What's the betting on the election - can Bush win?

Great Debates
181

I am not even aware of any prominent opponents of the war who are on record as saying that it was possible that Saddam had no WMD. Certainly there were some who said we shouldn’t act unilaterally, that we should continue the inspections, etc., but none (that I am aware of) who expressed any doubt that Saddam had WMD/WMD programs. The shortfall so far has been manna from heaven to those who were lucky enough not to be quoted on record. Dean is the most prominent example. I wonder (completely without evidence) if Dean might be reluctant to open his records as governor to forestall any embarassing admissions useful in the upcoming campaign. Wouldn’t that be fun?

No, I would say there is more to it than that.

Certainly it is beyond speculation that Saddam had WMD at one time. Certainly it is beyond speculation that if he didn’t have any from 1991-2003, he didn’t want the inspections to reveal this. And it is historical fact that he would be willing to use them if he felt it necessary. And I can’t think of a reason to hide the centrifuges and plans, and to prevent the inspectors from interviewing the Iraqi nuclear scientists under safe circumstances, unless he was trying to get away with something, either now or later.

Which is the other problem with discussions of this nature. Some are willing to give Saddam the benefit of a doubt that I and others like me are not willing to give.

Has it ever been shown that there is no possibility whatever that the three labs could be used for anything other than bio-weapons, and that they are unmistakably destined only for that purpose to the exclusion of any doubt? No. There seems to be indications that they are not the harmless hydrogen generators claimed by some, but if you make the right assumptions, you can convince yourself that there is no “there” there. I and many of the rest of the US voters are not willing to make those kinds of assumptions. Saddam was a bad doer, had a history of acquiring WMDs and using them, and was clearly not going to allow the inspections to do what they were meant to do.

That is why we invaded. Because Saddam was given one last chance to comply - fully - and didn’t. The French, Germans, and Russians were willing to play along for another dozen years, the US (based on the new awareness of world terrorism after 9/11 - this is not a claim that Saddam was involved in 9/11, so don’t bother) was not.

Yes, Bush fully expected that Saddam was stockpiling WMDs. So did practically everyone else on the planet. To use the fact that Saddam may have been playing games with the inspections as a reason to condemn the invasion is mostly to miss the point. Saddam was not going to be allowed to play games with the inspections. Given his track record, it would have been breath-takingly stupid to take his word for it that he was being harmless. Especially in light of the evidence that he had no intention of cooperating any longer than he had to, and the minute the inspections ended was the minute he would resume his drive to stockpile weapons to use against his neighbors, as he had done in the past.

Regards,
Shodan

182

Friend Shodan overlooks, and for good reason, the evolution of the term “WMD”. It originally surfaced as a classification primarily for nuclear-type weapons. Such weapons, you will recall, formed the primary basis for the Bushiviks central thesis, i.e., “Saddam’s gonna nuke yer Momma!! Nukes! Nukes! Mushroom clouds over Akron! Nukes!”

As this became more apparently laughable, they fell back upon generously expanding the definition of “WMD” beyond WWII era tech to WWI era tech, and biological agents as well. Thus, the “vast stockpiles” quote that serves to embarass friend Shodan and his ilk (got ilk?). Not to mention the perfectly ridiculous notions of drone aircraft as a threat to the coastal United States, long since shoved down the Memory Hole.

Its not so much that the original charges were nonsense, but that the original charges were expanded to include damn near anything as “WMD”'s and still were proven to be groundless. Not so much that the most important cassus belli has been shown to be a chimera, but that all of them, down to such crude weapons as mustard gas, have been proven to be non-existent.

One may, and several do, indulge oneself in Miss Cleo type bouts of clairovoyance by suggesting that one can peer into Saddam’s mind and divine his intentions, perhaps by scrying with entrails. One can only hope that no rational person will regard this sort of excercise in bunkum as being evidence of anything other than sheer determination to have one’s way.

I said then “I am reluctant to be led to war, but I’m Goddamned if I’ll be bullshitted into war.” Well, we were. As it was done in our name, by men honorably sworn to our protection, means that every single innocent life squandered thus is on our hands. I, for one, am deeply ashamed. Friend Shodan has, apparently, found sufficient rationalization to drape a meager scrap of justification over this crime. This is a perversion of reason to preordained ends, and I trust that one day he will repent of it.

