Errors of Mass Destruction

National Review Online ^ | June 12, 2003 | Michael Novak

[WarrenC]

Errors of Mass Destruction WMD search and accusations.

The Bush administration has made two errors regarding weapons of mass destruction. First, it is now failing to make clear that prior to the war the administration did not have the burden of proving that there were, or were not, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. That burden fell on Saddam Hussein. (This simple conclusion should have always been clear to all, since the U.N. inspectors never carried the burden of proof either.)

Since Iraq was known by U.N. inspectors to have had many such weapons until 1998, and since the disposition of these weapons after that time was not known, as by international obligation it ought to have been, the United States had no practical choice but to assume that they were still in existence.

Second, the public has not been made aware of how small a set of objects the U.S. is now looking for. In January, Hans Blix said that, among other things, 8,500 liters of anthrax were unaccounted for. How much space do 8,500 liters occupy? That's about 45 drums — the size of oil drums — probably spread out in several different hiding places.

If one contemplates how much damage a single teaspoon of anthrax caused in Washington, D.C., when it was spread through the mail in October of 2001, the United States was right to be worried about the enormous damage that a suitcase full of anthrax delivered by a small cell of terrorists might wreak.

That is why our troops in the field are not expecting to find huge warehouses or enormous storage spaces. They are looking for materials that may be hidden in somebody's basement, behind a false wall, in a space the size of a clothes' closet.

THREE FURTHER POINTS After September 11, given the character of Saddam Hussein and the variety of terrorist leaders who took shelter under him in Baghdad, from Abu Nidal to top people of al Qaeda, President Bush had to recognize a clear and worrisome danger. On any day that went by, terrorists seeking biological weapons might offer their clandestine delivery system in exchange for a supply of Saddam's weapons.

Again, as Stanley Kurtz has pointed out on NRO, several Iraqi villagers recently became ill after they broke into an unguarded nuclear facility at Tuwaitha (the one bombed by the Israelis years ago). In ignorance, they had emptied out barrels containing radioactive materials in order to use them as water containers. The New York Times now laments that these dangerous materials had been left unguarded, and so could have been seized by terrorists intent on manufacturing "an inestimable quantity of so-called dirty bombs." Here is the New York Times making Bush's prewar argument!

And, by the way, 1.8 tons of low-enriched uranium counts as a weapon of mass destruction, doesn't it?

Finally, Democrats in Congress should assemble all the evidence about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction revealed by President Clinton and Vice President Gore right up till they left power in early 2001, and by the U.N. inspection teams both in 1998 and again in 2003. Then they should try to measure any daylight between this evidence and the evidence adduced by President Bush and his team. They may end up pointing fingers at themselves.

— Michael Novak is the winner of the 1994 Templeton Prize for progress in religion and the George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute.

[WarrenC]

Some excellent points by Mr. Novak.

[JohnGalt]

I must have missed them.

The only point he made is the 'see, the NY Times and the Democrats and Saddam said their were WMDs too!'

He does not seem the least bit concerned that intelligence was either manipulated or just plain false as it made it way up the food chain and has not only embarrassed the President but added a taint of scandal.

[ex-snook]

[WarrenC]

Yeah, you must have missed them. And to think the President is embarrassed about our victory in Iraq takes a willful ignorance about the reality of the situation. As willful as your missing Novak's points.

[JohnGalt]

Please, enlighten me to his points then.

I detected only one meandering point: "Hans Blix, the UN, and the Democrats said Saddam possessed WMDs as well."

[JohnGalt]

http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/decade/sect3.html

Not sure if you have seen this link, but the item dated 1995 should send off red flags. The defector in question, not named, is some guy named 'Kamal.' The thing of it is that he also said, in 1995, that Iraq had destroyed the very weapons he was referring to.

How did the CIA let the White House screw up so badly on its own web site?

[chichipow]

Link for Kamal and his reference to destroying what he spoke of?

[chichipow]

http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/1998_r/980210t-fr.htm

An interesting read.

[chichipow]

From above link-

"A new approach to studying the Iraqi WMD programs was adopted in the aftermath of the "defection" of Lt.Gen. Hussein Kamal in the Summer of 1995. Originated as an audacious ploy to destroy the anti-Saddam movement from within, the "defection" went sour when Baghdad panicked over reports of contacts between Kamal and the CIA in Amman. Consequently, Baghdad was compelled to surrender to the UN large quantities of material Kamal might have divulged while in Amman. Consequently, Kamal and his brother were lured back to Baghdad where they were promptly assassinated. Meanwhile, the entire perception of the extent of the Iraqi WMD program had to be reevaluated. "

Seems as though the US and CIA suspected or had reason to think Kamal and what he stated was a 'ploy'. It is interesting though that they would use his admittion of WMD, but not his admittion that all he spoke of were destroyed. If the whole thing was bogus, why use any of it, unless they had intel that those weapons he said were destroyed were not.

