There is an assumption going around that “everybody” believed Saddam Hussein had WMDs. This is simply not so. Many people, myself included, suspected that the threat posed by SH was being exaggerated for political purposes by the POTUS and his administration, and that the presence of WMDs of any usability was dubious at best.
The fact that the leaders of Germany, France, Russia, and Canada (to name a few) were not convinced should tell you something. If Bush et al were right about the threat, then it was a major, major failure of diplomancy that he could not persuade those countries to support our efforts. But he wasn’t right. Bush was wrong. The leaders of Germany, France, Russia, and Canada were right. SH may have been obstucted UN inspections, but as those nations concluded, and as many people in the US also thought, SH did not pose a significant threat even to the weakest of his neighbors.
Anyone who doubts that there were informed Americans who were skeptical of the claims of Bush pertaining to the possible imminent threat of SH should watch this speech given by Scott Ritter, the former Chief Weapons Inspector for the UN in Iraq (1991-98), and a self-described “card-carrying Republican.” Click on the top link. The presentation is about an hour long, but well worth watching.
There is one reason, and one reason ONLY to justify putting American soldiers in harm’s way, and that is to counter a direct threat to the security of the United States. It is quite clear that this threat did not exist, as far as Saddam Hussein was concerned.
Anyone who cares about Democracy, the Rule of Law, International Relations, or simple plain old Right and Wrong should, regardless of political affiliation, demand that the President and his Administration be held accountable for the deception which was perpetrated on the American people to justify this war. The President is Commander in Chief of all armed forces; all conflicts involving American troops are his responsibility. If the reasons justying a war were false, whether through deliberate deceit or terrible intelligence gathering, the President is directly responsible. He must be held accountable.
There are some things which are more important than Party Loyalty. This issue is one of them. If a Democrat were President and had perpetrated this deception, conservatives would be screaming for his impeachment, and rightly so.
Not like this particular thread hasn’t been done before. lol. Oh well…
From Knorf
You have a cite or post you made PRIOR to hostilities that Iraq did not have WMD? You’ve been on the board since 2000, so there should be something about it. Not doubting you, I’m simply asking if you do. Would help when making the above claim.
From Knorf
Cite for German, French, Russian, Canadian leaders claiming catagorically BEFORE the war that SH and Iraq had no WMD, please. If thats too much, then a simple cite for any of them stating concerns that the information about Iraq’s WMD were overblown or in error. Or any concerns at all for that matter reguarding WMD (not concerns that the war was simply stupid).
From Knorf
First you claim (in your second paragraph) that Bush was ‘wrong’…then you claim there was a deception. Which is it? Was he wrong (along with a lot of other folks) or was it all a deception? Either way he would have to be held accountable, but one is certainly worse than the other.
As to the rest…get real. Rule of Law? What law? US law or UN law? Even UN ‘law’ there are as many arguements one way as the other (and a hell of a lot of precidence for countries going to war without UN sanction). Do a search on this board if you are interested and look at all the treads on the legality of the war from the UN perspective.
Right and Wrong? What right and wrong? From what perspective? As to being held accountable, in what way? The administration IS accountable for what it does, and the judge of that will be next years election. If you are saying the Administration acted illegally, you are fooling yourself. By our own laws the Administration acted legally (Congressional approval and all), unless you can PROVE that they lied (which you have zero chance of doing…plausable deniability and all that). Being wrong isn’t the same thing as lieing about something, no?
From Knorf
That is certainly true…and it goes both ways as well. If a Democrat was president and, say, authorized the use of force in, say, Bosnia even without UN sanction, they would be hemming and hawing too…just like Republicans do. Republicans would probably be bitching and moaning too about the ‘evil’ president and vowing to get him out of office any way they could. Dems and 'Pubs crack me up.
I’ll go through, again, my own take on all this bullshit. Personally, I think Bush and co. simply fucked up. That they really did think Iraq had WMD, but that WMD wasn’t the real reason to go into Iraq. I think their real reasons were A) Show of force to prevent anything further happening IN the continential US (and incidently ‘show’ the American people that the administration was ‘doing something’ after the 9/11 attacks), B) Securing a vital resource that was under the control of someone like SH, as well as establishing the US in force in the region in case there were any other brewups, C) political capital from winning a war and showing Americas ‘resolve and commitment’, D) the oppertunity was there, given to them on a silver platter by SH himself so they took it, E) the chance to establish a government in the region with closer ties to the US that was democratic (in theory).
