With Americans increasingly convinced that the Bush Administration lied to sell the war in Iraq, Bush and his defenders are pushing an idea that’s been refuted quite a few times before, but obviously needs another go. This is the claim that “everyone believed that Saddam had WMD’s”. Hence, it’s argued, even if the Administration misread the evidence, this was an honest mistake, shared by others. The argument is bolstered by citations from the Clinton Administration, Democrats who supported the war and claims about the concurrence of the French and other intelligence services.
For this argument to hold up, it’s obviously necessary that people believed in Saddam’s weapons independently of what they were told by Bush and Blair. After all, the whole point of the criticism is that the Administration’s lies led people to support the war.
It’s easy enough to support the claim that independent observers generally believed that Saddam had WMD’s with citations from 2002 and earlier. The evidence supported such a belief. Saddam was known to have used chemical weapons in the past, and to have attempted to produce nuclear and biological weapons. Moreover, he had first obstructed and eventually expelled the UN inspectors who were supposed to check that his weapons and facilities had been destroyed. This belief was reinforced by the claims made by Bush and Blair, who asserted that they had detailed knowledge about Saddam’s weapons programs. It was reflected in the unanimous passage of UNSC Resolution 1441, requiring Iraq to declare all its weapons and readmit inspectors.
The problem for the Bush argument is that the inspectors were in fact readmitted, inspected the sites that had been pointed to as likely targets, and found nothing. At this point, anyone who was not willing to rely on the word of Bush and Blair ought to have revised their beliefs and most in fact did so. For example, here’s my take on the issue, in January 2003, and this didn’t rely on inside information or special insight[1]. Most national governments that were in a position to make an independent judgement reached the same conclusion, a point reflected in the failure to get a second UNSC resolution supporting the war.
The conclusion to be drawn from the evidence after the inspections resumed was not that no weapons existed, but that there was not enough evidence to reach a conclusion and that inspections should continue. Again, most people who did not rely on the disinformation presented by Bush and Blair drew this conclusion.
Of course, a lot of people did believe, even after the inspections resumed and found nothing, that Saddam definitely had WMDs. But, almost always, this was because they placed credence in the claims of Bush and Blair, and particularly the willingness of Colin Powell to endorse them. As evidence that these claims were not dishonest, the fact that they fooled a lot of people points in the wrong direction.
fn1. My lack of special insight was evident in my belief that the British Labour party would never support a war in the absence of clear evidence that Saddam had WMDs.
John Quiggin 
I called Bush a liar at the time. Unfortunately since http://www.insidepolitics.com.au fell off the internet I can not point to anything on the public record. I have never doubted that the USA manufactured the pretext for the war with Iraq.
I don’t think Howard lied on the WMD issue. I think he just got sucked in by his trust for the US administration.
The formation of the view that the Bush administration was telling fibs was helped along extensively by Jude Wanniski who wrote endlessly about the flaws in evidence of WMD prior to the 2003 invasion.
Here is one of his early articles attacking the notion that Iraq still had WMD in 2003.
http://www.wanniski.com/showarticle.asp?articleid=2175
People are way too quick to trust governments.
Prior to the invasion it was widely argued that since the USA felt so unencumbered by the threat of Iraqi retaliation that they would calmly assemble thousands of soldiers on the border, this was proof enough that Bush and Cheney themselves knew Iraq did not have WMD.
And there were massive demonstrations around the world shortly before the invasion in which people pointed the finger at amongst other things oil as being the reason for war. Clearly large numbers of people – perhaps the majority – did not believe that WMD was an issue.
I suspected that somewhere in Iraq there would be found an old barrel or two of something or other. But this was never reason enough for an invasion.
I certainly did not believe that Iraq had a WMD program of any significance. Afterall Colin Powel and Condi Rice has assured the world of this just a couple of years prior.
John Le Carre wrote in Jan 2003 – “Baghdad represents no clear and present danger to its neighbours, and none to the US or Britain. Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, if he’s still got them, will be peanuts by comparison with the stuff Israel or America could hurl at him at five minutes’ notice. What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of US growth. What is at stake is America’s need to demonstrate its military power to all of us — to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad.”
This view was very common amongst those against the war.
“Let’s cut the nonsense. The primary reason the Bush team is more focused on Saddam is because if he were to acquire weapons of mass destruction, it might give him the leverage he has long sought – not to attack us, but to extend his influence over the world’s largest source of oil, the Persian Gulf.”
