My disgust with politics

[El_Kabong]

This is perhaps the best thread I’ve seen so far for a concise summary of the false case made by the administration to the public concerning its justifications for the invasion of Iraq. I for one await the OP’s no doubt spirited rebuttal of the points made here, or, failing that, an admission that he simply doesn’t care if he’s lied to by his elected representatives, as long as the ‘correct’ party is in power.

BTW, in my view, Magellan01’s list of Democrats who made statements supporting the notion of WMDs is disingenuous on two counts: 1) None of these parties actually commissioned the invasion (yes, I realize that some of the members of Congress quoted did vote in favor of the invasion, but that was on the same flawed data supplied by the administration); 2) I’ve seen no evidence that the administration actually made the decision to go to war based on any of the quoted statements.

[Cheesesteak]

There is a difference between making a bad decision on widely accepted information, and fabricating the information in the first place.

There was no definitive statement from Blix that Saddam had no WMD prior to the war. If there was, let’s see it. It was widely believed that Saddam had WMD, the inspectors did not account for everything he was known to have, and he had kicked them out of his country for years prior to the war.

Tell me that Bush made a tragically bad decision. Do not try and tell me that nobody other than he believed in Saddam’s WMD programs. (BTW, is that grammar correct?)

Bill Clinton clearly believed that Saddam had WMD, but he did not choose to go to war over it. The anti-Bush crowd is so enamored with sticking it to Bush that they can’t even admit the above sentence, they have to claim that Bush made it all up.

[Loopydude]

@Kimstu

Others, however, were probably being as irresponsible and self-serving as the Administration was in seizing this excuse for a casus belli. I see no reason to give any of them a free pass for their statements. If you want to go around with a bumpersticker that says “Kerry [or Hillary] Lied About Saddam’s WMD”, that’s fine with me.

Who’s giving them a free pass? I voted for Kerry in the last election with a terribly sour stomach. I voted for him because I felt I had no choice. I hated that so much I probably won’t vote for HRC under any circumstances, as she appears to be even more self-serving in her support for the war than even a few Republicans, who can be expected to toe the party line.

Thing is, the Senate voted based on the same rotten intelligence we’ve been discussing. I fault these people for cravenly checking their brains and their sense of decency at the door when they enabled Bush&Co. to do what they did without dissent, but the weight of guilt, by far, lies on the Bush admin. That should be obvious.

[Liberal]

@Cheesesteak

There was no definitive statement from Blix that Saddam had no WMD prior to the war. If there was, let’s see it. It was widely believed that Saddam had WMD, the inspectors did not account for everything he was known to have, and he had kicked them out of his country for years prior to the war.

I thought you were wrong when I read your demand, but upon researching it, I’m convinced you’re correct. From this CNN article, just before the war, there’s a blurb about Blix: “Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix says, “Iraq could do more,”…”. I reckon that if it could do more, it hadn’t done all it could.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/02/26/sprj.irq.un/

[Sevastopol]

@Cheesesteak

There is a difference between making a bad decision on widely accepted information, and fabricating the information in the first place.

There was no definitive statement from Blix that Saddam had no WMD prior to the war. If there was, let’s see it. It was widely believed that Saddam had WMD, the inspectors did not account for everything he was known to have, and he had kicked them out of his country for years prior to the war.

Tell me that Bush made a tragically bad decision. Do not try and tell me that nobody other than he believed in Saddam’s WMD programs. (BTW, is that grammar correct?)

Bill Clinton clearly believed that Saddam had WMD, but he did not choose to go to war over it. The anti-Bush crowd is so enamored with sticking it to Bush that they can’t even admit the above sentence, they have to claim that Bush made it all up.

Sure, Bush was honest all those times he said:

• *"Bearing in mind the conflicting and uncertain evidence and opinions, I believe that it is more likely than not that Iraq does possess WMD.

• Moreover, I similarly consider that Iraq does possess links to Al-Queda and is likely to pass armament to them."*

Problem is number of times he said that is none.

Instead as has been repeatedly made obvious to even the most obdurate dumbfuck he instead said,

“We know for absolute concrete certainty etc … which is why there is no point continuing with the Blix inspections.”

Get it?

Or do you join in the chorus of: “What’ll convince us? Nothing at all.”

Read around. Try “OSP.” The Bush team out and out fabricated major parts of the war case to deceive you.

