Contrasts nicely with this, from Sec. Powell’s interview of May 16 (yesterday) with Tim Russert:
(bolding mine)
Completely contradictory? Of course not. The Fox News guy seems more than slightly zealous, however.
I think people should keep in mind that so far it is only the preliminary tests that have suggested that Sarin gas was found. I’m not saying that it isn’t sarin, but I think people should at least wait for the definitive tests before they start gloating. In the past there have been times when the administration thought they found a nerve agent only to discover that it was something else.
That being said, even if it is sarin, it sounds as though this shell was left over from the 80s when Iraq was fighting Iran. The fact that an unused shell managed to stick around for 20 years doesn’t seem like much of a reason to go to war.
It will be interesting to see how this administration plays this bit. When we couldn’t find WMD the rationale changed to ending Saddam’s torture chambers. After Abu Gharib one might consider it a bit odd to continue with that line of justification. Will the administration return to the WMD justification based on this 20 year old artillery shell?
Man, this story is weak. Pretty much everyone thought there might be some stray material left over from before GWI. How is this news? This is a long, long, loooong way away from the claims that Bushco made about ongoing weapons programs and thousands of stocks ready to go.
Furthermore, anything we find now cannot be used to retroactively jsutify the inavasion. Any attempt by Bush or his lovers to construe this as a moral victory is laugably pathetic.
Whatever.
Look, it’s really simple. The Bush Administration, from the President on down, sold us the war based on Saddam’s WMDs representing a ‘grave and gathering’ threat that couldn’t be allowed to ripen. Particularly worrisome, they said, was the possibility that Saddam’s WMDs could find their way into the hands of terrrorists.
So when we invaded Iraq, what was priority #1? To quickly secure the most likely WMD sites to keep the WMDs from falling into the wrong hands?
As I beat to death in this thread about a year ago, Rumsfeld’s war plan didn’t allow for enough troops both to secure WMD sites we came across, and race towards Baghdad at optimum speed. So which goal did we sacrifice? Guarding the WMD sites. So we roared on to Baghdad, leaving the prospective WMD sites unguarded, then when our special find-the-WMD squad got to these sites a few days later, they’d find the sites had been looted to the ground.
IOW, the war was never about WMDs.
In fact, there are three possibilities:
(1) The Bushies knew in advance that the WMD claim was largely bullshit - that if Saddam had any, they didn’t represent a threat.
That’s a pretty serious allegation, but it’s the kindest of the three.
(2) There were WMDs, the Bushies knew that, but they just didn’t bother to secure them during the invasion.
If this is true, then some terrorists somewhere may well have their hands on looted WMDs from Saddam’s stash, and are just waiting for the best chance to use them on us.
If this should turn out to be true, I’d regard the Bush/Rumsfeld war plan as an act of treason.
(3) The Bushies believed there were WMDs, but they were wrong.
In terms of their personal depravity, this is equivalent to #2, but we dodged the bullet.
So you see, at this point, finding WMDs does not let Bush off the hook. It would have quite the opposite effect, once you think it through.
Agreed, but have you heard any yet?
(I may have missed some, as I just got out of the shower and haven’t yet caught up on the news! 
)
Sure it’s pathetic, but will it be effective? My main concern is that it will be totally effective.
I think you lost me. That might be because I’ve been up since 2:30 or so (but I got 7 hours’ sleep before, so Iunno), but humor me:) I read your post twice, and I usually don’t have to read anything you write twice, so maybe it isn’t just me, or maybe it is.
You said that, (IYO, absent any total brainfart on the part of the US Armed Forces, and a qualifier I’m using) Rumsfeld’s plan was so lacking that it was clear to you that his intent wasn’t to find WMDs. I can see (though I’m not sure I agree) the idea that finding WMD doesn’t let Bush off the hook. I’m not sure I understand (makes agreeing even more difficult:D) how it hoists Bush by his own petard … or am I extending your words further than you meant them to go?
Color me confused. Got the time and patience to explain it to me?
iampunha, My take, and forgive me if I am talking out of turn here, is that if the war was actually about WMD and based on accurate intelligence (as it was sold) that when we invaded we should have been able to march straight to where these massive stockpiles, and we would have had enough people to make sure that they were secure. The fact that we didn’t do so seems to imply that someone, somewhere either believed the intelligence and didn’t care (chilling) or knew from the start that the case for the war was weak and that we had some other agenda.
Either way, whatever we find now at best is dumb luck.
I’ll take a crack at this:
The “Shock and Awe” of the Blitzkrieg would convince the US and England to make peace pronto. Churchill would give Hitler a blowjob to keep him from butchering the Expeditionary Force and invading the island. Europe is a German State to this day.
The Japanese don’t even bother with Pearl Harbour. They put the smack down in all the other places and know we won’t lift a finger. They push thru Burma, India and wind up in Iran, producing oil for all the new Mitsubishis and Subarus.
Now, lets say we only had instant media coverage from D-Day on:
Images of beachs littered with dead Americans, reports of staggering losses to “Friendly Fire”, pictures of dead paratroopers hanging in trees- shot before they hit the ground would cause such an uproar in the States that FDR would be tarred and feathered and we would have Lindburgh in the White House signing a treaty with his old pal Adolph by the end of the week.
How did I do? What were we talking about?
Hitler only had one ball.
By contrast, news networks (except Fox News) will spin this as Bush’s fault for putting soldiers in harm’s way, and say that we should pull out of Iraq.
