The lies behind Iraq - suppressed document released

[Jakub]

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2076137.ece

So basically... yeah, they just flat out lied.

[Jason McCullough]

Interestingly, the public is pretty up to date on this stuff. Large numbers of people say Bush lied, large numbers want him impeached, and so on - it's just official Washington and the media that haven't caught on. It's a total mystery why, when they turned on Clinton so fast in 1993.

[Jakub]

Technically, this is more about Blair knowingly lying. The worst you can gleam about the US from that article is that they ignored British warnings that Iraq had no WMDs.

[Daniel Morris]

In his breathless rush through hyperbole, the journalist misspells "Damocles."

So in short: a former diplomat testifies to the Butler Commission that he didn't believe Iraq posed a threat. That's quite a breakthrough.

[Unicorn McGriddle]

If only Damocles had been spelled correctly, Daniel Morris would have been convinced.

[Lum]

You know, I'm about as anti-Iraq war as you can get (bring the boys home now, plz, enough dying over whether Sunnis or Shi'a get to rule Iraq) but, honestly, everyone knew even before we invaded that this had nothing to do with WMDs. That was a poor fig leaf which was widely ridiculed in the world and US media even during the invasion's run-up.

IIRC a couple of weeks before the invasion Hussein's government put out feelers that they would comply with literally any disarmnament proposal put forth by the US to forestall the attack, and the US's response was that the only acceptable option would be for the Iraq government to literally dissolve itself and allow the US military to enter peacefully. In other words, it was always about regime change.

If you want to go on about how the Bush administration invaded under false pretense, feel free (it's not like there isn't a dozen other things to attack them for regarding Iraq, such as demolishing the country, endemic corruption in its failed reconstruction, and a military strategy which consists mostly of emulating the French defense of Indochina) but acting as though OMG THEY LIED ABOUT WHY WE INVADED! I AM SHOCKED! is kinda screwball. You all knew they lied *while* they were lying.

What pisses me off more than "OMG THEY LIED ABOUT WMD" is the constant refrain that Iraq is Front #1 in the War on Terruh, and we are fighting honest-to-god Terruhrists in the streets of Baghdad. It's a stupid lie that keeps us from understanding why we have an insurgency there to begin with (the only 'terrorists' are opportunists who label themselves "Al-Qada in Iraq" because it buys them newspaper headlines) and worse, continues to justify suppression of liberty here at home.

[chet]

Interestingly, the public is pretty up to date on this stuff.

Funniest McCullough post this year.

[Sebmolo]

You know, I'm about as anti-Iraq war as you can get (bring the boys home now, plz, enough dying over whether Sunnis or Shi'a get to rule Iraq) but, honestly, everyone knew even before we invaded that this had nothing to do with WMDs. That was a poor fig leaf which was widely ridiculed in the world and US media even during the invasion's run-up.


Really? I mean, you're right and all, but I understood the republican talking point to be 'everyone thought there were WMD, sure they were wrong, but even the French thought they were nerve bombs and shit, they just didn't want us to invade because they're corrupt and hate freedom'.

Desslock? Cherub? Any comments here?

[quatoria]

Not only is it the republican talking point, it's been parroted frequently by some posters here - along the lines of "EVERYONE thought they had WMD," and it is, as Lum points out, absolute bullshit, and always was.

[Brian Rucker]

I think most intelligent people had reason to doubt the administration's claim that there was absolutely WMD, we knew where it was, and Saddam's going to personally give it to bin Laden with gift wrapping. We didn't have reason to assume there was no WMD either for the same reason. The only real question was does Iraq's assumed WMD program really present an immediate threat to the United States. I certainly didn't think so but that doesn't mean I wasn't surprised when we found nothing at all! I'm such a cynic I'd assumed they'd at least plant something somewhat convicing.

