Iraqi WMD’s - US Disinformation?
Posted By John Moore on June 16, 2003
[This entry is in response to an article at arcterex.net. I decided to post it here rather than in the comments section of the other blog due to its general interest and the amount of work I put into it!]
It has been argued that Americans have been mislead about the cause of the Iraq war - that the real cause was to justify a war for revenge and/or oil. Examples of misc misbeliefs by Americans were give (1/3 believe we found WMDs, 50% thought Iraqi’s were among 9/11 hijackers).
As far as the other issue: misinformation. It was argued that society’signorance is due to misinformation to justify the war. But a large percentage of Americans believe we never landed on the moon? A large majority have long believed that we have a defense against ICBM’s? A significant percentage of Americans are amazingly ignorant about specific facts behind modern events, and it isn’t simply a result of government disinformation.
On the other hand, Americans have good instincts about more general trends, and understand far more deeply than the leftist elite that we were attacked by a new and virulent force on 9/11. Americans watched 9-11 live - no interpretation - no New York Times or NBC News “interpreting” the event for them. Thus they harbor fewer illusions about that event than many who now oppose the policies of the current Administration.
Americans know that we must destroy the status quo in the middle east and eliminate the militant Islam that attacked us.In the status quomiddle east, governments are armed with WMD’s (usually chemical and biological agents) and direct the dissatisfaction of their citizens against the United States, inciting great hatreds in the process. Saddam did this.
Americans know that the next attack could be with weapons from those governments, provided quietly to the fanatics. Thus we supported the removal of the Taliban, and we supported the removal of Saddam. Those actions are putting strong pressure on other enemies in the area.
Why did we go to war in Iraq? There are number of reasons, some of which Wolfowitz mentioned (in a maliciously misquoted interview)…
1) Because with the escalation of terrorism to mass casualty attacks (previous not used by terrorists, and not predicted by government bureaucracies), we cannot allow WMD’s to get into the hands of those terrorists.
There was serious and credible evidence that Iraq had WMD programs and probably WMD’s. We didn’t make that up for propaganda purposes - the government believed it. Do folks really think we made all of our troops wear MOP gear in order to pull off a fraud? Do they believe we took major diplomatic and military risks to put important forces in the western “SCUD boxes” to stop Iraq from launching WMD tipped weapons against Israel? Do ythey ou think all those skeptical reporters quickly donned gas masks when the missile alarms went off just to fool us? Do they think we sent in the “exploitation units,” whose sole mission was to find and neutralize WMD’s, as a fraud? Do they think Saddam put up with a $350,000,000,000 loss of oil revenue in order to not comply with WMD inspection rules, even though he had no WMD’s and no intention to develop them?
There are many theories more credible than “disinformation - real reason = oil, revenge” for our failure to find WMD’s: Saddam may have destroyed them at the last minute; he may have shipped them to Syria during the UN inspections [as reported by several sources with access to intelligence information], planning on getting them back when the inspectors were kicked out or satisfied; he may have destroyed the agents but maintained the ability to make them quickly - we have strong evidence that he maintained bioweapons capability - the lab trailers have NO OTHER rational purpose (the hydrogen production excuse is laughable); he may have buried them in the desert and killed the folks who did so; his underlings may have disposed of them because of our pre-war psy-war warnings, but not told Saddam; he may have simply hidden them were we couldn’t find them - after all, he hid lots of other stuff in schools, mosques, hospitals, etc, and the volume required to hold all the WMD’s is very small.
What is not in doubt is that the prudent supposition, given all evidence available, was that Saddam had and was willing to use WMD’s. The only thing that was unlikely was his ability to produce nuclear explosives (he lacked enough raw uranium, and the report that he had purchased some turned out to be bad intelligence).
2) The argument that Al Quaeda would never cooperate with Saddam due to theological or ideological differences was extremely naive, as has been shown by subsequent discoveries and interrogations. Al Quaeda would deal with the devil himself if it allowed them to more effectively attack us. Hence the danger was real. Furthermore, Iraq had a number of agents in the US, and could easily have staged a chemical/biological weapons attack to be blamed on Al Quaeda. Iraq had a much stronger revenge motive than we did. Finally, Al Queda had significant contacts with Iraqi intelligence in Baghdad, and a major presence in NE Iraq that was less closely aligned with Saddam.
3) The destruction of the Iraqi regime puts strong pressure on a much stronger and more dangerous ally of Al Quaeda - Iran, and also puts pressure on another major terrorism supporting state - Syria. It furthermore demonstrates to our “allies” like the Saudi’s that they can no longer take us for granted.
4) We didn’t need to go to war to get Saddam’s oil. All we needed to do was drop the sanctions and buy it from him. The oil argument is the most pernicuous and yet most illogical argument in this debate. It consists of the leftist assertion that our president is really a pawn of the evil oil companies, and an ignorance of the oil markets.
5) It was necessary for the US to demonstrate that we were willing to put our own troops on the ground, and fight directly against Arabs and muslim extremists, in order to dispell the myth that we are cowards. THis myth started when we deserted the South Vietnames, was associated with the middle east failed to stronly respond to Iranian capture of our diplomats under Carter, continued when we ran from Beirut under Reagan after the Marine barracks attack, and greatly reinforced by Clinton’s such fear of casualties that he only attacked from a distance with cruise missiles).
6) The “Iraq War” was really the “Battle of Iraq” (as Bush referred to it) in the War on Terrorism. It was a step, and only one step. It would not have happened without 9-11. Expect more battles - unfortunately the next maybe in Korea. Are we after their oil too?
Iraq was a good first target for the reasons above, for its strategic position between Iran and Syria, because it was legally an international outlaw, because Saddam had a history of making and using WMD’s, because he was trying to hide something with his continued resistance to UN inspections, and because Saddam had a strong revenge motive to attack the US and a history of doing so (he did try to kill a former president, and one of his agents was a planner of the 1993 World Trade Center attack).
I would like to see you rewrite your article after a year has past. I’d say 0 for 7.
Jeff,
What a comedian. They all still look fine to me.
I believe your reasoning quite sound, and I would like to add that after twelve years and the events of 9-11 it became neccessary to bring the Gulf War to an end. Saddam had not cooperated with or even acknowledged his need to do so, the terms of the cease fire treaty stopping the war. To some people simply letting the inspectors in- not assisting in any way or volunteering any information or IF he disposed of WMD then having the inspectors witness the event- was sufficient. Was the danger imminent? Maybe not, but by most accounts he could have reconstituted his WMD stockpiles within months and his nuclear program within a few years. In the end the choice was his which course to take- to comply and move on or not to comply and risk war.If he had acted as Qaddafi has recently, this war would have been unneccessary.