Thomas Freidman, Jan 2003 –
… if he were to acquire …
PrQ,
One question. If they did not believe that there were WMD in there, and, knowing that as a result they would be shown to be liars once they went in, why did they not, with all the resources of the US government in covert operations, arrange to plant some evidence? It would have been comparatively easy with all the assets assembled on the borders and then they would have had the ‘proof’ they were looking for. It would not be the first time a US government had manufactured such evidence.
The fact that they did not even attempt to do this is at least an argument that they did not know that there were none there. I cannot see the Bush administration (as opposed to Bush himself) being stupid enough to omit this fairly obvious step.
Or do you believe that they simply hoped that, in the euphoria of victory, the reasons for the war would be forgotten?
Andrew, I think they expected to find something that would suffice – for example some old stocks of chemical weapons. They lied by asserting that they had strong evidence when they knew in fact it was worthless.
Once the invasion happened I suspect they were conned by their own propaganda. Judy Miller was trumpeting finds every other day, and when they all failed to pan out there were the trailers. By the time it was clear none of these would pan out, it was too late for a plant.
And if the war had gone well the euphoria of victory would probably have been enough. After all, it’s only now, after nearly three years that a majority of Americans believe Bush lied.
In other words, never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.
Terje: People are way too quick to trust governments.
while this is true of people right across the political spectrum I’m sure you, in particular, can appreciate the irony of so-called libertarians who don’t trust government to run a library or collect dog licences but have absolute faith in it’s ability to prosecute wars.
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/printme.php?eid=51202
I urge anyone interested in this subject to read the above article. It is an interview with Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski who authored the lies used by the Bush Clique to serve as the pretext for the Iraq fiasco.
Kwiatkowski worked in the Office of Special Plans, ‘a pet project of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld … a nerve center for what she now calls a “neoconservative coup, a hijacking of the Pentagon.â€?’
The interview is a fascinating and disturbing insight into just how thoroughly the Bush Clique subverted the proper processes of intelligence gathering.
However, it does tend to exculpate Bush, who had the thoughts he had about Iraq and the words he said about Iraq planted there by Dick Cheney. Bush allowed himself to become an uncritical mouthpiece of the Neocon position.
More accurately, therefore, the title of this thread should be “Cheney lied. bush believed him”.
Kwiatkowski was a Bushite conservative until her experiences convinced her about the subversiveness and dishonesty of the neo-cons, who dominated policymaking in the Pentagon and the White House at the time.
This point is underlined by the explosive memoir of the run-up to the war authored by Sir Christopher Meyer, the British Emabassador to Washington at the time.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1185407,00.html
On the matter of Howard. If anyone had been rash enough to attempt to tell Howard of this subversion of intelligence, he would have put his fingers in his ears and chanted “La la la la.”
Only Andrew Wilkie was honest enough to breech the conspiracy of silence on this issue. And it cost him his career.
Now that the Bush clique seems vulnerable, the US media will be all over them like ants. No doubt they’ll congratulate themselves for their courage. But the truth has been available since they beginning. Where were the media when it counted?
QUOTE: while this is true of people right across the political spectrum I’m sure you, in particular, can appreciate the irony of so-called libertarians who don’t trust government to run a library or collect dog licences but have absolute faith in it’s ability to prosecute wars.
RESPONSE: I do not have faith in governments ability to prosecute wars. However I lack faith in their ability to go to war for the right reasons or to achieve the right outcomes. After all blowing things up can’t be that hard. Blowing up the right things is a lot more difficult.
If governments spent less energy thinking about things like dog licences then perhaps they would be a little more focused on their key responsibilities. They seem to suffer badly from mission creep.
Terje Petersen Says: November 12th, 2005 at 10:29 pm “I called Bush a liar at the time.”
Terje and others: if we only listened to you at the time, we would also have had a cure for cancer, found the fountain of youth, and managed to have successfully scraped a crucial away goal in Montevideo this morning!
The Bush ‘lied’ thesis only holds if you accept that the conspiracy was so well managed that the entire Democrat opposition were either duped or so completely stupid.
For eg:
Bill Clinton: “If Saddam rejects peace, and we have to use force, our purpose is clear: We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program.”
