Wordsmith: If not for Bush’s decision in 2003, President Barack Obama in 2009 would have not only Iran and North Korea to contend with, but Saddam’s Iraq- a wmd-loving friend and ally to the jihadi movement- to fence-straddle over as well.

Shame on you, Word… we could have had another “czar”. The one who teaches Obama to juggle? And that would be one more (government) job saved and/or created.

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@Barleymash #144:

There were no WMDs.

Not entirely accurate (as Mata points out), but even if conceded…..so what? How does that invalidate/delegitimize the decision to finally enforce UNSCR 678? When weighing together all the intell info we pulled together at the time, the intell that pointed to Saddam as being a wmd threat outweighed the voices who cautioned otherwise. The case for war was built as much around capability and intent as much as the potential that he had posession of. President Bush never said the threat was imminent. That was language used by Democrats. President Bush said we had to act before the threat became imminent; because if it’s imminent, then we would have responded too late.

Our intell on WMD appears to have overestimated Saddam’s status on those; but the CIA also underplayed the al Qaeda-Saddam links, which are extensive (and no, I did not overstate collaborative links- nor did Bush or Cheney; and no, I did not say Saddam had a hand in orchestrating the events of 9/11- a different argument). And given Saddam’s love for wmd and his extensive ties to and open state-sponsorship of Islamic terrorism, in a post-9/11 world, what the Administration feared was the marriage of the two: wmd attacks delivered by terrorist proxies. It’s a CIA myth that a secular Saddam would not collaborate with jihadis for common short term goals. The Iraqi Perspective Project pilloried Paul Pillar’s noncooperation theory on this.

I’m sure you don’t agree, but I’d rather be right than, well, STILL apologizing for the Bush Administration.

Who’s apologizing for the Bush Administration? I’m very proud of the fact that Bush kept America safe from another 9/11 terror attack on U.S. soil. And that’s related as much to military action in Iraq and Afghanistan as it is to diplomacy and cooperation between nations, disrupting al Qaeda financing, intell, wiretaps and Patriot Act.

I’m sure you don’t agree, but I’d rather be right.

So, you got anything to debunk the Downing Street Memos?

Just what is it I’m supposed to “debunk”? I think it’s legit, although it’s a shame the reporter felt the need to destroy the original copy. And revisiting it, I still don’t see how this is supposed to be some “smoking gun” “a-ha” “gotcha” official document that “Bush lied, people died”. It’s a source speculating about a source speculating about a source speculating about what Bush was thinking about.

Can it be argued that the Administration was mistaken about wmd (due to CIA’s oversell)? Yes. That they knew there weren’t wmd? No. That they knew for certain that they’d find wmd? Not so certain (even Rumsfeld’s “parade of horribles” which was a checklist of everything that could possibly go wrong in Iraq listed the possibility that they might not find wmd)- and that was part of the point! We just didn’t know. But in a post-9/11 world, we were no longer willing to wait him out and tolerate a metastasizing cancer upon the world who practiced a decade of defiance and deception, and kept us guessing.

Given that Saddam was a constant menace throughout the 90′s with media reports that had linked him to bin Laden back then, the problem of Iraq and unenforced UN resolutions, any Administration would have been remiss not to take Iraq into foreign policy considerations on day one; and derelict to not examine whether or not Saddam had any involvement with 9/11 after it happened.

The burden of proof was upon Saddam. Not the UN. Not the U.S. Saddam played his cards and ultimately paid the price when he underestimated the intent of this president and assumed more of the same: more angry UN resolutions and saber rattling that meant nothing to him, perhaps an aspirin factory or two bombed, which he could weather, perhaps more cat-and-mouse games with UN inspectors…followed by the status quo (minus the fact that he was close to achieving a lifting of sanctions….after which….well, go read the Duelfer Report) of remaining in power.

This part of the memo seems to contradict “Bush knowing there were no wmds”:

For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary.

Then there’s the matter of the Emily Litella Memo, which seems to undermine the DSM.

