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Thanks for this post, Stephen. I take back everything I might have mumbled under my breath about you :).

As for this side of the Atlantic, I think there are several reasons to believe that this won’t be the political, um, bombshell that it may appear to be.:

1. We don’t know where it came from, and where the rest of it is. If the effect of the war was to disburse the stockpiles that existed then that is not an improvement. If there are not great quantities of Sarin gas, it was not much of a threat to begin with.

2. We now know that Bush had multiple opportunities to destroy a ricin lab in Kurdish controlled Iraq and chose not to do so because he wanted evidence against Saddam. In a just world (which this may not be), that would rather weaken his status as a WMD hawk.

3. Most people think that the WMD was already found.

4. WMD or no, it’s still the same bloody mess.

Finally, this may be yet another false alarm.

Most people think no such thing, Woody. The real bombshell here is that early reports say Zarqawi’s group was involved in planting the bomb.

If true (and I agree with those who say that it’s too soon to tell and we’ve had similair moments in the past that turned out to be false alarms) then we have not only WMD in Iraq but Saddam supplying WMD to Al Qaida. In short, a total vindication of the war that even the left won’t be able to plausibly question. Let’s keep our fingers crossed—but not break out the champaigne quite yet.

I wouldn’t even bother buying a bottle of champagne let along breaking it out, Martin.

A lone shell does not mean Saddam had WMD’s. First, how do we know that it’s from a stash Saddam had? Could have easily been smuggled across borders or built by others. They could have come across emply shells from decades ago (WMD’s we know Saddam did have because he did use them) and re-filled them. But a 20 year old shell found in a dump does not implicate Hussein’s regime in having WMD’s.

Secondly, al-Zarqawi is not part of al Quaeda and thus even any connection to Hussein does not tie him to al Quaeda. al-Zarqawi has his own organization and is more of a peer/competitor to bin Laden. There have been overatures to the effect of joining forces against the U.S., but you’re still calling a club a spade.

Thanks to the Pandora’s Box Bush opened in Iraq, there are dozens of political/terrorist/insurgent groups and interests operating within its borders at this date, so to find something by no means implicates the Hussein regime.

I think blipsman needs to see the facts. Read the plethora of links from here in the top and especially in the comments: http://www.lt-smash.us/archives/002897.html#002897
A couple of highlights:
Usually shells aren’t bought by the unit, they are bought in big, huge lots of a few thousands.
Saddam didn’t use 155mm shells to deliver gas when Chamical Ali gassed the Kurds.
A couple of points for those that think this [discovery] is unimportant.

1. This was BINARY shell. The sarin is in two components that are individually harmless and have to be mixed to form sarin. The liquid is mixed by spinning the shell very rapidly. How is the shell spun? By firing it from a cannon.

2. The Iraqis DID NOT label their chemical rounds as such. They had them in shells that looked identical to HE rounds. They did this to make it easier to hide the chemical rounds from inspectors.

What do these facts imply?

This was a weapon manufactured for a military — the Iraqi military. They used these types of weapons during the Iran-Iraq War during the 1980s. ALL of these shells were supposed to have been destroyed following the Gulf War. Obviously one was not. If one was not, many likely were not.

If the shell contained sarin, then the sarin was manufactured in the 1990s because sarin only has a shelf life of 10-15 years.

This shell is useless as a WMD when used as an IED. It explodes with a phutt, and does not mix the materials together. Very little sarin is going to be produced when it goes off. The dead-enders that set it up probably thought it was a standard HE round.

It was likely in a stockpile hidden in the desert west of Baghdad, known only to Saddam loyalists. The gas shells were probably there along with a number of HE rounds, not marked.

While it is only one shell, it demonstrates that Saddam did, indeed, have a war gas capability in 2003. And I suspect it is just the camel’s nose.

Hope this clears some things up.

Martin:
One problem: Even if Zarqawi’s people planted the IED, there’s little evidence to suggest they actually knew what they had, or failing that knew what to do with it. Of course, if they’re paying attention to the news, they might take a second look at what they had.

That is frightening. If they do have a stockpile, and they’ve realized what they found, then Zarqawi, with his particular talents could improve the IEDs into ICDs: Improvised Chemical weapons. Whatever happens, I sure hope we don’t see that next. Hopefully, our government will take this as their cue to run the evidence on this to ground, and to redouble their efforts to find Zarqawi.

If they have that stockpile, and they are just now learning about what they have, then it’ll be a darkly ironic turn of events: That we came to Iraq to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists, and through sheer dumb luck, that’s what the terrorists find a year into the occupation.

