The argument that Bush "lied" about WMDs in Iraq has been proffered ad nauseam by anti-war partisans, proving that sloppy arguments never die.
The problem with this argument is that it simply isn’t true. In order for Bush to have lied or "mislead" on the subject of Iraq, he would have had to have absolute foreknowledge that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. Last time I checked, Bush doesn’t have magical powers over space and time, or Michael Moore would have spontaneously combusted decades ago.
The argument then follows that Bush didn’t have conclusive evidence that Iraq had an active program, and ignored evidence to the contrary. This is a slightly more supportable charge, but it still doesn’t prove the overall argument.
First, we know Iraq had WMDs before 1998. The 1998 UNSCOM report was the source for the figures of 18,000 liters of anthrax, tons of VX, and the other elements of WMD program. This report comes from the UN – it’s hardly the product of some Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
Now, where did these weapons go?
That’s the $64,000 question. If Saddam Hussein destroyed these weapons, he could have easily proven it and saved himself and his regime. The Mukhabarat documented everything, including tortures and executions. It seems highly unlikely that the Iraqis would have torched their WMD stocks without extensively documenting what was destroyed, where, and when.
And that’s ultimately why the argument that Saddam Hussein either didn’t have or destroyed those weapons is so unconvincing. If you were in the shoes of Saddam Hussein and could save yourself by simply proving your weapons program didn’t exist why wouldn’t you?
However, Saddam Hussein didn’t do that. Even Hans Blix said Hussein was lying in his weapons declarations. He easily could have shown his own "smoking gun" that would have vindicated him and stopped the war in its tracks.
So, if the WMDs weren’t destroyed, where are they?
My money is on Syria, with the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon a close second. Contrary to science fiction, US satellites can’t monitor an area 24/7. Spy satellites are in low Earth orbit, which means that they have a limited window in which they can study an area before they pass below the horizon. A Predator or Global Hawk drone could hover over an area for longer, but we’d have to know when and where to look. (And the Iraqis shot down several drones in the no-fly zones before the war.)
We know that the Iraqis had routine shipments across the Iraq-Syria and Iraq-Turkey borders. A tanker truck could be holding either illegal oil shipments or chemical weapons – and unless those trucks were interdicted there’s no way to tell. With the cross-border traffic that went on for years before the war, it would have been easy to have shipped an entire weapons program across the border along with illicit oil.
The argument that Bush "lied" or "mislead" on Iraq doesn’t hold water. Quite the contrary – no sane President would lowball estimates of something that could be a very real threat to their country, especially not after being attacked by a country that didn’t seem to pose any threat before thousands were murdered. It is better to have liberated Iraq under one mistake made on the side of caution than to have ignored a threat that was not only a potential threat to the United States and the world, but an unmistakable threat to the region and to the Iraqi people.
Oh, poor Bush.
Honestly, Jay, this is just one more piece of gutless Bush fellation. You overlook of course that Bush is the President of the Fucking United States and while he may not have Superman’s X-Ray vision, he had something else – the CIA.
He certainly did his damnedest to convince the international community and the American people that the CIA was sufficiently god-like to know that Saddam had the weapons he said he didn’t have. Or maybe you forgot Powell’s speeches in the run-up to war?
Was the war right or wrong? I don’t know. But one thing I do know is that the case for war was made with statements that the administration knew to be false, or at the very least, statements made with an overstatement of confidence. While the war may turn out, eventually, to be good for Iraq, the cost of American and Iraqi lives for bogus intel should weigh heavy on every American conscience, especially this November.
P.S. Does this mean you’re no longer predicting that they’ll find the WMD “any day now”?
Can the ad hominems – this isn’t the third grade.
The CIA is not infallible – and the CIA has been gutted by decades of cutbacks, especially in human intelligence.
No, the Bush Administration’s case was that we didn’t know what had happened to Saddam’s WMDs. We had intercepts that clearly stated that something was odd. We had intercepts that indicated very strongly that Saddam did have chemical and biological weapons. The bloody UN said they did. Everybody agreed on the fact that Saddam Hussein had banned weapons.
So if Bush lied, so did Chiraq, Clinton, the UN, the Iranians, the Germans, and every bloody intelligence service on the planet. No one believed that Saddam didn’t have the weapons, the question was where they went.
If Saddam still had them, they were a threat. If he didn’t he could have proven it. He didn’t, and the only logical conclusion that can come from that is that he was hiding something.
If we start setting the precedent that a President has to come in with a case in which every i is dotted and every t crossed than we have ensured that thousands more Americans will fall victim to terrorism. Intelligence is not an exact science. Anyone who says otherwise is an idiot or a liar. Based on the evidence at hand, Iraq presented a clear threat to the region and to the world.
A President must error on the side of caution. Anyone dumb enough to ignore threats doesn’t deserve to be within in a mile of that office.
There was always a chance that Iraq’s weapons program would not be found. Saddam Hussein had 18 months to hide his weapons. If you think that he wouldn’t do anything in that time you’re not thinking straight.
Even without the finding of weapons, the invasion of Iraq has ended one of the most brutal regimes in our time, freed 25 million people, brought the hope for democracy to the Arab world, renewed the infrastructure crippled by years of Ba’athist neglect, forced Libya to give up their weapons programs, and changed the balance of this war into a war where we now choose the time and place for battle.