A memorandum written by Prime Minister Tony Blair’s cabinet office in late July 2002 explicitly states that the Bush administration had made “no political decisions” to invade Iraq, but that American military planning for the possibility was advanced. The memo also said American planning, in the eyes of Mr. Blair’s aides, was “virtually silent” on the problems of a postwar occupation.

“A postwar occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise,” warned the memorandum, prepared July 21 for a meeting with Mr. Blair a few days later. It also appeared to take as a given the presence of illicit weapons in Iraq – an assumption that later proved almost entirely wrong – and warned that merely removing Saddam Hussein from power would not guarantee that those weapons could be secured.

A transcript of the memorandum was posted Sunday on the Web site of The Sunday Times of London, after The Washington Post, citing one of the British paper’s own correspondents as a source, published excerpts. No image of the original was included, The Times said, to protect its source; a note on the Web site said the last page was missing.

Read the rest. There’s much more.

A number of independent investigations including the Robb-Silbermann Commission, Butler Report, and SSCI Report on Iraq Prewar Intelligence have exonerated the Administration of manipulating intell and pressuring analysts to “fix” the intell around the policy.

In private conversations intercepted by U.S. intell, Iraqi officials spoke as if Saddam continued to possess wmd; even Iraqi generals believed Saddam possessed them. Intell agencies around the world and UN officials believed Iraq possessed wmd.

Of course…..the Bush case for war was built around a lot more than the belief that Saddam was in possession of wmd stockpiles.

From the dreadful neocon, Doug Feith, War and Decision pg 331:

Nor were those errors an essential part of the Administration’s rationale for regime change. Suppose that President Bush had made the public case for war entirely accurately, in light of all that we learned afterward about Iraqi WMD programs. He would have presented the case essentially as he did- but without using the CIA’s incorrect assessment about stockpiles. He would have said that Saddam still intended to produce WMD and had preserved the ability to make chemical and biological weapons within a few weeks.

In 2002, the idea of U.S.-led military action to overthrow Saddam had broad support across the United States, including in the Congress. Would those who supported the war have failed to support it because Saddam was three or five weeks- or even twenty weeks- away from having the chemical and biological weapons we thought he had? Would anyone concerned about Saddam’s obtaining nuclear weapons have been comforted to hear that he had simply put his enrichment program on hold, even though Iraq might still import fissile material and produce a nuclear weapon in less than twelve months? Saddam had the technicians and scientists necessary to produce a nuclear bomb- and he retained the intention to do so after economic sanctions were lifted.

If not for Bush’s decision in 2003, President Barack Obama in 2009 would have not only Iran and North Korea to contend with, but Saddam’s Iraq- a wmd-loving friend and ally to the jihadi movement- to fence-straddle over as well.

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I love it when people trot out child predator Scott Ritter as a reliable source on WMD.

His “rightness” on that matter all depends on which of his statements you choose to cherry pick.

Since Ritter has been on every side and the middle of the WMD issue it’s easy, and quite disingenuous, for his non-critical thinking cheerleaders to say “he was right” as long as they ignore the statements that he made in the opposite direction.

Perhaps if the WMDs in Iraq had been guarded by a 16 year old girl wearing a Burger King crown Ritter would have had better luck sniffing them out.

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Why yes, Barley. My point in #136 was in reference to your narrow misinterpretation of the GC. To jog your memory, you said:

And remember, I really do believe we have an obligation — as it states in the Geneva Conventions that we signed — NOT to endanger civilians.

Since collateral damage has always been an unfortunate part of warfare, and most especially with a non-GC signatory and enemy combatant/non-State opposition who uses human shields, the GC was expanded with some clarification in some, but not all, of these kinds of circumstances. And key is whether the military target offers enough concrete strategic value for destruction that it justifies the risk for collateral damage. It also specifies that if you have several military objectives in a village, you can’t just bombard the entire village at random.

Under your GC interpretation, any military object target located within a city, mosque, or other buildings which civilians patronize (willingly or not), our military or coalition could not wage an attack. That is simply not what the GC states.

So to educate you to GC specifics, and how it relates to instances where civilians are apt to suffer negative consequences, I reprinted the updated rules of engagements sections.