[JohnGalt]

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31303

Thanks for the link. Take a peak at this story and I'll see if I can track down the Newsweek story mentioned.

[mewzilla]

Did you ever read UN Res. 1441? Even the UN acknowleged that Saddamn had WMDs.

[JohnGalt]

The UN has no credibility, so why would you site them to help prove that Iraq actually had these WMDs?

[mewzilla]

Just damning them with their own words. Fitting, don't you think?

[JohnGalt]

Damning who--the accusers?

I should think that conservatives demand a higher standard than a Clinton defense.

There was clearly an intelligence failure; identify the incompetent government hacks who fooled multiple administrations, disgrace them, strip them of their pensions, and lets be happy there is less evil in the world, before this issue becomes a scandal that threatens re-election.

[mewzilla]

J.G., do you really think we went on just the info from the UN? We knew more than they did, yet they knew enough to acknowlege that Saddamn had WMDs. We knew it, the Brits knew it, the Frogs, the Germans, the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans...I'm worried about any that weren't destroyed before we gained control of Iraq. The prospect of the naysayers finding out they were wrong the hard way scares me to bits.

[JohnGalt]

You and I both have no idea what evidence Bush might have been privy to, but the fact that he stopped the troops at the border of Syria and Iran tells me he stopped trusting that Rummy in his ear.

Click on the White House link I provided; there is blatantly misleading at the least 'stuff.' I do not believe Bush lied us into a war the way Wilson, FDR, and Johnson did, but I do believe he made a decision to go to war on the belief that there were WMDs that could threaten the United States. They have not been found where they were suppose to be-- look at Powell's speech to the UN.

Taking a Hans Blix wait and see approach is one tactic, but I am not willing to risk a re-election over it.

[mewzilla]

Are you saying that Iraq had no WMDs?

[clevermom]

The WMB dilema is just a ploy--the UN and Bush detractors were willing to give its inspectors unlimited time to find the material and interrogate agencies involved in Iraq prior to the war; however, now that the war is winding down they are limiting the time the US has to "discover" these weapons. The additional time it took to implement 1441 by the UN did nothing but buy Saddam time to hide, destroy or sell whatever incriminating evidence there might have been. Remember, this man was smart enough to string along the whole world via the UN!

[norton]

Get over it!

We done good and we are continuing to do good despite anyone's effort to revise the script.

Come next election the public will select between a proactive and reasonably conservative administration and some democrat yahoo who still believes that we need to take orders from Brussels or Boston.

By the time we re-elect a president the world will have seen Islamic melt-down in Iran and economic stagnation in europe.

By the time we vote again iraq will be a better place although not a perfect place and not anyone's vacation choice.

So stop trying to prove that the current administration is not conservative enough (nor libertarian, tsk) and try convincing them to come closer to its roots.

I know it would hurt, but you might start with agitating for closed borders, we'd all appreciate that.

[JohnGalt]

WMD is Orwellian political speak so I have no idea and neither do you. Short of a nuclear warhead, nothing the troops find at this point will satisfy the level of hype the intelligence industry built up.

What I can plainly see is an intelligence failure that is threatening to become an issue. Novack's defense is silly and based on 'see, everyone else got it wrong.'

[norton]

PS: I dson't care a whit about WMD; every once in awhile the dark forces just need a good slap-down and this was it for 2003.

Or at least the first half of 2003.

[mewzilla]

That's not an answer...Did/do they have anthrax, botulinum toxin, sarin, VX, smallpox...Just the anthrax would do it for me.

[JohnGalt]

Its your hawkish neoconservative and hawkish left-libertarians that favor open borders, not paleo-libertarians, friend.

If you cannot see a major problem with the intelligence apparatus that first allowed 9/11 to happen and apparently encouraged a war in Iraq, the death of American soldiers, and the cost of billions of dollars, then I can appreciate why emotional pleas like 'we done good' are all thats left. I dare say that attitude has implications in its own right and further caution against your approach as a political strategy.

[JohnGalt]

So now its about you?

I am talking about the claims of the trillion dollar central intelligence apparatus and the reality. If they do not reasonably coincide, the incompetents need to be identified and punished.

[JohnGalt]

Thank you, Woodrow Wilson.

