Weapons of Mass Distraction…

“Ironically, the president is doing everything in North Korea that he was accused of not doing in Iraq: building an international coalition to support pressure on North Korea; not taking North Korean claims at face value; weighing carefully the costs of military action; and so on. The bottom line is that the hard cases — North Korea, Iran and, yes, Iraq — are hard cases precisely because the easy options have been tried and proved wanting.” – Peter D. Feaver, Ph.D.

I’m sure that many of you saw the interview with former weapons inspector, David Kay following his testimony before the Senate. I mean, how could you not have seen it? It was all over cable news and being talked about all over talk radio. Heck, he was even ABC News’ Person of the Week for his comments on the intelligence failure preceding the invasion of Iraq. In his testimony, Kay stated that we basically got the entire situation wrong. Kay was basically right–and we did get the intelligence wrong.
What didn’t get as much press last week, was an Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post by Dr. Peter Feaver, Professor of Political Science at Duke University and Director of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies. In “The Fog of WMD,” Dr. Feaver puts aside the partisanship, and illustrates many points that are key in the discussion about weapons of mass destruction and the invasion of Iraq. Dr. Feaver does a fine job of putting the key elements of this debate in simple terms.
The basis for our going into Iraq was a clear and present danger to the safety and security of the United States. That is the only viable basis for deploying our troops at any time. The intelligence we had predicated our military action on appears to have been wrong, and that clearly is a monumental problem. As Feaver states, “Intelligence failures beget intelligence failures,” so where did this intelligence come from?
Well, the original reports came from the Bush Administration–George Herbert Walker Bush, that is. The current President’s father. We knew Saddam was developing and potentially using bio-chem agents back then. Estimates of quantities and types were in the revised intelligence provided by the Clinton Administration, which was the basis for the current projections of the Iraqi stockpile.
That evidence was corroborated by the British. Also by the Germans, and by the Mossad. This evidence was presented to the United Nations and lead to the UN Security Council to issue the following resolutions: 661 (1990) of 6 August 1990, 678 (1990) of 29 November 1990, 686 (1991) of 2 March 1991, 687 (1991) of 3 April 1991, 688 (1991) of 5 April 1991, 707 (1991) of 15 August 1991, 715 (1991) of 11 October 1991, 986 (1995) of 14 April 1995, and 1284 (1999) of 17 December 1999. Eventually, all of these prior resolutions would be cited in UN Security Council Resolution 1441.
Democrats and opponents of the Bush Administration are quick to say that Bush lied about the reasons for going in, and say that he did it “for the oil.” This is an absolutely shameful and repugnant statement, and those purporting that view demonstrate sheer ignorance and partisanship.
Look–in the pursuit of WMD and terrorism, Bill Clinton launched cruise missiles into Afghanistan and the Sudan, where he dusted an aspirin factory and a religious school in trying to get Osama bin Laden. This also was based purely on intelligence and where was the outrage there?
There was also no outrage or concern displayed when President William Jefferson Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act into law on October 31, 1998, making a regime change in Iraq the official, stated policy of the United States of America. This means that the law of the land since 1998 has been to remove Saddam Hussein from power at the best opportunity to accomplish that goal.
Congress also approved George W. Bush’s use of force in Iraq in overwhelming fashion with a majority of Democrats voting in favor of military action, based on the same intelligence.
Going back to Feaver’s article, an intelligence failure was practically inevitable given the nature of Saddam’s regime. I’d not thought about this point before, but he’s right. Saddam Hussein is a megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur and he wanted us to believe he was a bigger threat than he was. The problem is, we fell for his bluff. It doesn’t take the blame off of us, however. Our intelligence on WMD has been questionable since the beginning. Feaver highlights several examples since 1949 where the facts contradicted the best estimates of the global intelligence community.
Why would the Bush Administration lie about WMD and go into Iraq if they knew they were going to be proven wrong two months later?
Assuming you said “because of the oil,” then why didn’t they just plant the WMD to accomplish their goal of finding it if they’re as inherently corrupt as people would have you believe? They could have avoided this whole mess that way.
Now if you said, “because Bush is an idiot,” what about the hundreds of people providing him this intelligence, as well as the individuals helping him assess the situation? Is Colin Powel an idiot? Is Condoleeza Rice a moron? No, they’re not, are they?
This obfuscation of the facts is about one thing: people exhibiting their hate for George Bush, and that’s all. There is no evidence that Bush has lied or covered up the facts. None. If there were, I’d be first in line to demand his impeachment and his removal from office. Democrats and Liberals call this simple-minded and naive–that’s what they call any slice of logic that refutes their incredible claims What we have here is a serious failure of our intelligence community–one that we need to fix immediately so that we don’t risk innocent lives.
But, you know, what does Dr. Peter D. Feaver know about any of this?
He’s a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve. Oh, yeah, and he was only the Director for Defense Policy and Arms Control on the National Security Council at the Clinton White House in 1993 and 1994. I’m thinking he knows a little about this.
He’s also a Democrat.
William Smith
ConservativeBlogger.com