But I’m always surprised when people start trashing Ritter. I mean, Ritter was right. We’ve been there 6 frickin’ years. The only mustard or nerve gas we found was from before 1991.

I’m not trashing Ritter. Nor do I hold him up on a pedestal as you do for being 100% correct. He was incorrect that “all” CW production facility and missiles were “verifiably eliminated”, as proven by the discovery of the buried mobile labs (not far from where they were inspecting, BTW) and the missile in the Netherlands junk yard (another oops for Scott “we woulda found it by now” Ritter).

Your assertation that all sarin and mustard agents found were somehow acceptable as being manufactured prior to 1991 is not entirely correct. The key is was it caches declared to the UN, available for monitoring and in the sealed bunkers? No… quite the opposite. This discovery caught Saddam with his hand in the cookie jar.

From the link INRE those in particular:

They believe the mustard gas shell may have been one of 550 projectiles for which former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein failed to account when he made his weapons declaration shortly before Operation Iraqi Freedom began last year. Iraq also failed to then account for 450 aerial bombs with mustard gas. That, combined with the shells, totaled about 80 tons of unaccounted for mustard gas.

It also appears some top Pentagon officials were surprised by the sarin news; they thought the matter was classified, administration officials told Fox News.

An official at the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) headquarters in New York said the commission is surprised to hear news of the mustard gas.

“If that’s the case, why didn’t they announce it earlier?” the official asked.

As the Bush admin stated often, Saddam was not declaring all the facts and assets on CW agents he possessed… regardless of the year of manufacture. That discovery proved that accusation as undeniably true.

So now we know, beyond any doubt, that Saddam possessed undeclared and illegal mobile labs and missiles with longer range than permitted, and he possessed unaccounted for nerve agents. Well, at least *some* of us know beyond any doubt this is true. You are still clinging to pro-Saddam fantasies. Or perhaps that’s just BDS fantasies.

But wait… there’s *more*…. :0)

There was the discovery of an active CW lab in northern Mosul that was established post OIF and contained 1,500 gallons of chemicals. More were found prior, including in Fallujah, but none as large as this one.

Manufacturing CW requires both facilities and expertise. We already know Saddam never declared all his labs, and we most certainly never captured all the experts. Were the experts foreign entities? Were these labs completely built from scratch with equipment smuggled into a war zone? Or renovated from dual use facilties? The latter is most likely as Saddam procured the dual use equipment for use thru out the 90s.

Or, per the CIA,

Iraq’s historical ability to implement simple solutions to weaponization challenges allowed Iraq to retain the capability to weaponize CW agent when the need arose. Because of the risk of discovery and consequences for ending UN sanctions, Iraq would have significantly jeopardized its chances of having sanctions lifted or no longer enforced if the UN or foreign entity had discovered that Iraq had undertaken any weaponization activities.

ISG has uncovered hardware at a few military depots, which suggests that Iraq may have prototyped experimental CW rounds. The available evidence is insufficient to determine the nature of the effort or the timeframe of activities.

Iraq could indigenously produce a range of conventional munitions, throughout the 1990s, many of which had previously been adapted for filling with CW agent. However, ISG has found ambiguous evidence of weaponization activities.

In short, Saddam possessed undeclared labs and CW caches, and retained facilities where the program could be easily kickstarted because of a dual use design. Saddam was also proven to have intent.

Thus your most confident claim that there were no CW in Iraq is premature and, at best, pie in the sky. As I said…. I believe the jury is still out on the truth, and it’s a damn shame that there is little curiosity. But I guess that big time backpeddling on years of “no WMD” propaganda, and loss of credibility, serves as a serious deterrent.

I doubt that any of the sources you hang your confidence on believed Saddam was an innocent victim with a change of heart about possessing chem/bio and/or nuke weapons. And all agree that he was in a position to ramp up to speed quickly once sanctions were removed. In the meantime, he did quite well eroding those sanctions with the black market and the UN’s OFF. ‘

Saddam’s deposition is a good thing, and was official US policy since Clinton’s Iraq Liberation Act. It was sanctioned not only by that legislation, but by overwhelming Congressional approval on the AUMF, which contained at least 23 “whereas” reasons with only 7 or so pertaining to Wmd.

