We went to war over THIS?

And the prize for 'saying best in one line what I would have labored over for paragraphs' goes to ...



Bravo.

Sofia, the desert is big, it's true. But there are three - four - crucial points to be made there:

1. (the obvious one): there have been a great many troops out there ... and considering finding them was one of the most crucial points for Bush and Blair's war rationale, one would think they've looked every possible place ...

2. (the point Craven was making): how much WMD can be taken how well where? Even if bits and pieces are left buried in the sand in an improbable place - it's not, realistically - even when pasted all back together again - going to be anything that would amount to any imminent threat to world peace or the safety of the USA. Which was the case that was made, since small-scale bits and pieces can be found around the region - it was the big threat Iraq posed that was reason for war.

3. Bush didnt just somehow suspect Saddam had WMD, on some general level. He made his case based on two things. First, there were the reports from the weapon inspectors, which verified that, back in 1997, Saddam still had WMD, and where. (Be it already just a fraction of what he once had). But here the rub is that last year, the weapon inspectors quite adamantly made the case that right now, we couldnt be sure what they still had, and therefore we should not go to war. (You'll remember their head, Blix, saying so, to the chagrin of Bush).

Bush, though, dismissed their reports, arguing, explicitly, that even though the inspectors may not have been finding much yet, he had additional intelligence that showed him where Saddam was making and storing WMD. He couldnt unfortunately share all that intel, and the intel that he shared was judged doubtful by the UN, but thats what he said: we know Saddam still has them, because we know specifically where he still has what.

Ergo: its not that we 'knew' Saddam "had some", and thus they must "still be somewhere" - it's the other way around. We(=Bush) based our belief that he had some on the information we had about where, what and how. If that information is now disproven - then there is no ground for the belief, anymore. Cause our belief was based on stuff that was proven wrong.

(I base the submission that the intel was disproven on the fact that none of the places mentioned in it showed any trace of recent WMD storage or production. It may be easy to move and hide some stuff, but to have left no trace, whatsoever, in none of those places - while moving the stuff amidst war-time anarchy? Saddam's people would have had to be unprecedently good - and the war showed that, well, they werent.)

E.g. - say - I know my husband is having an affair, because my best friend told me that she saw him book into room 137 of the Holiday Inn with Kathy. I'm not surprised, cause he had affairs when he was with his previous wife, too. So I confront him about it, and he shows me that he was in London, that night, and that Kathy, in fact, has been in Australia for the past ten months. Furthermore, when I doublecheck with Holiday Inn, it turns out there was a cantankerous octogenarian in room 137.

Now most people would then say: my info apparently was wrong, so I guess my husband didn't have an affair. But you seem to be saying: well, this case is not closed! Because my info said that he was having an affair with Kathy, and I was pretty damn sure of that info; just cause the pieces of evidence I had have all been disproven so far, doesnt mean he didn't have sleep with Kathy - the evidence might still be out there!

But the thing is, those pieces of evidence were the reason you were so pretty damn sure he had that affair.

Same here. It's not that we knew Saddam "had some", so they must "still be somewhere" - we 'knew' he had them, because of the info we had about where & how. And that info has now been disproven. Ergo ...

It's not that we here claim "proof of knowledge" that there are no WMD; it's that every proof that had been brought for the proposition that there were still WMD, has now been disproven - and that, logically, there is thus no more reason to believe the proposition. Its about logic more than some kind of absolute knowledge.

4. The desert may be endless, but our waiting is irrelevant now, anyhow - even the Bush people are not looking anymore. Even Kay, the man who Believed in Iraqi WMD, the last expert standing whom Timber here relied on - even he has given up. They're packing up and rolling out. If there is anything out there in the desert, the only way we'll ever find it is by accident.

Well, to use your caveat, I don't know but I do not believe Bush thought Iraq was an imminent threat.

I think Bush played up the threat and the WMD issue because it was the strongest legal case.

I think the urgency had more to do with the fact that mobilization can't be indefinite and that 9/11 political capital was finite.

My opinion is that he correctly saw it as the only window in which such a war would be feasable for reasons related to political capital and that he used the WMD/threat issue because if both capitalized on said capital and was the only legal grounds for invasion.

Personally I don't care about lies and such. But I do think there was a deliberate campaign and a very intelligent one. For example, elsewhere we are talking about how many Americans believe that Saddam was involved in 9/11.

At one point it was almost nothing. The administration started using Saddam in the same sentence as 9/11 in a concerted effort and afterwards the figures rose as high as 79%.

But I too think democracy is long overdue in the ME.

And if there were an international institution to dispose of dictators on grounds of crimes against humanity (such as the ICC that the US hates) I would have strongly advocated its use to grant a legal mandate to remove Saddam.

Thing is, it was justified under pre-emption. And a false casus belli in pre-emption is a danger to sovereignty. Since a danger to sovereignty is what Saddam was being sold as (invading Kuwait was an issue of a breach of sovereignty) I found it counter-productive.

Regime change was something I always supported. It's been a longstanding US position as well.

What I do not support is undermining sovereignty and rule of law through a false casus belli.

If it had been sold on humanitarian grounds I'd have been one of its active salesmen.