Madeleine Albright, Clinton Secretary of State: “We must stop Saddam from ever again jeopardizing the stability and the security of his neighbors with weapons of mass destruction.”
Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Advisor: “[Saddam will] use those weapons of mass destruction again as he has ten times since 1983.”
Harry Reid: “The problem is not nuclear testing; it is nuclear weapons. … The number of Third World countries with nuclear capabilities seems to grow daily. Saddam Hussein’s near success with developing a nuclear weapon should be an eye-opener for us all.”
Dick Durbin: “One of the most compelling threats we in this country face today is the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Threat assessments regularly warn us of the possibility that…Iraq…may acquire or develop nuclear weapons.”
John Kerry: “If you don’t believe…Saddam Hussein is a threat with nuclear weapons, then you shouldn’t vote for me.”
John Edwards: “Serving on the Intelligence Committee and seeing day after day, week after week, briefings on Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction and his plans on using those weapons, he cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons, it’s just that simple. The whole world changes if Saddam ever has nuclear weapons.”
Nancy Pelosi: “Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons-inspection process.”
Sens. Levin, Lieberman, Lautenberg, Dodd, Kerrey, Feinstein, Mikulski, Daschle, Breaux, Johnson, Inouye, Landrieu, Ford and Kerry in a letter to Bill Clinton: “We urge you, after consulting with Congress and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions, including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.”
So, the question becomes were people of quality like Clinton and Albright duped? or were they just stupid/gullible? (surely Albright would have had the experience to have ‘tested’ the inntelligence presented) or did they TOO believe the intelligence presented? which prima facie presented very strong ‘positions’.
Of course Bush lied about Saddam’s WMDs. I dis-believed the WMD story from the word go. Saddam was bad, not mad. Iraq was invaded because, not in spite, of the fact that it did not have WMDs. The UN inspection was a complement, not a substitute, for military action.
It appears that Chalabi was used by the White House as a conduit for phony WMD material. He used Iranian know-how to fake WMD documents and then organized defectors to various intelligence services. They were all reading off the same script. Judith Miller was his reliable destination. American Conservative has the goods:
In the same month, the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) was set up to market the war by providing information to friends in the media. It has subsequently been alleged that false information generated by Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress was given to Judith Miller and other journalists through WHIG.
Then why did the US invade Iraq? The Bushies thought that Gulf War II would be a cake walk, like GW I. They thought they could do so at low military cost and high political gain. Regime Change would be a cinch. Nation building would be self-funding.
I was fool enough to take Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld at their words on this score. To me, this was the greatest lie – self-deception.
Pr Q,
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For a mere 5,132 words to the contrary, one could not do any better than read Norman Podhoretz. Who Is Lying About Iraq? http://www.commentarymagazine.com/Production/files/podhoretz1205advance.html
Podhoretz was certainly one I had in mind.
Jack,
Note that the Kenneth Pollack article cited by Podhoretz in support of the claim that Bush acted in good faith says exactly the oppposite. See here:
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/11/index.html#008302
Roberto: You left Saddam himself off the list of those who believed that he possessed such weaponry.
Also off the list was Weapons Inspector Richard Butler.
I don’t see any problem with the invasion of Iraq. Kofi Anan only just stopped Clinton & Blair getting stuck into Iraq only a few years before for non-compliance with weapons inspections.
Even Saddams arab neighbors had the view that he had brought it upon himself.
Saddam is gone. *Good* (Unqualified).
Podhoretz’s special pleading is quite transparent.
1. To personalise the act of lying on Bush’s own knowledge of the actual state of affairs is to, at the very least, expect too much of Bush’s ability to detect that the stream of information that came his way had been corrupted.
2. To base Bush’s bona fides on his willingness to accept CIA Chief George Tenet’s assurance that Saddam’s possession of WMDs was a “slam dunk” is disingenuous. Tenet himself had been nobbled by the Office of Special Projects (OSP) (see reference in my former post in this thread).
3. Podhoretz is right to excoriate the Democrats for allowing themselves to express their credulity in relation to the OSP falsifications. The Bush Clique had thoroughly grabbed the moral and political high ground on the issue ofthe war in Iraq. Shamefully, Democrats who privately doubted the lies decided to lie about their own scepticism because they believed that their own political survival depended on it. However, Podhoretz is wrong to imply that consent, especially consent gained by deception, cannot be withdrawn. Democrats and others who want to retract their support for Bush’s rationale for war should confess their self-interested credulity and move on.
