Well, I don’t think that even Saddam thinks he can win the war in battle. He hopes that pressure from outside the USA (The UN, France, etc) and internal pressure- protests, and mounting casualties- will cause Bush to withdraw before we win. This is not a bad strategy, and has a chance of working- although small.
If he uses the weapons (and I am confident they exist), it means he has given this hope up, as these sources of pressure will end. Even France won’t back him then. Hell, I don’t think that even the PLO will back him if that happens! All he can hope for is taking a bunch of dues down with him. Hell, even Hitler didn’t use his nerve gas, and as Evil as SH is, he isn’t close to Adolph. Strickly a “bushleaguer”.
There is another factor to consider: Saddam undoubtably (to me, anyway, and many others) has chemical and biological weaponry. But he may well not have them ready. You can’t just hide these things, as he has certainly been doing, in a state of immediate readiness for action. Given the short time lead and surprise nature of immediate US invasion (they expected a heavy bombing campaign) he may not have been able to get them operational.
I also note the suspected chem weaponry factory had some missiles ready for deployment with chem weapons nearby.
One theory I’ve heard bandied about is that Saddam will not use WMDs as long as he has plausible deniability. There are still some (however few) who believe that Saddam has no WMDs whatsoever - obviously if he dropped an anthrax bomb on US troops his possession of WMDs would be confirmed. But until we have concrete proof in the form of an actual, working WMD (or witnessing the use of one), Saddam won’t use them.
And for this reason, the US government may be unlikely to admit that we’ve found anything, even if we have. That massive chemical plant originally believed to be housing WMDs? Booby trapped, guarded by an Iraqi general, yet the official word is that no WMDs have been found there yet. Seems a bit odd to me. Why so much protection for a baby food plant, or a place that manufactures glass cleaner, or whatever? Could be we found something, but don’t want to give Saddam a reason to fry our troops. Or his people.
Jeff
I didn’t mean to imply that it was. But it also doesn’t seem to me that it would be standard for soldiers to carry it. Do US soldiers carry it? And would the Iraqi military commanders actually believe that the US would use anthrax in battle?
Actually it is fairly standard to carry gas masks and to be innoculated, or carry toxin nullifying agents if you’re going into an uncertain situation. **
Indeed. US soldiers carry tons of stuff with them as a guard against tons of contingencies. I forget how many pounds of gear each soldier carries, but it is far more than a few grenades and a M-16. Included with this gear is survival stuff and protective gear against any weapon the commanders believe they might possibly come into contact with(if it is at all feasible. In Vietnam they even had body armor they might be required to wear). Talking with a Marine friend of mine he said they carry antidotes for various types of nerve gas as well as gas masks pretty much as SOP. He said they also have chemsuits(protective clothing) and all kinds of other gear that they have to carry pretty frequently. In Desert Storm most troops were given full protective gear and today’s troops even carry portable sensors to detect chemical agents so the soldier will have time to get their gear on before they fall victim.**
We can only speculate as to what their commanders believe, but I wouldn’t be at all suprised if the Iraqi soldiers have been told the coalition forces are horrible brutes who will execute them mercilessly and/or use WoMD on them. Makes them fight more desperately if they think their opponents really are evil sumbitches. Plus, as has been pointed out, the forces the Iraqis will be facing(meaning the US and coalition forces) DO have chemical weapons, mostly tear gas and mace and the like, that an Iraqi soldier may need to be protected from. Anti-Anthrax pills may simply be another precaution as opposed to evidence that Iraqi commanders intend to use Anthrax-based biological weapons in the field.
The “He has them, but craftily isn’t using them until it’s his last resort because he realizes it would be strategically disastrous” theory poses nearly as much potential embarrassment for those backing the war as “he never had them.”
If fear of international censure and a more massive allied attack is sufficient to make him hold off on using weapons he (hypothetically) has and could use, the whole rationale that invasion is necessary to stop his imminent use of them becomes much more attenuated. In short, if he’s capable of acting with such Machiavellian restraint and cunning, and reserving the WMDs only as a doomsday last resort, the Butcher Of Baghdad/evil madman theory goes out the window. There were those who from the start pointed to what they saw as circularity in the syllogism of “Iraq has WMD; if pressured, they would use them; thus, all the more reason to pressure them by a preemptive war.”
