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June 23, 2006
WMD find
Lefty blog Progressive U leaps to the defense of Saddam Hussein on the news that 500 chemical weapons cannisters were found in Iraq.
It's obvious that Republicans will spin this "incredible" news so that they may feed their base a little read meat. Fox News has put up a report scouring the whole country, trying to insinuate that there are further weapons yet to be found. Fox also claims that this shows that Hussein was lying when he said all his WMD had been destroyed and that the weapons inspectors weren't able to locate a stockpile after years of inspections.
In typical fashion, a Washington Post report focuses on Democratic reaction to the news.
Yesterday, however, Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the intelligence panel, said the study contained "nothing new" and questioned the timing of its release, coming as it did in the midst of congressional debates on the war in Iraq.
To her question on the timing, Strategy Page offers this:
If the United States were to have announced WMD finds right away, it could have told terrorists (including those from al-Qaeda) where to look to locate chemical weapons. This would have placed troops at risk – for a marginal gain in public relations. A successful al-Qaeda chemical attack would have been a huge boost for their propaganda efforts as well, enabling them to get recruits and support (many people want to back a winner), and it would have caused a decline in American morale in Iraq and on the home front.
The other problem is that immediate disclosure could have exposed informants. Protecting informants who provide the location of caches is vital. Not only do dead informants tell no tales, their deaths silence other potential informants – because they want to keep on living. A lack of informants leads to a lack of human intelligence, and the troops don't like being sent out on missions while short on intelligence – it's easy to get killed.
For some, it makes no difference what they find in Iraq.
Posted by Tom Bowler at 06:50 PM | Permalink
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Tracked on Jun 26, 2006 7:22:49 AM
Comments
For some, it makes no difference what they find in Iraq.
Yes, I mean its not like we were told that we would find active smallpox, anthrax, botulism programs, several thousand tons of chemical weapons, UAVs capable of spraying WMDs, 7 mobile bio labs, a reconstituted nuclear weapons program, and active and huge chemical stockpile, a 45 minute deployment capacity.
No, we were told we'd find a few hundred old shells, pre-1991, possibly forgotten in the Iran-Iraq war. Even the ISG predicted we'd find some.
Posted by: Jon | Jun 24, 2006 12:01:44 AM
We were told we'd find a few hundred old shells? Here's the CIA assessment as of October 2002:
Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade.Baghdad hides large portions of Iraq's WMD efforts. Revelations after the Gulf war starkly demonstrate the extensive efforts undertaken by Iraq to deny information.
Since inspections ended in 1998, Iraq has maintained its chemical weapons effort, energized its missile program, and invested more heavily in biological weapons; most analysts assess Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.
It was hardly the conventional wisdom that there were only a few hundred old shells. Even Bill Clinton was convinced Iraq had WMD:
Former US president Bill Clinton said in October during a visit to Portugal that he was convinced Iraq had weapons of mass destruction up until the fall of Saddam Hussein, Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso said."When Clinton was here recently he told me he was absolutely convinced, given his years in the White House and the access to privileged information which he had, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction until the end of the Saddam regime," he said in an interview with Portuguese cable news channel SIC Noticias.
It's only with 20-20 hindsight that people can suggest we should have known there were no WMD in Iraq. There was also the question of Saddam Hussein's intentions. The ISG report to which you refer had in it's key findings:
• The introduction of the Oil-For-Food program (OFF) in late 1996 was a key turning point for the Regime. OFF rescued Baghdad’s economy from a terminal decline created by sanctions. The Regime quickly came to see that OFF could be corrupted to acquire foreign exchange both to further undermine sanctions and to provide the means to enhance dual-use infrastructure and potential WMD-related development.• By 2000-2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of sanctions and undermine their
international support. Iraq was within striking distance of a de facto end to the sanctions regime, both in
terms of oil exports and the trade embargo, by the end of 1999.Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq’s WMD capability—which was essentially destroyed in 1991—after sanctions
were removed and Iraq’s economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that
which previously existed. Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability—in an incremental fashion,
irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks—but he intended to focus on ballistic
missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities.
I notice the "no imminent threat" argument is making a comeback. Read the resolution that John Kerry et. al. voted for. There's a lot more in it than WMD and there's no mention of an imminent threat. That was an invention of the Democrats. Rather than argue that there was an imminent threat, the Administration consistently warned against allowing a threat to develop.
"We cannot defend America and our friends by hoping for the best. We cannot put our faith in the word of tyrants, who solemnly sign non-proliferation treaties, and then systemically break them. If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long."
While Saddam Hussein was not an imminent threat, he was an ultimate threat. To suggest otherwise or to think he could be contained is naive.
One last thing. No one has been able to confirm or deny reports that weapons were transported out of Iraq in the days leading up to the invasion. Saddam Hussein had plenty of warning.
Posted by: Tom Bowler | Jun 24, 2006 8:31:36 AM