The entire claim was a matter of faith with little current supporting documentation and absolutely nothing current was uncontested. I'm not surprised at all that the public at large, at the time, shaken as it was by 9/11 wanted to believe The President. You have to grasp something and it feels more reasonable, if you're not closely following things at least, to assume The President probably knows more than anyone else about national security matters and, heck, look at the Democrats. They seem to be playing along too for the most part. So, voila! Iraq must have WMDs and pose a real threat to us. I don't even want to start in on media bashing but with some real exceptions, inevitably buried deep inside papers rather than set out on the front page, the press was worthless. They've even since felt obligated to explicitly apologise, at least The New York Times and the Washington Post, for the tragic job they did.

And there's no doubt the WMD claim, along with the implied bin Ladin-Hussein ties, was the main thrust of the argument for war. Sure, other things were mentioned in passing but that was it. And we have an architect of the war in Wolfowitz (or Feith, I forget) who actually admitted in an interview that there were many reasons to go into Iraq but the only thing everyone could agree on (in the administration) or think would sell abroad was the immediate threat posed by WMDs. And it's clear in the work of outfits like the OSP in The Pentagon that these charges, even if the folks pushing them believed in it, were exaggerated beyond all reasonable recognition in order to twist the CIAs arm. It was lobbying and public relations not real intelligence work that came to these conclusions.

You can't just dismiss how the war was sold to the public. That's absolutely crucial. And it must be taken in the context of an administration that had been explicitly lying to the public also about its intentions. They were talking about diplomacy and "war as only a very last resort" to us, to the world, while in private they were determined to attack and primarily worried only about how best to sell us on the war they wanted so very badly.

That's important stuff. You can't run a democracy like that. And as we see in the polls now, you can't run a war like that either. The public's sorting out that it was not only lied to but lied to by the most incompetant administration in modern American history, at the very least.

[JeffL]

Not only is it the republican talking point, it's been parroted frequently by some posters here - along the lines of "EVERYONE thought they had WMD," and it is, as Lum points out, absolute bullshit, and always was.

So did the Democrats support and vote for the invasion because they knew it was all lies and were in a secret conspiracy with the Republicans or did they actually believe also? Or did they believe it was all BS and were just afraid to stand up and say BS? Many of them were on intelligence committees that had access to all of the information that the president and his folks did. The vote was successful by a wider margin that the first Gulf War, which was pretty easy to justify. Here's what the Dem leader said at the time of the vote:

"Daschle, D-South Dakota, said the threat of Iraq's weapons programs "may not be imminent. But it is real. It is growing. And it cannot be ignored." From CNN.

Frankly, I thought there were WMDs at the time. We all saw Saddaam playing hide the weenie, inviting inspectors in and then telling them they couldn't go here or couldn't go there, running them out, acting very much as if he had them. We all saw the U.N. pass the resolutions that you pass when you feel that a country is hiding something and needs to open up. And so on. A reasonable person in the public would, at the time, suspect that Saddaam had the WMDs that he had used on people in the past, and worse. It's just really easy in hindsight to be super smart.

I'm P.O.ed, in hindsight, that there wasn't more internal challenge from folks on the intelligence committees that had full info access.

[Brian Rucker]

Jeff, my guess is that some Democrats had real doubts but voted to give The President authority to do what he felt necessary (and the wording of that resolution is crucial - I highly recommend reading it as many people read more into it, sometimes, than was really there) and then stepped back. It was political calculation in most cases. If the President screws up we just gave him permission to do what he wants and that war's his, not ours. If Iraq turns out to be a real threat and we vanquish it we can claim to have played a patriotic part.

That's really how I saw it at the time and still see it. The country was getting shovelled along into a war fever pitch and the Democrats didn't want to look out of sync. Though, it should be said, that there were more Democrats that voted against the resolution than Republicans and in the House I think a majority of Democrats voted against it (or something very close to a majority).