Facts Vs. Beliefs
The Bush administration did not want to listen to Hans Blix.
For those who need reminding why this issue of lying about a cassus belli, here is the reason:
Here is the relevant principle from the Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal, as promulgated in 1950. The United States was a signatory of these principles.
Principle Vl
The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under; international law:
a. Crimes against peace:
i. Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
ii. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).
To spell this out:
1. if the United Nations had passed a resolution enabling invasion, then the Iraq war would have been legal.
2. if Bush could demonstrate that the United States faced an imminent attack, then self-defence makes the war legal. Now it is possible that a leader could sincerely though mistakenly believe that his nation faced peril. Going to war under those circumstances is probably not a “crime against peace”.
3. but the extent to which someone in the Bush Clique knew they were lying is the extent to which they have committed a “crime against peace”.
Podhoretz, schmodhoretz, Bush lied. I knew it as soon as it was said. Citing all the other pitchmen for the Iraq invasion including Democrats does not absolve Bush but confirms the US conspiracy to invade and control Iraq long before 9/11. Threats of WMD’s etc. were merely sales points for The Mob along with “Saddam is a real bad man” which were used effectively in the US, UK and by the Australian government. All those “reasons” are an insult to ones intelligence. Subsequently we have the giving of “democracy” as if this will absolve us of our sins. Killed 100,00 people? Say 12 hail Mary’s and introduce democracy.
The whole episode from the beginning stunk (stank?) of an imperialist adventure. Of course you have to have a nose to smell it. Other people believe their government always “does the right thing”, gives everyone “a fair go”, know what I mean?
Paul Krugman “Defending Imperial Nudity” http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110405I.shtml is a great satire on Bush’s duplicity, which I also think extends to self-duplicity.
Even if one accepts the Bush-apologists “screw-up not stich-up” spin this is still an indictiment. Ineptitude is no exculpation. Weber, somwhere, says that intelligence is the first condition of political morality.
The claim that Saddam believed he had weapons is unsupported speculation to explain his obstruction of the UN inspectors. He may well have done this for domestic political reasons.
It seems pretty clear that, by late 2002, he knew he didn’t have any weapons, since he made a declaration to that effect and allowed UN inspectors to check it, with the understanding that war would be declared if he was shown to have lied.
According to John Laws on his radio show at that time, (after he miraculously switched from a long Dubbya lampooner to a supporter) “Saddam has got chemical and biological weapons but is so diabolically cunning he would NOT use them against the coalition when they invaded Iraq. You knew when this kind of dribble was being spouted the sale was made and Iraq’s goose was cooked.
John,
Your assertion that Weapons Inspectors “found nothing” upon re-admission is simplistic ( but certainly convenient for the argument that Bush lied).
As I recall the Inspectors stated that they were not receiving complete co-operation from the regime ; therefore they couldn’t make conclusive statements about compliance?
Sure they said they needed more time etc but that wasn’t their call. As things turned out , the regime was in breach of UN sanctions though no bio/chemical/nuclear weapons as such were found.
I also believe that speculation as to why Bush/Blair made such unambiguous assertions to be less than credible.
If they knew no weapons existed then they also surely knew that they would be exposed before the world within a relatively short time as deceitful and/or incompetent.
Why then didn’t they simply plant some evidence or modify their arguments for invasion to include the more than ample other self-evident reasons to remove Saddam?
Isn’t the simplest, most rational explanation that fits the evidence and is consistent with the behaviours of both governments that they sincerely believed Saddam to still have useable WMD?
PS – the suspicion that the necessity for ” Bush Lied” to be correct as ideologically motivated rather than rationally proven , is also supported by the relative silence by many on the other reason given for the war – links to terrorists.
Saddam got rid of his WMDs after GWI when his greatest threat became the US. He was bad, not mad. Sy Hersh http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact has the goods, reporting an interview with an actual Iraqi defector, on the eve of the fall of Baghdad:
The first meeting, on April 11th [2003], began with an urgent question from a C.I.A. officer: “Does Iraq have a nuclear device? The military really want to know. They are extremely worried.�
Jafar’s response, according to the notes of an eyewitness, was to laugh. The notes continued:
Jafar insisted that there was not only no bomb, but no W.M.D., period. “The answer was none.� . . .
