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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/oped/chi-0305080027may08,1,4289625.story
Still looking for Hussein's destructive weaponry
Managing rumors that the Bush White House would be `amazed' if WMDs were found
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Molly Ivins, Creators Syndicate. Molly Ivins is a syndicated columnist based in Austin, Texas
May 8, 2003
Austin, Texas -- "We ought to be beating our chests every day. We ought to look in a mirror and be proud, and stick out our chests and suck in our bellies, and say, `Damn, we're Americans!' "
--Jay Garner, retired Army lieutenant general and the man in charge of the American occupation of Iraq
Thus it is with a sense of profound relief that one hears the news that Garner is about to be replaced by a civilian with nation-building experience. I realize we have all been too busy with the Laci Peterson affair to notice that we're still sitting on a powder keg in Iraq. In case you missed it, a million Iraqi Shiites made pilgrimage to Karbala, screaming, "No to America!"
Funny how media attention slips just at the diciest moments. I doubt the United States was in this much danger at any point during the actual war. Whether this endeavor in Iraq will turn out to be worth the doing is now at a critical point, and the media have decided it's no longer a story. Boy, are we not being served well by American journalism.
Anent the current difficulties, Newsweek's May 12 report on U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's favorite Iraqi, Ahmed Chalabi, leaves one with the strong impression we should not be putting all our eggs in that particular basket.
But the weirdest media reaction of all is to the ongoing non-appearance of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. More and more stories quoting ever-unnamed administration officials appear saying the administration would be "amazed if we found weapons-grade plutonium or uranium" and that finding large volumes of chemical or biological material is "unlikely."
Look, if there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it means either our government lied to us in order to get us into an unnecessary war or the government was disastrously misinformed by an incompetent intelligence apparatus. In either case, it's a terribly serious situation.
What I cannot believe is that respected journalists, most notably New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, would simply dismiss the non-existent weapons of mass destruction as though it made no difference. Of course it matters if our government lies to us.
Why do you think people were so angry at Lyndon Johnson over the Gulf of Tonkin? At Richard Nixon over the "secret war" in Cambodia? Even at Bill Clinton over the less-cosmic matter of whether he had sex with "that woman." If it makes no difference whether the government lied, why is Friedman a journalist? Why does journalism exist at all?
Non-existent weapons of mass destruction also present us with a huge international credibility problem, particularly since the Bush administration now feels entitled to "punish" those countries that did not join the "coalition of willing," as we so preciously called those who caved in to our threats to cut off foreign aid.
Come on, think about this. The Bush administration apparently feels entitled to take actions punishing old friends, including Mexico and Canada--not to mention the Europeans--for not siding with us in a war we may have lied about? This is not going to sit well with the rest of the world. Seymour Hersh's reportage in the current New Yorker should be read carefully.
The Friedman camp's reasoning on "lies don't matter" is that Saddam Hussein was such a miserable human being that taking him out was worthy in and of itself. As a human-rights supporter all these years, I made that argument, too. I even made it when the Reagan administration was giving Hussein weapons of mass destruction.
But that was not the case made by President Bush. He said Hussein was a clear and present danger who posed an imminent threat to the United States because he had chemical and biological weapons he was prepared to hand over to terrorists at any moment.
The administration detailed those weapons with excruciating precision: 5,000 gallons of anthrax, several tons of VX nerve gas, between 100 and 500 tons of other toxins including botulinum toxin, mustard gas, ricin and sarin, 15 to 20 Scud missiles, drones fitted with poison sprays and mobile chemical laboratories.
The reason Bush could not make the human-rights case against Hussein (as British Prime Minister Tony Blair did) is because we're still supplying other monsters with weaponry. (Algeria, anyone?) John Quincy Adams once said, "We go not abroad in search of monsters to destroy." We shouldn't help create them, either.
Maybe we can learn that much from Saddam Hussein.
