US Slaughters Thousands, But Still No WMD

[Chris Alger]

That's one accurate headline you'll never see.

Recall that the reasons that to distinguish our invasion of Iraq from, say, Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan or Hitler's invasin of Poland were to (1) preclude Baghdad's ability to use WMD against the US or the region and (2) preclude Baghdad's inclination to funnel WMD to terrorists, who in turn would then use them against the US or the region. Set aside for a minute the assumption that Iraq could forever circumvent a permanently instrusive inspections regime that already destroyed 90-95% of its former WMD and facilities. Both arguments also rested on the assumption that the inevitable response to such actions, the guaranteed destruction of the Baghdad regime, would not be sufficient to deter. War advocates strenuously argued that nothing short of conquering Iraq from border to border could possibly thwart the propensity of "Baathist ideology" for elective mischief.

So far, the war has proven the following:

1. If Iraq has WMD, it decided not to use them to deter or defend against the imminent destruction of the Baghdad regime.

2. If Iraq has WMD plus an inclination to proliferate them to terrorists, it decided not to do so to deter or defend against the imminent destruction of the Baghdad regime.

If we lived in a country with a free and independent press that was devoted more to useful information than official propaganda, these facts would be viewed as damning or at least revealing about the credibility of official sources. But since we don’t, they are not near the amount of attention devoted to pre-war claims about Iraq's penchant for destruction and terror even when the regime's survival was not at stake.

So far, despite hundreds if not thousands of White House claims about the obvious nature of Iraq’s WMD capability, it turns out that the US has been unable to locate any WMD at all.

From today's NY Times:

"The continued failure of American forces to find any "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq must be worrying some officials, particularly at intelligence agencies that assured the White House that Baghdad had such weapons. If Saddam Hussein authorized his field commanders to use chemical weapons, as Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested to the United Nations in February, presumably some of the weapons should have been overrun by Army and Marine forces as they closed in on Baghdad. Yet so far every report of suspicious items has proved to be a false alarm."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/18/op...html?tntemail1

My prediction: The White House will continue to refuse access by UN weapons experts to suspected WMD sites. The CIA will continue to come under pressure to verify the existence of WMD from pro-war organs like the WS Journal, using the implicit threat of Runsfeld's threatened "reorganization" of intelligence services (moving all intelligence under his direct command) to get the CIA to come around.

And then they'll be "found" under circumstances that most observers will find incredible. The general media reaction here will range from mild, quickly forgotten skepticism to angry denunciations of any that could doubt the word of the maximum leader.

And years from now someone will prove it was all a lie, long after the controversy disappeared into Orwell's memory hole.

[Parmenides]

I agree with your entire post. The USA is becoming a fascist society. This war was conducted for the main purpose of generating revenue for corporations loyal to Sick Cheney and W. Bush.

Bushes sadistic enjoyment of killing is probably around 3rd or 4th on the list of reasons.

[MMMMMM]

Chris, if you actually believe Iraq recently had no WMD then you must be a very poor judge of human character. Saddam's entire history with regards to WMD show a clear and burning desire to attain and hold WMD if possible--at any cost. Do you really think Iraq unilaterally destroyed all those WMD it claimed it did, and which were never verified, some years ago?

How anyone could hold such a poor judgment of the character and goals of Saddam, yet still be able to judge opponents accurately at the poker table, is a mystery to me. I suggest that anyone who actually thinks Saddam did not recently have WMD should, when at the poker tables, base their poker judgments entirely on math and throw the human element out the window;-)

[B-Man]

Don't worry Chris, we'll find them eventually. Iraq is roughly the size of California. It takes more than a few weeks to search everywhere, especially if they are buried underground.

Of course, the liberals, skeptics and peaceniks aren't going to believe it even when we do find WMD, as your post makes clear, so why does it matter?

[MMMMMM]

What's most amazing to me is that anyone could actually think that Saddam had no WMD. Is the Pope Catholic?

[Chris Alger]

So far, your assumptions about events that Saddam's "character" will compel have been empirically, spectacularly proven false. If it were true that he was willing to pay "any cost" to obtain WMD, then it follows (1) that he would be willing to use them when the benefit was greatest, being when the destruction of his regime in the absence of thier use was guaranteed; and (2) that he would have been willing to use them when the cost was free, when the destruction of his regime was guaranteed no matter what. There are obvious conclusions that follow from these facts, yet they are given no more currency in the mainstream than statements about the USSR being a dictatorship were tolerated in Pravda.

It is ineluctable that Saddam's failure to use WMD at the direst possible moment undermines the assumption that he was willing to do so during less dire moments.

Your inability ot grasp this simple logic and the inability to entertain any alternative explanation to the official one is an example of the totalitarian mindset of a big portion of the pro-war faction. By "totalitarian" I mean the assignment of a probability of zero to obvious possible alternatives to the official viewpoint coupled with a tendency to emotionalize any forceful rejection of the official line as a form of irrational hatred. This is different and, in my view, much worse than something like an admittedly faith-based acceptance of creationism or Papal infallibility. You don't find many fundamentalist Baptists and Catholics, for example, claiming that the main reasons others don't share their views is that they worship Satan or hate God. Yet you constantly find pro-war types claiming that war opponents secretly sympathize with terrorism, are unpatriotic, "support" Saddam, hate America and similar forms of degeneracy.

What accounts for it? Nothing more complicated than the ubiquitous tendency to assign a degree of righteousness to the collective purpose as defined by the leadership, fed by regular doses of propaganda and indoctrination. The fact that there are so many great things about America makes it easier to invest a lot of emotional energy into an unshakeable assumption of our basic morality, and actually makes it worse.

The nations within earlier imperial powers (and imperialist wannabes) mostly learned the hard way about the downside to this. The scariest thing about the U.S. is that a big chunk of the public has no clue about what this could be, even and perhaps especially now.

[Clarkmeister]

[Chris Alger]

This is a perfect example of what I said above; I couldn't have written it better myself.

Note that the undisputable facts are that the US couldn't point to any Iraqi WMD before the war and haven't found any yet.

Yet you contend that Iraq having WMD is beyond question.

It's not so much that you believe fervently in something that is not certain, its that you cannot entertain the chance of any alternative. This was the purpose of the corruption of "Newspeak" language in 1984: if the words don't exist, the thoughts can't exist. Some of us are already there.

[Chris Alger]

If Iraq actually did destroy its WMD as Karmal testified, then there are two possible alternatives: (1) in between visits to the battlefield wounded Bush stands before the public and says a long version of Emily Litella's "nevermind" or (2) some "Iraqi" WMD are "found." You decide which is more likely.

But you allude to an important point. Most of the antiwar folks think this war has more to do with Wolfowitz's first draft of Defense Policy Guidance" than it does with WMD, and has little to do with WMD in any event. So to us it makes little difference of some hidden cache is found. This isn't a contradiction. If the official justification for war has no facts to support it the war is automatically wrong. If it has some facts to support it the war is not automatically right.

[Chris Alger]