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Welcome to the musings and notes of a Cadillac, Michigan based writer named Micah Holmquist, who is bothered by his own sarcasm. Please send him email at micahth@chartermi.net. Holmquist's full archives are listed here.
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Thursday, October 02, 2003
Did the Bush Administration expect to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? [I've tried to get this published elsewhere, but without success. Since it appears that events will soon make it out of date, I've decided to publish it here, even though some of it repeats previous entries.] he very question may seem counterintuitive since George W. Bush and friends proposed the invading Iraq and separating Saddam Hussein from his weapons of mass destruction was the only sure way to avoid a “mushroom cloud” rising up over the United States. (Saddam, in the administration’s statements, would either attack the U.S. himself or give the weapons to one or more of “the terrorists” so that they could attack the U.S. When this was going to happen wasn’t clear. Seemingly, if Saddam’s life ambition were to attack the U.S. or aid someone else in this endeavor, he would have managed to find time to do so between 1990 and 2003.) Still, the evidence indicates that the possibility that the Bush Administration didn’t expect to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq at least deserves consideration. To begin with, the long and public build-up to the invasion is incongruent with fears that Saddam might attack with weapons of mass destruction. The administration seemingly wouldn’t wanted to have placed thousands of U.S. troops near the Iraqi border for months while talking about “regime change” as this would seemingly be a provocation for Saddam to last out at the U.S., something they ostensibly feared that Saddam was likely to do even if left alone, a detail that no less of a hawk than Christopher Hitchens has pointed out. Then there is the issue of how much of a priority finding the alleged weapons of mass destruction was. When asked about the search on March 24, Secretary of State Colin Powell said, “[r]ight now, our troops are essentially fighting the battle and when this battle has been won and when things have settled down, we'll have more than ample opportunity to take a thorough look at the country and determine what weapons of mass destruction programs we can show to the world.” This answer sounds like it is coming from an individual who views finding these weapons as a political accomplishment. If they were a threat, finding them would be of the highest priority for the military since only by doing so could they ensure that they are neither used against U.S. troops nor in the possession of “the terrorists” who the administration said were prevalent in the country. Even once the war was completed, the search for the weapons did not spring into action. It was a month before the U.S. secured suspected nuclear sites in Iraq and when a Defense Department team did go to the seven suspected sites, they found that materials may have been removed from each, Barto Gellman of The Washington Post reported in early May. Furthermore, Raymond Whitaker and Glen Rangwala report in the September 21 edition of The Independent that little effort has been made to find the weapons. This appears inconsistent with the view that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction constitute, in the words of Dick Cheney, a “mortal threat” to the U.S. It also leads one to question Bush’s recent declaration before the United Nations that the overthrow of Saddam "has made sure that Iraq's former dictator will never again use weapons of mass destruction.” If the combination of Saddam and weapons of mass destruction posed a threat before Operation Iraqi Freedom began, as the Bush Administration said that it did, there is no reason to think that the threat no longer exists. Saddam is believed to still be at large and if the weapons existed and have yet to be found, it would be possible that he has them and is waiting for the right time to use them. The Bush Administration shouldn’t be able to rule this out without admitting that they were at least “wrong” about what weapons Saddam had. But they do. When confronted with this logic on Thursday, White House Press Secretary refused to engage with the argument, preferring to speak irrelevant platitudes. There are only two explanations for this behavior. Either the Bush Administration was dishonest about what it knows about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and the threat they posed at some point or combination of points or they are incompetent to the point of being unable to accurately assess and neutralize the threats that it claims to be concerned about. (The latter possibility seems more likely in light of Lowell Bergman and Eric Schmitt's September 30 New York Times report that said, "as much as 650,000 tons of ammunition remains at thousands of sites used by the former Iraqi security forces, and that much of it has not been secured and will take years to destroy.") Either way there is no reason to trust the members of the Bush Administration as they advocate and pursue further interventions in the name of eliminating the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction, which they continue to do despite the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. "[O]ur Coalition’s operations in Iraq showed that this Administration and the international community take the link between terrorism and WMD [weapons of mass destruction] most seriously,” Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton said on September 16. “There is no graver threat to our country today than states that both sponsor terrorism and possess or aspire to possess weapons of mass destruction.” Bolton was testifying before hearings of the House International Relations Committee, Subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia and trying to paint a picture of the “threat” coming from Syria because that country possessed weapons of mass destruction and had ties to terrorist groups. Where have we heard that before? UPDATE: Saragon has responded to this entry. In other news, I am persuaded by his argument about the do not call list. 9:35 p.m. 10/02/03 |