What is being ignored in this current discussion is the corroberation by O'Neil of what so many have long suspected--that Bush intended to get Saddam from the day one. This throws into question any statement, or appeal to secure information, that he may have made. The Romans were at least honest with the expression causus belli. Although it is now used to mean the reason for going to war, to the Romans, it meant the excuse for going to war. The "yellow cake" story, discredited long before Bush obliquely referred to it in his state of the union message a year ago, and the fantasy land link of Hussein to Al Qaeda were both excuses, not reasons.

I would add to Nimh's points:

1. We have interviewed literally hundreds of Iraqi scientists who were supposedly involved in Saddams WMD program. Not a single one of them has said that Iraq has any WMD's or was in the process of making any WMD's. These scientists have nothing to lose and everything to gain from co-operating with us - yet they still stand their ground. Every single one of them.

2. We have Saddam himself in custody, and despite reports that he is 'singing like a bird', he has yet to lead us to any WMD's or direct us to any evidence at all that would help our cause.

3. Moving, storing, and using WMD's would require thousands of trained soldiers. Even after the war has ended, not a single Iraqi has come forward to direct us to any WMD sites. It is patently retarded to think that these high profile weapons could be built, stored and moved without scores of Iraqis knowing about it. Yet, not one of them has come forward.

4. Bush said, repeatedly and with great conviction, that he knew of "hundreds" of sites where he suspected weapons of mass destruction existed. All have been investigated and none have turned up. This goes to show that whatever intelligence he was operating on was false, and therefore, it throws into doubt the whole idea of WMD's in Iraq.

Ah, but there are so many instances of administrative retardation to point out, and so little time. It is a struggle to prioritize.

The thing is, it wasn't a case of: we had overwhelming evidence ("Saddam said it, himself! We have it on tape!") -- and just cause now, flabbergastingly, they turn out to have been wrong -- one can not judge in hindsight, cause we could never have known that -- so at the time, what else could we have done but act, considering the evidence? (Hope that wasn't too raucous a summary).

Its not like that, because what that line of rationalisation ignores is that, at the time, already, half the world was warning us that the suggested evidence - in as far as we got to see it - looked bogus or was at the least very doubtful -- and that it would thus be highly irresponsible to go to war over it. Not just NYT pundits - but government officials, military experts and the weapon inspectors team itself.



Me, too.

heeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee . . .


okbye

I was always against this war as well and Bush needs to go before he completely destroys America, so I guess I'm on the LIST as well.

Ok I guess it's time to confess.
I've got them. It was a genuine accident, I was checking out of the Bagdhad Hilton at the end of my holiday last year and I inadvertently picked up the wrong suitcase.

It wasn't until I go home I realised something was wrong as I knew that I hadn't bought Auntie Jean an Anthrax bomb as a momento of Basra and Grandpa's pacemaker stopped due to the EMP as his tactical nuke went off.

Look, anyone can make a mistake OK? Is it really necessary to continually harrass me on every news channel, in every newspaper (excpet the National Enquirer who report the Mars Rover has uncovered them) and with messages on the 'net?

I'd return them, I really would, but with increased airport security there's fat chance of me getting on the Bagdhad shuttle and discretely leaving the suitcase outside of mission HQ.

As a consequence I've buried them where no one will ever find them, and the fact that the azeleas in my back garden seem to be suffering from radiation sickness is pure coincidence.

So enough already! I've done my mea culpa, can I now just get on with my life? Please!

I haven't seen anyone mention the fact that 8000 INNOCENT IRAQI CIVILIANS DIED, so that Bush could search for these phantom weapons.

Dead and wounded Iraqis
Dead and wounded Iraqis don't matter much if anything to most people, especially Americans. If no Americans had been killed or wounded there, Iraq would have been a footnote in the News.

I detect a great deal of cynicism here. Craven appears to be saying Bush exploited the tragedy of 911 to implement his policy of invading Iraq.



And




And Setanta seems to doubt the integrity of the reasons for starting the war in the first place.



What am I, an innocent abroad in these matters, supposed to make of this?

Well perhaps not that innocent

I watched this programme and this is exactly how it came across.

The BBC decided to play "opposition" to the government, rather than impartial observer and faithful reporter.

Perhaps it's not all that complicated.

Someone (can't remember his name) on a local talk show last night (Beat the Press with Emily Rooney) said Bush WANTS to be a war president - it gives him the unquestioning support of enough patriotic Americans to get him re-elected. It deflects attention from other issues.

It takes a persistent and/or courageous media to get the word out that the war was contrived for political gain, that diplomacy has suffered near irreparable damage, that the economy is working only for the wealthy, that health care has been ignored, that education has been insulted (by the NChLB fiasco), that our foreign policy is now in the hands of radical right-wingers who have absurdly espoused pre-emption as a necessary tool to bring "peace" to the world, and that we are less safe than we were four years ago because of increased anti-American resentment generated by a transparently contrived war.

So, y'think the media is up to the task?

Superb post, Angie.

Frank, you are my A2K soul mate ! :

Ringo Bingo!

it's been done before, it'll be done again.

Ladies and gentlemen please be upstanding for your next President Mr G.W. Bush

Red Herrings make a good Hitchcock movie and lousy politics. Anyone still falling for this deception should consult with a therapist who is an expert in cognitive therepy.