[The_Tooth]

@Cheesesteak

There was no definitive statement from Blix that Saddam had no WMD prior to the war. If there was, let’s see it.

No, there isn’t. Does the need for inspections to remain ongoing justify the Bush Administration claiming absolute certainty regarding the existence and locations of these weapons? The burden of proof was on the United States, not Hans Blix. Reports confirming the allegations the Bush Administration made are what’s missing here

It was widely believed that Saddam had WMD, the inspectors did not account for everything he was known to have, and he had kicked them out of his country for years prior to the war.

So? The claim isn’t that Iraq had to be invaded because things weren’t accounted for or that inspectors were allegedly kicked out of Iraq. A claim that is not true, as it happens.

Tell me that Bush made a tragically bad decision. Do not try and tell me that nobody other than he believed in Saddam’s WMD programs. (BTW, is that grammar correct?)

Nobody has. The problem is with the claims that the whole world believed in Saddam’s WMD programs. Doubtless there are some who believed Bush’s claims.

Bill Clinton clearly believed that Saddam had WMD, but he did not choose to go to war over it. The anti-Bush crowd is so enamored with sticking it to Bush that they can’t even admit the above sentence, they have to claim that Bush made it all up.

I can admit it, I just don’t pretend it’s important. The statements made in 1998 may have been correct in 1998 but they don’t apply to the situation as it stood in 2003. In 2003, Clinton was in no position to make declarative statements about Iraq’s military capabilities. People who believed what the Bush Administration told them are guilty of nothing more than misplaced trust in the Bush Administration. Since they didn’t invade Iraq, their being fooled or, should they have happened to have known better, outright lying doesn’t matter. They aren’t the ones who started a war on false pretenses, Bush is.

[Loopydude]

As I recall, there certainly were a number of occasions where Blix complained about Iraqi stubbornness and evasiveness. He even said something to the effect of “This is not about ‘catch as catch can’”. Sure he was suspicious. Everyone was. There’s an enormous difference between “you need to do better” and “you’ve got enough WMDs to present a clear and present deadly threat to US security, and hence we must invade your country post-haste”.

In Blix’s own words:

How much, if any, is left of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and related proscribed items and programmes? So far, UNMOVIC has not found any such weapons, only a small number of empty chemical munitions, which should have been declared and destroyed. Another matter - and one of great significance - is that many proscribed weapons and items are not accounted for. To take an example, a document, which Iraq provided, suggested to us that some 1,000 tonnes of chemical agent were “unaccounted for”. One must not jump to the conclusion that they exist. However, that possibility is also not excluded. If they exist, they should be presented for destruction. If they do not exist, credible evidence to that effect should be presented.

We are fully aware that many governmental intelligence organizations are convinced and assert that proscribed weapons, items and programmes continue to exist. The US Secretary of State presented material in support of this conclusion. Governments have many sources of information that are not available to inspectors. Inspectors, for their part, must base their reports only on evidence, which they can, themselves, examine and present publicly. Without evidence, confidence cannot arise.

In sum: “There’s cause for doubt, but no proof of anything.”

A measure of doubt. That’s it. Certainly not any degree of certainty that WMDs even existed at that time. Certainly no indications of “clear-and-present danger”. Certainly nothing even remotely resembling what the Bush admin. was foisting on the US or the UN.

[jshore]

@Cheesesteak

There was no definitive statement from Blix that Saddam had no WMD prior to the war.

We weren’t dragged into this war because noone could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Saddam had no WMD. We were dragged into it because we supposedly knew that he had significant amount of WMD and that these constituted some real, credible threat to us that there was no better way to deal with.

And, what we have shown is that even if Bush was deluded enough to really think he knew for sure that Saddam had significant WMD before the inspectors went in, by the time the inspectors had been on the ground a few months it was clear that what we thought we knew was complete and utter hogwash. Shouldn’t that have given us pause?

and he had kicked them out of his country for years prior to the war.

Speaking of repeated lies, here you go telling another one (although perhaps it is a lie that you yourself believe). The inspectors were not kicked out of Iraq in the late 90s; they were withdrawn so that the U.S. and Britain could launch a few missiles and bombs. Now, some might argue that the reason that U.S. and Britain embarked on this course was that Saddam was not being very cooperative with the inspectors, so maybe this distinction is not that important. However, one has to note that his stated reason for his non-cooperation was that the inspection regime had been co-opted by his adversaries (the U.S. and Britain) to spy on him… a charge that was later reported to indeed be true in several U.S. newspapers, citing sources both within the U.N. and the U.S. government. (And, indeed in the Fresh Air interview of Hans Blix that I referred to in the post above, he refers to this spying in the previous inspection regime as a matter of fact.)

