The American Mind

Did you read the AP article?

“Tuwaitha and an adjacent research facility were well known for decades as the centerpiece of Saddam’s nuclear efforts.

Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at the site in 1981. Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said.”

Heh…no reason for little details like “facts” to get in the way of a good “BUSH WAS RIGHT OMG” post, Erik.

Do either of you remember the shrieks about “Bush lied, people died?” Part of the argument for war was Saddam’s WMD programs. The existence of those were denied by Bush haters.

A few points here. I’m not defending the hysterical left here… “Bush lied, people died”, those people are idiots. But that’s not the point.

Yellowcake is worthless without a system to enrich it (which made the 16 words moot whether the story was true or not). It’s slightly radioactive dirt. 25 year old dirt in rusting drums is NOT a weapons program. Enrichment is a long slow process that is literally done molecule by molecule. Centrifuges are really hard to hide, suck massive amounts of power, and it takes an enormous number of them to produce a critical mass of U235.

Saddam was a threat to Iran, a threat to the Saudis and the Kuwaitis, and a mild threat to the Israelis. Saddam was no threat to the US.

We were safer when Iran had credible threats in the region.

Erik, I’m well aware of what yellowcake is. It’s needs significant processing in order to do more than make a geiger counter tickle.

But why would Saddam have 550 tons of the stuff sitting around other than be planning on doing something evil with it?

It’s great 20/20 hindsight to look back at 2003 and declare that Iraq wasn’t a threat. The late William F. Buckley, who should have known better, used that crutch. At the time of the war debates the arguments weren’t whether Saddam had WMD but how to deal with them. Heck, even France thought Saddam had WMD.

My point is that Saddam, even with WMD, was not a threat to the US. Lots of us more libertarian leaning conservatives saw that clearly. He was a threat to Iran. Threats against Iran are a good thing.

MAD worked with Saddam, he was a secular dictator. He had no interest in martyrdom (he didn’t even resist when caught).

Ask yourself, why did Ronald Reagan support Saddam militarily?

“But why would Saddam have 550 tons of the stuff sitting around other than be planning on doing something evil with it?”

Plans, and the ability to execute plans, are two very different things.

This is not evidence of a weapons program. This is evidence that there was a weapons program back in the 1980s. That is not news.

Erik, you’re going to make me list Saddam’s history:

Invaded Kuwait.
Planned an assassination of President George H.W. Bush. (In the olden days that alone was grounds for a declaration of war.)
Constantly fired at U.S. patrols over Iraq.
Paid the families of Palestinian bombers.
Developed WMD programs.

In a post-Sep. 11 world where the U.S. discovered a small group of determined people to rain hell on a city the threat calculus changed. MAD wouldn’t deter a Saddam or anyone under Eugene Volokh’s scenario.

It wasn’t the fact Saddam was an evil man. It was his threatening actions along with the realization that loosely-formed terrorist networks could do tremendous damage.

Invaded Kuwait

US soldiers died to put a king back on his throne. Our founding fathers would be appalled.

Planned an assassination of President George H.W. Bush. (In the olden days that alone was grounds for a declaration of war.)

It’s that planned/implemented dichotomy again. Many countries have plans to assassinate foreign leaders (including us).

Constantly fired at U.S. patrols over Iraq.

The no fly zones were not authorized by the UN, or anyone else. Don’t think so? Try to find the no fly resolution.

Paid the families of Palestinian bombers.

Did they bomb the US?

For that matter, why did Saddam never give Palestinian bombers WMD to use against Israel? The reason is MAD worked against Saddam.

Developed WMD programs.

We’re still looking for any of those…

It’s just more backwards rationale. More digging for any little scrap to justify the biggest foreign policy blunder in recent history. I mean, c’mon–i love it whenever Sean busts this one out:

It’s great 20/20 hindsight to look back at 2003 and declare that Iraq wasn’t a threat.

Shit, i was convinced in 2002 that Iraq wasn’t a threat! But that’s not important. Even if Sean’s “hindsight” excuse is valid (and that’s what it is–an excuse), then you’re basically saying that the Bush Administration’s intelligence was incompetent. I mean, you wanna argue incompetence over maliciousness, go right ahead. Either way, the poin is the same–this Administration effed up bad.

DJ, you were in the minority. The consensus was Saddam possessed WMD because he acted like he had them and the incentives for the Western intelligence community in a post-Sep. 11 world were to be more pessimistic. It’s not even so say the Bush administration was incompetent–anymore incompetent than the Clinton administration and U.N. weapons inspectors. As now Bush critic Francis Fukuyama wrote in 2003,

What we need now is not more politicized debate over specific items in presidential speeches, but a careful review of what Unscom and the intelligence community thought they knew about Iraqi programs going all the way back to the end of the 1991 war. This is being undertaken currently by David Kay, the former U.N. weapons inspector, in a closely held process. What he finds needs to come out in the open soon. What is at stake is not the credibility of one administration, but of a system designed to protect the world against weapons of mass destruction.

We have to deal with the systemic issues dealing with incentives to make sure leaders get reliable information to act on.

The consensus was Saddam possessed WMD because he acted like he had them
And that consensus should have evaporated in 2002 when weapons inspectors found nothing and when Saddam, in response to 1441, handed over documentation that he had none and stopped “acting like” it. Those, combined with the strong doubts at State and in some parts of the CIA and DoD about “Curveball,” the aluminum tubes, and so on should have been enough to put the brakes on any invasion. But the dissent was stifled and the inspectors were driven out by Bush and the bombs flew.

Bush has consistently said, post-invasion, that Saddam wouldn’t let the inspectors in. Which is not just untrue, but which explains an awful lot about his decision to invade. If you plug your ears and shut your eyes to reality–such as what the inspectors saw in 2002 (including the 550 metric tons of yellowcake under IAEA seal that you seem startled about in this post)–then it’s easy to make massive mistakes.

Jay, at least you’ve moved passed “Bush lied, people died” tripe.