Ashcroft: Saddam's 'Evil Chemistry' Justified War

FOX ^ | 1/26/04

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

Saddam Hussein's (search) past use of "evil chemistry" and "evil biology" and the threats they posed justified the war in Iraq even if no weapons of mass destruction are ever found, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft (search) said Monday.

Ashcroft, in Vienna for talks with top Austrian officials on measures to fight terrorism and drug trafficking and improve air travel security, told reporters that Saddam's arsenal remained a menace and was sufficient cause to overthrow his regime.

[LS]

I think Kay is being seriously mis-reported, if I understand his comments: he says Saddam did not have WMDs because they were shipped to SYRIA.

[brewcrew]

Ashcroft may or may not be a good AG, but somebody in the administration needs to put a cork in him when he gets the idea of commenting about foreign policy matters. What an embarrassment.

[DMCA]

I wonder if he has had his people cover up any 'inappropriate' statues in Iraq?

:->

[rightbanker]

not quite what he said. He alluded to that as a possibility but he did not suggest that masses and masses of Iraqi WMD were shipped to Syria. He just said that something was shipped to Syria and we ought to try to find out what.

His bottom line is that Iraq had no stockpiles of WMD, had not resumed massed production, had only very marginal research going on in various areas.

Scientist were scamming Saddam who was in a downward delusional spiral controlling everything himself.

Something went badly wrong here. This is one collosal failure on at least the part of the CIA maybe of NSC the DOD and the Bush white house generally.

I think we would not have gotten into this war if we had had a true picture of the state of Iraq. Probably lots of people within the regime saw what a deluded person Saddam had become. If we had better contacts inside Iraq, we probably could have gotten some Sunni bathaast just take out Saddam. We wouldn't have had to rely on people like Chalabi to be our boy. Chalabi and his cohort obviously feed us a load of hooey in order to get us to do what we've done -- invade Iraq, try to annoint him and his minions the saviors of Iraq.

Obviously that wasn't to be. Who's going to follow a man who hasn't been inside the country for 50 years ? What in heavens name were we thinking?

I gotta say this is really a comedy of errors. It would be funny if weren't so desparately serious and deadly.

I do no think history will look kindly on this misadventure.

[kaktuskid]

If Bush was lying then your buddy Clinton was lying. And the Dems in 1998-2000. And the UN. And the French. And the Germans...

Don't forget Saddam's Iraq was continuously firing at US fighter pilots, conspired to attempt to kill an American president, and breaking every UN agreement!

[LS]

I disagree. I think either Kay is not saying what he found, or there was a huge screwup, and the WMDs were there. Reason?

Russia, France, Ger., Br., Aus., China, and others ALL agreed independently that Saddam had WMDs. They can't all be wrong.

Scientists aren't that clever. If they were, they could have overthrown Saddam. I'm sure there was SOME fraud going on, but sooner or later, Saddam would have demanded some demonstrations, and it's too hard to fake that stuff. Moreover, these guys were at risk of their lives for LYING to him, as well as for FAILING to produce the stuff. So I don't think that explanation stands up.

The UN said he had the stuff, well after 1998.

Clinton said he had it. I know, Clinton. But the point is that you can fool one or two INTEL agencies, but not everyone, and not all the time. No, there is simply too big a confluence of INFORMED intel opinion that he had WMDs. The real question is, where did they go?

I think history will judge Bush as quite brilliant for remaking the Middle East into a much less threatening place.

[Shermy]

Kay, all of them are dancing around words for some reason. It's like the debate over Bush's "16 words" or Blair's such-and-such.

The game now seems to be around the word "weapon." That is, they can't find any, or a lot, of actual dispersal mechanisms, but they have found indications of the "chemistry" or the biologicals themselves.

[Destructor]

Saddam's links to Al Qaeda, and 9/11 more than justified the war!

[LS]

It is absolutely clear that something is up---that both in the case of the AQ ties and the WMDs, something is "there" and no one is willing to bring it all out.

[gcruse]

Saddam's links to Al Qaeda, and 9/11 more than justified the war!

That's nine parts  Kool-Aid, and one part
straw man.  But once the Botulism takes
hold, there's no coming back. 