There are a lot of countries, unfortunately, with various WMDs or tactical weapons. The rationale for singling Iraq out could not have been merely that they had such weapons (otherwise we’d have taken out Pakistan and South Africa years ago), but rather that – uniquely among the dozens of countries having them – Iraq was eager to use them offensively or at the drop of a hat defensively. Take away that rationale, and the reason for treating Iraq differently from India or Russia or other countries that have but don’t routinely use super-potent military weaponry arguably becomes somewhat dubious.
I’m overusing winks, after beating poor dubious into the ground.
One reason not to use WoMD is the repercussions if the war ends in the capture of whoever gave the order. Bush has made it clear he will seek to try anyone who uses them. This has been enshrined on leaflets now available all over Iraq. I’m not suggesting that WoMD will not be used, just a rationale why they might not be.
Now, after reading that article more carefully, IANAMD, but isn’t, "Cipro is meant to ward off the effects of a biological attack from several toxic agents, foremost among them, anthrax."not quite correct? One use for Cipro could be warding off biological attack, right?
Not even evidence. Elucidate yourself on Cipro from a source that isn’t talking about it in a war context.
For all we know the Iraqi soldiers carry it so they can keep incidents of E. coli down. Let’s not fall into the trap of everything looking like a nail just cause we’ve got lots of hammers. Cipro is extremely widely used for an extremely wide variety of uses.
Were those 300 million people expecting to be exposed to Anthrax? Were those 40,000 published articles all about Cipro as an anti-Anthrax drug? Then why the hell would ANYONE think that having Cipro is some sort of evidence that you expect to be exposed to Anthrax? Circumstantial evidence, AT BEST.
I don’t have easy access to the contents of a med pack that US/Coalition soldiers carry, but I would not be at all suprised if Cipro(or at least some strong oral antibiotic) is standard issue. Please, please think some more and do some more research before parroting some news source. They’re TRYING to be sensational. We’re TRYING to fight ignorance.
Just sit back and wait. Clear evidence will come if Iraq has WoMD. In the meantime claiming the presence of Cipro is some sort of evidence that the Iraqi regime both has and intends to use biological weapons is just ignorant.
Ah, the Scarecrow appears- the old “straw man”. The Administration did not claim the sole reason for going to war was that “we were scared he’d use WMD (openly, in war)”. There were a number of reasons, and this was one of them.
And one of the rationals is exactly that: “that they have such weapons”- as “uniquely amoung the dozens of countries having them”- Iraq is alone enjoined from even having them in the first place. It is not illegal for Pakistan or South Africa to possess them, it is illegal for Iraq to do so. The UN even decided SH could not be trusted with them. South Africa did not invade a neighboring small nation, steal everything that wasn’t nailed down (and a lot that was), set fire to the oilwells causing untold waste & environmental disatser, and torture citizens & POW’s, not to mention other atrocities. (And yes, there was one atrocity story that wasn’t true. There were many other true instances). Saddam & Iraq was punished for this act of aggression by UN agreement.
Then, besides the fear SH may use them openly, there was the very real fear he’d supply them to terrorists. Now, I will admit his connection to Al Qaeda is tenuous at best (seems like only an “enemy of my enemy” thing). But his connections & support to other terrorist orgs, such as Hamas, is well known & public. So, instead of Al Qaeda using Iraqi nerve gas against NY, we have Hamas using it against Tel Aviv. I don’t see that’s any better.
If each of the officers had an entire course of Cipro just ‘coincidentally’ sitting around with no pills taken, I think it is interesting. Well, more disturbing than interesting. Cipro was used with some success in the recent anthrax attacks, IIRC.
But, I agree, the evidence is always being stretched, or carelessly analyzed, by the media. Meanwhile the government is on a 24 hour spin cycle. At least the DoD seems to be staying levelheaded about all this stuff, adopting a wait-and-see attitude. Their political asses are not on the line, just their actual asses.
Given the fact that many people base their “the US armed Iraq” argument on the 1980s trasfer of some germ samples from US corporations to Iraq, I don’t know how anyone can deny that Saddam has bioweapons (and make that claim). I’m not saying that Mtgman–or anyone else in particular–has made that claim, btw. I just find it paradoxical whenever it arises.
