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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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 Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 12:26 am Post subject: Slate on the lack of WMD in Iraq |
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Two articles. I didn't post them here because Slate is free and they would run too long. But I encourage people to quote their favorite parts. I dunno, I just thought that the Iraq War and the justifications behind it don't get enough attention around here. 
Believe It or Not
Are you sure you want to keep saying we were fooled by Ahmad Chalabi and the INC?
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Nov. 14, 2005, at 11:46 AM ET
I Was Wrong, but So Were You
Parsing Bush's new mantra.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Monday, Nov. 14, 2005, at 6:39 PM ET
I think both authors make good points. Hitch is right, we caught Saddam red-handed on long-range missiles and he definitely had the infrastructure to pump out chemical weapons once he had the long-range missile technology. However, Bush's arguments also seem weak. I messed up but so did the Democrats, so I shouldn't be held accountable? I think Kaplan does a good service demonstrating that not even the first part of that statement is true. Discuss. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 5:43 pm Post subject: Re: Slate on the lack of WMD in Iraq |
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| Kuros wrote: |
Two articles. I didn't post them here because Slate is free and they would run too long. But I encourage people to quote their favorite parts. I dunno, I just thought that the Iraq War and the justifications behind it don't get enough attention around here.
Believe It or Not
Are you sure you want to keep saying we were fooled by Ahmad Chalabi and the INC?
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Nov. 14, 2005, at 11:46 AM ET
I Was Wrong, but So Were You
Parsing Bush's new mantra.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Monday, Nov. 14, 2005, at 6:39 PM ET
I think both authors make good points. Hitch is right, we caught Saddam red-handed on long-range missiles and he definitely had the infrastructure to pump out chemical weapons once he had the long-range missile technology. However, Bush's arguments also seem weak. I messed up but so did the Democrats, so I shouldn't be held accountable? I think Kaplan does a good service demonstrating that not even the first part of that statement is true. Discuss. |
A good deal of Kaplan's arguments appear to rest on semantics and finely parsed sentences though. And he offers no proof for some of his conclusions. For example he claims that there is reason to believe that Saddam's REAL (capitals mine) capabilities and arsenal were kept a secret by Donald Rumsfield yet offers no proof as to this.
Last edited by TheUrbanMyth on Fri Nov 18, 2005 5:49 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Hater Depot
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 5:49 pm Post subject: |
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| How so? I've never thought so. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2005 2:32 am Post subject: |
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| TUM wrote: |
| A good deal of Kaplan's arguments appear to rest on semantics and finely parsed sentences though. And he offers no proof for some of his conclusions. For example he claims that there is reason to believe that Saddam's REAL (capitals mine) capabilities and arsenal were kept a secret by Donald Rumsfield yet offers no proof as to this. |
I don't agree with your first statement, but I'll admit in the case of your example the last statement seems warranted. We can see the accusation below, that everyone thought Saddam was building WMDs but only the administration had good conclusive evidence against it, but no proof for this exists in the present article. I checked out a few other of his articles and couldn't find it there, either.
| Kaplan of Slate wrote: |
So, yes, nearly everyone thought Saddam was building WMDs, just as everyone back in the late '50s thought Nikita Khrushchev was building hundreds of ICBMs. In Saddam's case, many of us outsiders (I include myself among them) figured he'd had biological and chemical weapons before; producing such weapons isn't rocket science; U.N. inspectors had been booted out of Iraq a few years earlier; why wouldn't he have them now?
What we didn't know—and what the Democrats in Congress didn't know either—was that many insiders did have reasons to conclude otherwise. There is also now much reason to believe that top officials—especially Vice President Dick Cheney and the undersecretaries surrounding Donald Rumsfeld in the Pentagon—worked hard to keep those conclusions trapped inside. |
TUM is right, no proof for that.
I do think that Bush's central point, that the Democrats (and the rest of Congress) had access to the same intelligence that the administration had, is well debunked by Kaplan. Bold type is mine, and it highlights real evidence of Kaplan's argument.
| Kaplan of Slate wrote: |
This is the crucial point: these Democrats did not have "access to the same intelligence." The White House did send Congress a classified National Intelligence Estimate, at nearly 100 pages long, as well as a much shorter executive summary. It could have been (and no doubt was) predicted that very few lawmakers would take the time to read the whole document. The executive summary painted the findings in overly stark terms. And even the NIE did not cite the many dissenting views within the intelligence community. The most thorough legislators, for instance, were not aware until much later of the Energy Department's doubts that Iraq's aluminum tubes were designed for atomic centrifuges—or of the dissent about "mobile biological weapons labs" from the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
Intelligence estimates are unwieldy documents, often studded with dissenting footnotes. Legislators and analysts with limited security clearances have often thought they had "access to intelligence," but unless they could see the footnotes, they didn't. |
And the reason this is so important? Bush wants to say that claims by Democrats (and probably all others) that the administration misled the public about the war is simply disingenuous and politically motivated. His contention is that Congress knew everything he did. That's false, and it's not a matter of semantics to say that. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2005 5:43 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| TUM wrote: |
| A good deal of Kaplan's arguments appear to rest on semantics and finely parsed sentences though. And he offers no proof for some of his conclusions. For example he claims that there is reason to believe that Saddam's REAL (capitals mine) capabilities and arsenal were kept a secret by Donald Rumsfield yet offers no proof as to this. |
I don't agree with your first statement, but I'll admit in the case of your example the last statement seems warranted.. . . |
Okay then, let's see if I can give another example to warrant the first statement, and if you like I will be happy to give more. Let's look at the section of Mr. Kaplan's article where he talks about the UN resolutions about Saddam's WMD. Kaplan claims that "the resolutions never claimed-or had the intention of claiming-that he had such weapons." But he also states that "These resolutions called on Saddam to declare the state of his WMD arsenal and, if he claimed there was no such thing to produce records documenting its destruction."
See the contradiction here? If the resolutions had no "intention of claiming that he had such weapons" (and Mr. Kaplan is speculating here, only the people who formed the resolutions would know their intentions) why would the resolutions either ask for Saddam to declare his arsenal or records documenting the destruction? If Saddam never had them (which we know is not the case), it would be impossible for him to comply with the U.N. resolutions
Either way the report ASSUMES that Saddam DID have or had them. Mr. Kaplan is being overly literal here and playing at semantics. The resolutions may have not claimed Saddam had them, but that is because they were operating under the belief that Saddam did in fact possess them or had at one time. |
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