I was following the coverage at the time and I remember the polls saying some things it's inconvenient to remember now for some folks. Most of the public supported the Iraq invasion but only on the condition it had international support. Which tells you that even with the White House sales pitch, the Democratic capitulation and the media's terrible coverage most Americans were wary about this prospect. This is what drove Bush to even bother with the UN in the first place. Do you remember the speech he gave? It wasn't an argument or a respectful approach to potential allies. He harangued the body and essentially told it to get in line or get out of the way. It did far more harm than good but was completely in line with the neocon drive to marginalize the world body while allowing his political people to say "Bush went to the UN, isn't that what you wanted?"

Why do you think we even bothered with all the dog and pony show of the "Coalition of the Willing" which, aside from Britain, was of marginal worth at best. It was to assure the domestic public the world was on our side. That's what the polls demanded, that's what was delivered.

So saying the UN's rulings demanded our actions is just barmy. The White House sent Powell off with a bill of goods to embarrass himself lying to the UN (and that's why he made damned sure Tenet was seated directly behind him, hell, and personally picked him up from his hotel to make sure nothing would cause him to miss the event). And then, when the UN was going to rule on the use of force as a remedy for the situation in Iraq we decided, nah, we don't need that ruling after all. We're going in!

It's a fig leaf, the UN. That had zero to do with why we invaded Iraq aside as a legalistic excuse for an internationally accepted, which it still hasn't been, casus belli to cover our asses from being charged for violating international law and waging an illegal war. Which is still something that folks can, and will, argue about.

[Aleck]

You know, I'm about as anti-Iraq war as you can get (bring the boys home now, plz, enough dying over whether Sunnis or Shi'a get to rule Iraq) but, honestly, everyone knew even before we invaded that this had nothing to do with WMDs. That was a poor fig leaf which was widely ridiculed in the world and US media even during the invasion's run-up.

I can't speak for anyone else, but my feelings on the issue:

I was skeptical leading up to the Iraq war. Bush et. al. were clearly tilting at their own windmills, and there was little public evidence to support them.

Then Colin Powell -- a voice of reason, moderation, caution, and good judgement -- made the presentation to the UN. While I was skeptical of the Bush Administration as a whole, I (for some reason) actually trusted Colin Powell. I mean, he had shown himself to be a good diplomat, general, and responsible political leader, right? If he was supporting the war, then clearly there might actually be some evidence of the WMDs which were our sole reason for going to war.

Of course, in the epilogue, the UN speech was more or less completely inaccurate, Powell wasn't at all sure about the WMDs but was carrying the Administration's water, and we now have 3,000 dead Americans and God only knows how many dead Iraqis with nothing to show for it. At least we won't have President Powell, since he managed to blow all the credibility he had built up over 4 decades of public service in one incredibly poor decision (to support the Administration rather than resign).

What a depressing start to the morning....

[Jason McCullough]

You know, I'm about as anti-Iraq war as you can get (bring the boys home now, plz, enough dying over whether Sunnis or Shi'a get to rule Iraq) but, honestly, everyone knew even before we invaded that this had nothing to do with WMDs. That was a poor fig leaf which was widely ridiculed in the world and US media even during the invasion's run-up.

Foreigners knew, but the average US citizen had no idea Bush was lying; how would they, with the media war hysteria? Christ, I didn't think Bush was lying; I just thought he was retarded. How were US citizens supposed to know? Move to a foreign country with a working media?

[JeffL]

Brian, the vote was 296-133 in the house.

I've searched, and I can't find any documentation of leading Democrats saying Saddam didn't have WMDs. I do find a lot of Democrats saying he DID have them, that he was a mounting threat. The Daschle statement above. Here's John Kerry in October of 1992:

"But none of the underlying realities of the threat, none of the underlying realities of the choices we face are altered because they are, in fact, the same as they were in 1991 when we discovered those weapons when the teams went in, and in 1998 when the teams were kicked out.

