different strings

January 27, 2004

Evidence that Saddam had disarmed is found

The Washington Post is reporting that David Kay, until recently the head of the Iraqi Survey Group, has said that while working in Iraq, he found evidence that Saddam Hussein had at least partially disarmed during the 1990s.

The discovery means that inspectors have not only failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but also have found exculpatory information -- contemporaneous documents and confirmations from interviews with Iraqis -- demonstrating that Saddam Hussein did make efforts to disarm well before President Bush began making the case for war.

Kay noted that the fact that Hussein did not present proof of disarmament to the US or UN when threatened with war indicates, to him, that Saddam may have been "bluffing about his weapons capabilities to maintain an aura of power." Apparently, Saddam was more afraid of being attacked by his neighbors if he provided proof that he had no WMD than he was that we would actually go to war against him.

I'm sure that most conservatives will maintain that Saddam's choice to lie to us in spite of our threats, along with their late-found interest in the welfare of the Iraqi people (who, admittedly, may eventually get a better country out of this mess than they started with, but it doesn't look to be anytime soon), justify the war, but personally, this discovery shows precisely why the UN Inspectors should have been allowed to continue with their job before the war ever began.

Part of why I still have such a problem with the war in it's entirety is that, realistically, very little changed about Iraq - or the conditions that existed for the people living there - between the end of the first Gulf War and the beginning of the second. So far, the most significant change seems to be that Saddam did destroy many of his weapons and we ran a bombing mission that likely got rid of most of the rest. We had no new information indicating that Saddam had (or had obtained) any WMD between the time of the bombing run and the start of the war, and yet suddently it was an absolute necessity that we attack Iraq. So necessary that we couldn't allow the weapons inspectors to finish their jobs.

Before arguing that the war was necessary for the good of the Iraqi people, and that Saddam was a murderous tyrant who was filling mass graves, keep in mind that many of those mass graves were already filled or being filled when we still considered him an ally. The fate of the Iraqi people meant nothing to our leaders back then. It meant nothing when we waged the first Gulf War and encouraged the Kurds to rebel against Saddam before abandonding them - essentially handing Saddam new bodies to add to his graves. Their fate meant nothing to us for the twelve years between Gulf War I and Gulf War II. It only began to mean anything to our leaders when they started running out of reasons (or had the reasons they were offering shown to be weak or false) to attack them now. Remember also that the people now live in a war-torn country where there are frequent acts of terrorism which are happening in response to our being there.

Next time you hear President Bush make his claim that at least now, we can be sure Saddam won't be giving WMD to any terrorists, keep in mind that - had we allowed the inspectors to do the work they were sent there to do - we'd have known that without having to sacrifice 500 of our soldiers, plus the countless others of our troops who have been injured - physically or mentally - in this war. There was evidence to be found. President Bush and his administration simply weren't willing to take the time to look for it.

Posted by thorswitch at January 27, 2004 11:15 PM | TrackBack

Comments

Thanks, Kriselda -- you jogged my memory with this post, had forgotten this:

Saddam gave a report to the UN back in November of 2002 advising status of weaponry. The US took that report BEFORE it got to the UN, and then pulled a substantial number of pages before they released it.

*What happened to those pages???*
*Did Saddam report the weapons were destroyed in those pages???*

Kay is bad-mouthing the CIA, but dollars-to-donuts Kay also supported the Administration's search for weapons because Kay believed they were there. Kay's own beliefs probably tainted the decision-making process. Grrr...

The real kicker is that Human Rights Watch says this war was not justified for humanitarian reasons. Had we gone to war a decade ago for that reason alone we would have been justified.

Posted by: Rayne at January 28, 2004 07:53 AM

K, this is about the 3rd time I've seen you mention President Clinton's cruise missle attack against Saddam Hussein. You imply that the one little attack wiped out any remaining WMD stocks and capabilities of Iraq. Come on. Just because the missiles may have WJC engraved on the side doesn't make their aim any better or their blast radius any bigger. If current events have proved anything, it is that the truth -- and therefore the target -- is elusive.

Posted by: pedro at January 28, 2004 10:09 AM

The main reason I keep bringing it up is that both Bush and Rumsfeld have said that they used the exact same intelligence Clinton had used when he decided to make the airstrike, and both have acknowledged that we had not obtained ANY new intelligence SINCE the airstrike. Whether the missiles actually did destroy what arsenal Saddam might have had, I don't know for sure (and I certainly don't think that they were somehow "better" because Clinton sent them - I'm not a huge Clinton fan - you shouldn't assume that all Dems are - he did a number of things I didn't care for, though, given the choice, I'd gladly take him back in place of Bush, but that's sort of like asking someone to choose between having horse entrails or raw cow's brain for dinner - neither option is what I'd called "good"), but what I DO know - and why I think the airstrike is an important issue here - is that we had what we believed to be reliable intel and we ACTED on it back in 1997.

Here's the thing. Either the 1997 intel was good, and the airstrike most likely took out most (if not all) of Saddam's cache of WMD, OR the 1997 intel was bad, the airstrike accomplished nothing (except, perhaps, to let Saddam know where we were EXPECTING to find WMD so that he could move them) and we never had any REAL idea of what Saddam had or where he was hiding it. In either case, the intelligence from 1997 was irrelevent to the situation in 2003 and relying on 5 year old intelligence that had ALREADY been acted on was irresponsible and rather foolish.

Personally, I think the fact that there's no indication that Saddam had any kind of current WMD capacity indicates that the airstrike likely met with at least some success and may have finished up the jobs of disarming Saddam that we're now learning Saddam himself HAD already started. Even if it didn't, though, NO one (and I would say this even if it were a Democrat in office) has any business taking a country to war based on 5 year old intelligence that's already been acted on.

So the importance of the airstrike is that it marks the last point at which we actually had any "current" (at that time) intelligence available on Saddam, and the very act of the airstrike - successful or not - rendered the intelligence it was based on obsolete.

Posted by: Kriselda Jarnsaxa at January 29, 2004 06:04 AM