183

Excuse me. Is it your contention that the US was unaware of world terrorism until we were victimized? I can’t imagine that it is, because that’s spectacularly ridiculous.

Therefore…how did 9/11 lead to attacking Iraq? Since Iraq hadn’t terroized anyone (apart from its own citizens, individually) in over a dozen years, what did 9/11 tell us *** about Iraq, ** * that made going after it so important? So important that all our money, all our resources, all our efforts had to go to toppling Saddam Hussein? If Saddam had absolutely zero to do with 9/11, and we were not babes in the woods about terrorism in the world (and even if we were, really, your premise is kinda meaningless no matter whether one believes it or not, in relation to Iraq), why? What was new? What was different?

There are several answers:

  1. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  2. We were wounded, so we needed to lash out at somebody. Saddam was an easy, easy mark. He was personally still wealthy and powerful iwthin the confines of his country, but sanctions had worked to wear down his ability to mobilize. His country was (sadly, true) bleeding out, so to speak. And if you really believe that our military intelligence didn’t know that, as surely as they knew their own names, then I have some land in Florida I’m sure you’d be interested in. (Not to mention the low opinion you’d be holding of their abilities. It was pretty obvious to the naked eye.)

  3. Bush wanted to go after Saddam before he was ever elected. The reasons for this have been discussed and cited at length all over this board. 9/11 was manna from heaven, handing him the excuse he needed to do what he absolutely intended to do from the start, and not out of any noble desire to “finish what daddy started to make the world safer”. The fact that he managed to pull it off, managed to convince a huge segment of this country that after more than a decade, we need to go git Saddam * right this minute, * leaves me aghast.

This war was bullshit from the start, and a horrible stain on our country.

184

And this bit of hilarity, just in…

"Tony Blair was at the centre of an embarrassing row last night after the most senior US official in Baghdad bluntly rejected the Prime Minister’s assertion that secret weapons laboratories had been discovered in Iraq.

In a Christmas message to British troops, Blair claimed there was ‘massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories’. The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) had unearthed compelling evidence that showed Saddam Hussein had attempted to ‘conceal weapons’, the Prime Minister said. But in an interview yesterday, Paul Bremer, the Bush administration’s top official in Baghdad, flatly dismissed the claim as untrue - without realising its source was Blair.

It was, he suggested, a ‘red herring’, probably put about by someone opposed to military action in Iraq who wanted to undermine the coalition.

‘I don’t know where those words come from but that is not what [ISG chief] David Kay has said,’ he told ITV1’s Jonathan Dimbleby programme. ‘It sounds like a bit of a red herring to me.’"

This would all be such a grand bit of comedy, if it weren’t for all the corpses.

185

From Shodan:

Well, from my cite above, retired General Anthony Zinni. And, of course, former inspector Scott Ritter.
There is much that friend Shodan overlooks.

186

Well, I think that perhaps you were listening to the wrong sources. Yes, those who questioned whether there was really any good evidence of WMD were marginalized in the media but they were out there. I could cite you editorials in The Nation for example that said that Powell’s presentation before the U.N. was not very convincing. The fact that those of you who presumably get most of your information from rightwing and mainstream media news sources were so out-of-touch with this stream of thought suggests that maybe you need to reconsider where you get your info from. :wink:

I will admit, however, that some people (myself included) were cowed to some degree by the Administration’s insistance that they knew there were significant WMDs. After all, they are privy to more info than us, and although the Bush Administration had already given us plenty of evidence of lies and deceipt in their domestic policy up to that point, I was still not sure to what extent they would claim certitude on something when they really didn’t know. In that sense, I guess you could apply the line, “Fool me once, shame on you! Fool me twice, shame on me!” I should probably have never given any credence to anything this current Administration says.

It is also historical fact that he proved unable to hide these, even under an inspection regime less rigorous than the one imposed in 2003.

Only against an enemy that did not have ways to massively retaliate and when he was (rightly) confident that the world community, and the U.S. in particular, would let him get away with it.