But using that logic, then any nation that’s (a) unfriendly to the United States or its allies and (b) might possess some WMDs are fair game for a war. Are you seriously advocating this? Because that’s an awfully long list…
I’m not saying he has them, nor am I saying he doesn’t. What I DO know is that, at one point, he DID have WoMD(chemical definitely and some/all of the components for biological weapons) and that 90%+ of them HAVE been destroyed. The inspectors and the documentation during the early days of disarmement(post Desert Storm) proved that. What happened to that <10%? Did they build covert production facilities during the past decade and produce more? I think it is fair to say they have been less than forthcoming on the status of their stockpiles as well as their programs. I also think they are quite possibly, if not probably, in breech of their obligations to disarm. If this is the case then evidence, hard evidence that can be verified and will stand under scrutiny, will be found.
Cipro is not anything like this category. It may well occupy the same niche in the Iraqi military gear that Penicillin occupied in the US packs. At this point it is hyperbolic at the least to claim the presence of Cipro is evidence that Iraq has/has plans to use biological weapons.
Never said this was the “sole reason” cited by the U.S. But any fair reading of the debate/argument leading up to the war shows that it was not the mere (possible) possession of such arms that was invoked, but the additional “he can’t be trusted to show any restraint or rational risk-benefit analysis in not using them, unlike others who have them.” This rationale is the one that may be undercut by empirical evidence that he (or those who control the button) are in fact capable of (admittedly selfish) calculation that will restrain them from using the suppositious WMDs even under substantial military duress (which suggests though it doesn’t prove that they might likewise show similar or even more (self-interested) restraint in the absence of an attack on their territory.
The problems with your alternative theories are that they are not ones that were relied upon, solely, in justification of the attacks; they may not be ones that are supported by the U.S. Constitution; and (most importantly, perhaps), they may not be ones that, standing alone, would ever sway a majority or plurality of U.S. voters or legislators to support a war – which is the issue: is the WH politically vulnerable to charges of a bait-and-switch whereby they threw in juicy, popular, but less-than-sustainable claims to supplement the rationales you point out? All I suggested is that they may have to worry about such allegations of disingenuousness.
A great majority of Americans would probably support any military action necessary to prevent an imminent terrorist or military attack on the territory or citizens of the U.S. The rest of the world either would support such self-defense, or would be blithely ignored by the U.S. populace if Americans were truly convinced of an imminent threat to them. The Administration, by statement or implication, continually stressed Iraq’s links to or imminent potential to commit or abet such attack, including one on the U.S. The suggestion that the “WMDs are weeks away from being deployed” line was not rooted in empirical fact would weaken this claim and thus weaken any “mandate” the WH received for war. The continued stressing of such tenuous theories would also suggest that the WH itself knew that theories 2-n, in the absence of theory 1 (WMD/imminent attack on U.S.), might not sway even the U.S., much less the world. Whether you believe that political/military legitimacy of a policy depends on rationally convincing a large portion of your own electorate, and whether disinformation to the domestic electorate can ever be a legitimate tactic, may be issues on which reasonable men can differ. Without regard to party, war stance, etc., I and I suspect others would have preferred that Bush and Blair argue from the very outset, as Blair finally did in announcing v. 5.0 of “Why We Fight,” that abstract moral considerations alone justified the war. At least that lets the punters know what their leaders are really trying to sell them.
It’s not just a theoretical point. The vast U.S. majority that would favor a “Self Defense Vs. WMD In Manhattan War” would almost certainly drop significantly, even precipitously, if that scenario were negated and they were frankly presented with any of your alternatives.
a. ‘Alleged “Illegal” possession (alone) of WMDs’ – Many Americans don’t necessarily believe there is such a thing as “international law,” or that the UN is the source thereof (indeed, the U.S. government can’t really concede that such law definitively exists and is overriding because this would subject U.S. military and environmental and criminal justice policies to a finding of “illegality” and to sanctions from the Hague, etc.). Of course, you may favor the concept of binding international law as a sufficient justification for war, and support the unestablished principle that one UN member can be the (as yet undesignated) enforcer thereof when a “rogue nation” does something illegal, but the point is that the Administration might not have been able to convince enough Americans or Brits to send the boys off to die in defense, principally, of the international rule of law against procedural “illegality.”.
