So Bush lied to get into Iraq, ok but why?

[Ravenman]

@GIGObuster

Well, you are saying now that Blix was not going to expose the Bush lie.

I’m saying that there was nothing imminent that would have blown the Bush case to shreds. When Blix reported to the Security Council on March 7, there were efforts ongoing to define a list of benchmarks to define the completion of UNMOVIC’s work. In his book, he estimated that doing the job right would take an additional four months. (Four months that would have been well spent, IMHO.) There was some talk of trying to finish inspections under some to-be-developed benchmarks in a matter of weeks.

Would there have been some breakthrough during that time that would have resulted in a clean bill of health? The answer to that is speculation. I don’t know. It is possible. But it wasn’t like Blix was holding a smoking gun that showed that Bush was lying. Again, at the time, Blix’s personal view was that Iraq probably was hiding something, but he had increasing suspicions that the Western intelligence wasn’t panning out. Furthermore, in his addresses of February and March, he was determined not to announce any conclusion, but allow the facts of what he found lead countries to their own conclusions.

However, after reading the information it is clear to me that Blix was going to report soon that the intelligence regarding WMD of the USA and England was just shit. (I remember an inspector coming close to say that when asked about what the latest inspections showed regarding the places to look thanks to the “intelligence” the US and England claimed to have.)

This is true. In fact, Blix had already complained about it.

@Speech from February 2003

Intelligence information has been useful for UNMOVIC. In one case, it led us to a private home where documents mainly relating to laser enrichment of uranium were found. In other cases, intelligence has led to sites where no proscribed items were found. … The presentation of intelligence information by the US Secretary of State suggested that Iraq had prepared for inspections by cleaning up sites and removing evidence of proscribed weapons programmes. I would like to comment only on one case, which we are familiar with, namely, the trucks identified by analysts as being for chemical decontamination at a munitions depot. This was a declared site, and it was certainly one of the sites Iraq would have expected us to inspect. We have noted that the two satellite images of the site were taken several weeks apart. The reported movement of munitions at the site could just as easily have been a routine activity as a movement of proscribed munitions in anticipation of imminent inspection. Our reservation on this point does not detract from our appreciation of the briefing.

There were similar comments made in March, IIRC.

I do not believe that it was just foolishness that the USA decided to not risk getting a “no” vote at the UN for the second resolution to approve military action and to also ignore that the last inspections were showing virtually no WMDs in Iraq.

No, of course it wasn’t. Bush didn’t want to look like he was thumbing his nose at the UN, when he really was. There was certainly a bald-faced lie when Nicholas Negroponte said of UN Resolution 1441 that it had no “hidden triggers for war,” and then the US went to war because 1441 “allowed” the US to do so.

But I think the concern from Bush was not that UN inspections were going to disprove the WMD claim, it was that the inspections would go on forever with no conclusive end. Bob Woodward wrote extensively on this point.

As far as France goes, I think the stench that people smell is the foul-odored cheese breath that goes along with laughing about being in the right while her ally goes marching off to folly.