Sure, the fact that he kept the parts to one centrifuge and some plans shows that he didn’t want to completely give up the possibility of reconstituting a program in the future. However, this is far short of showing that he was definitely going to…Or, more to the point, that he had. And, while it was admittedly harder to determine if Iraq had reconstituted its biological or chemical weapons programs, the nuclear one was easier to detect and I believe the inspectors of the nuclear programin their report expressed quite a bit of confidence that this hadn’t happened.

By the way, I can think of a lot of reasons why he wouldn’t want his scientists interviewed in that manner. Just try, if you can, to imagine a scenario where the shoe is on the other foot and some country is wanting to do this to our scientists (say in regards to chemical weapons, since they know we have nuclear ones already) and I am sure you will come up with many reasons why you wouldn’t be happy with this. Then multiply that sort of paranoia by 10 to account for a totalitarian regime and I think you’d get the picture.

Well, yes, when it comes to invading a sovereign nation, even if it is under a brutal regime, I do think we need to do this only as a last resort if we’ve exhausted all other avenues and have evidence that there is a realistic threat to us. Otherwise, it is simply international lawlessness. In essence, you are endorsing doing something because we are the biggest kid on the block and can get away with it…because there is no way in hell you are going to want to endorse it when other countries start doing this under similar pretexts.

[quote]

Has it ever been shown that there is no possibility whatever that the three labs could be used for anything other than bio-weapons, and that they are unmistakably destined only for that purpose to the exclusion of any doubt? No. There seems to be indications that they are not the harmless hydrogen generators claimed by some, but if you make the right assumptions, you can convince yourself that there is no “there” there.

Can explain what Saddam could have done to prevent the invasion? Because I am not sure he could have done anything. The inspectors were saying his compliance certainly wasn’t 100% but was fairly good…even somewhat pro-active…and improving. There was obviously evidence that we wanted concerning the destruction of WMD materials but if they had destroyed them and simply did not document it as we would have liked them to, what exactly could they have done to show this to us?

Personally, I think Bush had decided to take Saddam out and there was really nothing he could have done…short of completely abdicating power along with his relatives and henchmen…that would have prevented an invasion. (Even in that scenario, I could imagine U.S. troops might have gone in but without any organized fighting by the Iraqis against them.) Obviously, I can’t prove this but it certainly seems to align more closely with the facts as we know them today than any alternate scenarios. I find no evidence that Bush ever made any demands on Saddam that he wasn’t confident either Saddam would reject or that he couldn’t say Saddam was not complying adequately with.

We weren’t taking his word. We were using inspections, sanctions, and intelligence to insure he was not a real threat to us. Now we have set a simply horrible example internationally and can basically only tell other nations that there are two sets of rules - those that you live by and those that we live by. Maybe you have no problem with that but I find it rather unnerving and ultimately not in our own best interests.

187

elucidator said:

Wow. Of course, you have a cite for this? For any of it? First, I’d like a cite for the notion that ‘wmd’ meant only nuclear weapons, because I’ve been following matters military for decades, and WMD has always been interchangeable with CBN - Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear weapons. This sounds like a whole lot of revisionism to me.

Second, your notion that the Administration’s ‘primary basis’ was nuclear weapons is a pure fantasy. The Bush administration has always said that the nuclear weapons program was the least-understood and documented of Saddam’s programs. They’ve also always been careful to speak in terms of weapons development (Cheney’s gaffe on “Meet The Press” notwithstanding), and have always talked in terms of years for Saddam to build a nuke. Specifically, “perhaps within this decade”. They did mention a couple of times the assessment of the intelligence community that IF Saddam had a supply of fissionable material, perhaps smuggled in from North Korea, THEN he could build a weapon within six months.

Please, let’s not rewrite history so soon. You’ll have plenty of time to do that later.

188

I believe the conclusive result – from our trusted allies, the British, no less – were that the trailers were mobile helium factories, for the production of helium for weather balloons (to be used to gather atmospheric data during combat). Supposedly the US Army has similar trailers for similar purposes, so the idea is not as goofy as it sounds – unlike the claim that the trailers were mobile WMD labs, which by now is either laughable or pathetic.

Well, considering the alternative is to admit that he was wrong and that Bush did sell a war on bullshit and lies, I can understande why – cognitive dissonance and all that, don’cha know.

