That’s right, no WMD’s in Iraq
When discussing the ongoing search of Iraqi WMD’s on Meet the Press a couple weeks ago, Colin Powell, the most credible member of the Bush Administration, had this to say (quote from TalkingPointsMemo)
- David Kay is in charge of our effort now, with some 1,500 inspectors and analysts and experts. He will provide an interim report later this month, and I am confident when people see what David Kay puts forward they will see that there was no question that such weapons exist, existed, and so did the programs to develop one.
Man, that Kay report must have some pretty damning evidence in it. I’m sure when it comes out, all of us on the left are gonna feel pretty stupid. Oh wait…
- No weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq by the group tasked with looking for them, according to a Bush administration source who has spoken to the BBC.
The source told the presenter of BBC television’s Daily Politics show, Andrew Neil, this was the conclusion of the Iraq Survey Group’s interim report, which the source said was due to be published next month.
Mr Neil said the draft report says it was highly unlikely that weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were shipped out of the country to places like Syria before the US-led war on Iraq.
So Colin Powell has shown us that being the most credible member of the Bush Administration is about as prestigious as being the world’s tallest midget. (yeah, I stole that line…)
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I don’t know whether they’ll ever find the Weapons of Mass Destruction, but every person in a position to know, from Clinton to the left or the right, has admitted that 1)Iraq did have those weapons and a program designed to build them (Nuclear program excluded) and 2)Iraq completely avoided transparency when it came to their program, so even if they had destroyed them, who would know, and how could they prove it? When it comes down to it, we did a good thing in Iraq, and Saddam Hussein invited our incursion by flouting United Nations mandates with clear knowledge of what the potential outcome could be. Colin’s credibility on this issue is as firm as Clinton’s in my mind.
Comment by Earnest — September 25, 2003 @ 9:29 am
Have we done a good thing? I don’t know. I don’t think so by any measurement.
The rate of civilian deaths, murders, and the deaths of our troops is bad enough, but things are getting worse all the time. You do realize that the moment we leave, Iraq is going to be Iran II: Iran Goes West.
We were specifically lied to about our reasons for making war. This wasn’t about freeing the people of Iraq until it became apparent that we might not be facing at a credible threat after all. oops. And besides, if we’re so into freeing people and helping like, why did we not get involved in Liberia when they were begging us to? Why haven’t we done more for North Korea?
Furthermore, Saddam is still alive, Osama is still alive, and the terrorism issue isn’t going to go away. By every single measure, this entire exercise has been bungled, and now we, with the lives of our soldiers, potential terror victims, and with our economy, are the ones paying for it. We have incredible expenses that are being paid for on credit since the only thing the Bush team can come up with is more tax cuts.
Oh, and have you paid attention to Afghanistan lately? We’re fucking it up there too. Outside of Kabul, it’s pretty much the same as it was under the Taliban, except where it’s total anarchy.
And oh yeah, this wasn’t fought over WMD fucking programs. We are specifically told that there was an immediate, credible threat, and everyone who demanded more proof was ridiculed. We were right, and this situation is a mess.
Anyway, this was a mistake, and no matter how nice it was that we “Got rid” of Saddam, we haven’t actually succeeded, and things aren’t better there, and the people currently in charge are not the right people for the job.
Comment by Ross Angeles — September 25, 2003 @ 10:41 am
How could armchair pundits like you or me be more or less right, at the time, than the former President of the United States and leaders of both parties who acknowledged the danger Iraq posed? And aren’t things getting better there, though? When you live in a society where you’re free to say “Hey, maybe things aren’t going as well as we’d hoped, Mr. Bush,” as the Iraqis can now, that is ultimately better. When you don’t live in fear that your family is going to be deposited in a jail and never heard of again, that should be better. When you finally have programs in place for rebuilding infrastructure and schools all over Iraq, things are getting better. Iraq may not have been as present a danger as everyone feared, or it might have been– it’s a situation we won’t know for a long time, now. So lacking any real knowledge in that area, we have to look at the real outcomes:
1)our troops are committed and are dying 2)the war was divisive for our country and the world 3)a brutal regime has been toppled 4)a sponsor of terrorism has been uprooted 5)we have an opportunity to create a society that does not foment terrorism.
I think we’ve accepted a short term loss for a long term gain. I think the benefits clearly outweigh the losses.
Comment by Earnest — September 25, 2003 @ 11:36 am
But do the ends justify the means? I’m not willing to accept being lied to by the government, and lie to us they did. Even if you do argue that, ultimately, the ends (Saddam’s regime being toppled) justified the means, you have to admit that the US had no idea what they were planning to do in Iraq once they “liberated” it. Why? Because that wasn’t their original plan, and they didn’t stop to come up with a new one. The result is a total mess, globally, when it never had to be.