Jafar explained that the Iraqi leadership had set up a new committee after the 91 Gulf war, and after the unscom [United Nations] inspection process was set up. . . and the following instructions [were sent] from the Top Man [Saddam]—“give them everything.�
The notes said that Jafar was then asked, “But this doesn’t mean all W.M.D.? How can you be certain?�
His answer was clear: “I know all the scientists involved, and they chat. There is no W.M.D.�
Jafar explained why Saddam had decided to give up his valued weapons:
Up until the 91 Gulf war, our adversaries were regional. . . . But after the war, when it was clear that we were up against the United States, Saddam understood that these weapons were redundant. “No way we could escape the United States.� Therefore, the W.M.D. warheads did Iraq little strategic good.
He probably played cat and mouse with UNSCOM weapons inspectors for good reason. It was penetrated by US and ISR spies who were intent on setting him up for assasination. This, after all, was the intent of the Iraq Liberation Act passedby the US Congress 1998.
But Clinton’s fine-grained assasination plot failed. So Bush went for the coarse-grained regime change, with nation-building to go.
Andrew Reynolds wrote:
One question. If they did not believe that there were WMD in there, and, knowing that as a result they would be shown to be liars once they went in, why did they not, with all the resources of the US government in covert operations, arrange to plant some evidence?
There is a very good reason for this. When you plant evidence it can often lead back to the perpetrator of the plant. Let’s not forget what has been happening with the investigation into the anthrax attacks. Here is some information that may jolt your memory:
1. Meanwhile, in the United States, FBI agents and scientists have been working to match the gene sequence of the mailed anthrax spores to a specific laboratory. They remain particularly interested in such laboratories as Fort Detrick, Louisiana State University and Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. – Washington Post, 16/09/2005.
2. An analysis of the writing in the letters has been perfomed by the FBI. Use the following link to access the analysis:
http://www.fbi.gov/anthrax/amerithraxlinks.htm
In short the perpetrator is an adult male who:
– Has little contact with the public
– Did not select his victims randomly (the politicians targeted were Democrats)
– Hold grudges for a long time, but
– Is a non-confrontational person.
A right-wing Muslim extremest. I think not. More likely a right-wing American extremest similar to Timothy McVeigh or the Una Bomber.
And do you rember the famous “Mushroom Cloud” statement made by Condleezza Rice, backed up by the Niger document? I wonder who was the real source of the fake Niger uranium document? There are obfuscations flying left right and center – the British, the Italians or maybe the French. We will have to wait and see if the special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald can throw some light on this. I wouldn’t be supprised if it came from the OSP.
The writings of Karen Kwiatkowski,as has been said by several people above ,are interesting because of her military and conservative background.Her writings appear regularly on ..Lewrockwell.com..and on several other sites. She is a scathing critic of the neocons aand the likudniks in Washington. Her final decision to leave her senior Pentagon popsition was brought about by her disguit at the actions of Douglas Feith,then an under-secretary to Wolfowitz. In one recent article she recounted how Feith, a rabid neo-cons and zionist hawk, made his office in the Pentagon a virtual basefor the neo-cons and their activities . She instanced one day when she was on duty and a whole group of israeli military men on some mission to Washington entered the building,claiming they didn’t need any secutiry clearance,and when admitted to Feith office,wandered in and inspected his files and messages ,he being in another of the part of the building. When she complained to Feith,he dismissed her saying..”.the Israelis are our allies”. She felt this was unaccecptable ,and her breach with Feith followed these actions by Israeli personal who had unrestricted access to Feith office. She later recorded her delighted when the F.B.I. indicted a US Pentagon official named Franklin,who now faces charges of passing classified material to 2 officals of The Israeli Embasssy. The trial will take place soon,and of course has led to ppredictable attacks of the F.B.I.. as “anti-semitic”)This has now become the word for anyone who who is critical of Ariel Sharon,and his Likudniks.Kwiatkowski writings are a very good picture of how some US conservatives ,like Pat Buchanan,are now openly hostile to Bush and his neocon buddies(or is it masters?)She also writes for The American Conservative ,Buchanan’s magazine,also available on line.
before the Gulf war the US wouldn’t commence operations until the Fench took out both the radar system and the mirages they sold to Iraq.
with those out of the way the Iraq defence forces were unimpressive.
