to tell your friends/workmates that you think Bush was wrong? Do you think that, despite the falsity of the administration’s claims regarding “WMDs,” that the invasion was nevertheless justified on other grounds?

25

Oh my Lord.

Who is Oceania at war with again?

26

Sorry, Scylla, my last post was unnecessarily glib - I’m just not sure what we’re meant to think anymore!

Your analysis is earnest, and some of your admissions required no little courage. While I still disagree with a lot of your assertions and interpretations, I feel you have approached this thread with great dignity and I commend you for it.

27

Based on my understanding of the Key report, they are. You’re apparently confusing “impartial” with “agrees with my biases.” Or as I like to say, “don’t ask the question if you don’t want to hear the answer.”

The same thing we’re meant to think every night, Pink-- er, SentientMeat. “Bush good, Saddam bad, and we kicked his ass!” :rolleyes: :wink:

28

I’m the last person in this community who should be expected to defend the OP, but I must take exception to this characterization, if only in defense of good debating. What was promised in the OP (and to my mind quite honestly delivered) was a “nonpartisan and impartial analysis” of Kay’s unclassified report to Congress, i.e. an analysis not colored by a favored political conclusion.

Some of the OP’s reasoning is indeed colored by biases— so whose aren’t? All the conclusions he’s offered have been supported by sound inductive arguments and have been delivered in a manner uncontaminated by demagoguery. This is, or should be, a model for rational debate. One can cheerfully disagree with some of the conclusions, but unless those disagreements are supported with equally sound arguments, one cannot legitimately carp about “biases”.

29

Yes. He’s still got a few things wrong, but in the majority, this was an admirable display of Scylla being open to a fact based re-evaluation of his position. Can’t ask for much more than that from anyone.

30

Friend Scylla has written a very plausible case for the prosecution. One cannot claim that his analysis fails to offer every conceivable benefit of doubt. His earnestness in pursuit of clarity sometimes makes his prose style emulate a paranoid German bachelor philosopher… But still. The guy looked at the facts, and changed his mind. Good on you, mate.

(I think I may have a tie-dyed “Che Lives!” t-shirt up in the attic that might even fit him…)

31

Squink:

You have a point, and you may be right. I had thought about some of what you said and can’t discount it. I’ve decided to come down on the other side of the fence on this particular issue because quite frankly Iraq had no excuse for doing any covert research in potential bioweapons strains, IMO.

Iraq knew it was under the gun in terms of this kind of research and that it had to be declared to the UN. Yet they chose to continue anyway.

To me this is akin to attempting to carry a gun onto a plane. I suppose there is the possibility that one can attempt to smuggle a gun illegally onto a plane and not have an evil intent. However, if you are caught trying there is only one conclusion that can be drawn.

Knowing this, you wouldn’t smuggle the gun unless you had bad intent.

Iraq was smuggling the gun with it’s bio-research. It knew what conclusions would be drawn if they were caught. They proceeded.

There is no legitimate reason under the circumstances to do it and deliberately conceal it from the inspectors and fail to declare it.

Yes, there may have been possibilities for legitimate research. They did not howeve declare it and make that argument. So, it’s hard to make the argument now.

But again, you may be right. I can’t prove you’re not. I think though that my interpretation of this activity makes more sense considering the environment at the time.

Svin:

I’m not so sure. It should be easily diposed of. I’d done some thinking about what the footprint for an active bioweapons program would look like post-war with concealment, and I think Kay has found good evidence.

I’d shared some of my thoughts in a smallpox thread in GD. Another reason that I think I am right on this call is that the bioweapons program should be the most difficult aspect to prove as it leaves the smallest footprint on industry. From Preston’s The Demon in the Freezer I learned just how simple and concealable such efforts are, and got a good idea of what a usable bioweapon would look like. You don’t really need a delivery system the virus itself is its own system. A can of powder is your end product. The wind and the air is your delivery system. Particularly enlightening was an interview with Peter Jharling in that book that described the “anthrax trick” which is how you weaponize it. If you knew the trick you could buy everything you need at a Home Depot according to this source. With this trick and a little attention to the winds and placement you could literally take out a city by throwing the can into the air!

Chemical and Nuclear research as well as the manufacture of warheads and their storage is a large and specialized area of industry that leaves quite a footprint on industry and should be much easier to discern than the bioweapons footprint.

Finding more in the bioweapons sector is telling against the chemical sector since the latter should be much easier to find than the former.

I would guess there was more activity in this area because that was pretty much all that was left to Iraq.

But again, I may be wrong.

But how will you discern motivations in these individuals? I don’t think it’s possible to find out. I think it’s moot because the effect is the same. The Prez is responsible.

Depends on what happens next. Certainly one no longer can give him the benefit of the doubt. There was this tone before the war, a subtext of “We have reasons that we can’t share, but all will become clear. We just can’t divulge now.” I am generally inclined to accept such provisos. I understand that we can’t give away sensitive info. But, if you play that card it needs to be backed up after the fact. Bush is now in the position of having to rigorously prove his case before acceptance of policy decisions, IMO.

Good question, and one I’m still thinking about. Unfortunately, I don’t expect to have much of a choice. It appears to me that the nuttier more extreme elements of the left are the frontrunners. Reasonable centrist elements (again IMO since you’re asking, I don’t expect to be called to task for my opinions on this issue since you’re asking personal questions) don’t stand much chance of getting the nomination.

About a year ago, I thought Lieberman was a mushy joke. Now I truly respect the man. I’d have to see how it plays out of course, but nominate Lieberman and he’ll probably get my vote unless he screws it up. I happen to beleive that his assesment of the war is the best one in the political environment. I think he tries to call it like he sees it.