Hardball politial move IMO. Drop all the ridiculous conotations of evil by Bush & co and it comes down to realpolitic, plain and simple IMO. We’ve been repeatedly through the whole legal/illegal aspects and I remain unconvinced that it was either one…but thats just me. Having seen it debated ad nausium, I think a convincing case could be made either way.
To my mind it was a stupid war, not because it was ‘illegal’, not because SH was no threat to the US (he wasn’t IMO)…it was stupid because it cost us in both lives and money to little gain as far as I can see. It was stupid because it was unnecessary IMO. It was stupid mostly IMO because it has tied up a huge percentage of our military (again, to no gain afaik), and we will be fucked if we need that military for something else for the next few years.
To answer your OP…ya, I thought he had WMD. The general consensus was that he had them IMO for everything I read at the time. Obviously I was wrong. It happens frequently unfortunately.
Now, lets see if any of the usual suspects (on both sides) even bother with this tread, as its been done to death IMO.
In other news, the Cold war has ended.
Where’s the bleedin’ debate, other than what we should do with trite OP’s ?
p.s. you oversimplify the issue; for most, at the time, it was enough that the UN had an agreed process and timetable in place and functioning for dealing with Saddam’s alleged weapons programmes, not a question of countries being “convinced” or otherwise – it was the overriding of this existing timetable by Bush that many objected to.
You also say: “There is one reason, and one reason ONLY to justify putting American soldiers in harm’s way, and that is to counter a direct threat to the security of the United States”
Hmm, so where are you post-WW2 ? See, unless you put them in “harms way” you ain’t got an empire and that, economically, would not make a politician electable – never mind that $1 gallon gas you all love.
Well, I never for one moment, thought Saddam had WMD. I thought it was a pretext all along. They had to use the WMD excuse because they couldn’t tell us the real reasons because the real reasons were too vague, too large-scale, too likely to fail.
I even posted a thread about my theory on 13 February 2003 (long before hostilities commenced). And back then I was just a lone voice in the wilderness. I hadn’t seen my theory anywhere - not in the media, not on these boards, not anywhere. Now, everyone’s talking about it (not my specific theory but the general gist of what I was saying).
I didn’t think they had WMD but I thought we should still go ahead with the war anyway in pursuit of greater gains ie
the democratisation of the middle east
the destruction of al qaida
the resolution of the Palestinian problem
I still tentatively, cautiously, hold to my theory and think that removing Saddam was probably a better thing to do than to leave him there for the next 20 years (after which his insane sons would have taken over).
That’s the problem with dictators - they never leave. They just cling on for ever and ever until someone kicks them out. They don’t understand that politicians are our servants not our masters. Government is something that needs to be earned, it is not a trophy to be grabbed by force and then defended at all costs.
I never thought for one minute the WMD issue was the real reason for invasion.
I’ve simply spent my time trying to figure out why on Earth we did invade. I had a rather simple theory that Bush had it out for Saddam, and, besides, keeping permanent watch on no-fly zones and whatnot would be prohibitavely expensive.
While this theory may have a grain of truth, others here have eruditely (and I smacked my forehead in self-castigation for not thinking of this first, because it’s so goddamned obvious) pointed out that it’s all about oil. There was always a great desire to get rid of Saddam because he was, as others rightly pointed out, the “lowest hanging fruit” in the region. With the house of Saud in an increasingly precarious state, how do you preserve the free flow of oil from the Middle East? Well, invading Saudi Arabia preemptively might be one way, but that’s patently unacceptable. Well how about Iraq? Much more workable, but still a tough sell internationally. What to do, what to do? Well, lucky us, a bunch of Islamic fundamentalists just happen to kill thousands of Americans, in most spectacular fashion, in a single day. Opportunity has knocked (and how!), and cannot be refused.
Now how to proceed? Simple! Distort intelligence, plaigiarize outdated reports, totally fabricate if you have to; do everything possible to lend credence to the specious notion that Iraq is the next hotbed of al Quaeda-style terrorism, and proclaim the urgent need to eliminate this immediate threat. Nab dictator, impose rule, and voila! You got back control of the second biggest store of crude on Earth.