[WarrenC]

Look, two things are significant about WMD: Whether Saddam had them, and whether he had the will to use them. He's used them on his own people which answers both concerns. An article in last Sunday's Miami Herald quoted an Iraqi prominently involved in their WMD program to the effect that Saddam was planning to re-start their production of WMDs at the earliest opportunity. The notion that no counter-terrorist action is justified unless it comes five minutes before they attack so as to assure our finding their weapons is silly. As Mark Steyn recently wrote, it would probably be easier to pick the evidence of WMD out of the rubble of a major city but some of us prefer a less painful approach. Thank God the president showed the leadership to take him out. Your concerns are just foolish.

[JohnGalt]

So your prediction is that this will just go away?

New to politics?

[WarrenC]

I'm not new to politics but the more people contrast the silly, fetishistic concerns of critics like you with the reality of the situation, the better for President Bush. A civilization either has the self confidence to defend itself or it doesn't. If Americans let this become a problem for President Bush, they'll be responding to that challenge in the negative, in which case we'll all have problems far more severe than even you imagine.

The day Americans become such irredeemable fools as to punish President Bush's courage in the execution of his constitutional duty to defend this nation and its citizens from a bunch of 7th-century-loving psychopaths is the day I start rooting for the terrorists.

[JohnGalt]

"If Americans let this become a problem for President Bush, they'll be responding to that challenge in the negative, in which case we'll all have problems far more severe than even you imagine. "

Do you really hate your country that much?

To be a patriot is to love the land of your fathers, warts, lefties, et al.

Is it unpatriotic to even ask questions of the intelligence reports?

[chichipow]

Thank you for the link.

"Click on the White House link I provided; there is blatantly misleading at the least 'stuff.'"

I understand that, but from the article link I posted and the excerpt I quoted, it seems the CIA felt Kamal's duplicity was clear. He spoke of cache's and how they were destroyed, but intelligence, for their own reasons, believed him to be part of the Saddam plan to 'out' anti-Saddam forces in his own ranks. It seems Kamal also felt that he could 'play' both sides and pick the winner. One was helping Saddam, one was telling the CIA bits and peices and being put in line as the next President of Iraq. Neither worked because the CIA saw through him, and he went back to Saddam. Problem is, Saddam is so paranoid (and apparently rightly so with guys like this surrounding you) that he killed Kamal upon his return from his disinfo campaign.

Do you read it a different way?

So essentially, the CIA believed in his account of WMD, but not their destruction. Saddam believed he(Kamal) was actually helping the CIA past the point he was supposed to (lie)so he then again began to destroy weapons. Kamal got assasinated for all of his troubles. The game he was in didn't go his way.

Bad intel post 9/11 through the present? Yes. Outright lying from the Bush Administration to go to war? I don't see it.

[norton]

Spent five years in 'the intelligence service' way back when and probably know more horror stories than you'd be able to take in.

However, it has always been so and will continue.

You take the best you have at hand and go with it...
'though it would be nice if some of the analysts were taken out and hanged every once in awhile. (random would be OK, no less precise than any other system)

At bottom, Iraq was a lesson, not an interdiction.

Premise was they'd not cooperated, UN was diddling itself, an active USA would provide an alert to others that the good old days were over.

It worked.

Wilson was a jerk.

How in the name of reason do you come up with "hawkish.." anyone favoring open borders??

[chichipow]

Norton,

What is your take on Kamal? The story I linked has been the only one I've found so far making this assertion (that he was playing both sides to further himself) and that the CIA knew this.

All of the other links are pundits and writers expressing their opinions about what others wrote. Am I wrong here, or did I read the article correctly?

Kamal gambled and lost, and the CIA believed his testimony only to the point of what he knew of each weapon (not that he destroyed them).

[norton]

Don't think you are wrong:
There is only so much original information available and everyone responds to what someone else said about that small sample.

As to defections and bogus defections:
Either a largely personal spat that caused him to run off and pout for awhile, telling our side what they wanted to hear. Or an actual plant who did not realize that silence really is golden and return to Iraq would be a mistake.
In either case, his judgement wasn't all that sound.

What many seem to ignore is that the major goal in intelligence is to VERIFY. Analysis of a single point is only good enough for an opinion. Lots of really good stuff languishes and dies because there is no second source found to confirm it. (Or because the only source was questionable)

Saddam's absolute refusal to give proof of the actions he was supposed to take, and knowldge that he had at ANY time been developing (using) these weapons made it impossible to verify anything. They worked to be sure verification was impossible; perhaps to keep up his tough guy image in the neighborhood?

That in my mind is sufficient to act on the many opinions and fears that surrounded Iraq's weaponry: a sane person would NOT have destroyed the weapons then stiff armed the inspectors and allowed the mystery to remain.

This, of course, assumes the kind of logic common to the west, from what we see in the news daily, that may be asking too much from the islamic world. Too bad, because we have to act on OUR logic rather than attempt to guess at theirs - unless it can be verified.