Tough question. One of the reasons I like posting here is that I need to be circumspect in my public opinions so’s I don’t alienate people. So Probably not, but they don’t really know my current stance either. I tend to be simply agreeable to whatever I’m hearing when politics go among colleagues, though there are a few that I indulge myself with. Those are aware of my stances and their changes.

Yeah, I do. One of the reasons why I beleive the administration genuinely beleived they were there is that they didn’t have to have the WMD argument to do this thing. Why tell a lie if you absolutely don’t need it, and you know you’re going to get caught?

The other possibility and I think it’s equally likely is that the WMD argument looked good for a lot of reasons as the path of least resistance and since everybody knew that Saddam had them, why not go with it. They got committed with this bad assumption and it got magnified and they had no choice but to escalate the scale of what they were talking about. In my experience (and I have some, particularly in the area of policing financial misdoings) people in responsible situations do not start off to mislead, prevaricate or exagerate. One mistake snowballs the situation, and rather than coming clean they go with it in the hopes of getting ahead of it. Somewhere in there they cross the line. I’m not saying this is how it happened, but it’s a possibility.

32

Scylla: There are those who support the Administration that assert that the report vindicates the government’s assertions and actions. By your reading, how much (self-)deception, if any, is required to take that point of view? In other words, how reasonable is that outlook just based on the contents of what we see in the report?

33

No self-deception is necessary. We’re into the realm of pure politics with that question, which is something akin to negotiation. It’s the nature of the polarized political climate we’re in.

It is always this way. Since all political debates inevitably go back to Clinton’s blowjob let me lead the way. I’ll try to do this not to impugn anybody but to give an example.

Let’s start with what I beleive is a fair asessment of the scandal:

Clinton did a pretty bad thing.

The Republicans lined up and basically declared it the end of the world, and the worst thing that any human being has ever done in history.

The Democrats lined up and said “T’ain’t no big deal. Nothing bad. Nope,” and for good measure attacked the Republicans back.

These positions were pretty much predicated by politics. You have to claim everything you can because you know the other side is going to do the same.
Republicans will claim total vindication and Democrats will claim impeachable offense.

What else can we expect?

34

I’m sure a lot of people know more about bioweapons than I do, so they can probably correct anything I screw up. But from what I understand, this claim is simply false. The anthrax would largely be dispersed and wouldn’t be concentrated enough to hurt a lot of people. It also doesn’t spread well from person to person. That’d make it damn hard to use it to take out a city, or even come close. My understanding is that anthrax - whether dispersed in the air by crop dusters or put in the water supply - wouldn’t do all that much damage. It’d kill some people and terrorize people, but not ‘take out a city.’ Certainly not by just throwing a can into the air, where it’d probably kill you first. :stuck_out_tongue:

Regarding Bush for a moment: I think he’s a piece of shit, but I think he believed what he said about Iraq and continues to do so. It’d be next to impossible to prove his motives one way or the other, and I don’t think it matters. My take is that while he didn’t consciously lie, he acted on personal prejudice and his own opinion instead of making a reasonable assessment and paying attention to the facts of the situation. Is that really any less of a fault in a leader? I don’t think so.

35

And anthrax isn’t a virus.

36

Scylla, I would also like to commend you on a very impressive display of thoughful and relatively objective consideration of the topic. I am impressed, and would like to think that I would be able to do the same.

There is a little cynical part of me that harkens back to past interactions and past awareness of your style, though, that yells out “Look out for the low-balling!” See, the bioweapons section of your analysis stands out like a thumb just smacked with a mini-sledge. In the context of such a thoughful review, this is so far towards being a rubber stamp that it makes that little niggling part of me say that everything else in your analysis was an obvious sacrifice of an already lost pawn, so that your claim that there might have been a bioweapons threat would be given a pass.

But then I tell that little cynical part of myself to try to remember that I am a liberal and am supposed to be forgiving and compassionate for the lost and forlorn.

On the whole, I do appreciate your review.

37

It’s pretty obvious to me, at least, that Scylla is still following the party line, and claiming that:

  • bullshit isn’t bullshit
  • hey, it’s just politics.

Who honestly gives a rat’s ass whether Scylla considers changing his voting intentions?

38

You’re right, Demo, but any motion away from ignorance and toward the light must be encouraged, and profusely, even if its sincerity is inobvious. There are a lot more people who read these things than participate in them, and they’re the true audience.

39

**

Delicately put. I don’t think I’m doing that. Beleive it or not I have considered whether I am, so your skepticism and suspicion are certainly merited.

It is not easy to try to form a rational opinion about an issue you care about, especially one filled with as much noise and acrimony as this one.

I really can’t prove to you that I’m not doing that.

I guess what you have to do is put aside your biases and prejudices as much as possible (assuming you have them, of course, no insult intended) and look at my reasoning.

I tried to share it with you, and I think I clarified it in my response to Squink.

You need to look at it as indpendantly as you can, and see if you think it holds water or has merit. If you think it doesn’t let me know, and let me know why you think so as specifically as possible.

If you think my bioweapons analysis has some merit, I’d also appreciate knowing. I’m not married to it, but as far as I can evaluate I think my current stance is the best one.

When you find them let me know.

40

Marley:

I’m going from the book on this one, and it cites some heavy duty guys like Jharling who know more about this than just about anybody else.

I also made an error in ommission. The example that I was quoting for taking out a city used a combination of Anthrax and Smallpox weaponized with the “Anthrax trick” which is a general name for making a very light dispersable powder that will behave almost like a gas out of a biological agent.