The Day I Realized I Would Never Find Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Negrodamus : Because he has the receipt.
- from Paul Moody's "Negrodamus" skit on Chappelle's Show
More seriously, Western countries sold Saddam plenty of chemical weapons which were used to kill lots of Iranians during the particularly brutal Iraq-Iran war during the 1980s.
The whole situation is complete madness from the average individual's perspective. Technically there were still WMDs in Iraq (because "we" sold them to them so of course we knew) but it was probably covered up or obfuscated.
Depends on what you consider a WMD. How many expired cans of phosgene makes a valid WMD claim? Iraw famously used gas against many enemies, decades before. Ultimately, Saddam had less difficulty getting ahold of conventional arms, which he used to attack Kuwait. Unfortunately for him, this mobilized the US (who had been waiting a long time) as a signal that Saddam's regime was desperate, alongside showing what military capability they had.
No:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destr...
"Iraq actively researched and later employed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from 1962 to 1991, when it destroyed its chemical weapons stockpile and halted its biological and nuclear weapon programs as required by the United Nations Security Council.[1]"
What's sure is that at the time of 9/11, the U.S. had still significant quantities of chemical weapons that they just started to destroy a few years before:
https://www.cnbc.com/2013/09/23/destroying-chemical-weapons-...
"After the U.S. formally agreed in 1997 to destroy its 30,000-ton chemical arsenal, Newport's mission changed again" ... "Not until 2008 — 11 years after our visit and U.S. ratification of the chemical weapons ban—was the last of the VX eliminated."
Yes, and the US sold Saddam a wide range of biological weapons too. A lot of details near the bottom of this page:
This podcast helps give some insight:
https://cafe.com/stay-tuned-the-paradox-of-dick-cheney-with-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_C...
and check what were the functions before, then and after of the people who wrote the documents or were involved and also what they wrote. Especially a document:
"Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century," September 2000.
With the famous quote:
"Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."
And exactly a year later, 9/11, conveniently for the writers, happened.
If I remember correctly everything was on their internet site, available even before 9/11 for everybody to read and think about it. Just checked: the Internet Archive has a first capture from one month after 9/11. Still, the document was made before.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/05/12/selective-inte...
"In Congress, a senior legislative aide said, “Some members are beginning to ask and to wonder, but cautiously.” For now, he told me, “the members don’t have the confidence to say that the Administration is off base.” He also commented, “For many, it makes little difference. We vanquished a bad guy and liberated the Iraqi people. Some are astute enough to recognize that the alleged imminent W.M.D. threat to the U.S. was a pretext. I sometimes have to pinch myself when friends or family ask with incredulity about the lack of W.M.D., and remind myself that the average person has the idea that there are mountains of the stuff over there, ready to be tripped over. The more time elapses, the more people are going to wonder about this, but I don’t think it will sway U.S. public opinion much. Everyone loves to be on the winning side.”
EDIT: and don't forget the tubes...
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/world/threats-responses-i...
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/washington/us/the-nuclear...
I suspect Maddox was misled, like Powell, by relying only on classified material that amounted to summaries produced with deliberate bias.
It is a fundamental problem: there is a thousand times as much classified material as you can afford to read. Who can justify reading outside it, where the writer might not have access to the whole story? But because there is so much, you are obliged to rely on summaries, and the sound judgment and the scruples of those in charge of what goes into them.
It’s the banality of evil, cynically exploited by ruthless operators at the top.
Foreign-policy circles are full of people who think they are the smartest guys in the room, when they are anything but. Dr.Strangelove is alive and well.
Based on this, the guy is either an idiot (unlikely) or just wilfully ignorant.
Once he was in Iraq, and after he returned, he knew. That's be his own admission. So he spent his time running around and interrogating old men until they cried, blocking streets, disrupting commerce etc.
Then when he came back, instead of telling the truth, he covered for the whole enterprise.
This guy is telling a sob story and acting like he is the victim. But he's not. He's part of the problem. Without people like him, wars like Iraq 2 wouldn't happen.
That’s what a lot of republicans have been saying about climate change for decades. Sensible people don’t act based on “everyone knows” especially not when tasked with actually digging out facts.
If you where a republican investigator in charge of figuring out if climate change was a problem and decided to not actually do any fact checking because “everyone knows it’s bullshit” you would be an idiot.
In the same sence, someone tasked with looking for WMD in Iraq would be an idiot to simply go “well everyone knows there aren’t any” and not checking the facts.
Point is that no matter your political leanings, there is no such thing as “everyone knows” when doing investigations you look for facts and evidence.
And sometimes that’s hard because there isn’t any (Iraq) and other times that’s easy because there are tons (climate change). But no matter the case and your political affiliation if you skip the facts and rely on public sentiment you’re being foolish.
2003 Colin Powell's speech in the UN Security Council:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Counci...
A presentation with all the "proofs" which, only after the war started, were proven to be fakes.
Only in 2005, he admits:
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/09/politics/powell-calls-his...
"Powell Calls His U.N. Speech a Lasting Blot on His Record"
In between, there were a lot who wanted to believe. Including most of the politicians. And not only in the U.S.
Britain was more than willing to help and contributed with its own fake proofs, e.g. the February 2003 dossier:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Dossier
"much of the work in the Iraq Dossier had been plagiarised from various unattributed sources including a 13-year-old thesis produced by a student at California State University"
The thing is, J.D. Maddox is right when he writes:
"I’m struck by the power of our national momentum toward going to war — especially unnecessary ones — and alarmed that this momentum seems nearly impossible to halt."
It was true then, it's true now.
Edit, to answer LatteLazy's: ""UN Chief Inspector Hans Blix" rebutting the Powell speech. That's before the invasion and after the speech of course..."
Yes, that rebuttal surely existed (and some others too!), but has it influenced the politics of U.S. and allies in any way? Or the media? It effectively hasn't. Therefore: "the power of our national momentum toward going to war — especially unnecessary ones... seems nearly impossible to halt."
There were also the protests, in vain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War
Not entirely. Before the war started, there mass protests, and ubiquitous claims that its ruling class promoters were pathological liars. People could even discuss those claims around serving soldiers without getting punched.
As Noam Chomsky pointed out at the time, none of that had happened before. The peace movement couldn't stop a war in 2003, but it made a lot of progress towards a future where it can.
Would you really say no, even when you have a hunch that it’s all just song & dance...?
Being "successful" to me is far less important than being happy/not being a piece of shit to the rest of the world.
Altruistic? Or just not a selfish scumbag? You decide.