So, what is the point of all this? Is it that Saddam is a good guy and we are bad? No. The point is that by being told a false history of what actually happened, people were led to a conclusion that was not justified by the facts: “Well, Saddam kicked out the inspectors…What other reason could he have besides hiding something?” However, there was a much simpler explanation…namely, that he had some “strange” aversion to opening up his most secret defense facilities to foreign adversaries. Considering that even democracies like ours are a bit squeamish about such things, might one not imagine that a dictator use to having much tighter control of information would be even more so?

[jshore]

@jshore

We were dragged into it because we supposedly knew that he had significant amount of WMD and that these constituted some real, credible threat to us that there was no better way to deal with.

Oh yeah…And, I am still awaiting any Bush apologist willing to explain how it was better to have any supposed WMD free and loose for the taking than to have them locked up in Saddam’s hands (with the CIA believing that it was very unlikely that they would be used against us OR given to terrorists).

In other words, noone has even demonstrated how the war, as executed, would likely have made us more safe rather than less safe in the event that Saddam actually had had WMD!

[tomndebb]

@Cheesesteak

There is a difference between making a bad decision on widely accepted information, and fabricating the information in the first place.

There was no definitive statement from Blix that Saddam had no WMD prior to the war. If there was, let’s see it. It was widely believed that Saddam had WMD, the inspectors did not account for everything he was known to have, and he had kicked them out of his country for years prior to the war.

Tell me that Bush made a tragically bad decision. Do not try and tell me that nobody other than he believed in Saddam’s WMD programs. (BTW, is that grammar correct?)

Bill Clinton clearly believed that Saddam had WMD, but he did not choose to go to war over it. The anti-Bush crowd is so enamored with sticking it to Bush that they can’t even admit the above sentence, they have to claim that Bush made it all up.

Your first sentence is correct. That is the difference between (on the one hand) the congresscritters (Democrat and Republican) quoted by magellan01 in the fall of 2002 when they had been handed doctored intelligence reports by the administration and (on the other hand) the administration that actually spun and doctored (and occasionally fabricated) the “intelligence.” Having been handed lies that they accepted in good faith, Congress gave conditional approval to use force, if necessary, to remove Hussein. (I opposed that vote on the grounds that Iraq was not an aggressor nation at that time to the U.S. or any of its allies, but Congress was being told that Hussein was supporting terrorists and planning an attack.)

It is true that Blix had not concluded that Hussein had no WMD by January of 2003. On the other hand, by that point, he had openly expressed anger about numerous lies that the administration had attributed to him, he was actively pursuing the leads to earlier WMD production, and he was reporting diminishing returns on his efforts. (It is also a false atatement that Hussein kicked out any inspectors. The UN pulled its inspectors out of Iraq for their safety after it became public that the U.S. had inserted spies into the UN inspection teams.)

Clinton (and nearly everyone else) believed Hussein’s bluff in 1998. Most people were still persuaded of his bluff in the summer of 2002. (This is why it is so easy to trot out anachronistic quotations. People who only look at the words and fail to note the dates can be misled into believing the administration’s claims that they were fooled just like everyone else.)

The sequence:

• 1980s through early 1990s: Hussein has (and uses) WMD.
• Mid 1990s, UN inspection teams go into Iraq and meet a lot of stonewalling as Hussein runs a successful bluff that he still has WMD while they mostly get dismantled or rot away.
• Early 2000s, Adminstration begins to prepare a basesless assault on Iraq by playing up non-existent terrorist connections while appealing to memory of WMD.
• Fall 2000: Bush claims that we need to invade Iraq if Hussein does not prove he has no WMD.
  Bush goes to the UN to seek a resolution authorizing the inspections. He gets it.
  Hussein invites the inspectors back into the country.
  Bush goes to Congress to get permission to invade if necessary.
  Bush goes to the UN to seek a resolution authorizing invasion. He does not get it, as the UN has just sent the inspection teams that Bush sought and they have not yet reported back.
  Bush sends the military into Saudi Arabia anyway, with the understanding of everyone with a brain that he has to either use that force or withdraw before summer (at a huge cost) because of the difficulties of keeping troops staged (and battle ready) in the desert through the summer.
  The administration begins using OSP reports to spin intelligence to make Hussein look bad.
  Blix notes that they are lying about what he has found. Outside analysts begin noting that the adminstration continues to use twisted and invented claims to promote the idea that the WMD are a threat, yet increasingly, information suggests that there are no WMD. (The “yellow cake” is a bad joke quickly dispelled. The “nuclear” tubes were actually part of a weapons system that Hussein was forbidden to have (but not a WMD) and the process to convert them to nuclear tools would have cost more than simply buying the correct tubes, to begin with.)
  Bush (with his army in danger of dehydrating) insists that all the false intelligence claims are true and demands that the UN give him authorization to invade, promising that he will not invade without UN approval.
  The UN looks at the false evidence and tells him to wait until Blix’s teams can report.
  Bush says, “I don’ need no steenkin’ permission” and launches the war.

Note that the story takes a very serious turn in the late fall of 2002. Up until that time, Hussein’s bluff had worked and everyone was pretty sure he had WMD. Beginning in the early winter of 2002-2003, as Blix uncovered more and more indications that there were no WMD and as the adminstration continued to pump out transparent lies that “proved” there were WMD, the attitudes and beliefs of a lot of reasonable people changed. If Iraq really had WMD, then why the need to tell such flimsies lies? If Blix and company were being given access to more and more facilities, why the need to invade before their reports were in (other than saving an army that was prematurely parked in a desert?

And, as noted above, once the war started, the WMD decontamination and security teams were held in the rear and forbidden to secure all the “known” sites. That is either a sign that the administration knew there were no WMDs or a sign that they wanted terrorists to claim them.

Providing a list of people who believed Hussein’s bluff prior to December, 2002 only proves that Hussein did a good job of bluffing. The crunch comes between December 2002 and February 2003 as the administration published lie after lie, leading to increasing suspicion that Hussein no longer had the weapons he had possessed ten years earlier.

[John_Mace]

@Sevastopol

Instead as has been repeatedly made obvious to even the most obdurate dumbfuck he instead said,

“We know for absolute concrete certainty etc … which is why there is no point continuing with the Blix inspections.”

If you want to prove that Bush lied, you might not want to make up evidence in support of your case, because such fabrications are easily debunked. Unless, of course, you have a cite for that quote…

Just out of curiosity, does one ever see “Blair lied” bumper stickers in Britain? I think there is a perponderance of evidence that the WMD info was slanted and exagerated and whatever you want to say about it. But let’s keep in mind that it wasn’t like most world leaders thought SH didn’t have WMDs, they just weren’t sure one way or the other. After all, the call from most of the rest of the world was for continued inspections, not a call to just drop the inspections because they knew no WMDs existed.

I think the Bush administration thought they’d find some WMDs in Iraq. I think they were sloppy and were ready to believe any info leading to that conclusion, and disbelieve any info that contradicted that conclusion. Does that amount to lying? Hard to tell. To me it doesn’t really matter. There’s no need to attribute to malice what can be eaily explained by incompetence (or however that saying goes).

[Loopydude]

@John Mace

There’s no need to attribute to malice what can be eaily explained by incompetence (or however that saying goes).

But don’t you think at this point it really had to be both? To me, a terribly compelling summary of events is: “Great! Once we find WMDs, we can invade! What, no WMDs? Make shit up and invade anyway!”

[light_strand]

Let me see if I can explain why I believe Bush lied.

Bush was told by many people that there was a chance that WMD would not be found, could not be found, or simply didn’t exist. We all remember Scott Ritter, Joe Wilson, Hans Blix, Saddam Hussain’s son in law Kamal, members of the CIA, and the entire country of France.

So it simply wasn’t true that the president didn’t know that there were people who believed that WMD were limited, or not present at all. However, what did the president do when these objections were raised? He dismissed them, and cherry picked intelligence that backed his opinion.

Now imagine that your boss said crawl into a hole. He tells you; It’s safe, I swear it is. However, your boss was told by many experts that it may not be safe, although, he was told by some experts that you might be safe. Now your boss really wants you to crawl into the hole, so he discounts the people who say it’s unsafe. Now he don’t have any particular reason to discount them, it’s just that he doesn’t like their answer. If you crawl into that hole, and drop dead, was he lying to you about the safety of the hole? I’ll bet your loved ones sure would think he was lying.

