Don Rumsfeld, 9/18/02, to the Senate: "[Saddam] has amassed large clandestine stocks of biological weapons including anthrax and botulism toxin and possibly smallpox. His regime has amassed large clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX and sarin and mustard gas"

Colin Powell, 2/3/03, to the U.N.: "Saddam Hussein has never accounted for vast amounts of chemical weaponry: 550 artillery shells with mustard, 30,000 empty munitions and enough precursors to increase his stockpile to as much as 500 tons of chemical agents.
[...]
Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets."
Via Pandagon

You are so busted.

You are right. There were referencs to "stockpiles."

SO, are you guys gonna stick with stockpiles? Can we hold you to that? Trust you? YOU guys said "Bush lied--there are no WMD's" Now you've shifted to "Bush lied--no stockpiles."

If we find stockpiles, what will you say? My guess is that we won't hear anything like an apology, or anything like intellectual honesty. I'll bet you go to another fall-back position. Maybe, "yes there are stockpiles, but they're old and dusty."

I'm looking forward to the 2009 NYT spin. "The recent subway attacks used several ounces of nerve agent, and only killed 97 people. This is nothing like the hundreds of gallons claimed by Bush to justify invading Iraq. And anyway it's probably moldy old Sarin left over from Halabha."

So, you make up something and change the goalposts, and the people who correct you have to answer for it.

Makes perfect sense tome.

I didn't make up anything--I quoted Bush correctly, but was unaware of the other statements. You corrected that and I admitted I was wrong.

But you guys are the ones who moved goalposts. From WMD's to "stockpiles of WMD's." OK, we did predict stockpiles, so that's not so unfair.

The rest of my comment was a challenge to YOU to not move your goalposts again. To stick with "stockpiles" as the goalpost. Do you accept the challenge?

John,
Don't throw up strawmen. I've always been convinced it was more a case of self-delusion rather than delibrate lying.

The evidence leaves you with two options:
A: the United States was convinced by Iranian-backed con-men that Iraq had significant stocks of biological and chemical weapons, with ongoing nuclear development programs, none of which actually existed. Tehran loses a regional rival, and gains a sympathetic neighbor.

B: Said stockpiles and programs did exist. A year after the invasion, they are now in the hands of forces unfriendly to the United States, and who are capable of delivery.

So far as WMD arguments are concerned, this is all you are left with.

Now how does either option improve the security of the United States over the next decade?

By the way - sarin production doesn't require a state actor - Aum Shinrikyo demonstrated that. Taking out Saddam does not reduce the West's exposure to this particular weapon. What it does require is rapid manufacture - it breaks down quickly. Saddam's stockpiles, even if they exist, are therefore irrelevent in any case to the problem of terrorism against the homeland.

Cheers,
Duncan

...and speaking of moving goal posts...

"..Iraq likely maintains stockpiles of VX, mustard and other chemical agents.." G. W. Bush 9/12/02

"The United Nations concluded in 1999 that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax...

The United Nations concluded that Saddam Hussein had materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin...

Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent....

U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents....

From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs...." G. W. Bush 1/28/03

"..the Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities..." G. W. Bush 1/20/04

Literally dozens!

One quote is bugging me, from the first comment on this thread:

Colin Powell, 2/3/03, to the U.N.: "Saddam Hussein has never accounted for vast amounts of chemical weaponry: 550 artillery shells with mustard, 30,000 empty munitions and enough precursors to increase his stockpile to as much as 500 tons of chemical agents."

Well, I seem to remember that we did find large stockpiles of empty chemical delivery shells. And early in the war there was lots of stuff found that was chemically similar enough to nerve agents to register as positive in the field tests. Were those precursors, decayed from poor storage?

Duncan,
I was writing purely on the "there are no WMD's so Bush LIED" accusation. Purely on the subject of credibility. I myself do not justify the Iraq Campaign that way. You are attacking a position I don't occupy.

I have about 10 reasons why invading Iraq was a good idea. WMD's are close to the bottom of the list. The administration had to over-emphasize them to try to get the UN on board.