Iraq has a much brighter future on it’s present course, and they’ve paid dearly for the price of governing themselves. I’m sure this bugs the tar out of you, but it is what it is.

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Wordsmith: Nice job on documenting the arguments against Blumenthal’s reporting. It’s been discussed ad nauseum since it’s appearance, so I’m not surprised you’d have counter-arguments. But I’m always surprised when people start trashing Ritter. I mean, Ritter was right. We’ve been there 6 frickin’ years. The only mustard or nerve gas we found was from before 1991. There were no WMDs. Deconstruct the way he came to that conclusion all you please, but whether you do math in your head or show your work, getting the right answer has got to count for something. I’m sure you don’t agree, but I’d rather be right than, well, STILL apologizing for the Bush Administration.

So, you got anything to debunk the Downing Street Memos?

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@Barleymash:

That’s very cute, Chalupa. So you don’t hold Osama Bin Laden responsible for 9/11 anymore? Sure, KSM’s sitting in a cell.

Listen Mishmash, you’re the one whining about the “mastermind of 9/11″ not having been brought to justice.

Those were your words. Own them. Embrace them. They’re yours.

OBL is a different person, he played a different and, in the scheme of things, a rather minimal role, in the events of 9/11.

If you meant OBL, then you should have said OBL instead of “mastermind”.

Say what you mean. Mean what you say.

It’s pretty apparent that you didn’t know about KSM’s role, thus you left your mental midgetry exposed….again.

That’s becoming a rather distinctive pattern for you isn’t it?

my objection is to the idea that we’re ALWAYS in a hair-on-fire crisis.

If you were being honest in the quote above, the time period since Jan 20, 2009 has been rather unpleasant for you, eh?

PS….Still waiting in eager anticipation for the direct quote from Tenet regarding WMD…I cannot wait to see precisely what “he said”.

What were Tenet’s words exactly, you know, since you said that “he said” it.

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@Barleymash

Fair enough. You answered my question. I had a suspicion you believed Dubya wanted to finish what his daddy started. We’ll never know for sure that was his intent, but it’s certainly a fair assumption. I would like to point out that my scenario is just as fair. There is plenty of evidence to support an all out war in Afghanistan would have been incredibly ugly to watch on CNN every night and moving the front lines to Iraq was a good move.

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That’s very cute, Chalupa. So you don’t hold Osama Bin Laden responsible for 9/11 anymore? Sure, KSM’s sitting in a cell. That satisfies you, fine. We got the job half-one and you’ve declared “Mission Accomplished” (oops there you go again.)

Mata: In post 136, were you making a point?

Aqua: Consider it a dodge if you will, but I’m not interested in falling into the “when did you stop beating your wife” hypothetical trap of your argument. For the record, I’m all for torture in ACTUAL ticking time-bomb situations. I’m all for sacrificing hostages to ACTUALLY save a greater number of innocents. I would arm insurgents to take down a murderous dictator. I have no objection to these tactics — my objection is to the idea that we’re ALWAYS in a hair-on-fire crisis. Sure, move the battlefield somewhere more practical, once you’ve established through experience that the battlefield you’re on is a serious problem. But we were NOT in a shooting war with anyone when moving the battlefield to Iraq was presented. The goal of attacking Iraq was in play long before 9/11. It was never a tactic of last resort to save American lives in Afghanistan. Justify it in hind-sight all you like, but that’s all you’re doing.

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@Barleymash:

“On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam’s inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.

And didn’t we have this conversation last night?

Yup. And didn’t I address that, indirectly in comment #68?

“two former senior CIA officers”. I wonder which shadow warriors these were. Drumheller is probably one of them. He’s 60 Minutes’ “go-to” expert on intell and so full of shit-spinning, that he was rebuked by the Senate Select Committee on post-war findings. They were baffled by his claims, taken to the media, which were patently false. Seems Blumenthal is one of those media-partisans who ate it up, hook, line, and sinker. Prior to the Senate Report, the media had run at least 134 stories referring to Drumheller’s claims and criticism. And this is how spin becomes the accepted narrative.