And we still haven’t found any proof of a viable Iraqi nuke program, have we? I notice that “Saddam’s nuclear weapons program” has joined “Saddam’s stockpiles of WMDs” on the list of Presidential gaffes to be avoided these days.

But the Bushies are already doing the rewrites! Why can’t we join the fun?

189

I read your cite. Which was the contemporaneous quote from Zinni where he says that Saddam doesn’t have any WMD? It seems to be all after the fact, or saying that Saddam does not have enough WMDs to pose a threat just now.

In case I am not being clear, I would like an unambigous quote from someone, published before the invasion, in which they clearly state that they think it is likely or highly possible that Saddam does not have WMD. Not that the threat isn’t imminent, or that the inspections regime has to be given time to work (which would be unnecessary if Saddam were known to be disarmed), but a clear statement that the inspections are unnecessary because Saddam doesn’t have any WMD.

Well, no, not really, since he was able to retain possession of the centrifuges/nuclear plans, mobile weapons labs, and chemical munitions.

Well, I guess you could say that he didn’t get away with it, but that is what we are discussing, is it not? The US did not let him get away with it. The French, Germans, Russians, et al were trying to look the other way.

And my understanding is that we were trying to prevent Saddam from using WMD on his neighbors (again). Depending on the threat of retaliation to dissuade him from his WMD programs does little good if you wait until it is too late, and/or show that you have no real intention of following thru on your threats.

Come clean on the inspections. Allow his scientists to be interviewed with them and their families safely out of Iraq, hand over the nuclear plans, etc. But compliance needed to be complete and immediate - not “pretty good, considering” or “not bad for a lying, murderous tyrant”, or “he will probably come completely clean sometime in the next twelve years”, or however you care to phrase it. Bush made it abundantly clear that this was one last chance - not the first in a series of last chances to see how much longer Saddam could play games with his obligations under the cease-fire. There comes a time to quit fooling around.

The shorthand answer is “axis of evil”. 9/11 made it clear that the American homeland was not safe from attack, and from attack that leads to spectacular losses as well.

For the same reasons, 9/11 led to an increased interest in Libyan terrorism, disarming North Korea, Iranian nukes, and other perceived threats to American and her interests. Even though none of those regimes were involved in 9/11 either.

Sort of similar to how an attack by Japanese on Pearl Harbor led to war with Germany, even though Germany was not involved. The US has, unfortunately, more than one enemy at a time, and suffering an attack from one is a good time to see about dealing with all the others as well. Hence things like the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, and so forth.

Gotta get dinner going. On preview, rjung, could you provide a cite conclusively proving that the labs could not have been used to produce bioweapons?

Regards,
Shodan

190

So, I guess we should not believe the conclusions of experts (after all, experts are sometimes wrong) but instead just continue to assume the worst? Here is the Guardian’s June 15th article on the conclusion of the official British investigation:

191

The point is that the inspections were able to find and supervise the destruction of what they estimated to be most if not all of the weapons stocks and to make sure the nuclear program was discontinued. (And, nothing unearthed so far goes against this.) You have been unable to explain to us how the parts to one centrifuge / nuclear plans posed any credible threat to us and it has been noted to you how utterly inadequate one centrifuge would be for creating a nuclear weapon.

As for “mobile weapons labs”, what labs are we talking about? And, what chemical munitions was he able to retain?

What, we were worried about defending Iran from an attack by Iraq with chemical weapons? I wasn’t aware of this concern. If you are talking Saudia Arabia or something like that, he had never used such weapons against a U.S. ally. Also, were the Saudis asking us to invade to protect them?

I don’t understand you here. You are saying there is no value to deterrence? That all you can do is pre-emptively attack because threat of retaliation will not deter him?

At any rate, I would argue that we had multiple lines of defense. We had sanctions, inspections, intelligence to prevent him from being able to be a threat…or at least severely limit the threat. We had the obvious threat of massive retaliation to prevent him from using anything he might have. And, we had evidence from the past that he was not suicidal and that he seemed to take actions only when he thought he could get away with it…with a small miscalculation in the case of the invasion of Kuwait, but a mistake he was unlikely to make on the scale of “Oh, I am sure they won’t react if I launch a WMD attack against them or their allies.”

