Oh, those weapons of mass destruction
Fishkite has a good summary of what has been found in Iraq. Hyperlinks in the post would have been nice but if you look on the right side toolbar, there are some links to what has been found.
Via Les.
18 Responses to “Oh, those weapons of mass destruction”
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August 9th, 2004 at 12:24 pm
Did he include my link between al-Qaeda and Kevin Bacon?
August 9th, 2004 at 1:15 pm
Didn’t you “borrow” that from The Onion?
August 9th, 2004 at 1:26 pm
Ah, the wet dream continues. Good to see that even though David Kay has said that there were no WMDS in Iraq, it doesn’t stop this guy from quoting Kay.
Fishkite also seems to include some discredited stuff (i.e. Atta met an Iraqi agent in the Czech Republic bit), non-WMD (long-range missiles aren’t WMD by any measure), and innuendo about Zarqawi (we no longer think he was in Baghdad seeking medical treatment and his camp was in Kurdish-controlled teritory, not Saddam controlled territory).
August 9th, 2004 at 1:32 pm
Actually, IIRC he did tie al q to kevin bacon.
August 9th, 2004 at 3:12 pm
Manish: if we’re thinking of the same missiles, they were missiles Saddam wasn’t supposed to have according to his agreement with the U.N., and he claimed he had gotten rid of them. Depending on what he put in the warhead, they certainly could be used as delivery systems for WMDs.
August 9th, 2004 at 3:58 pm
Thib:
Actually, the Onion did do a quick little blurb, “Kevin Bacon Tied To Al-Qaeda,” with no attached story, but I had already been making the joke for some time (it’s a pretty obvious joke, so I take no points for originality) long before the Onion ran that.
But back in June, someone challenged me to actually come up with a Bacon/Al-Qaeda connection, and I did so here. Al-Qaeda has a Bacon Number of two.
August 9th, 2004 at 5:12 pm
My bad.
August 9th, 2004 at 5:41 pm
Thanks for the link, Uncle. It takes so much time to compile this stuff that I just didn’t have time to link everything. In the meantime, you can find most of them at right or in the archives.
August 9th, 2004 at 7:21 pm
So here’s a question for Les, Uncle and the rest..assuming for a moment that pre-emptive invasions are a good idea, what are your criteria for a country that we should invade?
And then as a follow-up, was Iraq the top of the list based on your criteria? If your criteria is having WMDs, Pakistan, Iran or North Korea would probably score higher. If its democracy promotion, Pakistan atleast already has the infrasctructure since it was a democracy before Muscharaff took control and most other countries in the region don’t have the threat of civil war due to having 3 different ethic groups.
Les..I agree that he wasn’t supposed to have them, but they weren’t weapons of mass destruction either. And if memory serves, Iraq had declared those particular weapons in their dossier, and there was some back and forth as to whether they range beyond 150km or not and Blix asked them to destroy them which they were in the process of doing until Bush declared war.
August 9th, 2004 at 9:54 pm
Manish: I agree there was a case for invading Iran first. Now maybe this was Oedipal revenge and maybe not, but there were good reasons for going into Iraq first:
* Iraq was in violation of UN regs. Iraq refused to allow inspections, and kept shooting at U.S. patrol planes. Even Clinton agreed.
* Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1991
* Saddam killed half a million or more of his own people, according to groups like Human Rights Watch
* Saddam was a known bad guy to the American people, whereas Iran had no celebrity leader
* Saddam was widely believed to posess and to be in development of WMDs. This was based on pre-Bush intelligence. See here.
* Iraq is geographically situated in the heart of the Middle East, bordering on Syria, Jordan, Saudi Aribia, Kuwait, Iran, and Turkey. It’s also in shooting range of Israel. The idea here is to provide a peace in the Middle East as we provided in Europe and Japan. Once our army is in charge, no one kicks up any dirt.
August 9th, 2004 at 11:01 pm
Les,
* A lot of countries are in violation of UN resolutions, including Israel who has been in violation of them for 30 years. Doesn’t it seem a little hypocritical to you that we would bust Saddam’s balls for being in violation of UN Resolutions for “12 long years” when Israel has been in violation for like 30? How do you think the Arab world sees this? Beyond that, a number of countries are in violation of international treaties including Pakistan developing nukes and selling them to our enemies too. (To be fair India also developed nukes).