But no, the childish partisans of the Democratic Party have a vision that begins and ends with George W. Bush. An infantile revulsion based on cheap partisanship above any logic, reason, or strategy. What few intelligent arguments against the war that existed were drowned out in a cachophany of cheap sloganeering and repugnant partisanship.
Bush did the right thing by removing the Hussein regime. What has been done in the region has saved tens of thousands, even millions of lives. The costs have been high, but each and every soldier that died in Iraq died for a reason.
It sickens me that so many would piss all over that sacrifice for something is cheap as partisan advantage.
No, the Bush Administration’s case was that we didn’t know what had happened to Saddam’s WMDs.
We don;t know what happened to some of our own WMD’s. Does that mean you’d support an invasion from Canada?
So if Bush lied, so did Chiraq, Clinton, the UN, the Iranians, the Germans, and every bloody intelligence service on the planet.
Ah, but Bush was the only one who decided that was enough to start a war.
If we start setting the precedent that a President has to come in with a case in which every i is dotted and every t crossed than we have ensured that thousands more Americans will fall victim to terrorism.
Yeah, God forbid we hold the president to a higher standard or something.
Anyone who says otherwise is an idiot or a liar.
Can the ad-hominems. This isn’t third grade.
A President must error on the side of caution.
Right, but reasonable people would interpret “caution” to mean “not starting a war based on intelligence that can’t possibly be certain.”
It sickens me that so many would piss all over that sacrifice for something is cheap as partisan advantage.
Just as, I’m sure, it sickens me each time you fellate an adminstration so arrogant, petty, and retributitive, it doesn’t deserve to lead a church fundraiser, much less this country.
And that’s the problem – again, INTELLIGENCE IS NEVER CERTAIN. Unless you’re a complete idiot, (or a Bush-hating Democrat on election year) you don’t blindly assume that someone who has already gassed thousands of people is telling the truth when he says that he doesn’t have what the whole world says they have good reason to believe otherwise.
Of course, when your whole world is defined by the irrational hatred of one man, things like logic and common sense are immaterial compared to petty spite.
Of course, when your whole world is defined by the irrational hatred of one man, things like logic and common sense are immaterial compared to petty spite.
Likewise when your whole world is defined by an irrepressable need to fellate the President.
Wow, see how easy it is to wave away reason with generalizations?
War is never erring on the side of caution, by definition.
No, wars are sometimes necessary to rid the world of evil. Hell, Bill Clinton used the same rationale to bomb and invade Kosovo. Milosevic was never a threat to the United States, he was only a threat to his own people. Yet Clinton went ahead and engaged in a military action that was never supported by the UN and which we’re still engaged in nearly 5 years after the fact.
Mohammad Farah Idid was never a threat the United States, but only to his own people, yet Clinton began military action in Somalia.
If Saddam Hussein had not been removed, the situation in the Middle East would be much worse. Libya would still have WMDs. Syria would never have begun quietly shutting down terrorist operations. The Iranian pro-democracy movement would have never been so emboldened. The Iraqi people would still be under the bootheel of Saddam Hussein and his twisted sons.
Quite frankly, there’s little point in arguing with you. You’ve already made up your mind. You hate Bush, we all know that. Anything you say is going to be based around the simple prejudice that is Bush does it, it must be bad. There’s scarce little point in reasoning someone out of something that’s based in an irrational hatred rather than a reasoned position.
You hate Bush, we all know that. Anything you say is going to be based around the simple prejudice that is Bush does it, it must be bad.
It’s funny you keep saying that, when I know I’ve told you that I not only voted for him, I actually support some of his positions. But it’s not Bush-hating to realize that he’s done more harm than good for the country.
Your repeated ad hominem grows tiresome. I realize that in your world of spineless, toadying Bush-fellation, anybody who disagrees with you must be a Bush-hater. There’s honestly no use trying to engage somone like you in rational conversation.
There’s scarce little point in reasoning someone out of something that’s based in an irrational hatred rather than a reasoned position.
Try addressing this with a reasoned position, if you can : Are we better off now than we were 4 years ago? Only an idiot – or a Bush-fellater – could say yes.
Yup, because anyone who agrees with Bush on one issue is a “Bush fellater”. Even though I’ve vigorously *disagreed* with Bush on numerous issues.
Here’s a little clue for you:
BUSH ISN’T THE ISSUE
I don’t give a flying fuck who is in charge. It could be Bush, it could be Rice, it could be Hubert B. Crotchlicker – THE POLICY IS WHAT MATTERS. The invasion of Iraq isn’t right because Bush did it, the invastion of Iraq was right because it removed the world of a horrible dictator, made the world safer, and changed this war from a war that is fought on the terms of the enemy to one fought on ours.
That isn’t “Bush fellation” that’s sound policy. That’s doing what’s right to protect this country from people who want to destroy it.
When the only line of attack that you have on an argument is that Bush did it, so it must be bad, that’s Bush hatred. When any support of Bush is “Bush fellation” that’s irrational Bush hatred. When someone hates Bush more than they hate Saddam Hussein, that is indicative a sense of priorities that is so far out of proportion that it’s ridiculous.
Come back when you can learn to be an adult.
Do you think you could come up with an argument that’s a little more sophisticated than basically “I know you are but what am I?” That’d be great, thanks.
Could you bother actually reading and understanding the argument being made before spouting off? That’d be great, thanks…