Still looking for Hussein's destructive weaponry
Managing rumors that the Bush White House would be `amazed' if WMDs were found
Advertisement
Molly Ivins, Creators Syndicate. Molly Ivins is a syndicated columnist based in Austin, Texas
May 8, 2003
Austin, Texas -- "We ought to be beating our chests every day. We ought to look in a mirror and be proud, and stick out our chests and suck in our bellies, and say, `Damn, we're Americans!' "
--Jay Garner, retired Army lieutenant general and the man in charge of the American occupation of Iraq
Thus it is with a sense of profound relief that one hears the news that Garner is about to be replaced by a civilian with nation-building experience. I realize we have all been too busy with the Laci Peterson affair to notice that we're still sitting on a powder keg in Iraq. In case you missed it, a million Iraqi Shiites made pilgrimage to Karbala, screaming, "No to America!"
Funny how media attention slips just at the diciest moments. I doubt the United States was in this much danger at any point during the actual war. Whether this endeavor in Iraq will turn out to be worth the doing is now at a critical point, and the media have decided it's no longer a story. Boy, are we not being served well by American journalism.
Anent the current difficulties, Newsweek's May 12 report on U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's favorite Iraqi, Ahmed Chalabi, leaves one with the strong impression we should not be putting all our eggs in that particular basket.
But the weirdest media reaction of all is to the ongoing non-appearance of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. More and more stories quoting ever-unnamed administration officials appear saying the administration would be "amazed if we found weapons-grade plutonium or uranium" and that finding large volumes of chemical or biological material is "unlikely."
Look, if there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it means either our government lied to us in order to get us into an unnecessary war or the government was disastrously misinformed by an incompetent intelligence apparatus. In either case, it's a terribly serious situation.
What I cannot believe is that respected journalists, most notably New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, would simply dismiss the non-existent weapons of mass destruction as though it made no difference. Of course it matters if our government lies to us.
Why do you think people were so angry at Lyndon Johnson over the Gulf of Tonkin? At Richard Nixon over the "secret war" in Cambodia? Even at Bill Clinton over the less-cosmic matter of whether he had sex with "that woman." If it makes no difference whether the government lied, why is Friedman a journalist? Why does journalism exist at all?
Non-existent weapons of mass destruction also present us with a huge international credibility problem, particularly since the Bush administration now feels entitled to "punish" those countries that did not join the "coalition of willing," as we so preciously called those who caved in to our threats to cut off foreign aid.
Come on, think about this. The Bush administration apparently feels entitled to take actions punishing old friends, including Mexico and Canada--not to mention the Europeans--for not siding with us in a war we may have lied about? This is not going to sit well with the rest of the world. Seymour Hersh's reportage in the current New Yorker should be read carefully.
The Friedman camp's reasoning on "lies don't matter" is that Saddam Hussein was such a miserable human being that taking him out was worthy in and of itself. As a human-rights supporter all these years, I made that argument, too. I even made it when the Reagan administration was giving Hussein weapons of mass destruction.
But that was not the case made by President Bush. He said Hussein was a clear and present danger who posed an imminent threat to the United States because he had chemical and biological weapons he was prepared to hand over to terrorists at any moment.
The administration detailed those weapons with excruciating precision: 5,000 gallons of anthrax, several tons of VX nerve gas, between 100 and 500 tons of other toxins including botulinum toxin, mustard gas, ricin and sarin, 15 to 20 Scud missiles, drones fitted with poison sprays and mobile chemical laboratories.
The reason Bush could not make the human-rights case against Hussein (as British Prime Minister Tony Blair did) is because we're still supplying other monsters with weaponry. (Algeria, anyone?) John Quincy Adams once said, "We go not abroad in search of monsters to destroy." We shouldn't help create them, either.
Maybe we can learn that much from Saddam Hussein.
Posted on Thu, May. 01, 2003
Where, oh where, are the WMDs?
By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate
The sour joke is: "Of course we know the Iraqis have weapons of mass destruction. We have the receipts."
At this point, the administration would probably be delighted if it could find the WMDs that the Reagan administration gave Saddam Hussein. At least it could point to some WMDs.
This is a "what if …" column, since I have no idea whether Saddam was or was not sitting on great caches of chemical and biological weapons.
