After two weeks no WMD have been found in Iraq. Let’s suppose that Baghdad is conquered and still none have been turned up. (Note that, technically speaking, that wouldn’t prove Iraq didn’t possess them - they could be well hidden or shipped out of the country. So you may think this question’s academic, but let’s play anyway.) Obviously Pres. Bush and his administration would have something of a problem.
So let’s talk: which of the following basic strategies would the executive branch employ if no WMDs are found in Iraq, and why?
Option 1: Admit the Lack of Evidence - The government could simply come out and say “Well, we expected to find WMDs but we didn’t. Perhaps we were wrong.”
Option 2: Claim They Exist But Are Hidden - The government could say “Yes, we have found no WMDs, but we are certain Iraq has shipped them to Iran or Syria or France.” An intriguing solution, but hasn’t been tried yet, and really can’t until Iraq is conquered. Would be useful for starting another war.
Option 3: Plant Them - Already speculated by many on this board, the U.S. could simply plant some evidence and say they found WMDs, or could pretend that something innocuous (e.g. a bleach factory or some such thing) is in fact WMD evidence when it really isn’t. Some small examples of this already, e.g. “Look! We found a guy with some antibiotics! And a pile of chemical warfare suits and gas masks!”
Option 4: The Big Lie - The administration could simply start saying that the war was about “liberating Iraq” all along, was never about WMDs, and would just stop talking about WMDs entirely, and change the subject whenever it came up. The “we have always been at war with Eastasia” solution.
I think i’ll go for option 2 (since took the trouble to type them all out).
I think that’s the most likely option if they don’t find WMD in Iraq.
Syriua has already been accused of accepting WMD shipped out of Iraq.
I don’t know if it would be possibe to plant them. Maybe biological components, yes, but whole factories of chem weapons and such? Unlikely.
I can tell you one thing for sure: option 1 'll never happen…
Option 5: They’ve been given to someone else - Saddam gave them to ObL / Hamas / Hizbollah / Islamic Jihad / or “our next national target” (Iran/Syria/Somalia/North Korea)…?
How do you interpret “a pile of chemical warfare suits and gas masks” as either “planted evidence” or “innocuous”?
The Iraqis know well the coalition forces are not about to use such weapons, so why are they issuing chemical suits and gas masks to their troops (according to the 4/3 USA Today, just-captured Iraqi prisoners have been carrying gas masks)?
I’ll suggest Option 1 for antiwar conspiracy theorists once (as is highly likely in my opinion) chemicals weapons or other WMD are found or used on coalition troops:
Argue that Saddam’s forces would never ever have considered using such weapons if not driven to the brink of defeat by the U.S. and Britain (the “you made me do it” defense).
The cost of not finding any WoMD is too high, no higher than the cost of getting caught planting evidence. Refocusing on all the good that has come from this adventure will be par for the course, no matter what the basis of criticism is directed at the administration.
Option 1 won’t happen. 2 and 5 won’t go over without some compelling evidence.
Option 2 and/or Option 4. The war really was never about WMD- this was a personal vendetta pure and simple. The finding of gas masks and chemical suits prove nothing- the US has them and we don’t have chemical weapons.
Option 4 – the Administration is already tossing a half-dozen “justifications” for the war, depending on what the current phase of the moon is. Losing the WMD excuse would not stop Ari Fleischer for more than three microseconds.
It makes sense to have these things. Maybe the coalition wouldn’t use chem/bio weapons, but what if Iraq had been attacked by a country or terrorist who did? He wasn’t necessarily buying them for protection against the coalition, but as protection against * any * enemy attack.
Secondly, how do they * know * we won’t use chem/bio weapons? Take our word for it? They already see us as lying, evil invaders. They don’t know what lengths we’ll go to in achieving our objective. The average Iraqi soldier may not know all that much about the United States. The only media he has been exposed to is state-run. To him, we are not “the good guys” who wouldn’t stoop to using such weapons. In his shoes, I would want my mask as well.
Bush has approved the possible use of tear gas on the battlefield. That settles the whole issue of why the Iraqis would need gas masks at all. Even otherwise this could just be old equipment made for other contingencies. Or they may be paranoid about the US.
My guess would be that Iraq does indeed have some biological or chemical weapons but the idea that the discovery of Iraqi gas masks constitutes evidence in that direction is ludicrous.
No they won’t. They talked up WMD to get approval for the war. They got approval for the war (or at least as much as they felt they needed. They are having the war.
By the time elections come around, the whole topic of quite why the war was necessary will be history. Wars are self fulfilling. The people you fight become the hated enemy whatever they were before, because they have a strange tendency to fight back and kill our own. One’s mental defences kick in and you come to be quite sure that there must a be a good reason why you are having the war (to admit you’ve just invaded a country and killed a bunch of people for no good reason is not something most people want to allow themselves to think).
If Bush doesn’t otherwise stuff up, he will be re-elected as a strong leader who won a war (everyone likes a winner etc). Whether he should have fought the war will be forgotten.
Nifty. She left out the Kuwaitis lying to Congress about Iraqi soldiers taking hospital incubators and leaving babies to die. However:
Can we make some corollary to Godwin’s law about the use of the word “genocide”? Because this is the point at which my bias-detecting needle went way over into the red. She has some interesting and valid points about the manipulation of public opinion, but let’s be frank, even in the worst-case scenario what is going on in Iraq is nothing like genocide.
Wouldn’t Option 2 be an admission of defeat? Wasn’t part of the justification for war that Saddam could give WMDs to terrorists, and therefore the US could claim acting in self defense? Using Option 2 suggests that WMDs could now be in the hands of those very terrorist organizations.
What!? They found antidotes?! Surely that is just as good as a “smoking gun”! If they find pennicillin, we can certainly surmise they meant to fire a gonorrhea bomb!
