Did anyone catch the interview with Hans Blix on the BBC World News this evening? Priceless. Some of his comments were very telling.
He said that when the U.S. and U.K. started feeding him the very best leads their intelligence could muster, he sent his inspectors to the places identified, and they found nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. He said that certainly gave him pause (diplomatic understatement, I believe).
When asked about why no WMD have been found, he posited the most obvious explanation first, i.e., that there weren’t any. He didn’t even raise the possibility that the WMD were there, but had been destroyed just before the invasion (which has always been a ridiculous hypothesis - chem and bio weapons just aren’t that easy to get rid of). He wouldn’t absolutely rule out the chance that some WMD would still be found, but he left the impression that if he were a betting man, he wouldn’t put a nickel on it.
He was very persuasive in his theory about why Saddam seemed ambiguous about whether or not he had WMD. Blix believes that it’s probable that Saddam had no WMD, but wanted to keep the U.S. thinking that he did, simply to forestall an invasion (“Don’t invade my country, or we’ll launch our terrible WMD against you and your allies in the Middle East.”). Blix pointed out that Saddam has a history of miscalculating in such situations, and that he may well have done so again.
When asked about the U.S. assertion that they will find WMD, and that everyone should just be more patient, Blix remarked on the rather obvious fact that his inspection regime was never the recipient of any such patience.
Take a look at this 1998 letter from the Senate Armed Services Committee. It calls on the President to take action against Iraq, because of Iraq’s refusal to end its WMD program. Among the signitories are Tom Daschle, Barbara Mikulski, Chris Dodd, Frank Lautenberg, Diane Feinstein, and other Democrats.
At this point, there’s a mystery about the WMDs, but there’s no evidence that Bush lied about them. Nor is there evidence that Tom Daschle, Barbara Mikulski, Chris Dodd, Frank Lautenberg, and Diane Feinstein lied about them.
There no evidence he lied about them? Are you serious?
Well, here’s some evidence; George Bush said Iraq possessed thousands and thousands of pounds of active chemical weapons. And the world’s most powerful army has now completely occupied the entire country and they cannot find a single WMD. You don’t think that constitutes EVIDENCE?
That’s certainly evidence that Bush may have been wrong. But, if Bush was saying what the intelligence agency reports told him, then he wasn’t lying. Intelligence reports have been wrong before. Intelligence is an inexact process.
The CIA reports are all going to the Senate Intelligence Committee in a few days, so I think we will soon find out whether or not Bush’s statements were based on what he had been told.
Diogenes, think of it this way: I’m trying to keep you from becoming even more cynical.
The message from Bush is as crystal clear as it gets: he is telling his constituency, the upper portion of the middle class, the majority of whose sons & daughters aren’t ever going to volunteer for military service, that they are going to be a) safe and b) prosperous, no matter what it takes in terms of blood and treasure. The consequences of this, he is telling them, in no uncertain terms, will be borne by a) those in the lower half of the economic spectrum and b) foreigners.
That message has been heard, and he will be re-elected, barring a total disaster in the economy that (this is the important part) can’t be traced to terrorism.
I’ll place a gentleman’s bet with you that the economy will recover, and that he’ll be re-elected. And just to be clear, this is coming from someone who wants to see him disgraced, impeached and jailed.
While this thread has been devoted largely to slamming Bush and his administration (rightly, i believe), there were plenty of Democrats who were far too willing to toe the line on all of this. The lack of a critical perspective from much of the Democratic party is not something of which they have any cause to be proud.
Well, december, I believe you’re reading this letter in rather an odd way. The letter was written in direct response to Saddam kicking the U.N. inspectors out of Iraq in 1998. In 2002, of course, he allowed them back in, and let them go pretty much wherever they wanted. So, the situation faced by Bush was the opposite of the situation these Senators were addressing.
When this letter was written, the Senators were clearly concerned that, without inspections, Iraq might “reconstitute its weapons of mass destruction programs.” That tells me that, at that time, they didn’t believe that Saddam actually had any WMD. They were merely concerned that, if he was allowed to evade future inspection, he might start developing some again.
Bush, on the other hand, told us that Iraq had vast stockpiles of WMD, despite the fact that he obviously didn’t have any credible intelligence to support that claim, and despite having the U.N. conducting surprise inspections all over Iraq, and finding nothing.
december, is the evidence in the OP insufficient? In case it is not, what further do you personally require to sign your name to the statement “George W. Bush knowingly and purposefully lied about weapons of mass destruction”?