I think Bush made it abundantly clear…and even clearer in retrospect…that none of his demands were made with the belief that they had any likelihood of being met (or that we could always argue they were being inadequately met). Such making of demands does not constitute diplomacy but merely the appearance of diplomacy.

192

And obviously Condie and Bush weren’t talking to the nuke inspectors, given their ominious references to “mushroom clouds”.

193

Who was under the impression that we were invulnerable? Bush? That would just serve to prove what an idiot he is.

Having learned this lesson the hard way, you are suggesting that the correct response is to go after anyone who looks at us funny? this strikes you as an American way of doing business?

I believe the following are true:

  1. Japan and Germany were allies.
  2. Germany declared war on us.
194

Yah, we all believed the Bushies were saying what they were saying because they had some evidence.

Our bad, I guess. But as the song goes, we won’t get fooled again - while you still keep parroting the party line. Fooled aleph-naught times, shame on Shodan.

Since about May 11, I’ve been 100% consistent on this. If there weren’t WMDs, the Bushies were lying to us. If there were…let’s put it this way: Rumsfeld went to great lengths to demonstrate that Baghdad could be taken without a heavy troop commitment. But the ultimate war objective, supposedly, wasn’t Baghdad, but keeping Iraqi WMDs out of terrorists’ hands. He didn’t bother to commit enough troops to secure the top few dozen suspected WMD sites.

This leads one to one of two conclusions: either (a) Rumsfeld believed there were no WMDs, which would have justified such a strategy, but means the Bushies lied to us; or (b) he believed there were WMDs, but didn’t give a flip if the places he expected them to be were looted to the ground, and the weapons sold or given to terrorists. IOW, he betrayed us.

So if we find WMDs at this late point, the real questions are: (a’) who else has found them first, and (b’) when do we try Rumsfeld for treason?

195

Does Scott Ritter not count, Shodan?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1446656.stm
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0721-02.htm

He was right. Bluesman was wrong.
And that Zinni didn’t say anything prior to the war (that I can find yet, anyway) proves nothing except that he’s been and continues to be pointed but subtle in his opposition, as one would expect of a former general taking an opposing view to an Administration he supported.
However, let’s take a few choice quotes from the first hit I got on Google when I searched for “Anthony Zinni”:

From http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/zinni.html

…transcript of a speech on Aug 23, 2002.

The above doesn’t sound to me like a man who believes Iraq was any sort of threat. Note that he distinctly and pointedly separated the war on terror from the war on Iraq. He didn’t come out and say they didn’t have WMDs, but he did try as hard as he could, IMO, to communicate to his audience that they either didn’t have any or had so few as to not pose a significant threat.

196

By elucidator <snip> “but that all of them, down to such crude weapons as mustard gas, have been proven to be non-existent.”

No, no they haven’t. Not finding any yet is not the same as proving they are non-existent. But then you should already know that.

Back to the OP, as the days pass it seems less and less likely that the Dems will produce a candidate capable of beating Bush. Lately they’ve been floundering, going backwards.

“Where have all the good men gone and where are all the Gods?
Where’s the street-wise Hercules to fight the rising odds?
Isn’t there a white knight upon a feiry steed?
Late at night I toss and I turn and I dream of what I need
I need a hero…”

From the song: “Holding Out For a Hero” by Bonnie Tyler

It doesn’t look like a hero clad in democratic cloth is going to appear.

197

RTFirefly: Yeah, I have to admit that this apparent failure to try very hard to secure those sites is perhaps even a bigger mystery than the lack of WMDs. I wish we would hear more about this…and more questions asked about this by the “liberal media”.

198

“Not finding any yet is not the same as proving they are non-existent.”

It is true that non existence cant easily be proven, but the onus generally doesnt lie in that direction.

Otherwise if I claim there are intelligent aliens on Jupiter guiding this whole mess by mind powers, noone can say Im wrong until the whole of Jupiter is investigated.

Otara

199

Bad analogy. Suppose I said it had been proven that no intelligent life existed on Jupiter. Would you call that a true statement?

200

No.

But think how silly Id look if I tried to use that as an argument to sidestep people saying my theory was looking a wee bit weak evidence wise.

Otara