As for my seeming reversal, just think of it this way: As long as there wasn’t good evidence of Chemical weapons, my attitude was to treat it as speculation, and not as a reliable claim. Now that one has shown up, over a year after the beginning of the war, I’m prepared to concede that there may in fact be stockpiles, because Binary Sarin Shells don’t just come from nowhere.

But still, I want to know certain things. Where did this one come from? How did whoever it was get it, from whom, and how did they know to look for it? Those things alone could lead us to other hidden caches of these weapons.

Questions about origins, of course, must be asked. Do these Shells date Back to those Saddam wasn’t supposed to have? I’d like to know that.

For me it’s a question of assumptions as opposed to lines of inquiry. When you don’t simply assume that the weapons are this or that, when you don’t simply assume the are there, but check things out, the inquiry can dynamically reshape your picture of things, helping to refine the misconceptions out of your plans and intelligence. When it’s simply just assumptions, things can go as far as one’s imagination is willing to stretch them.

That’s what I want to avoid, and most importantly, what I criticize this administration for failing to do: keeping a dynamic picture of things, and keeping their conclusions tentative to the evidence.

This is also why I don’t want Bush re-elected, because he doesn’t seem to have that sort of self-correcting perspective. He never had to admit there were no WMDs, he merely had to say that the evidence, at least that he could release, wasn’t backing it up. Bush tries to set himself and his administration beyond criticism by not admitting mistakes, but what he does, unfortunately, is give people the impression that he is more interested in maintaining his office and his career than he is in following the facts.

It just goes to show you that sometimes, you do want to let them know you’re human. Human beings are easier to forgive than divinely mandated leaders.

I once read a report written by a retired Master Arms Sergeant specializing in WMDs - specifically biological and chemical. He described the ideal conditions for deploying chemical and biological weapons - enclosed area with little ventilation, high population target, and limited possiblity for egress from the affected area. He then described the case of the Sarin attacks on the Japanese subways, and explained how the attack venue and method was absolutely ideal. Do you remember how many people died from those multiple attacks, where thousands of people crammed together were targetted? 12. A whopping 12.

By comparison, a single Iraqi mortar instantly killed 6 of our troops recently.

After reading that, I’ve just never seen the real unbeleiveble danger of these weapons. Nuclear weapons are an entirely different story, of course.

Pete, you’re still using a lot of circumstantial evidence to try to prove your point.

I never disputed that at some point Hussein had biological weapons. However, the existence of a shell doesn’t prove anything in regards to it being part of a recently active WMD program run by the Iraqi government.

As I stated before, it could be an old shell that got lost along the way. Seeing the little impact the agents had, maybe they were 10-20 years old. Or an empty shell may have been filled recently by al Zarqawi’s organization. Hussein also could have sold them to other states decades or years ago and through the movements of terrorists in the region they’ve made their way back into Iraq.

>Let’s keep our fingers crossed—but not break out the champaigne quite yet.

Before you go and buy the champagne, consider the fact that if there is a big stockpile out there it is going to be used on US.

Of champaigne, Woody? It’s not hard to use up vast stockpiles of champaigne on me… but I digress.

Pete wrote:
> … dead-enders …

LOL, get with the program Pete! Even Rummy has stopped using that expression. They’re “insurgents” now, not just aimless Baathists causing mischeif.

-Cf

One shell does not a stockpile make. It could have come from Syria or Iran. Or it could simple have gotten lost by the Iraqis during the last go round. If you’re prone to conspiracy theories blame it on the CIA. After all W really need a win about now.

This thing could have been lost in the inventory system for the last 20 years. Show me 10000 and I will concede the point of Chemical weapons.

Beside, as others have pointed out on this thread chemical agents sucks as weapons and were never a threat to this country.

If you want to convince me that Iraq was/is worth an invasion show me Biological or and A-bomb.

Besides wasn’t Rumsfeld the one who arranged for Saddam to acquire chemical weapons to slaughter the Iranians?

I’m curious: what’s the chance of anybody changing their minds at this point, of actually switching support from one candidate to another—or going from pro-war to anti-war (or vice versa) based on any concievable events? Or are we all totally immovable at this point.

I’d like to think that every reasonable person has some threshhold at which they’d flip. How many WMDs would have to be found, for example, before the “Bush lied” crowd changed their tune? I’m pretty sure that even if we found vast stockpiles—if we found nuclear weapons with the names of US cities painted on their sides—the storyline for many would change from “There were no WMD in Iraq” to “There are WMDs in Iraq and Bush planted them there.”