And while yer at it, hell, put a few of your friends to work on big meaty contracts for good measure. Let 'em try to bilk the Pentagon for a few mil. too, just to see what happens. Brilliant!
I thought he had biological and chemical WMDs, but probably not nukes. The fact that none have been discovered doesn’t matter much to me. Saddam needed to be gotten rid of, and we got rid of him.
I don’t think that France, Russia, and Germany knew more than anybody else did. Their vote against invasion wasn’t a noble act. They all had financial ties to Iraq that they didn’t want revealed and/or lost. Ergo their vote in the UN was entirely in their own self interest.
I had enough serious doubts that I felt the war was unjustified. The inevitable loss of military and civilian life that a war results in means I have to be real sure that there’s a threat before I’m going to support an invasion.
But I would not have been very surprised if WMDs were found.
The entire phrasing, "WMD"s reflects the successful salesmanship of the Admin. They started out shrieking hysterically “Saddam’s got nukes! Nukes!”. The entire focus was on nukes. As this became increasingly implausible, they segued to "WMD"s, of which nukes were the most prominent. Pretty soon, it meant whatever they wanted it to mean: bio-warfare, chemical warfare, anything and everything. And we bought it.
What did I think? To be candid, I doubted it because of the people who were saying it to me. When GeeDubya stood there with Blair waving a report in the air and saying “I don’t know what more proof you need!”, and it turns out the report never even fucking existed… From then on, I was an even harder sell.
Was Saddam a threat to us? Dont be ridiculous, at best he could only piss us off enough to vaporize his sorry ass. I haven’t the slightest doubt that he knew this, he had it amply demonstrated. What good is a terror type attack if it only infuriates your enemy without incapacitating him in any way? By the furthest stretch of the imagination, he might have a couple of atomics. We have some several thousands of megaton range *thermo-*nukes and the means to put them anywhere we like. Do the math. You can bet your ass he did.
And the worst of it: there was a time, not that long ago, when we had the entire sympathy of the world. People who didn’t even like us that much held candlelight vigils for America. We had the whole damn world on our side.
And GeeDubya has to piss it all away playing tough guy. The waste of that opportunity may be more tragic, in the long run, than the war itself.
There has been considerable debate on the boards concerning WMDs from both sides of the issue. Now that David Kay has come out with his views, the Administration is not only back-pedalling, but will probably attempt revisionist tactics that WMDs were never a priority in the first place. Didn’t they attempt this with the assertions that Saddam was involed in 9/11?
I’m basically with John Carter here. No, I never thought he had nukes, because the hardware and technology needed for even a crude weapon is considerable and expensive, and any weapon-grade radiological material is heavily controlled and/or watched.
I figured that if he did have one (or more) then it was more likely a stolen/black-market Soviet leftover from the breakup if the USSR.
And biological weapons have a fixed “shelf life”- they are, after all, biological, germs. They can be created and incubated easily, quickly and in large amounts, they just don’t “store” well.
But chemical weapons are easy to produce, can be very effective when used, cheap to make (relatively speaking) and for the most part will store for years, as long as the container doesn’t corrode away. And Hussein did have such weapons at one time, and is known to have purchased- and tried to purchase- additional materials to produce more after the first Gulf War, in violation of UN mandate.
Assuming he still had it all, would that have “justified” the war? Meh, maybe, maybe not. I do know, from talking to a few military aquaintences, that they “couldn’t wait” to “go kick Saddam’s ass”, and I tend to get the feeling they couldn’t have cared less whether we were going in for WMDs, for Saddam’s ass, for oil, or for some gold-plated machine guns. It’s a pretty small sampling group though, take it was you will.
I’m also in agreement with JCo’M on Russia and France’s objections being largely from self-interest. Hussein had something like 1,500 ammo dumps/weapons depots scattered about, totalling possibly as much as a million tons of ordnance, roughly half as much as the total US inventory. Iraq could not possibly have made this much “in house” and thus must have bought it from outside suppliers.
Those outside suppliers are, of course, France and Russia, among others. Some of that ordnance was, we know, sold to Iraq after the UN embargoes, and thus, illegally. How much, we don’t know, but we do know that both countries did so.