They were even worse going into the Invasion of Iraq,
There is no point of having WMDs if you have littel in the way of defence forces to use after the WMDs are used.
Hussein couldn’t threaten anyone.
Anyone who bothered to do any homework knew that
Well of course!
After 10 years of sanctions (which caused the deaths of , I dunno, name a number over a million, children) no fly zones where the British and US airforces new where every sheep and hovel was, they knew this was not “war”.
Lesson #1 to any country about to be invaded. Get some arse kicking weapons quick.
Here goes: (as I indicated earlier)
The Bush ‘lied’ thesis only holds if you accept that the conspiracy was so well managed that the entire Democrat opposition were either duped or so completely stupid.
For eg:
Bill Clinton see above
Madeleine Albright see above
John Kerry: “If you don’t believe…Saddam Hussein is a threat with nuclear weapons, then you shouldn’t vote for me.�
So, the question becomes were people of quality like Clinton and Albright duped? or were they just stupid/gullible? (surely Albright would have had the experience to have ‘tested’ the inntelligence presented) or did they TOO believe the intelligence presented? which prima facie presented very strong ‘positions’.
I await a convincing rebuttable
Ian Gould: the irony of so-called libertarians who don’t trust government to run a library or collect dog licences but have absolute faith in it’s ability to prosecute wars.
Most libertarian opposed the Iraqi war. Many libertarians opposed the Afghani war also… so it is a bit of a stretch to paint libertarians as war-mongers.
Roberto — your above Kerry quote is irrelevant to your point. He is saying that if Saddam had nuclear weapons then he would be a threat.
Steve at the pub: Yes, Saddam gone is good. But there are also some bads. Smart people try to weight the good against the bad and check the net impact before having the government spend hundreds of billions of dollars. Commie. ;p
The underlying problem is that people trust their politicians, despite all of their protestations to the contrary.
Roberto, you don’t seem to have read the post. The fact that lots of people, including Democrats, believed Bush doesn’t mean he wasn’t lying. You’re merely repeating Bush’s talking points without responding to the post.
John H, I think it’s fair to say that most of the US bloggers who would have been regarded as libertarian before 2003 supported the war. Obvious examples are Instapundit and Samizdata. Counterexamples like Jim Henley are in the minority as far as I can see. Even in Australia, opinion among libertarians seems pretty evenly divided to me based on postings to the Aust Libertarian blog.
Roberto, you did say “people of quality” in the same breath as Clinton and Albright didn’t you? This is the pair who killed far more Iraqis than Bush and appearing beautific while doing it. Yes, they lied too.
John
The statements Roberto quoted (From Clinton and other Democrats) were made in 1998 – 3 years before GWB was elected President. Is it the your opinion that Bush, as Governor of Texas, had that much influence over the Democratic administration?
“….. lots of people, including Democrats, believed Bush….. ”
I never picked him as a powerfull orator; maybe he wrote lots of letters?
John Humphreys: There are some “bads” in the wake of the removal of Saddam, all of them due to arabic terrorists who persist with murdering Iraqi citizens.
Call me “commie” all you like, sticks & stones mate. Btw, the ozzi word is “commo”. There could be quite a few other pieces of reality you may wish to brush up on, judging from you post.
Neil, you should also reread the post, particularly the bit starting
“It’s easy enough to support the claim that independent observers generally believed that Saddam had WMD’s with citations from 2002 and earlier. The evidence supported such a belief. “
QUOTE TERJE: I do not have faith in governments ability to prosecute wars. However I lack faith in their ability to go to war for the right reasons or to achieve the right outcomes.
WHAT I MEANT: I do trust governments ability to wage wars. However I am lacking in faith when it comes to their ability to go to war for the right reasons or to achieve the right outcomes.
QUOTE: if we only listened to you at the time, we would also have had a cure for cancer, found the fountain of youth, and managed to have successfully scraped a crucial away goal in Montevideo this morning!
RESPONSE: I have never offered a view point on how to cure cancer, stay young forever or kick goals. Neither have I claimed that I would have done a better job then Bush, just that he lied. So what is your point or are you just trying to stir up the usual insult fest in lieu of making an intellectual comment?
The only section of the Right which was reliably against Iraq War were the paeleo-cons ie the conservative’s conservatives at American Conservative. Their analysis of the Gulf War, although not especially “right wing”, has been 100% vindicated.