I’d like to say that I agree with this. Sadly, instead of showing outrage, righteous indignation at how the executive branch is handling things, few congressmen - Democrats especially - have said one word that goes against administration policy. Our congressmen have shown cowardice and ineptitude in the face of a major national problem. Most of them have bent over backwards to avoid saying anything negative.
Two things need to be proved:[ol][li]Bush was wrong about Iraq’s WMDs before the war.[*]Bush was knowingly wrong. That is, his position was not supported by the intelligence reports he received.[/ol]The failure to find weapons so far (except for 2 biological labs) is evidence of #1, but not yet conclusive. We’ve seen no evidence at all of #2. Frankly I doubt that Bush was knowingly wrong, because Tony Blair was saying the same things as Bush was. Also, Saddam Hussein was behaving like someone who was not complying with the UN resolutions. I think it’s more likely that the US and UK spy agencies *were *reporting substantial amounts of WMDs, although they may both have been wrong.[/li]
However, minty green may have evidence of #2. From his last post, it appears that he has top security clearance, has already read all the CIA files, and has interviewed many members of the CIA. That would seem to be the only way that he could be so certain that the CIA falsified their reports at Bush’s request.
[QUOTE] Originally posted by december *
**Two things need to be proved:[ol][li]Bush was wrong about Iraq’s WMDs before the war.[]Bush was knowingly wrong. That is, his position was not supported by the intelligence reports he received.[/ol]**[/li][/QUOTE]
I think #1 is pretty much a certainty, at this stage of the game. As far as #2 is concerned, either Bush was knowingly wrong, and lied to the world intentionally, or he’s presiding over a spectacularly incompetent administration, and ended up lying to the world through sheer dim-wittedness. I can’t, for the life of me, come up with any other plausible explanations.
When did we confirm that those trailers were “biological labs,” btw? From what I’ve read they show no evidence that they were ever used as labs. The best the WH can say is that they “fit the description” given by informants of possible labs, but they’ve also admitted that they have found no evidence that these particular trailers were ever used a such. They’ve also called these trailers their “best evidence yet” that Iraq had a WMD program. If their “best” evidence is no evidence, I’d have to see what their crap evidence is.
Is this really the best they can do. Are they really going to cling to a couple of empty vans as proof that Iraq had thousands of WMDs and posed an imminent threat to the US?
As far as I can see, there’s no evidence at all that Bush et al. “knew they were going on flimsy (if that) evidence.” If there is some evidence that Bush knew his evidence was flimsy, please point it out.
It seems likely to me that Bush believed the evidence, because many others did as well. The list of those who thought Iraq had a big WMD program includes Tony Blair and Jack Straw from the UK. Also, in 1998 many leading Democrats made statements indicating their certainty of Saddam’s WMD program, including President Clinton.
Furthermore few, if any, leaders took the position that Saddam didn’t have WMDs, not even Chirac. Quite a few anti-war folks said that the WMDs weren’t sufficiently proved or perhaps said Saddam might not have WMDs. But, there weren’t many people before the war who flat-out said that Saddam didn’t have WMDs.
In short, Bush’s allegations that Saddam had WMDs were conventional wisdom.
No one has confirmed that the trailers were WMD biological labs – the closest we’ve got are folks in the Pentagon who assume they’re WMD mobile labs because “we can’t think of any other use for them.” Given how grossly inaccurate the Pentagon’s pre-war information is looking these days, I’m taking that with a shaker full o’ salt.
And if you want to poke into this thread, there’s some talk that the trailers may actually be mobile laboratories for manufacturing rocket fuel – allowed under UN resolutions – and that Iraq declared them to UN inspectors as recently as March 2003…
The plant’s design possibly could be used to produce hydrogen using a chemical reaction, but it would be inefficient. The capacity of this trailer is larger than typical units for hydrogen production for weather balloons. Compact, transportable hydrogen generation systems are commercially available, safe, and reliable.
Ohh better systems were commercially available - were they supposed to import one through the sanctions, perhaps they are available mail order
And there is also talk of using magnetic bracelets to cure all that ails you. Neither is going to happen in our lifetimes. Europe spends far too little on defense to ever expect to rival the US.