Which is why, had we not gone into Iraq and removed Saddam immediately, he may have had time to use the weapons he was seeking to produce this huge stash of which you speak.
Happy to try again, pun. Binarydrone basically has it right, though. I think ‘are we safe?’ is a more essential question than ‘who was right?’ It isn’t to their credit if they were right about WMDs, if their war plan didn’t safeguard against the possibility of their being right about WMDs. In fact, it’s just the opposite.
Anyhow, my quick summary:
-
We claimed we were going to war to prevent Saddam’s WMDs from falling into the hands of terrorists.
-
So theoretically, our principal war aim was to come out of the war in control of any and all WMDs and production facilities that Saddam had before the war.
-
We failed to secure prospective WMD sites as they came into our hands.
-
This was a direct consequence of the war plan.
-
By the time we had a chance to inspect those sites, they’d been looted to the ground.
Now, either there had or hadn’t been WMDs at these sites; and the Bushies either believed or didn’t believe they were there. So:
A) If there were WMDs at these sites, then they were removed from the sites by looters. They could still be used against us now. And that possibility would be the fault of those who authored and approved the war plan that resulted in the WMD sites being left unguarded. Or:
B) If there weren’t WMDs at these sites, then we’re safe from that threat.
So if we find evidence now that Saddam had WMDs, what does that tell us? That we’re in serious danger on account of their criminal incompetence. But if there were no WMDs, the only issue is the Bushies’ dishonesty.
“Hey may have”?
The only thing he had was intent, and to be honest I don’t even think he had that. He had a decade since the last war to get up and running again, and yet there is literally nothing over in Iraq that indicates he wanted to do so. He has no weapons, he had no infrastructure to maintain them, and he had no capabilities to produce them.
I find it laughable that he could just…ATTACKUSTHISSECOND!!!
It would have taken him years to get to the point we were saying he was already at. In the meantime we would have noticed all this new infrastructure popping up.
I’ll second this.
Of course, it would be more convincing if we could document 500 of these things in a shed in Syria, autographed by Saddam himself. And even then, it would be a tough sell to convince many people that we’re better off now than before the war.
Duffer said
In fact, German submarines sank quite a few ships off the Atlantic coast of Florida, as well as in the Gulf of Mexico. Plus, we (the USA) captured a few (I can’t remember the number) German spies inside the US.
And, just as a reminder, the US Navy fought a rather extended engagement against Japanese troops in the Aleutian Islands. My ex-FIL took part in that battle.
Iraq, on the other hand, was never a threat to US soil.
Look, I’m not refusing new evidence, I’m just doing a preemptive eye roll in advance of my prediction that the Bush Admin will blow this out of proportion.
Knowing the American public, saying we found banned chemical weapons will conjure up visions of massive stockpiles, when in reality the claim only holds up under the weakest of technicalities. None the less, they get to use it now.
If it is Sarin, this makes it a whole new ballgame.
So, like, who makes Sarin? I’m assuming The US never has? Or at least not would not have had any on hand to provide to Saddam. And why do you suggest that it would make a difference if it was Sarin as opposed to a banned variety of laughing gas?
This, despite the fact that in the past year, the Administration has actually been very conservative in evaluating reports of WMD. The press has often gone off half-cocked at early reports, but the government has more often than not adopted a “let’s wait for the analysis” stance. The one possible exception to this that I can think of is the trailers which might have, but almost certainly weren’t used for mixing up chemical weapons. But even then, the Feds admitted that the evidence was ambiguous.
So basically, what you’re employing is one of the scummier tricks of rhetoric. “I predict that my opponent is going to do A. Anyone who does A is a scoundrel. Therefore, my opponent is a scoundrel.”
Let me clarify.
What I meant to say was if this shell had Sarin in it, they can now claim to have found WMD, and then it becomes a whole new PR/semantics ballgame, IMHO, for the worse, YMMV.
Thank you for your presumtuous concern for my proneness to gullibility. What is your degree of expertise on WMD’s, and the Bush cabinet’s and the Iraq Governing body’s policy hereto, which allows you immunity to such mass gullibility?
I am not advocating the existence of WMD’s to jusify war; and I’m not advocating the lack of WMD’s to justify not having a war. What I am advocating is: chill out. I don’t know; and neither does anybody on this MB. Let’s see what happens.
Kind of a shame then that they didn’t adopt that stance before the invasion then, ain’t it?
Remember this golden oldie?
“Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.” --George W. Bush, 17 March 2003
So, well over a year after the invasion is over, with over 800 U.S. soldiers dead, we have at last managed to secure one rusty can in the desert. I hope they remembered to dust the fragments for prints, in case Saddam Hussein himself buried it there by the side of the road, as part of his devious “hide the weapons instead of using them when invaded” strategy to make the Bush Administration look foolish in the eyes of gullible American liberals.
I have to admit, I never thought that finding genuine evidence of WMD’s* in postwar Iraq would actually make the pro-war arguments look more stupid, but there you go. Life is full of surprises.
*Well, technically, “WMD,” singular…so far! Except that it didn’t manage to actually destroy anyone or anything other than itself. So, really, “Weapon of Self-Destruction,” then, I guess. Could be that the decade-plus expiration date had something to do with that, or maybe the insurgents forgot to shake it up thoroughly beforehand. Assuming, of course, that the field tests were correct and we don’t hear in the next few days that, whoops, sorry, the shell actually contained powdered milk or something.