With respect to Saddam Hussein and the threat he presents, we must ask ourselves a simple question: Why? Why is Saddam Hussein pursuing weapons that most nations have agreed to limit or give up? Why is Saddam Hussein guilty of breaking his own cease-fire agreement with the international community? Why is Saddam Hussein attempting to develop nuclear weapons when most nations don't even try, and responsible nations that have them attempt to limit their potential for disaster? Why did Saddam Hussein threaten and provoke? Why does he develop missiles that exceed allowable limits? Why did Saddam Hussein lie and deceive the inspection teams previously? Why did Saddam Hussein not account for all of the weapons of mass destruction which UNSCOM identified? Why is he seeking to develop unmanned airborne vehicles for delivery of biological agents?

"It would be naive to the point of grave danger not to believe that, left to his own devices, Saddam Hussein will provoke, misjudge, or stumble into a future, more dangerous confrontation with the civilized world. He has as much as promised it. He has already created a stunning track record of miscalculation. He miscalculated an 8-year war with Iran. He miscalculated the invasion of Kuwait. He miscalculated America's responses to it. He miscalculated the result of setting oil rigs on fire. He miscalculated the impact of sending Scuds into Israel. He miscalculated his own military might. He miscalculated the Arab world's response to his plight. He miscalculated in attempting an assassination of a former President of the United States. And he is miscalculating now America's judgments about his miscalculations.

All those miscalculations are compounded by the rest of history. A brutal, oppressive dictator, guilty of personally murdering and condoning murder and torture, grotesque violence against women, execution of political opponents, a war criminal who used chemical weapons against another nation and, of course, as we know, against his own people, the Kurds. He has diverted funds from the Oil-for-Food program, intended by the international community to go to his own people. He has supported and harbored terrorist groups, particularly radical Palestinian groups such as Abu Nidal, and he has given money to families of suicide murderers in Israel."

"I mention these not because they are a cause to go to war in and of themselves, as the President previously suggested, but because they tell a lot about the threat of the weapons of mass destruction and the nature of this man. We should not go to war because these things are in his past, but we should be prepared to go to war because of what they tell us about the future. It is the total of all of these acts that provided the foundation for the world's determination in 1991 at the end of the gulf war that Saddam Hussein must: unconditionally accept the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless underinternational supervision of his chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missile delivery systems... [and] unconditionally agree not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons or nuclear weapon-usable material.

Saddam Hussein signed that agreement. Saddam Hussein is in office today because of that agreement. It is the only reason he survived in 1991. In 1991, the world collectively made a judgment that this man should not have weapons of mass destruction. And we are here today in the year 2002 with an uninspected 4-year interval during which time we know through intelligence he not only has kept them, but he continues to grow them."

So these are the types of statements coming from leading Democrats at the time, even liberal ones like Kerry. And the average American, hearing Bush and his cohorts being supported by his opponents such as Daschle and Kerry, with numerous speeches and writings such as the one above, was supposed to say "well, THEY certainly must be wrong, I know better than what the Democrats and Republican leaders are saying!" ? Really? Kerry sounds like he's saying what a lot of conservative posters here were saying in 2002. And that was the tone out of Washington in general at the time. So I think it's disingenuous to say only blind conservatives believed Saddam had WMDs and was dangerous at the time.

This is another reason I have such disdain for Kerry. He was as much a part of leading America to believe Saddam was a dangerous dictator with WMDs as anyone at the time, and now he stands on a pedestal pointing fingers.

[bago]

There was no good reason to hit iraq. We spent 2 billion dollars to fight opium in afghanistan last year, and the opium crop was 2 billion. We are stupid.

[Jason McCullough]

Jeff, give me a break - Saddam wasn't disarmed through the UN sanctions program back in 1992, right after the war when Kerry made that speech. He was disarmed by the 2002 timeframe, as has been proven true, which is the time frame actually under discussion. The people in the US who got saddam's WMDs right in 2002 are....ok, Scott Ritter, he of the mysteriously leaked banging a teenager prosecution, is the only one I can think of. At least the only one with the knowledge and the willingness to come forward about it.