The larger question of justifying the invasion is too big for a comments-post, and I don't think we have enough common ground to argue sensibly. I personally feel that this is WAR, and we have a perfect right to pulverize anyone who looks at us cross-eyed. (I'm not recommending that, just saying we have the right.) All this pettifogging legal justification stuff is an attempt to pretend we are in some sort of law court or trial, not war.

It won't work. With each terrorist attack or atrocity, more people realize that this is war--kill or be killed. The only important thing is winning. The only important argument is, what strategy will bring victory.

I always love this line of argument.

"We didn't go to war for the reasons that we spent all that time talking about, we went to war for *my* reasons."

By the way, it's hard to say we're moving the goalposts when we've now determined we went to war for weapons of mass destruction related program activities, as laid out by George W. Bush himself. In fact, you're sitting here moving the goalposts yourself when you declare that we really went to war for another reason other than the major stated one. At some point, after it's been sold to the entire world as a hunt to take out Saddam's WMD capacity and stockpiles, it actually *becomes* a hunt to take out Saddam's WMD capacity and stockpiles, strategic goalpost changing on your part aside.

No, I said MY PERSONAL feelings are that WMD's are not an important reason. And therefore I didn't want to argue justifications with Duncan on ground that I had no interest in defending. My interest in WMD's was only in discussing the issue of whether "Bush lied."

The only real justification for fighting the battle of Iraq is that it helps win the Global War on Terrorism. I think it will, and all your defeatist cackle will soon be forgotten. Or it won't, and then we will just have to try something else. And you will still be marginalized, and we Americans will just get tougher and more determined.

Bush and aides saying "stockpile." Repeatedly.

Well whoop-tee-doo.
You guys must be more desperate than I thought, to keep repeating this same point--after I conceded the point and admitted you were right about stockpiles being mentioned.

I was writing purely on the "there are no WMD's so Bush LIED" accusation.

Which is why I said "so far as WMD arguments are concerned".

I have about 10 reasons why invading Iraq was a good idea. WMD's are close to the bottom of the list. The administration had to over-emphasize them to try to get the UN on board.

So you are the one saying that Bush deliberately misled the world?

No, I just said they had to over-emphasize it. Clinton, Gore and Kerry all did the same, before Bush was elected. They all made speeches about the grave danger of Saddam having WMD's. The UN said the same.

None of them were "misleading the world;" that's just how things looked then. "Anti-war activists" agreed, they said invasion might bring massive casualties from chemical or biological attacks!

Now you are conveniently forgetting all that, and acting as if WMD's were a Bush fabrication. Go for it. Have fun.

And if they turn up, (maybe coming soon to a convenient location near you,) you can resurrect the old Kerry and Gore quotes and say they warned all along about WMD's, but Bush was too slow to invade Iraq and secure them...

They (Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Rodham Clinton etc etc.) saw the WMD potential of Iraq as requiring containment, sanctions and occational bombardment. (BTW: I was against much of this policy at the time). More to the point, they saw disengagement as harmful to US prestige. WMD provided a rational for putting off that decision indefinitly. They also had to appease the vocal hectoring of AEI through this period - who were pushing the Chalabi-lead popular revolution as a means of regime change, as well as Laurie Myloie's wingnuttery. Nobody covers themself in glory when it comes to Iraq.

They never, however, saw WMD rising to a level requiring invasion and occupation. And that makes all the difference.

And what the heck does "over-emphasize" mean, if not distorting the facts?

ANY politician will put the emphasis on those aspects of a problem that people respond to. That's just normal politics.

Clinton and Gore probably also had other concerns besides WMD's. For instance Saddam's subsidies to terrorists. But they emphasized what people were concerned with. If that's "distorting the facts" then so is almost any political appeal.

If we wanted to work with the UN we had to appeal on issues the UN was interested in. Whether for Clinton's sanctions or Bush's invasion...If I cared to, I could say: Clinton lied about WMD's to get sanctions and bombardments. No stockpiles have been found, so Clinton obviously lied.

That just shows how silly it is to dissect decisions with the advantage of hindsight. We make decisions based on what we know at the time. Often our knowlege will be faulty.

"over-emphasized", the term you used, has a definite pejorative sense. (If you are going to get pick over the words "stockpiles" and "imminent"...)

That just shows how silly it is to dissect decisions with the advantage of hindsight. We make decisions based on what we know at the time. Often our knowlege will be faulty.