Sabri did indeed warn that Saddam had wmd- the opposite of Drumheller’s claims.

I’ve already linked to what I wrote before:

Tenet said that the source — meaning Sabri — had said Iraq was stockpiling chemical weapons and that equipment to produce insecticides, under the oil-for-food program, had been diverted to covert chemical weapons production.

As for Drumheller, he’s a lying partisan sack of shit.

His media spin garnered the attention of a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence investigation, which rebuked Drumheller’s misrepresentations.

Read: Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on Postwar Findings about Iraq’s WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How They Compare with Prewar Assessments, with Additional Views, pg 141-144

And my other quote:

This whole media circus-jerk around leaked intelligence, with Drumheller making his rounds of the usual willing suspects, is directly referred to in the link I provided to you (pg 143):

The Committee was aware of this source’s WMD reporting [Sabri] during the first phase of the Committee review, the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Assessments on Iraq, but began exploring this issue again as a result of press reports, in particular a story on 60 Minutes, “A Spy Speaks Out,” which seemed to contradict the information available to the Committee.

The 60 Minutes story focused on the account of the former Chief of CIA’s Europe Division (Chief/EUR) [i.e., Drumheller] who claimed that the source described above “told us that [Iraq] had no active weapons of mass destruction program.” This story was followed by numerous other media appearances by the former Chief/EUR such as, CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight and Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees, and MSNBC’s Hardball, in which he claimed that the source said Iraq had no WMD programs.

Concerned that something may have been missed in our first Iraq review, the Committee began to request additional information from the Intelligence Community and to question current and former CIA officers who were involved in this issue. As noted above, the Committee has not completed this inquiry, but we have seen the operational documentation pertaining to this case. We can say that there is not a single document related to this case which indicates that the source said Iraq had no WMD programs. On the contrary, all of the information about this case so far indicates that the information from this source was that Iraq did have WMD programs. Both the operations cable and the intelligence report prepared for high-level policymakers said that while Saddam Hussein did not have a nuclear weapon, “he was aggressively and covertly developing such a weapon.” Both documents said “Iraq was producing and stockpiling chemical weapons” and they both said Iraq’s weapon of last resort was mobile launched chemical weapons, which would be fired at enemy forces and Israel. The source’s comments were consistent with the nuclear, chemical and missile assessments in the October 2002 WMD NIE. The only program not described as fully active was the biological weapons program which the source described as “amateur,” and not constituting a real weapons program.

The former Director of Central Intelligence testified before the Committee in July 2006 that the former Chief/EUR “has mischaracterized [the source's] information” and said the former Chief/EUR never expressed a view to him, as the former Chief/EUR has claimed publicly, that the source’s information meant Iraq did not have WMD programs. The Committee is still exploring why the former Chief/EUR’s public remarks differ so markedly from the documentation.

Steve’s Salon quote:

“They described what Tenet said to Bush about the lack of WMD, and how Bush responded, and noted that Tenet never shared Sabri’s intelligence with then Secretary of State Colin Powell.”

George Tenet, in his “tell-all” memoir, devotes 7 pages to debunking Drumheller, who

“had dozens of opportunities before and after the Powell speech [at the UN] to raise the alarm with me, yet he failed to do so.”

Records show that Drumheller paid Tenet’s office 22 visits during this time period.

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@Aye Chihuahua:

If that’s your position, then it’s entirely appropriate to exclude you from the intellectually honest group.

Okay then, I’ll direct you Wordsmith’s comment #102…

But Bush agrees with you, that it gave a false impression and opened himself up for political opponents to take full advantage and spin away on it.

So your ad hominem insult towards me, which you base on my disagreement with you on this matter, can also be applied to Bush.

Then I can summarize that it’s clear that I’m not afraid to admit that I agree with Bush, as you are to admit you agree with Obama.

I’ll let the last word be yours. No doubt you’ll use it to bully me as I walk away from you. But I’m quite content with not being alpha.

So until our next discussion…

be well.

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