Of course they tend to be a little more honest than the average person, being Grumpy Old Men at heart, and suffering from a dose of what John Derbyshire calls “Elderly Tourette’s Syndrome”. This is the inablility to stifle an annoying or controversial thought in the interests of their professional career or political harmony.
Jack,
A topic like war is one area where notions of left-wing and right-wing really collapse. We need better words to describe political ideas.
http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html
Regards,
Terje.
it is alright for people to believe that Iraq was attempting to gain WMDs but where was the deductive abilities concerning the state of the Iraqui defence forces.
The Australian defence experts certainly didn’t expect Iraq to threaten any country.
Bush said Iraq threatened the US. Dunno how given its best missiles dropped out of the sky halfway to Israel!!
also developing nuclear weapons takes money. A lot of it.
Hussein was supposedly doing this whilst building up other WMDs as well as building a lot of palaces and other neccessary infrastructure!
Invading Iraq was certainly better than permenant sanctions. However that does not say a lot for western policy.
John: Most libertarian opposed the Iraqi war. Many libertarians opposed the Afghani war also… so it is a bit of a stretch to paint libertarians as war-mongers.
John, I know many libertarians oppsoed the war – not sure if it was a majority but know it was a respectable number at least.
However I have encountered soem people on line who claim to be libertarian and at the same tiem support not only the decision to go to war but the “nation-building” exercises in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
JQ: “The claim that Saddam believed he had weapons is unsupported speculation to explain his obstruction of the UN inspectors. He may well have done this for domestic political reasons.”
Or he may have been engaging in what NATO used to refer to as “strategic ambiguity”, hoping that the pretence that he did still possess some weapons of mass destruction acted as a deterrent to possible miltiary action by the US or neighbours such as Iran.
It is interestig to compare the Bush administration’s response to Iraq’s alleged WMD programs with the response of the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations to the supposed “missile gao” of the late 1950’s and early 60’s.
Military intelligence claimed that the Russians had a signifcant and increasing lead in ICBMs and that America’s primarily bomber-based deterrent was vulnerable to a Russian surprise attack.
The military recommended the US attack Russia while it still had a chance of winning a nuclear war.
Both administrations concisedered the possible consequences of even a “successful” nuclear war and decided not to attack.
Subsequent evidence – including eventual access to Soviet records – proved the military were mistaken and had badly overestimated Russian strength.
We’re fonrtunately Bush, Rumsfeld etc weren’t in charge at the time.
Similarly, the Clinton adminsitration knew there was a possibility that Iraq had retained soem of its WMDs despite the UN inspection regime. (BTW when will the right admit that that regime was far more successful than they claimed at the time?)
But given the risk and costs involved in invading Iraq, they decided to opt for continuation of sanctions and attempts to destabilise the regime rather than an invasion.
You may or not believe the case outlined best by Podhoretz. Personally I believe the 2 independent enquiries that the intelligence agencies were simply guilty of ‘drinking their own bathwater’. OTOH you may personally need to sample a turkey yourself to believe it’s real or plastic. Nevertheless, I also think the war critics were guilty of drinking their own bathwater somewhat. Their figures on anticipated war casualties, refugees pouring out of Iraq rather than going home, Iraqis couldn’t handle democracy and last but most importantly their mistaken belief that UN sanctions could control Saddam’s ambitions long term. I believe they drank their own bathwater on this, rather than deliberately lied, but they can have it any way they choose. They personally have more to lose in this regard.
Syria offered Bin Laden to Clinton. Clinton declined because Syria was an enemy. I think that Clinton’s “regime” was definitely flawed. Which one isn’t?
I’ll qualify that by saying after Dec 15th of course.
In going to war was impossible to know whether the President was lying or not before he went to war. The actions which surrounded the threats caused many concerns – that it seemed that it didn’t matter what the evidence, the USA and AUST and UK were spoiling for a war without thinking through the strategies apart from brute force.
Just as Afghanistan has dragged on – shades of the Russian invasion – the war in Iraq had no exit strategy nor any stabilisation strategy. The links of Iraq to terrorists at the time used as a justification were clearly lies and now have become self fulfilling prophecies. That the strategies used to counter the problems created by a lack of foresight are now spreading terror is of little comfort to anyone – but a new approach is required.
Unfortunately with the current leadership we will have worse situations before solutions are found because they are so reluctant to even conceive that they might have made mistakes.