What is clear is that not finding the WMDs is getting to be a problem -- and if we don't find any, it's going to be a bigger problem. And if we do find some, we'd better make plenty sure that they come with a chain-of-evidence pedigree, or no one is going to believe us.
You don't have to be an expert on WMDs in the Middle East to know that when the administration starts spreading the word that "it wouldn't really make any difference if there were WMDs or not," it's worried about not finding any.
In the weeks before Persian Gulf War II, the United States told the world that Saddam was hiding mobile chemical laboratories, drones fitted with poison sprays, 15 to 20 Scud missile launchers, 5,000 gallons of anthrax, several tons of VX nerve gas agent and between 100 and 500 tons of other toxins, including botulinun, mustard gas, ricin and Sarin. Also, we said he had over 30,000 illegal munitions. So far, we have found bupkes.
The United States, which insisted it could not give U.N. weapons inspectors so much as 10 days more to search, so dangerous were these WMDs, now says it needs months to find them.
In the meantime, we are clearly being set up to put the whole issue of WMDs down the memory hole. Here are the lines of argument advanced by the administration so far:
• Saddam did have WMDs, but in a wily plot, he poured them down a drain right before we invaded, just so he could embarrass George W. Bush.
• The WMDs are still there, but in some remote desert hiding place that we may never be able to find. "Just because we haven't found anything doesn't mean it wasn't there," one Pentagon source told the Los Angeles Times. Right.
• Saddam had WMDs, but he handed them off to the Syrians just before we came in. Or maybe it was to the Iranians.
• Well, maybe Saddam didn't have huge stores of WMDs, but he had critical blueprints, weapons parts and, most ominously, "precursor chemicals," so he could have manufactured WMDs.
• Well, maybe he didn't have WMDs ready to deliver. The Pentagon has already backtracked on the Scud missile claim.
So far, U.S. "mobile exploitation teams" and other special forces have visited 90 of the top 150 "hot" sites identified by U.S. intelligence. No wonder Hans Blix, head of the U.N. inspection team, says what he got from American intelligence was "garbage."
I'm sorry, but this does make a difference.
The problem is called credibility. Tom Friedman of The New York Times, in a rush to be the first on his block to adopt the "it makes no difference" line, announced the other day that it made no difference because Saddam was such a miserable slimeball on human rights.
As one who long argued that there was a good case to be made for taking out Saddam on human rights grounds back when we were still sending him WMDs, think how pleased I am.
Unfortunately, that was not the case that Bush made. Of the various shifting rationales advanced for this war, human rights was way, way down there, and WMDs were way, way up there.
If there are no WMDs, I would seriously advise this administration not to try to spin its way out of the problem. Bad idea. Will not fly.
There's plenty of evidence that we believed in the WMDs -- took along chemical suits, antidotes, etc. So if there are no WMDs, it's time for a blame-game witch hunt.
I really hate those things, but someone needs to go around roaring, "Whose fault was this?! " It's a splendid opportunity to fire half the CIA.
Let it be a lesson to all intelligence analysts not to let political pressure sway them on evidence. As a minor plot point: It would be interesting to see if George Tenant, a skillful warrior in intra-bureaucracy turf wars, could survive this one.
Maybe the American people can be brainwashed into forgetting why we supposedly went to war. Near as I can tell, our national memory span is down to about two weeks, and the media have been spectacularly unskeptical on this issue.
But the rest of the world is not going to forget that WMDs were our primary reason for an unprovoked, pre-emptive war.
http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/...ns/5759590.htm
Where, oh where, are the WMDs?
By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate
The sour joke is: "Of course we know the Iraqis have weapons of mass destruction. We have the receipts."
At this point, the administration would probably be delighted if it could find the WMDs that the Reagan administration gave Saddam Hussein. At least it could point to some WMDs.
This is a "what if …" column, since I have no idea whether Saddam was or was not sitting on great caches of chemical and biological weapons.
