Rove was the source of the Plame leak... so it appears

You would have thought that if Saddam didn't have WMD he would have come clean with UN weapons inspectors.

Though I agree that Saddam was playing games with the west, the statement above strikes me as funny. You're saying, if Saddam didn't have WMd he should have come clean and told the UN inspectors... what? That he didn't have any? Isn't that what he told them? Or, if he didn't have them he should have told them where they were? The whole thing seems impossible to me.

Freeduck writes

Quote:

Though I agree that Saddam was playing games with the west, the statement above strikes me as funny. You're saying, if Saddam didn't have WMd he should have come clean and told the UN inspectors... what? That he didn't have any? Isn't that what he told them? Or, if he didn't have them he should have told them where they were? The whole thing seems impossible to me.

If he didn't have them he should have invited the inspectors into any and every factory, office building, warehouse, etc. etc. etc. they asked to inspect. He didn't do that. He stalled them, diverted them, refused them for days and weeks at a time--plenty of time to move any incriminating evidence out of whatever facility. This is clearly described in the reports from the inspection team, was acknowledged by the UN, and was denounced on the floor of the House and Senate long before George W Bush took office. In fact in at least one official multi-signed letters from leading Democrats, President Clinton was urged to take action based purely on Saddam's thwarting of the inspection teams and presumed build up of WMD.

What I think is that he lied and tricked, but I'm not entirely sure that we can know his motives for that. One motive above seems reasonable. Another possibility is that he believed that the US was spying on him through the UN and he was trying to thwart that.

No matter what the trickery, it seems that what we did was spend 10 or more years making sure that he was disarmed and then invaded the country only after it had been weakened to a point where there would not be much resistance. To some, we might look like a big bad pussy for that.

BTW, I don't think it would have mattered if he'd done more to let them in, when it comes down to it, it is impossible to prove that something does not exist.

In his syndicated column Monday, Novak provided some details after having been largely silent about his role. He did not dispute that a former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow told him he should not print Plame's name during conversations they had before the column was published.

But Novak reasserted that no CIA official ever told him in advance "that Valerie Plame Wilson's disclosure would endanger her or anybody else."

January 26, 1998

The Honorable William J. Clinton
President of the United States
Washington, DC

Dear Mr. President:

We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War.  In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat.  We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world.  That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power.  We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.



The policy of "containment" of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished.  Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq's chemical and biological weapons production.  The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam's secrets.  As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons.

Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East.  It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world's supply of oil will all be put at hazard.  As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat.

Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.



We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.

We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.
Sincerely,



Elliott Abrams    Richard L. Armitage    William J. Bennett



Jeffrey Bergner    John Bolton    Paula Dobriansky



Francis Fukuyama    Robert Kagan    Zalmay Khalilzad



William Kristol    Richard Perle    Peter W. Rodman



Donald Rumsfeld    William Schneider, Jr.    Vin Weber



Paul Wolfowitz    R. James Woolsey    Robert B. Zoellick

Careful, ehBeth. You're dangerously close to steering this thread back on topic.

<Careening towards the subjects at hand>

So, you're Bob Novak and you've been told by a source at the CIA not to publish Plame's name, ...What are they going to do? Make a federal case out of it?

Joe(Good Morning, Mr. Novak. If you accept this mission...)Nation

hurl cursewords at the guy that you've had heated television debates with for years, without cursing