Still think Saddam had WMD's?

Actually most of us who supported the war did not think Saddam had massive stockpiles of WMD.  We simply considered Saddam's regime to be an unacceptable threat in a post-war Iraq.  I've been blogging since before the war and had written my view that it wasn't canisters of mustard gas or whatever that we were going into Iraq about.

It's been those who opposed the war - even when they thought there were WMD stockpiles - who made the switch to acting like they somehow would have been for the war if they'd merely found some barrels of mustard gas or something.

That's the one nicest thing about blogging - it creates a written record.

Actually most of us who supported the war did not think Saddam had massive stockpiles of WMD. We simply considered Saddam's regime to be an unacceptable threat in a post-war Iraq.

Perhaps you didn't feel that way, but it's pretty hard to argue that anyone who supported the war did so because they felt there was no imminent threat from WMD's. Why would Saddam's regime be more a threat than Iran or N. Korea if it didn't have WMD's? Because Wolfowitz and PANAC felt so?

Again: The nice thing about the blogsphere is that it keeps a written record.

The leading "warbloggers" of the time, ranging from Steven Den Beste, Right Wing News, Instapundit, Andrew Sullivan, James Lileks, One Hand Clapping, Eject Eject Eject, JoeUser (back when it was just me) and so forth were saying the same things.

Anyone who thinks that we invaded Iraq primarily because we thought it contained drums of mustard gas or something is ignorant of the facts and deserves nothing but scorn and contempt for their naivete.

Show me anti-war people who would have thought taking out Saddam would have been a good thing if only we had found a warehouse of mustard gas. You can't because they were against it no matter what. So out of their own cynical nastiness they merely spin the absence of WMD stockpiles as being the main reason we went in which was never the case.

Tell me Deference: Are you glad we invaded Iraq? Would you been cheering on Bush today if we had found a warehouse in Baghdad with drums of mustard gas in there?

Never said it was the primary reason Drag...But the current administration did use it as a secondary reason for invasion. Let's keep the record straight here guys!


Also for the record, this should have been finished in 1990, when the WMD was a real threat.

Whatever warbloggers may have been writing about, Bush absolutely focused on WMDs and the eminent threat to America in his comments and speeches. Warbloggers aren't accountable to the citizens of this country, Bush is. Warbloggers don't run the country, Bush does. It is certainly accurate to say that Americans supported the war because Bush told us we were facing an eminent threat from Iraqi WMDs. That's why people keep reading articles about it, and posted articles get bumped up at sites that track web views, and it's also why the Bush people haven't apologized for hiding the CIAs caveats at the time, and why they are still nearly unwilling to acknowledge that there were no WMDs. Everyone's behavior is consistent with the thesis that both the American people and Bush think WMDs matter.

The whole 'why' debate has raged for months.

There have been hundreds of posts on JoeUser by pro war supporters about the definite proof of WMD.

I think it is very fair to say that most of those who bothered to read up on the issue supported the war for non WMD issues. The majority however had to decide to support the war based on what their government was telling them. Whether the government tried to sell the war on WMD issues and links to 9/11 is important here. I for one definitely believe they did.



Paul.

Anyone who thinks that we invaded Iraq primarily because we thought it contained drums of mustard gas or something is ignorant of the facts and deserves nothing but scorn and contempt for their naivete.

Regardless, this was the selling point given by the current administration, I doubt much public support would have been given by the people for the war if it were not. Try getting the public behind you to invade North Korea or Iran without getting them to believe they are in immediate danger from those countries, despite their threat.

Tell me Deference: Are you glad we invaded Iraq? Would you been cheering on Bush today if we had found a warehouse in Baghdad with drums of mustard gas in there?

Nope, not glad we invaded Iraq, with the amount of cost to us, in lives and taxpayer dollars, I'm certain there were other options that were ignored that may have been less expensive and dangerous for us. Do you feel this was the best way to solve problems in Iraq? Knowing your judgement here in the forums, I would infer that you don't. If we found a warehouse of mustard gas, I would say that it would at least justify us to a greater extent for our preemptive action in the eyes of the world, but even then, I feel this administration rushed us from one war to the next while playing a shell game with the reasons why.

The leading "warbloggers" of the time, ranging from Steven Den Beste, Right Wing News, Instapundit, Andrew Sullivan, James Lileks, One Hand Clapping, Eject Eject Eject, JoeUser (back when it was just me) and so forth were saying the same things.

Oh yes, those middle-aged men with a tight grip on the blog fad are surely an accurate representation of the American population eh.

The truth is, that without the WMD argument, the Bush administration would NEVER have had such a high support for war from the general public or support from other countries.