What is clear is that not finding the WMDs is getting to be a problem -- and if we don't find any, it's going to be a bigger problem. And if we do find some, we'd better make plenty sure that they come with a chain-of-evidence pedigree, or no one is going to believe us.
You don't have to be an expert on WMDs in the Middle East to know that when the administration starts spreading the word that "it wouldn't really make any difference if there were WMDs or not," it's worried about not finding any.
In the weeks before Persian Gulf War II, the United States told the world that Saddam was hiding mobile chemical laboratories, drones fitted with poison sprays, 15 to 20 Scud missile launchers, 5,000 gallons of anthrax, several tons of VX nerve gas agent and between 100 and 500 tons of other toxins, including botulinun, mustard gas, ricin and Sarin. Also, we said he had over 30,000 illegal munitions. So far, we have found bupkes.
The United States, which insisted it could not give U.N. weapons inspectors so much as 10 days more to search, so dangerous were these WMDs, now says it needs months to find them.
In the meantime, we are clearly being set up to put the whole issue of WMDs down the memory hole. Here are the lines of argument advanced by the administration so far:
• Saddam did have WMDs, but in a wily plot, he poured them down a drain right before we invaded, just so he could embarrass George W. Bush.
• The WMDs are still there, but in some remote desert hiding place that we may never be able to find. "Just because we haven't found anything doesn't mean it wasn't there," one Pentagon source told the Los Angeles Times. Right.
• Saddam had WMDs, but he handed them off to the Syrians just before we came in. Or maybe it was to the Iranians.
• Well, maybe Saddam didn't have huge stores of WMDs, but he had critical blueprints, weapons parts and, most ominously, "precursor chemicals," so he could have manufactured WMDs.
• Well, maybe he didn't have WMDs ready to deliver. The Pentagon has already backtracked on the Scud missile claim.
So far, U.S. "mobile exploitation teams" and other special forces have visited 90 of the top 150 "hot" sites identified by U.S. intelligence. No wonder Hans Blix, head of the U.N. inspection team, says what he got from American intelligence was "garbage."
I'm sorry, but this does make a difference.
The problem is called credibility. Tom Friedman of The New York Times, in a rush to be the first on his block to adopt the "it makes no difference" line, announced the other day that it made no difference because Saddam was such a miserable slimeball on human rights.
As one who long argued that there was a good case to be made for taking out Saddam on human rights grounds back when we were still sending him WMDs, think how pleased I am.
Unfortunately, that was not the case that Bush made. Of the various shifting rationales advanced for this war, human rights was way, way down there, and WMDs were way, way up there.
If there are no WMDs, I would seriously advise this administration not to try to spin its way out of the problem. Bad idea. Will not fly.
There's plenty of evidence that we believed in the WMDs -- took along chemical suits, antidotes, etc. So if there are no WMDs, it's time for a blame-game witch hunt.
I really hate those things, but someone needs to go around roaring, "Whose fault was this?! " It's a splendid opportunity to fire half the CIA.
Let it be a lesson to all intelligence analysts not to let political pressure sway them on evidence. As a minor plot point: It would be interesting to see if George Tenant, a skillful warrior in intra-bureaucracy turf wars, could survive this one.
Maybe the American people can be brainwashed into forgetting why we supposedly went to war. Near as I can tell, our national memory span is down to about two weeks, and the media have been spectacularly unskeptical on this issue.
But the rest of the world is not going to forget that WMDs were our primary reason for an unprovoked, pre-emptive war.
http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/...ns/5759590.htm
The other thing I will mention is that this is not an opprotunity to point out other reasons for going to war; i.e liberation, Saddam is a bad man, etc. Bush's and Powell's case for the war was based upon the notion that Saddam had WMD and was going to give them to terrorists.
This discussion is about whether or not Bush will be considered a liar, or whether or not the intelligence community is inept for telling Dubya that Saddam had WMD's; in the event WMD's are not found.
IMO, if WMD's are not found. I'll put Bush in the same category as LBJ and Nixon... "Lying to the American people".
Discuss and please follow what the discussion is about.
nice Stefu... nice...
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