[steve]

If you'll all recall, the response to whether we should invade Iraq or not on this board was, "Read The Threatening Storm by Kenneth Pollack."

[Myth]

Although my memory is somewhat fuzzy, I do recall towards the end that the weapons inspections under Blix were showing that there were no signs of WMD and that it looked like the Security Council wasn't going to vote for a war against Iraq. Just prior to the invasion, I remember that Bush and Blair stood up in a news conference and did an end run around the security council. They kept repeating that Sadam was a threat, but the evidence was showing he wasn't but they were not going to wait it out. After all, it was getting hot out in the ME which would be an impediment to the gathering invasion forces.

Congress gave Bush the OK to take appropriate action, which he didn't. The original pretext for war was starting to crumble and the actions he took were not appropriate.

During this time, the media was pretty much backing the president. Have we so soon forgotten 'freedom fries' and 'old Europe' and a 'toothless UN'. ALL the talking heads on CNN and Fox were marching to the nationalistic drumbeat to war. The enviroment was pretty caustic as I recall for anyone who dared take an opposing view. Even on this message board those who argued against the war were pretty much shot down for being naieve surrender monkies.

[Nellie]

You can't just dismiss how the war was sold to the public.

It wasn't sold to the public though, at least in Europe, and I do count the UK in that. Close to 1 million people marched through London against the war. But again the main opposition party to Blair here, like the democrats in the US, fell in line behind the government and backed the decision to go to war.

It has been interesting watching the people happy to go into Iraq from the start revising their memories of just why it was we started this debacle from
"He's got WMD!!!1! OMG He can bomb london in 45 minutes!!!"
to
"He was a nasty dicatator, you not agreeing with the war means you want iraqis tortured and killed by him."
to
"It's a mess, but we should leave these people to it and bring the troops home now, it's not our responsibility what happens next, but they're still better off in Iraq than before we went in."

[Brian Rucker]

I've searched, and I can't find any documentation of leading Democrats saying Saddam didn't have WMDs. I do find a lot of Democrats saying he DID have them, that he was a mounting threat. The Daschle statement above.

Well, I'm guessing these fellows are leading Democrats in the House because we see them moving into leadership positions now. Check out this recent article:

Democrats Who Opposed The War Move Into Key Positions (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/03/AR2006120301108.html)

Looking at the numbers from the vote that seems to be the entire House, not just the Democrats. What I said was I believe a majority of Democrats in the House voted against the resolution not that they won the vote. I can't find those numbers right now myself so this is, admittedly, based on one of my hazier memories.

And I don't disagree that senior Democrats in the House and Senate did kow tow to the administration and public sentiment. As noted, I'm pretty disgusted with that behavior myself. But their information was only as good as what the President deigned to give them. We never did have that investigation of how intelligence was used because it was stalled by the Republican controlled congress. I've posted several links in other threads, which I can dig up if needed, that show how that can kept getting kicked down the road in an effort to avoid the topic of political uses of what intelligence there were and how it squared with what the administration really knew.

Better stock up on popcorn. C-SPAN's new season should be very interesting as we finally dig deeper into what actually went on.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/15/AR2005121501813.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/29/AR2006072900608.html

And the average American, hearing Bush and his cohorts being supported by his opponents such as Daschle and Kerry, with numerous speeches and writings such as the one above, was supposed to say "well, THEY certainly must be wrong, I know better than what the Democrats and Republican leaders are saying!" ? Really? Kerry sounds like he's saying what a lot of conservative posters here were saying in 2002. And that was the tone out of Washington in general at the time. So I think it's disingenuous to say only blind conservatives believed Saddam had WMDs and was dangerous at the time.

This is another reason I have such disdain for Kerry. He was as much a part of leading America to believe Saddam was a dangerous dictator with WMDs as anyone at the time, and now he stands on a pedestal pointing fingers.