Comment by Kyle — September 25, 2003 @ 1:34 pm
I’ll accept that Iraq is probably a better place now, but as Annan implied, we’ve embarked on a scary slope of lawlessness with our pre-emptive tactics, losing respect from the world community and breeding more hatred in the Arab communities against the West. Iraq may be a better place, but we’re no safer.
Comment by Erin — September 25, 2003 @ 4:59 pm
Good point Erin. Without the rule of law and the willingness to abide by it, our treaties, intentions, and most of all, our ability to effectively relate to other nations as an honest ally just don’t work. Sure, Iraq might be slightly better off, but the long run cost is far scarier.
Need I bring up:
Iraqi national resentment, lack of cooperation from the locals. Not to mention the fact that the robber barons we’ve placed in charge of the reconstruction can’t do anything right.
The total abandonment (again) of Afghanistan, which is slowly turning into an anarchist narco state and rape utopia, kind of like before the Taliban took over. And it’s doing this in spite of Bush’s repeated promises that we would act differently than last time.
The fact that, no matter how you slice things, we were lied to brazenly about why to get involved in Iraq. If you’re going to hold Clinton accountable to the blow job thing, it’s far worse to ignore the lying, dissembling, name calling and utter disregard that characterized the bushies in the lead up to this war.
The international support immediately after 911 and during Afghanistan has been utterly eviscerated. This isn’t because those Dirty Euros hate America, it’s because they fear our, no, not our, the republican’s president.
The manipulation of public opinion by shamelessly using wartime resources to promote the Bush agenda (Jet landing, anyone?). If Clinton did that, he would have been impeached inside of two weeks.
Finally, Fuckface Bin Ladin is still on the loose. What the hell is that about?
….
If Iraq has been a short term failure, the Bush Foreign policy program is a long run disaster, and nothing, not even the unlikely event that Iraq ends up not turning into a theocracy, will change that. This isn’t being unfair or intellectually dishonest, this is simply looking at reality and admitting that we’re fucked. And we didn’t have to be fucked. If the Bush boys had listened to reason and acted, in bush’s words, with Humility, we might be in a much better position.
Comment by Ross Angeles — September 25, 2003 @ 5:33 pm
BTW, that was a very general post, meant to address several things at once. I didn’t mean to sound like I was speaking directly to Erin when I menation Clinton’s impeachement, or the other cases when I was seemingly speaking directly to Erin. The only thing directly related to her post was my giving props to it.
Comment by Ross Angeles — September 25, 2003 @ 5:40 pm
But once again the picture is much bigger. For instance, the resentment of the Americans in Iraq is larger in Baghdad than in the rest of Iraq. Also, the lawlessness you refer to can be looked at one of two ways. Obviously, we decided to go it alone, smacking France, Russia, and Germany in their collective faces, but if you threaten but never punish for misbehavior, your threats lose their effectiveness, promoting much more widespread misbehavior. As we were acting well within the confines of all UN Mandates, we were not really acting lawlessly, and we were preventing further lawlessness.
Were we lied to? I repeat my insistence that every credible person believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The only people who didn’t believe they were there were Green Party members who would salt their fries with Anthrax just to prove that Iraq was safe.
Comment by Earnest — September 26, 2003 @ 9:05 am
Were we lied to? I repeat my insistence that every credible person believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
But we were lied to. It’s not about what we believed. I agreed with the conventional wisdom that Saddam probably had WMD’s, but I don’t think he ever posed an immediate threat to our safety the way al Qaeda does now. In order to try to convince Americans that Saddam was either (a) a bigger threat that al Qaeda or (b) associated with al Qaeda, the president and his administration lied. They lied to the American people, they lied to the U.N., and they lied to Congress. In the past year there has been so much time and money spent on this Iraq war that there have been substantial cutbacks in the effort to keep us safe from the people who have already attacked us.
In the past year, we’ve been told again and again that the president and his administration knew that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. What this latest report shows is that he didn’t know shit. Bush may have believed that Iraq was a threat, but, unlike may of his programs, warfare should never be “faith-based”.
Comment by greg — September 26, 2003 @ 10:38 am
Actually, there were many hundreds of credible people who very vocally insisted that there weren’t any weapons, or that there wasn’t really any proof, not enough to go to war, and that more time was needed. Theyw eren’t just Green party people, they included former inspectors, the UN, American politicians.
Comment by Ross Angeles — September 26, 2003 @ 11:59 am
Point taken, Greg. The administration did distort the concreteness of its position, and for that, maybe I should be upset. I just find it very hard to be upset with what has happened there. Even if the ends don’t justify the means, is there anyone who is truly upset with the ends? Or is it all spite directed at the man who affected those ends?
Comment by Earnest — September 26, 2003 @ 6:38 pm