Let's start off with the obligatory proviso that even if Saddam had maintained WMD stocks, facilities, and programmes -- which the Bush Administration knew full well, before the invasion, was not the case -- it would not have justified the Administration's brutal, barbarous attack upon the country's civilian population and infrastructure (including with its own banned weapons -- Depleted Uranium, Cluster Bombs, and Napalm).
That out of the way, we can get down to cases.
About a year ago, we were afforded a hearty chortle when, explaining away the dearth of WMD in Iraq, we were told that Saddam had "put in place a double-deception program aimed at convincing the world and his own people that he was more of a threat than he actually was."
The point of the "double-deception", we were told, was to deter an attack from the United States. The "bluff" was so elaborate, we were told, that Saddam had even issued "pre-war Iraqi communications collected by U.S. intelligence agencies indicating that Iraqi commanders...were given the authority to launch weapons of mass destruction against U.S. troops as they advanced north from Kuwait."
Saddam, we were told, "may have misled the world", and "is thought to have...made ambiguous statements about his WMD programme as an elaborate bluff that backfired." [Emphases added.] No examples of these misleading and/or ambiguous statements were offered.
Fast-forward to today, and the release of the final status report acknowledging once and for all what Iraqi defectors and UN Inspectors had been telling us for some years -- Saddam abandoned his WMD dreams in the early '90s.
But, what about Colin Powell's fabulous presentation? What about the absolute certainty -- not only of existence, but of quantities and locations -- of the Bush Administration? Never mind that.
As he was a year ago, sneaky Saddam is to blame for pulling the wool over the world's (or at least the Stateside mainstream media's) eyes. This time, though, his deceptions weren't in attempt to deter a U.S. invasion, but to deter Iran. And instead of intercepted communications, we now have this knowledge thanks to interrogations of Saddam and his top commanders.
While "the report does not state explicitly whether Saddam himself has acknowledged that he engaged in a deception operation about these weapons before the war," we are again told by the New York and Los Angeles Times that Saddam "hid behind ambiguities and evasions about whether Iraq possessed unconventional weapons" and that, "Although Saddam often denied U.S. assertions that he possessed WMD in defiance of UN resolutions, for years he also persisted in making cryptic public statements to perpetuate the myth that he possessed the banned weapons."
Alas, just like last year, no examples are given. So here's a request to everybody out there in readerland: If you know of any examples of Saddam's "double-deceptions" and "bluffing" (including especially any cited in the 1,000 page Duelfer report, which yours truly has not yet had time to peruse), could you pretty please with sugar on top link them up using the comments form? Would also like to see some evidence -- or even any speculation, prior to today -- that Saddam was in any way worried about an Iranian invasion.
This smells as ratty now as it did last year.
Speaking of stinking, the LA Times asks, "If Saddam understood he had no stockpiles of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, why did he limit the activities of the United Nations inside Iraq, violate UN Security Council resolutions, and defy the outside world?" Surely the LA Times (as well as its mainstream media kinfolk) are by now well aware that, as Glen Rangwala put it in 2002:
In its October 1997 report, UNSCOM stated that "the majority of [weapons] inspections were conducted in Iraq without let or hindrance" (Annex I, para.33). Even up to its final inspection report on 15 December 1998, UNSCOM was recording how "the majority of the inspections of facilities and sites under the ongoing monitoring system were carried out with Iraq's cooperation". Non-cooperation was recorded in only 5 out of 427 inspections in the round before inspectors were withdrawn on the request of the US; those 5 instances resulted in minor delays, not inspection refusals.
So enough of the "Saddam wouldn't let us in" crap, okay? And, you know, given that it's now been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that Saddam's WMD were destroyed shortly after the first Gulf War, enough of the "he repeatedly violated Security Council Resolutions ordering him to disarm" crap, too. Okay?
Similarly,
On the one hand, Duelfer says, Saddam recognized the need to disarm to achieve relief from UN sanctions. On the other, he felt the need to retain such weapons as a deterrent.
"The regime never resolved the contradiction inherent in this approach," Duelfer says.
Uh, he "never resolved" the "contradiction"? How about, he abandoned his WMD programmes in the early '90s, and never attempted to re-start them -- even though "relief from UN sanctions" was not forthcoming? Even after the Americans ordered inspectors withdrawn and started bombing? That ain't "resolution"?
Moving on to his highness. Dubya's reaction to the report is as follows:
The Duelfer report showed that Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the UN oil for food program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions. He was doing so with the intent of restarting his weapons program once the world looked away.
Is this the best you can do, George? We're supposed to believe that, even if the sanctions regime (which would have been lifted in 1998 had the Clinton Administration not chosen to play political games with Iraqis' lives) had collapsed, the world would have "looked away"? That the United States would not have maintained its illegal, unilateral "no-fly zones" and several-times-weekly bombing runs? That periodic inspections could not have been continued indefinitely? (Not saying that the shrill attention paid to Saddam's supposed WMD arsenal while ignoring all others' wasn't supremely hypocritical. Just that Saddam's "systematic gaming" of "the system" could easily have been subverted, even had sanctions been lifted.)
What you can do: Find examples of Saddam's "ambiguous" and "cryptic" statements regarding his WMD programmes! Failing that, e-mail the New York Times and LA Times, demanding either examples from their archives, or retractions of their ass-kissing regurgitations of State Propaganda.
Eddie, dontcha know the inspectors were kicked out of Iraq in '98?
Good find on that Rangwala bit.
Posted by: dack on October 8, 2004 12:09 AMEddie, dontcha know the inspectors were kicked out of Iraq in '98?
That's what Richard Perle said on Charlie Rose the other night, and Rose didn't even bat an eyelash.
Good find on that Rangwala bit.
But that's just stuff that was in the UNSCOM reports, and that any media organisation worth its salt would have told about long ago.