Reply #7 By: Deference - 10/6/2004 12:00:22 PM Anyone who thinks that we invaded Iraq primarily because we thought it contained drums of mustard gas or something is ignorant of the facts and deserves nothing but scorn and contempt for their naivete. Regardless, this was the selling point given by the current administration, I doubt much public support would have been given by the people for the war if it were not. Try getting the public behind you to invade North Korea or Iran without getting them to believe they are in immediate danger from those countries, despite their threat

WMD's were their main selling point because *at the time* it what the intel weenies were feeding them. Don't try to lay all this on Bush! Put some of it where it belongs.....on the CIA!!!

As I recall it, the WMD argument went something like this:

He has had them in the past. Sizeable stockpiles of them.
He has USED them in the past.
He has had the capability to build them himself.
He has consistently refused to show the UN inspectors proof that he no longer has the capacity to build them.
He has consistently refused to show the UN inspectors proof that he has destroyed all of his stockpiles.
His actions demonstrate that even if he no longer has the capacity to build them or the stockpiles, he will re-acquire that ability and re-stockpile them.
We know from his history that he is willing to use them when he has them.

Therefore:
We cannot afford to wait until he proves that he has them by using them (on us, quite probably) before we act against him.

...let's see, George Tenet, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Cheney, etc. etc., we had a lot of people assisting Mr. Bush in selling this war, I will not believe he was some uninformed innocent simply because he made the wrong call and has to suffer the consequences of his foolish preemptive action.

Reply #11 By: Deference - 10/6/2004 12:25:06 PM ...let's see, George Tenet, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Cheney, etc. etc., we had a lot of people assisting Mr. Bush in selling this war, I will not believe he was some uninformed innocent simply because he made the wrong call and has to suffer the consequences of his foolish preemptive action.

You just don't get it do you? ALL those people you are refering to, read the SAME damn intel reports! I never said he was an uninformed innocent. I'm saying that he was *misinformed* by his intel dept.

The point I'm making is that, just like Bush at the debates, the homework wasn't done, and the results were disastrous. You are going to tell me that the United States Government doesn't evaluate these reports for their plausibility? When so much intelligence is taken to justify war that falls through, there is a serious problem, either the collective workings of the administration (and that includes G.W.) are broken and incompetent or such information, though they knew it was the equal of walking out on a limb, was jumped at as a justification for more military action. Let's not look at the pattern of fearmongering we've seen from this administration as some wizened ancients looking out for our better interests, instead, let's see them for the chickenhawks they are.

Dr....Come on!

There were other intel reports out there at the time that stated saddam didnt have WMD's. bush 2.0 chose to ignore them. The current administration planned to invade Iraq very early in their term. The WMD's and 9/11 were their justification to do it.

Reply #13 By: Deference - 10/6/2004 12:51:48 PM The point I'm making is that, just like Bush at the debates, the homework wasn't done, and the results were disastrous.

You still don't get it! The homework assignment that you are refering to was supposed to be done by the CIA no Bush!

Reply #14 By: thatoneguyinslc - 10/6/2004 12:52:48 PM Dr....Come on! There were other intel reports out there at the time that stated saddam didnt have WMD's. bush 2.0 chose to ignore them. The current administration planned to invade Iraq very early in their term. The WMD's and 9/11 were their justification to do it.

Show them to me, I'm from Missouri! Even British intel said there were WMD's how many reports does Bush need to look at??? He actually should only ever have to look at one. The one from our intel dept (CIA).

The homework assignment that you are refering to was supposed to be done by the CIA.

Except the administration unprecedentedly set up its own office in the Pentagon to oversee and selectively pull and highlight (questionable) intelligence information, including information having to do with Iraq. The White House has oversight over the CIA. The president is in some ways ultimately responsible for the administration of the CIA and other intelligence gathering operations. The president IGNORED CIA briefings when they said intelligence he was quoting in his 2003 State of the Union address was suspect at best. The president seems to be dodging his responsibility for making these claims about WMD when he lays it off on faulty intelligence as if the intelligence gathering community is completely separate from his administrative policy, as if he's just another guy waiting for their reports with no influence on how that work is done. The buck for this one ultimately stops at the President's desk....now watch him play hot potato with it.

You still don't get it! The homework assignment that you are refering to was supposed to be done by the CIA no Bush!

I understand what you are driving at, that it's not Bush's fault we invaded Iraq based on intelligence he received. I'm telling you that he exaggerated those claims without questioning their veracity and plausibility and that his administration agressively sold the public on those claims to justify dropping 240,000 troops in the middle east without an proper war plan that made the proper concessions for an exit strategy or even the monetary means to complete the mission. There were much better options that could have been explored, but the Bush administration curiously and impulsively threw caution to the wind leaving Bush supporters to defend a mess that cannot be justified with anything but,

"Hey, buddy, it was faulty intelligence, my bad!"

Irresponsible and unstatesmanlike, vote CHANGE.