And I said as much in my post about what the American public believed and why. IE, the most "reasonable" thing to assume is that these guys know what they're talking about and most of them seem to agree with the president. Yup. Kerry's not on my list of favorite people these days either. But, heck, you have to remember what the alternative was in 2004. If Kerry hadn't won the election we'd have been fucked! ... Oh, crap. Nevermind.

[Tim Partlett]

I think Lum is very wrong on the idea that "everyone knew" that there were no WMDs in Iraq. There was huge skepticism amongst Europeans, and in the European press, but every American I talked to seemed convinced of the truth of this. Polls from the time back up my view.

I also don't recall reading any skeptical pieces in the American press, but I do remember posting a few from the European press, that were roundly scoffed at by pro-war Americans. And before the invasion, most Americans were pro-war too.

The US coverage of the lead-up to the war was horrific in its failure to offer any kind of context or perspective, and I think that is one of the reasons why it has gone in almost the complete opposite direction since. The press even passed out complete falsehoods as facts, such as constantly regurgitating the Bush meme that Saddam had "thrown out" the UN inspectors in 1998, when they had in fact left of their own choosing to avoid the incoming US bombs.

Given the utter failure of the American press prior to the Iraq invasion to give balanced reporting, it's no surprise that many Americans were ignorant of the facts. I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but Fox News was a particular offender over WMDs, constantly yelling "smoking gun!" at every pathetic discovery in Iraq.

Remember the artillery barrage balloon maker that Fox (and others) claimed was a mobile biological weapons lab? That, among other things, kept many people insisting that Saddam had WMDs long after the "mission accomplished" had been declared. Some people just had to believe.

[Brian Rucker]

There was some good, even mainstream, coverage of what was going on. Look at some of the prewar reporting by Pincus and Priest in the Washington Post. Knight-Ridder, in its diminished glory these days, also had some very hard hitting pieces. But these things were buried inside the fold and low profile but they were out there. Also Salon.com hit many of these warning notes repeatedly.

I think the main reason I "caught" this stuff was because I was inclined to be very skeptical about Bush and the people around him. If you weren't already aware of what this guy's history was and exactly who he was looking at for advice you probably wouldn't be digging nearly as hard to see what second opinions there were out there. Most Americans just aren't that engaged. They took a brief scan of what the media was covering, what most leaders were saying, and came to a conclusion (if a hesitant one - without "international support" for an Iraq invasion you'd see popular acceptance of the idea dropped in the polls).

What's lovely about Fox News is that a few years after the war an independant group did a study to see which viewers of what news outlets had the best grasp of the facts surrounding the war. Fox viewers came in dead last by a wide margin. My guess is they still do.

[Nellie]

I do think the criticism against the [US] Media is largely justified. For the first 4 days of the war we could only get CNN which told us largely nothing, preferring instead to spend literally hours showing footage of the back of a humvee one of their embedded reporters was following.

We came to rely on the coverage of the daily news conference, and the questions asked by non American news agencies to get any kind of idea what was going on and what reaction to the war was. US reporters from all networks seemed more concerned with just how many times they could get "schock and awe" into a question to the point that it became a running joke in our party.

[shift6]

I've searched, and I can't find any documentation of leading Democrats saying Saddam didn't have WMDs. I do find a lot of Democrats saying he DID have them, that he was a mounting threat. The Daschle statement above. Here's John Kerry in October of 1992:

"But none of the underlying realities of the threat, none of the underlying realities of the choices we face are altered because they are, in fact, the same as they were in 1991 when we discovered those weapons when the teams went in, and in 1998 when the teams were kicked out."
I think Jeff meant 2002 here (where I bolded), although that is a weird typo. I don't think Kerry made a speech in 1992 where he talked about the UN teams being kicked out in 1998. ;)

[Jason McCullough]

Ah, I stand corrected; there wasn't a link. Kerry was probably blathering on to shore up his warmonger credentials, rather than special knowledge about Saddam's WMD program, but oh well either way.