[Destructor]

Kool-Aid, eh? Check out this article posted today:

"Case for Iraq War Stronger Than Ever."

You're all over the map, man. I can't tell anything about your politics.

[Shermy]

something is "there" and no one is willing to bring it all out.

They all seem worried about fine tuning of words...look how the media went beserk over the "45 minute" claim, and the "16 words".

there may be a fear of being torn down, there is a lawyer-like game with words.

Everything I read, and read between the lines, tells me that Iraq had plenty of "biologicals" - and the fact that they weren't poured, yet, into a "weapon" (whether it takes 45 minutes or a day) is the trampoline Kay and others are bouncing on - in the context of a public who probably thinks stocks anthrax, etc. is a "weapon" in itself.

Lots of BS, lots of straighttalk...reading the tea leaves...I think this "distinction" is what Ashcroft is getting at...why he's the one to say it, I don't know.

[eno_]

Ashcroft may or may not be a good AG, but somebody in the administration needs to put a cork in him when he gets the idea of commenting about foreign policy matters. What an embarrassment.

Exactly. Somebody needs to gong this skit. Dimmest bulb on the Republican front porch.

[eno_]

I sure as hell hope you are right. And there are reasons to think a) The WMDs exist, and b) Bush can't say exactly where yet.

But if he doesn't play it correctly, we get President Dean. Ick.

[LS]

I agree that there is a big political risk in not exposing this the way it needs to be exposed. I'm mystified as to why the admin. is not energetically advertising the irrefutable AQ presence in Iraq before 9/11.

[rightbanker]

They can't because they've already denied it. Bush himself said as much.

Time to face facts gang, whatever other reasons there might have been to invade Iraq, it's now clear that there was no even medium term threat of SH either attacking with WMD himself or his handing them over to Al Quaeda to use. There weren't any functioning weapons there and none likely to be there in the near to medium term.

What follows from that politically? Heck if I know. But I do know you have to play cards with the hand you are dealt, not with the hand you wish you were dealt. Bush better start playing the re-election game with his real hand and stop pretending to have a hand (SH was a "grave and gathering threat) that everyone can now see tha he doesn't have. Because if he continues that way, he will face not only the enraged dems (who will be as mobilized as they have ever been in November) but also disillusioned republicans and tuned out or disgusted independents.

I think that's what Ashcroft in his clumsy inept way was trying to pull off. Make the presence or absence of WMD a non-issue. Move on to other grounds for defending the war.

[JohnnyZ]

Evil chemistry . . . evil biology . . . so many high school and college students are going to have so much fun going Dr. Evil on this!

[LS]

Just because they already denied it doesn't mean that AQ isn't there---cause they were. It's clear they were.

I don't think that's the answer. I think there is some other reason they are not touting the OBVIOUS presence of AQ in Iraq, even before 9/11. Don't know what it is yet, but the connection was real. Minitier says it was; Posner said it was; Gertz said it was. Every author who has looked at this agrees that not only was AQ in Iraq, but in Yemen, Syria, and Iran too. And that is likely what is behind this "willing blindness."

[ex-snook]

The jokes are starting about Ashcroft

 

  At New York's Kennedy airport today, an individual -- later discovered to be a public school teacher, was arrested trying to board a flight.  The man was in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square, a slide rule, and a calculator.  At a morning press conference, Attorney General John Ashcroft said he believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-gebra movement.  He is being charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.

"Al-gebra is a fearsome cult," Ashcroft said.  "They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like "x" and "y" and refer to themselves as "unknowns," but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country.  "As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, there are 3 sides to every triangle," Ashcroft declared.

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes.

"I am gratified that our government has given us a sine that it is intent on protracting us from these math-dogs who are willing to disintegrate us with calculus disregard. Murky statisticians love to inflict plane on every sphere of influence," the President said,  adding: "Under the circumferences, we must differentiate their root, make our point, and draw the line."

President Bush warned, "These weapons of math instruction have the
potential to decimal everything in their math on a scalene never before seen unless we become exponents of a Higher Power and begin to factor-in random facts of vertex."

Attorney General Ashcroft said, "As our Great Leader would say, read my ellipse. Here is one principle he is uncertainty of: though they continue to multiply, their days are numbered as the hypotenuse tightens around their necks."