Die-hard neocon lunatic and warmonger - William Kristol

The Bush administration's initial argument for Saddam's ouster was a plausible belief that Saddam still possessed WMD. All major western national intelligence services agreed with this scenario. This info, and the knowledge that Saddam had ties to known terrorist groups who might be allowed access to these weapons, and backed by a number of U.N. resolutions (one being unusually, for the U.N., firmly worded and allowing forceful international intervention) gave Bush the legitimacy he felt was needed for the invasion. The problem came when the U.S. could not produce the WMD and the administration seemed to switch reasoning in mid-stream for the war to Saddam being just a nasty dictator whose absence benefited, well, everyone. This was an arguably unsatisfying argument for the war and, although true, was not going to appease those initially against the invasion. Why Kristol is beating this dead horse is a mystery. He usually and correctly points out this is water under the bridge and the real and present issue hinges on how we handle the Iraq problem going forward.

What I have always wondered about was the administration's mishandling of the post invasion period. That the invasion would vanquish Saddam's forces was never in question (only the time and cost in American blood was). This callous disregard for the post war planning was manifest in the Marines' orders to only protect the oil ministry, looting elsewhere was rampant and ignored. Further actions involving Iraqi Army disbandment and debathification seemed poorly thought through, at best. This action of Bush's administration speaks louder than its words professing its concern about the ultimate welfare of the Iraqi people. This, of course, is just as irresponsible as the professions of those that would set a timetable for or just have the U.S. unilaterally pull out of Iraq immediately.

JM

Nonsense. At no point was there agreement that the remote risk of Saddam being in possession of WMD warranted a war of aggression against Iraq.

Western intelligence services actually warned their American counterparts that their administration, in making the case for an invasion of Iraq, was relying on highly doubtful or even discredited intelligence. The German Federal Intelligence Service warned the US Government that the claims of "Curveball" about mobile Iraqi WMD labs were highly questionable, that the guy was regarded as "crazy ... out of control", as a "congenital liar." Nevertheless, his claims ended up in Bush's speeches as well as Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council.

Same with the Niger yellowcake forgeries. European intelligence services had doubts about the authenticity from the beginning (as did the CIA). In 2003, the IAEA finally determined that the determine that the documents were fake - crude forgeries that even contained blunt mistakes like incorrect names of Nigerian officials. Nevertheless, those claims ended up in Bush's State of the Union address.



Maybe you'll also remember the Security Conference in Munich, right before the US invasion, in 2003. Germany's foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, even broke the protocol to address Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld personally, saying, in English: "You have to make the case in a democracy. You have to be convinced yourself, and excuse me, I am not convinced. [...] This is the problem, you can't go to the public when you don't believe in this."

Doesn't sound as if the intelligence he had made it plausible that "that Saddam still possessed WMD."


I mean, you can believe in whatever you think is the reason for the Bush administration to tell the American public that they knew exactly that Saddam was in possession of WMD, and even knew the location of where they were hidden. You can believe that they willfully lied to the American public, that they knowingly left out information that would have shown the claims to be wrong, or that the CIA was completely incompetent and failed to reach the conclusions that other intelligence services apparently had reached. But claiming that "all major western national intelligence services" were agreeing that Saddam was still in possession of WMD - that's just ridiculous.