* Iraq and Kuwait had a long standing border dispute. A lot of countries have invaded their neighbors over border disputes including Pakistan-India, Greeks-Turks, Korean war, etc. We’ve discussed this before at your blog, Kuwait is no saint of a state.
* Again, genocide is far too common and yet going into Bosnia was like pulling teeth. The other point to be had was that he wasn’t in the middle of a genocide, these were previous operations that we didn’t seem to condemn at the time.
* Saddam was turned from friend to foe in a matter of weeks when he invaded Kuwait. Surely, our spinmeisters could have done the same to anyone else. This is a weak reason to choose Iraq.
* We knew that Pakistan had nukes and we knew that they were selling them to our enemies. There are something like 70 countries who are suspected to eithe possess or developing WMDs.
* Each of the countries you list as bordering Iraq, would be a better candidate for pre-emptive invasion based on one of the main reasons given for invading Iraq (with the possible exception of Turkey). Iran had a more developed nuclear program and wasn’t subject to an embargo. The others would be better candidates for democracy due to more homogenous populations and potential ethnic strife would be minimized.
August 10th, 2004 at 3:58 am
Actually, no, Israel is only violating UN General Assembly resolutions, which are non-binding and are the equivalent of a popularity contest. Legally, there are no consequences for continuing to violate UNGA resolutions.
Iraq was in violation of many UN Security Council resolutions which _are_ binding and have legal weight to them.
Big difference.
August 10th, 2004 at 11:30 am
Jesse..what do you call UNSC 242? Or some of these
August 10th, 2004 at 12:07 pm
Manish:
“Again, genocide is far too common and yet going into Bosnia was like pulling teeth.” It was like pulling teeth to get the UN to help, you mean. Clinton, like Bush, had to act unilaterally.
Pakistan’s a problem, all right, but we haven’t figured out how to handle rogue states that have gotten nukes.
Honest question: if we had invaded one of the other countries you mention, would you be supporting Bush’s actions right now?
August 10th, 2004 at 12:59 pm
Les:
You didn’t ask me, but I’ll answer it anyway: No, because finishing the job in Afghanistan should have been a top priority, rather than chasing the Taliban out of two cities and then pulling out all but a skeleton presence. But at least if Bush had gone after one of those other targets, there would have been some consistency to his position.
Remember, the Iraq war was a tough sell because people couldn’t figure out how it fit into the larger terror war (remember that? the war on terror?). In fact, in many ways, people still can’t figure that out. Notice that none of the “good reasons” you list has anything to do with terrorism, which is why I think your list is a semi-accurate representation of the administration’s true motives. As to the stated reasons for going to war, those were different, and I’ve already discussed the reasons why.
I like Mick, I think he’s a nice guy, but his “what we’ve found” list looks a lot like an attempt to throw every little scrap against the wall in hopes something will stick. And I’m with Manish on this one: I’m pretty sure that much of what he still lists has since been discredited.
August 10th, 2004 at 4:15 pm
Tom: I would add to my earlier list the fact that Saddam was openly funding Palestinian terrorists and suicide bombers. He also had training camps for various terror groups. (Russian intelligence has confirmed this as well.)
Having said that, I agree that Bush should have spent more time in Afghanistan, but not to the exclusion of Iraq.
August 10th, 2004 at 6:03 pm
Les, it was like pulling teeth to get Congress (and in particular the Republicans who decried the lack of UN approval) to go along.
If we had invaded one of the other countries, I would still probably not support it, but I would be more understanding of the reasons to go to war. To me, Iraq was literally the last country that was a threat to us and the most difficult in terms of trying to bring about democracy.
August 10th, 2004 at 10:49 pm
Manish: check this 1995 CNN story on the run-up to intervention in Bosnia. The American people weren’t sure this was the right thing to do, but there were plenty of leading Republicans backing Clinton. The major exception being whackjob Pat Buchanan.