From: Keith Elis (hagbard@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Thu May 08 2003 - 08:35:37 MDT
> It's one month since they pulled down that statue in Baghdad.
> It was *four years* between the end of Gulf War I and the
> discovery of the hidden bioweapons program, and that only
> happened because its administrator, Hussein Kamel, defected
> to Jordan - not because the weapons inspectors independently
> stumbled upon it. Nuclear weapons programs may be hard to
> hide, but bioweapons seed stocks can be stored in small
> containers and buried anywhere you please. It's a bit
> premature to proclaim that there were no WMDs.
There's a significant difference Mitch. After Gulf War I coalition
forces didn't have unfettered access to the whole of Iraq. At the moment
at least 4 divisions worth of ground forces are combing the country
looking for this stuff. The US claimed it knew Iraq had WMD of one type
or another, but it begins to look shady when the intelligence they
relied upon to make such a statement does not quickly lead them to WMD
caches. If the intelligence was not concrete enough to lead troops there
quickly, then I think it wasn't as concrete as the US administration
purported it to be prior to the war.
If WMD are not found very soon, I have no choice to conclude that the US
didn’t really have the concrete intelligence it claimed it did. Every
day that passes without finding WMD shows how little the US really knew
about WMD going in. I am even willing to make the even bolder claim that
any WMD found from here on out is just good olde-fashioned luck. If the
US was betting on finding WMD after the war, it was probably a decent
bet. If they had vague pieces of intelligence that suggested WMD were in
country, then it was an even better bet. But, this is not how it came
across. It was not presented as a speculative bet. It was presented as a
near certainty to energize a pre-emptive rationale. Now, the issue is no
longer whether Iraq had WMD. The issue is to what extent the US hoped it
would find WMD after a war, and to what extent this hope was all they
had.
Keith
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