[Lum]

I think I'll have to just say screw it and fly my elitist flag here. When I said "most people" I really meant "most people that I talk to, who bother to read multiple news sources and don't trust the 3 minutes of 'news' interspersed between Britney Spears updates in the mass market media". Part of the problem with our society is that our media consistently addresses us as if we were four years old. Does widdle baby want some American Idol? I tink it does! Awwww, so cute!

But limiting the discussion to people actually paying attention, If I had to hazard a guess from the haze of 4 years of memory, the NYT was fairly equivocal about the possibility of WMDs (thanks largely to the coopting of Judith Miller) and the WP was a bit more on the skeptical side. I don't really remember that well, though. But yes, the European press was far more skeptical.

It's also important to remember that we invaded Iraq just 2 years after 9/11. 2 weeks after 9/11, we could have invaded Sweden and no American would have batted an eye. "Yeah, they're socialist, I can see that they probably had something to do with it. OK. KILL." The fear/paranoia/frenzy had faded a bit by then, but only a bit. The Administration skillfully played on that, and transferred it onto Iraq (at a time when Iraq and the Islamic radicals of al'Qaeda were blood enemies).

What really drove home the lack of debate was this: in 2003, most Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was a member of al'Qaeda, even when the media tried to tell them otherwise repeatedly. The fact that we went in solely to effect regime change, with only the UK allied with us, with too few troops to execute a war plan safely, and with no post-occupation planning whatsoever, was all well known and debated by some at the time. But it didn't matter, because all anyone had to say was the magic words "9/11" and all rational debate would just ...stop. Expecting any Democrats to step up and oppose the drive to war then would have expected courage that almost none of today's politicians possess.

Personally, at the time I thought Iraq still had chemical munitions (which I think most people did) and was surprised when Iraq didn't try to lob a chemical-laden Scud into Tel Aviv when we invaded. But I knew that we were attacking solely to depose Hussein, and I'm fairly certain most of my acquaintances did as well.

[Nellie]

Personally, at the time I thought Iraq still had chemical munitions (which I think most people did) and was surprised when Iraq didn't try to lob a chemical-laden Scud into Tel Aviv when we invaded. But I knew that we were attacking solely to depose Hussein, and I'm fairly certain most of my acquaintances did as well.

If they'd turned up a few thousand mustard gas shells I wouldn't have been surprised. Heck I was half expecting a scud laden with dead cows and dog poo to be lobbed somewhere in the vague direction of Israel as a final "fuck you".

And then all the excitement when they turned up that CHEMICAL WEAPONS FACTORY!!!!!! that turned out to be a portacabin used by builders or something.

I still keep seeing this thing about Hussein trying to assassinate Bush, couldn't they just have used that as justification, at least not finding any physical evidence whatsoever wouldn't have been quite as obvious as failing to turn up a single shred of evidence to back up the 45minute crap they tried to sell us before hand.

[Tim Partlett]

Hang on, by WMD, do you just mean nuclear weapons? Because you just said you assumed he did have chemical weapons, but at the same time you said you didn't think he had WMD. For me, and I believe most people, they are the same thing.

[Nellie]

By WMD I'm assuming a weapon capable of mass destruction you know something that's going to flatten a city or kill thousands of people.

A few thousand mustard gas shells/mortar rounds doesn't qualify as a weapon of mass destruction imo and certainly didn't pose a credible danger to any of the countries bordering Iraq, let alone the UK or USA. Not that any apparently existed in Iraq before we went in anyway. By the looks of whats going on at the moment I can't see many of the groups there having any qualms about incorporating a mustard gas shell into a roadside bomb so it doesn't look at the moment like the "they took them all and hid them" argument is holding much water either.

[Myth]

Not really on topic but kind of related, I always wondered why the Bush adiminstration didn't fabricate some proof after the fact regarding WMD, like a hidden chemical lab or weapons cache or documents aluding to an active program. I mean they were quite happy fabricating and exagerating evidence in the run up to the war.