Those in the W-is-perfect-and-pure fan club might be disappointed, as would be those for whom WMD was the sole issue. But there were a lot of reasons different people thought it was the right thing to do.
I was sold a car by a salesman who told me that the car got “great” gas mileage. Turns out he was exagerrating by quite a bit; I don’t know if he thought it really did get good mileage, was misinformed by the guys in the shop, or was lying to me. Ultimately, I can’t know, but in any event, it’s going to make me look at his future sales pitches a wary eye, and I may shop elsewhere in the future. But I’m not going to return the car solely because of his deception; I’m going to look at the total package and decide whether or not this car is still worth it.
Looking at the total package, knowing what I know now, I still think this was the best thing, for our country and theirs. YMMV.
Not to be a know-it-all, but I think this is incorrect. According to Rolf Ekeus, executive chairman of UNSCOM:
Kenneth Pollack, an intelligence analyst in the Clinton administration and expert on Iraqi weapons systems, writes:
Regarding this:
The answer sort of depends on what one requires to justify a war, doesn’t it?
To be blunt, if the Bush administration had stated, “We strongly suspect that Iraq possesses some stockpiles of chemical munitions,” I find it kinda hard to believe they would have been able to garner much public support for the invasion, me. furt:
Well, in one sense, Hussein was an ongoing problem in the region that needed to be addressed. He was not solely a problem for the US, however.
If you’re going to take this pragmatic approach to the question, there are in fact an awful lot of downsides to the way things have worked out. Because there were no inspectors in the country after 1998, intelligence communities were forced to make “best guess” estimates of what was really going on inside; and we can see, now, that those guesses were way off. Turns out that Hussein was considerably weaker than anyone knew, as David Kay can testify:
Excuse me for saying so, but Saddam hardly seems like the scourge of the Middle East we were so frightened of prior to the war. And it seems like an awful lot of work from our side just to dislodge a wanna-be novelist.
At this point, elucidator and I should be separated twins, a tasty little irony in itself since I disagreed with him so much about the rationale for knocking over Afghanistan. He supplies the rhetoric, I paste them to the wall with a nice epoxy of solid facts–what’s available to the six billion-and-fifty of the rest of us, anyway.
My first exhibit is the 111-page Carnegie-Endowment for International Peace, which this past three months took the trouble to analyze virtually everything the Bush Administration uttered and dared to cast it in the cold hard light of what we now know. Some of you will ask for citations beyond the modestly well cited report itself. I endeavor to offer them right here, right now.
However, since I cannot trust the SDMB to reliably save these items for posterity, I have also saved them to a CD-ROM, and sent multiple copies to friends of mine around the world, because frankly, I don’t think people ten years from now are going to believe how outrageous this bullshit really is once it is expunged entirely from the Internet–and I think it will be, if Bush is reelected.
You think I’m kidding? Try going to this page: http://wwww.ceip.org/intel You won’t get there, because it’s being deluged with DoS attacks to prevent you from reading it. In fact, much of the time you can’t even get to www.ceip.org without crashing out. As a consolation, you can still get this error message if you click on it, for now.
Assuming some semblance of order resumes, the document in question–which I by the way have in hand, and come and get it you bastards–can be found here:
Now, to get on with my job of blindly backing up elucidator’s bald assertions:
Carnegie says:
Cite 130 is the following: “For example, on October 7 in Cincinnati, President Bush
said, “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proo–the smoking gu–that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” Bush, “Address on Iraq.” For full text, see appendix 2.” (Appendix 2 is the text of this speech, delivered on October 7, 1992 and reprinted in the Carnegie document, which is a good thing, since it is difficult to find now at www.whitehouse.gov. It is now the number 12 out of 13 hits on the President’s website, conveniently falling on page 2 of the search, according to my search string of the word “mushroom.”)
And to continue while I don’t feel the need:
I like that assessment, “highly debateable.” Seems we’ve been around that block or two once or twice, haven’t we?
This guy is as impeachable as a double-D model at a Georgia rest stop on I-95. A favorable political climate is all that separates this man from the words “worst” and “President” and one more: “ever.”