b. “The UN decided that SH could not be trusted with WMD.” But this is the whole point of the OP – the possibility that facts on the ground may be suggesting that, in practice, he or his commanders can “be trusted” (very relatively speaking) not to open Pandora’s Box at the drop of a hat. This point is also shaky, as others have discussed ad infinitum, given the vehement resistance of that same UN to taking military action – you can’t really cite what the UN members theoretically thought several years ago SH would do with WMD, while ignoring: (a) superseding intervening non-theoretical behavior of the SH regime with regard to WMD; and (b) the same UN’s recent (possibly misguided, but very clear) indication that it was not convinced SH had or would in the near future use WMD. This is true whether you think the UN has any relevance to U.S. policy or not.
c. “SH is really nasty and invaded Kuwait, etc.” Never under dispute. Again, the dispute is whether the “coalition” nation could have sold the war to its people on this basis alone. You may deplore isolationism, etc., and make the argument that we are all our brothers’ keeper, etc. (and you might well be morally right), but facts have shown that Americans, at least, are chary about investing lives or political capital or money to try to settle intramural disputes in parts of the world where such disputes seem intractable and constant due to a flawed political culture, and where the alternatives to one dysfunctional regime are often viewed as an equally-dysfunctional replacement. Denounce this fatalism, certainly; characterize it as racialism or chauvinism, if you want, of course; the interesting question remains why even those advocating war felt they had to invoke a manifest, but possibly absent, threat to America’s borders, or threat of regional apocalypse (which is about all that would stir a certain segment of the U.S. populace to interfere in intra-Third-World squabbles, as they’d see them), rather than simply making the “SH is nasty” argument?
d. For your other arguments, I’d pose the same question: Not “Should Americans be willing to support spending lives and military capital on punishing ” but "Would the public or Congress, in fact, have given its leaders the support they needed if it had been made clear all along that the justification for the war stood or fell solely, or in combination, on grounds of:
Menu A.
[upholding the procedural dignity of Resolution 1441]
[extirpating evil wherever it may be]
[protecting the Kurds]
[protecting Tel Aviv] [etc.].;
but that
Menu B.
[protecting New York] or
[neutralizing a clear and present danger that the madman will imminently begin lobbing chemical/biowar shells at Americans or others]
may really never have been significantly-realistic issues/possibilities. I viewed this as the politically-interesting part of the OP, given that the Administration did not choose only from menu A., but repeatedly leaned on menu B. as well. The query becomes (1) why the Administration felt compelled to rely upon what may turn out to have been “makeweight” arguments, and (2) whether (YMMV) this detracts from the political legitimacy of the ultimate authorization to use force. IMHO, reasonable, patriotic, moral leftists and rightists can differ on these questions, but it does not seem unfair to pose them of a pro-military-action campaign that chose to emphasize the menu B. parade of horribles in support of its campaign.
True, “protecting New York” will get more votes in Congress that “menu A”, and certainly that was a main point. However, so far other Isamic Terrorist groups have not targeted the Continental USA. But, they certainly hate us, even if they hate Isreal more. Thus, there remains the very real possibilty of such usage. Now is SH the only offender? No, but except for Osama & the Taliban, he’s next.
Note that we had a “clear & present” danger with Bin Laden & the Taliban. I think we were right going in there, kicking butts & taking names. Osama attacked US. The Taliban supported him. We had the right, it was a 'clear & present danger".
However, even though I think Saddam is a danger, he just IMHO hasn’t QUITE crossed the line into “clear & present danger” (to the USA) to make an Invasion justifiable. He was close, IMHO, and I’d have reluctantly gone along with a UN intervention. But without the UN, I think we needed the “gun” to have some more “smoke”. Perhaps the Prez has some evidence he isn’t sharing, I dunno. Still, given the info at hand, I can’t support the Invasion.
However, the fact that SH has so far been smart enough (or dead enough) to not use the WMD I am sure he has, does not automatically make the Adminstration wrong.