That’s what Bush did. It’s not so much that others didn’t believe the same thing, it’s that they didn’t tell us to crawl into the hole.

Bush knew there was contrary information out there. Bush didn’t care that there was contrary information out there. Bush didn’t bother informing the public that there was contrary information out there. Bush fired people who did try to inform the public that there was contrary information out there. Bush withheld information which would allow people to know the whole truth. To me, this = lying.

Moreover, the argument of this smacks very much as: “that depends what the definition of ‘is’, is.”

[Tamerlane]

@Loopydude

But don’t you think at this point it really had to be both?

I don’t. I think if they really had believed they’d find nothing, they would have tried to get firmer international backing, so as to defuse the eventual egg on their face. No, I believe they were largely a victim of self-deception. They were almost certain they’d find something and even if it was a not very impressive something, they would be able to subsequently propagandize it into something big.

I firmly believe think they were as shocked as anybody when they turned up zero.

Of course I was both convinced they would turn up something and firmly against the war anyway for what I thought were pragmatic reasons, so what do I know?

• Tamerlane

[jshore]

@John Mace

I think the Bush administration thought they’d find some WMDs in Iraq. I think they were sloppy and were ready to believe any info leading to that conclusion, and disbelieve any info that contradicted that conclusion.

I agree with you to a point. I think that they thought that they could find something that they could hold up to the world to justify invading. In fact, almost right from when the war began, the Administration seemed to start lowering the bar about what would constitute such evidence for our invasion.

However, as I noted, I see no indication from the Administration’s actions that they thought these WMDs constituted any real threat (at least in regards to getting in the hands of terrorists). Or, if they did, they had a strangely incompetent way of dealing with this threat while they were carefully parachuting the special ops teams in to secure the oil facilities.

[John_Mace]

@Tamerlane

Of course I was both convinced they would turn up something and firmly against the war anyway for what I thought were pragmatic reasons…

Sums up my position exactly. In fact, I wasn’t even paying that much attention to the whole WMD hulabaloo, since I didn’t want us to invade no matter what. But I thought they’d find something. Maybe not nukes, but probably some bioweapons of some sort.

[Loopydude]

@Tamerlane

I firmly believe think they were as shocked as anybody when they turned up zero.

But, really, would BushCo’s case have been made if they turned up some barrels of half-expired goo in a cave, or the corroding remnants of a SCUD missle stashed away someplace where someone forgot it? Given that the inspectors couldn’t find anything, what more could the amin. have expected to bolster the “truth” of their argument? Were they so deluded they figured scoring a puny technical was sufficient to demonstrate “clear and present threat”?

Well, given that “oops” has sufficed thus far as a mea culpa, perhaps that was a realistic expectation, for rhetorical purposes.

[Loopydude]

I forgot about this article until just a few minutes ago. Gives a good summary of the approach to intelligence prior to GWII, according to Sidney Blumenthal

:: pause for “That unpatriotic Clintonian hack!” jeers::

'K, so, not much that hasn’t been spelled out or alluded to above, but a nice, concise review all the same.

[Liberal]

@Loopydude

But, really, would BushCo’s case have been made if they turned up some barrels of half-expired goo in a cave, or the corroding remnants of a SCUD missle stashed away someplace where someone forgot it? Given that the inspectors couldn’t find anything, what more could the amin. have expected to bolster the “truth” of their argument? Were they so deluded they figured scoring a puny technical was sufficient to demonstrate “clear and present threat”?

Well, given that “oops” has sufficed thus far as a mea culpa, perhaps that was a realistic expectation, for rhetorical purposes.

My sense of it was that they hoped to elminate the intrinsic weaknesses of hosted inspections, such as the existence of secret chambers and underground stashes, or the sureptitious movement of stockpiles timed to coincide with inspections. (For surprise inspections, the host could hem and haw with red tape formalities while logistical plans are carried out.) In other words, I think that they simply didn’t trust Saddam.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

Specific examples of lies are helpful, I think; as such, I’ll point folks to this summary of this thread, in which a case is laid out for a very specific lie. I don’t think anyone has denied that this constitutes a substantive lie on Bush’s part regarding the reasons for war.

Daniel