However, when one considers the audacity and arrogance of the Bush regime, it's not suprising. They pretty much felt that they were above reproach and didn't have to answer to anybody.

[Nellie]

"They" tried fabricating documents about George Galloway and couldn't even get that right, so what chance about fabricating evidence of a huge industrial scale weapons complex without people shouting "bullshit"?

[Mark Asher]

"Or did they believe it was all BS and were just afraid to stand up and say BS?"

I think this goes for a lot of the Democrats and probably many Republicans, too. There was no way to oppose Bush at that time and not get voted out of office, or at least that's what many of them thought, I'm guessing. Critics of the war were painted as being unpatriotic.

It was Bush's war. He wanted it. He got it. He bears the responsibility more than anyone else in government so he shoulders the consequences. It never would have happened without him aggressively pushing for it.

[Sebmolo]

The way we were. (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=1655)

Interestingly, Jason was much more sanguine about the war than he's normally painted. Brad looks pretty silly now, though.

[Jason McCullough]

I snapped out of it later as the war approached; Bush threatening Mexican immigrants in a Spanish-speaking newspaper with "you know, I don't know what will happen to them by our angry citizens if you don't vote for the war"
was the last straw. Can't find the thread, though.

[JeffL]

Jeff, give me a break - Saddam wasn't disarmed through the UN sanctions program back in 1992, right after the war when Kerry made that speech. He was disarmed by the 2002 timeframe, as has been proven true, which is the time frame actually under discussion. The people in the US who got saddam's WMDs right in 2002 are....ok, Scott Ritter, he of the mysteriously leaked banging a teenager prosecution, is the only one I can think of. At least the only one with the knowledge and the willingness to come forward about it.

That speech was made by Kerry in October of 2002. I mistyped 1992, but should have been obvious if you read the speech, because he talks about it being 4 years past 1998.

[Brian Rucker]

I'm wondering where I was. I think this might have been when I was still doing most of my political posting elsewhere. My first P&R post on Iraq doesn't seem to have arrived until March 2003 to ovations and one request, thanks Tyjenks, that I run for President.

No wonder I kept posting here...

Edit: I kept looking for older political posts but I think that might have been my first one. I quit looking after running into a Koontz post talking about how good a political poster I am. And how I have interesting ideas about roleplaying. If nothing special. :) *chuckle* That cured me of nostalgia right fast.

[JeffL]

I've gotta tell ya, when Kerry and Daschle and other leading Democrats and others were joining in on how dangerous Saddam was and how we knew he had all these WMDs, ect. at the time, it was pretty compelling. Combine that with Saddam's games that seemed to be aimed at convincing the world that he had them, and I think it's hard to point fingers at any average Americans who believed it then.

[Nellie]

Combine that with Saddam's games that seemed to be aimed at convincing the world that he had them, and I think it's hard to point fingers at any average Americans who believed it then.

Can you blame him? The other two in the "Axis of Evil" definitely did and were in no imminent danger of having anything done to them. But then Saddam also had an army pretty much in name only, zero air defences and practically 0 infrastructure of any substance because we spent 10 years making sure that was the case.

North Korea and Iran have always been much more of an "imminent threat to the west", Iran has definitely sponsored terrorist groups that have hit US interests, one has tested a nuclear device and the other isn't too far off it.

But we didn't go into those two countries at all. Perhaps Iraq was supposed to be a public beating, sort show the world what happens when you dick around with America. Quick in and out; rose petals at the feet of liberating GIs, democracy blooms and it's home in time for tea and biscuits. On the plus side we aren't talking about 3,000 American soldiers dead after 4 days rather than 4 years which I suspect would be more realistic trying to invade Iran or North Korea.

Iraq was supposed to be easy,unfortunately it's ended up effectively hamstringing the US, especially when it comes to Iran. It's cost it all the goodwill it had post 9/11 and it's basically crippled it's ability to do much in Iran given that diplomacy has never been on the table.