Well, you’re right, Dr. Svinlesha. I just got there now. But before that I got the classic DoS page: “Error 4xx…”
I figure three times is acceptable for the Straight Dope. Five Times for this page should be unacceptable, which is all I tried. However, I see now that I am wrong, and I retract the assertion.
To be short, yes, I thought he had WMD’s. Certainly not nuclear, but probably chemical or biological weapons. I mean, it’s not hard to beleive…everyone has chemical weapons. WE have chemical weapons.
Hell, I’d be surprised if he didn’t have some mustard gas still stashed away, somewhere. We know for cetain he’s had it, in the past. Even if they weren’t ready to be used at a moment’s notice, I’m sure there’s a few cans buried out in the boonies. (Probably not in the best way to preserve their shelf life, tho.’) Why else was he screwing around with the weapons inspectors for so long? For kicks?
And, honestly, I was expecting Saddam to start firing off gas, as soon as we got to Baghdad. A few of the reasons I can think of for why this didn’t happen include…
•The Iraqis didn’t have WMDs handy—either they actually didn’t have any at all; or just weren’t available to any forces in range of Baghdad; or they were unusable because of poor storage or handling—or Saddam didn’t want to use them. (Maybe he had a moment of humanity. Or he was just afraid of getting nuked in retaliation.)
•Saddam did give the order, but it was ignored by his generals, who didn’t want to get themselves nuked, or put on trial for war crimes. Like Speer disobeyed Hitler’s “scorched Earth” order when Germany was falling.
But, in any case, even from the start, I didn’t believe that the war was only about ridding the world of the danger from Iraqi WMDs. It was obviously about affecting a regime change. I’m mostly disappointed in the U.S. Govt. for not including this as part of the official motive for invading Iraq—it’s always a good idea to “leave yourself an escape plan,” to paraphrase. Q.
And, personally, I still approved of the war in Iraq, even if it was “just” to remove an asshole dictator. We’re all better off for it, including the Iraqi people. The ends can—in this case, at the very least—justify the means.
Ranchoth
Umm, Furt…this is a poor analogy because it doesn’t reflect the gravity of the truth. This is perhaps a better version.
The salesman told you that you would get great gas mileage and the brakes worked great as well- Knowing full well that both representations of the car were either deceptive or a blatant lie. You see, the expert mechanics at the dealership had warned the salesman that the brakes were faulty and potentially dangerous based upon diagnostics and analysis. The salesman doesn’t care…he needs to sell the car. He sells you the car and lets you drive off with the car and five minutes off the lot you cause a 300 car pileup on the freeway due to brake failure. There were no survivors in this chain reaction accident, except you…500 dead. You are liable for the accident and everybody has sued you to the tune of $200 billion. In the end, it was the salesman’s intention to sell you that car by any means possible (lying and deception included), regardless of the danger and expense it might cost you. Ultimately, the salesman is liable. He is also criminally negligent.
So noted, Mr. S. What I know about chemical weapons amounts to a couple of magazine articles and maybe a Clancy book. I based what I said on partial knowledge, such as the fact that were are only now getting around to disposing of some WW2-era and Korean War-era chemical weapons, but yes, I can easily see that less-pure source chemicals would have an effect on “shelf life”.
Personally, prior to the war, I was worried about who, or what, would take his place, were he to suddenly expire, whether from a 9mm brain aneurysm or a normal heart attack.
Either the clerics move in and (probably) start turning it into another Iran-style theocracy (or, at worst, a Taliban-style theocratic dictatorship) or Hussein’s sons take over.
I doubt either one would have been an improvement.
So noted, Mr. S. What I know about chemical weapons amounts to a couple of magazine articles and maybe a Clancy book. I based what I said on partial knowledge, such as the fact that were are only now getting around to disposing of some WW2-era and Korean War-era chemical weapons, but yes, I can easily see that less-pure source chemicals would have an effect on “shelf life”.
Personally, prior to the war, I was worried about who, or what, would take his place, were he to suddenly expire, whether from a 9mm brain aneurysm or a normal heart attack.
Either the clerics move in and (probably) start turning it into another Iran-style theocracy (or, at worst, a Taliban-style theocratic dictatorship) or Hussein’s sons take over.
I doubt either one would have been an improvement.