If those decisions are not disserted, you will not learn how to make better ones in the future. And if it turns out that somebody has a repeated record of bad decisions - well, it might just say something about the undering judgement and assumptions.

If those decisions are not disserted, you will not learn how to make better ones in the future.

I have somethng of a philosophical disagreement with that. Sometimes that's helpful, but in most cases it is almost impossible to separate a single decision from a dense ecosystem of possibilities and policies and problems. And even if you could, that's not asking the right question.

Most decisions are going to be made in a fog, especially in war. Most of them will be wrong in one way or another.

The important question is, do we have the right overall goal? And are we making decisions that take us in that general direction? If you are in an unmapped wilderness, any decision about which trail to take is likely to be wrong. But if you have a compass and a goal, you can keep correcting your path as you go along.

I don't believe there are any "mastermind" leaders who make mostly right decisions. Looking for them is a waste of time. We should look for leaders who have goals we think are right, and who can keep flexibly adapting as they move in the right general direction.

No offence intended - but that sounds like the triumph of ideology over wisdom, theory over practice.

As I recall, the intent of communism would have been happiness for everyone - it was those pesky details that got in the way...

They said that was their intent, but it obviously wasn't. Their goal was always to create an all-powerful socialist state, and every action was aimed at that.

They are actually a good example of what I'm saying, but from the "dark side." Communist leaders made as many mistakes as the rest of us, but they were always pushing towards their evil goal, so they often reached it. Analyzing their mistakes would miss the reality.

Another example would be the Union in the Civil War. The Union made many many mistakes, and lost lots of battles. If you analysed mistakes you would probably want to dump Lincoln. But you would be missing the real story--that he had a simple goal--preserving the Union, and stuck to it no matter what the setbacks.

I'm not talking about anything as fancy as ideology--just the simple word 'goal." Or even less fancy, just a rough general direction you want the world to move in. A compass course.

Can you answer the question for yourself? What are you FOR? (Not vague stuff like "happiness; everybody's for that.) If you have a interior picture of what you are for, then you can judge a Bush or a Clinton by a useful standard.

Do you know what you are for? (I'm not really asking for an answer, just prodding you to think a bit.) I often encounter people who are anti-Bush, but who don't seem to be "for" much of anything. I can't really discuss things sensibly with them because there is no stated yardstick to measure anything by.

A goal: A stable, prosperous future for all of us, and the ones to come.
The devil is in the details. Good directions for the United States would be drastically reforming its imploding health care system, getting serious about energy consumption, and developing a sustainable foreign policy. Implementing a solid space program would also be a Good Thing.

The U.S. learned a lot during the Civil War - especially that bit about amateurs and tactics, and professionals and logistics, which seems to have been forgotton by some.

There were actually very good cases for dumping Lincoln and Roosevelt during their respective wars - it's not as if their second war terms lasted very long. Lincoln was a great orator but a lousy comander-in-chief. The sickly FDR gave away the barn at Yalta.

Nobody is indispensable.

You are not quite getting my point. (I'm not meaning to hassle you, but it's fun to discuss these things.)

"A sustainable foreign policy" is sort of like "happiness" as a goal. It doesn't give you any guidance--doesn't answer the question "where do you want of foreign policy to take us? To take the world?"

Imagine you are the president and the imaginary new nation of Urdustan is torn between factions. One faction stands for Order, to prevent civil war. Others emphisize democracy, or economic development, or being pro-America, or pro-"International Community," or anti-terrorist, or preserving-traditional-way-of-life.

Do you have any general trend or course you favor, that would help you decide which group to support? (Of course this is a ludicrius over-simplification)

"Fixing health care" is something everyone is for. My question is, do you have a general direction you want any fixes to move it in? (I myself would like to move in the direction of reducing bureaucracy and giving more power to doctors and patients. If Mr Kerry made proposals that would move things in that direction I would be praising him. Saying, "Listen to Kerry everybody!" )

My feeling is that many people who are anti-Bush don't have much they are really "for." They've never thought it out, they've maybe just assumed being a Democrat meant they were lined up with all that was good. So now they are stuck--the world is changing rapidly and they have no credible policy alternatives to propose. They're just "against," with not much they can say they are "for."