Also for the record, this should have been finished in 1990, when the WMD was a real threat.

Would have been, if Bush 1.0 hadn't done the show under the terms of the Kerry Doctrine (as Kerry has recently espoused it). Acting unilaterally or with a smaller, more deferential coalition would have given Bush 1.0 the lattitude to do just that. The whole notion of mustering world-wide consensus for such action is a two-edged sword, because it by definition limits your options.

Cheers,
Daiwa

Just to rule out the British reports. We had a legal review of the process behind those reports and it was shown that the government asked for much rephrasing of the report to emphasise the threat. While they did not actually add any false claims they did insist that the more outragious intelligence received be included and emphasised despite no secondary sources.

So the British report proving Saddam had WMD was a political report and NOT the internal belief of the intelligence community.

Paul.

My point has been and always will be that no matter the existance of WMDs now, there were greedy, dishonest regimes around the world that were poised to make a fortune re-arming Hussein the moment France and the rest had forced an end to the sanctions against him. Those sanctions had been in place for 10 years. There was basically NO support for the no-fly zones beyond the nations that were enforcing them. Within 10 years, certainly, and most likely 5 or less years, those sanctions would have been lifted, allowing Hussein to import "defensive" military equipment and the floodgates would have opened.

That simply could not be allowed. We were fighting against too much French, Russian and Chinese armament as it was. Once North Korea and other starving, rogue states had slid into the equation Hussein would have had no problem at all restarting WMD programs at a very accelerated rate.

The fact is, the neo-cons wanted to take Saddam down well before September 11th. Bush said he was going to, "Take Saddam out," while he was campaigning for President in 2000. So of course there were other reasons to invade Iraq, if you agreed with the neo-con argument that regime change would stabilize the region rather than destabilize it.

The miscalculation the Bush administration made was when they decided to invade Iraq in 2003, not because it was strategically necessary at that moment, but because they knew they could get support for it in the post 9-11 climate. And they used the threat of WMD to get that support. Now that the WMD argument has unraveld, they have to fall back on the neo-con philosophy that it will stabilize the region, which looks less and less reasonable the less stable Iraq becomes.

The lack of WMD also further hurts our credibility in the world. All the people out there who think international alliances are for wussies are kidding themselves. If we want to win the war on terror, international alliances are more important than all the military firepower we've got. Many of our allies opposed George W. Bush in the run up to war because they weren't sure it was justified for the reasons he was giving, and now they know they were right. They feel vindicated in their opposition to us, and they have good reason not to trust us in the future.

The new Republican argument is that sanctions were eroding and would have been lifted and therefore Saddam would have become the threat George Bush told us he already was. But that's only if the dynamic had remained what it was in the pre-9-11 climate. Post-9-11, countries across the world felt sympathy for us, and wanted to help us fight terrorism. It was only in the run up to the invasion that Bush managed to alienate so many of the people who could have helped us keep weapons out of the hands of terrorists. If we'd had a leader for a president, instead of a bully, he could have pursuaded the international community to do whatever he wanted.

That's the real difference in leadership philosophies between George Bush and John Kerry. All George Bush cares about is whether or not he's right. But being right doesn't get the job done. John Kerry believes in pursuading the rest of the world that we're right, and that our interests are the world's interests.

bakerstreet,
I agree totally with your point on why Saddam needed to be removed. Pity the government didn't focus on the truth as to why he needed removing and not try to 'sell' the war based on WMD.

Paul.

Good arguement Baker, but we should have done it in 1991.

We had the manpower in place, the Shiites were on board, and we could have pulled it off. But because of bush 1.0's hesitance and fear of pissing off the UN, we walked out. BIG mistake. If we would have done it then, the world would have been a much safer place now. Saddam would not have massacred all the Shiites, not paid the suicide bombers families and motivated others to do the same. Then we could have focused more on the real threats in this world unfettered. Like Iran and North Korea.

Lets face facts here folks. bush 2.0 fabricated the WMD's this go-around. There was also no connection between Al Qaida and Iraq. There's no arguing it. Wether you defend him by saying he was going off bad intel or whatever. The proof was never there. The administration wanted to get rid of Saddam, which i have no problem with. But the problem i have with them is that they could have used more legitimate reasons, for instance Iraq's multiple violations of the UN agreement. We did maintain the right to go in there and finish the job. But true to form our government paid too much attention to what the rest of the world thought through the bush 1.0 and Clinton administrations.

Bottom line...bush 2.0 lied to the american public about his reasons for the latest Iraq war to jusitfy his actions. Which is WRONG! And i feel will eventually cost him his job. We americans expect our politicians to lie to us on some things, but not when it costs us the lives of 1,000 + american soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen. That is unacceptable to me. and i suspect many others as well.

How about this arguement, then? Link