A Return to the WMD Argument
A pretty damn good essay on the legitimacy of the WMD argument.
I never bought into the WMD argument ALONE as being the reason to disarm Saddam. I believe the argument was used to legally justify invasion, although the real good reasons for invasion were political.
But needless to say, the "Bush lied," argument has been put to rest by all reasonable people.
2 comments:
That article is a joke. It's almost like Bay is saying that he's got the Bush critics on a technicality: (and I paraphrase) "See, any reasonable person had to believe that there might have been some WMDs in Iraq; thus, war was justified, and what the Bush administration did wasn't technically a lie." The issue is not whether we believed there were WMDs, it is how the public was mislead. It was later shown that intel was far from sure that there were any WMDs and nearly certain that Iraq was not a threat to us; however, the administration altered this information, saying there was "no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." Now, if the administration meant what Bay says they meant, in effect, "these WMD are probably few, old, and generally harmless to us," then they did a pretty bad job of making that clear. Being unsure of something and then representing the information as if you are sure of it is a lie. No two ways about it.
you're being silly. first off, the whole point of the WMD issue was that we weren't sure one way or the other. in an era of proliferation and terrorism, the issue with WMDs is obvious...we cannot afford to error on the side of caution.
knowing this, the UN wanted inspections to prove a negative - that saddam DIDN"T have WMDs. and to me, that standard made sense in the case of saddam.
everyone can agree on this...and in fact, has.
what made the iraq situation weird, in hindsight was that saddam was representing (poker term) that he had WMDs - for domestic purposes. even some of his generals thought he had WMDs.
did they have faulty intelligence? yes. the reason: saddam is a kook. so were we justified in thinking that saddam had WMDs given the evidence available? of course we were.
did bush hype up this argument and make it into the principal argument? yes. did he lie? no.
he made the same judgement about the threat of saddam any responsible president, dem or republican would have, and in fact had - clinton was sure in 1998 saddam had WMDs. gore, had he won in 2000, would have made the same conclusion.
what would have been different was how the whole thing was handled and went down, diplomatically.
anyhow, now we know he didn't have them...if we didn't go in, we still wouldn't know. i prefer the former (although i think it would be reasonable to say the cost of knowing has been too high)
Post a Comment