For my part, I would flip like a dolphin at Sea World if I was presented with credible evidence that Bush really did lie, that he knew there was no WMD and spun a story about them in order to steal Iraq’s oil (Kennedy’s story). The same if I found out that OBL was living in a secret White House penthouse with a door adjoining George and Laura’s bedroom.

I worry though, that many or most on both sides don’t have similar breaking points—a sign, I fear, that American politics in now officialy in the grip of madness.

I find it utterly reprehensible that some are trying to explain away the existence of the binary sarin shell. It IS evidence. It is also NOT conclusive evidence that mass stockpiles of WMD’s exist, but it is a piece of the overall puzzle.

For those in here who disagree with the war to immediately explain this piece of the puzzle away, with only speculation as their ammunition, is pure silliness.

Its also just as silly to speculate that this single piece of the puzzle creates the entire puzzle picture.

Stephen, you are correct when you took the position that the existence of this binary sarin shell might….MIGHT….mean there are stockpiles. Lets all hold our breath, say a prayer for the troops, and hope that as we continue to look, we find whatever chemical weapons before they can be used on our troops. And if we find none, then let us follow that particular path to its conclusion as well.

But lets NOT idly speculate in order to make it seem that we have been right in our respective positions, simply for the purpose of wanting to have been correct.

For my part, I would flip like a dolphin at Sea World if I was presented with credible evidence that Bush really did lie, that he knew there was no WMD…

At the risk of sounding nuanced, Martin, how about if Bush wasn’t sure there were WMDs, but told us he was. Because that’s what happened.

In February, Tenet testified that the NIE’s he gave President Bush had qualifiers and dissenting viewpoints. There was no “slam dunk” evidence, yet President Bush maintained that, based on the intelligence he saw, he was “certain” Iraq had WMD.

Bush misstated the facts. He distorted the truth. He full on lied to you.

Ready to flip, Shamu? If not, why?

It’s also interesting to wonder, if this gas shell really is part of Saddam’s fabled El Dorado of WMD, was it taken from one of the “known” stockpiles?

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the shell was stolen from one of the sites that Rumsfeld’s race to Baghdad bypassed and left unsecured? Some of those sites were left unguarded for weeks and many were found to be looted when specialists finally arrived.

For a guy who says he was really worried about Iraq WMDs, Bush didn’t have much of a plan to secure them if found. But that type of poor planning has been the essence of this adventure, hasn’t it?

Martin, I don’t flip because of the way Bush has behaved in the time since the War began. Let me show you the anatomy of how I approached the War in Iraq:

Early on, I was surprised to hear it come up. As much as I wanted closure on Iraq, I did not consider it a big threat, nor did I consider it a part of the war on terror.

When Powell made his case, my support for the war went up considerably. At last, facts. At last, leads that could be followed up on.

When we finally won through in Baghdad, I was overjoyed. Nothing like being there for the historic moment when we freed Iraq.

But I was beginning to wonder about you-know-what. I had amassed an array of news links, trying to get a good spread of facts and figures (a good argument for competition in the media rather than consolidation), and there were one or two reports of a find. I would find that on Fox News, and later, I’d not be able to find it. No one else picked it up.

At this point, I’m still holding out hope, but still, the lack of immediate discover casts doubt on Powell’s case, which more or less implied an active WMD infrastructure, and stockpiles waiting to be found.

Bush does his Mission-Accomplished Aircraft Carrier landing. What strikes me at this point is that he’s prematurely declaring victory again. I thought, and still think that his dismissal of the importance of Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar as people to be captured was a mistake. I believe he should have made his priority to capture those people, if only for the propaganda value of saying that nobody who attacks the United States gets away with it. Well, this time, my gut instinct is that we shouldn’t declare victory until we are out of the place. My gut instinct, so far, has been right, to the tune of 893 coalition deaths in Iraq, 784 of those American. My source on that is CNN’s Casualty list Website.

With all that in mind, lets take a trip through a summer filled with coalition deaths, looting, and general mayhem. The fighting doesn’t die down as we expect. The weapons don’t turn up. The terrorists? As is obvious now, they turn up after Saddam’s regime falls. UN headquarters gets bombed. NOthings going right until we get Saddam.

Maybe it dies down a little. But for the most part, no. it has escalated As the year begins, I have seen any number of documentaries detailing how this country went to war, and the things that may very well have made a lasting peace difficult to acheive There’s not much to like about it. The manner, the methods, the crap they’re willing to let slide- for me, more than anything else, this leaves a bad impression. Then this latest round of rebellion. I expected the Sunni Triangle to remain a hot spot, but to have the south of the country blow up and have a radical cleric take over the centers of power in any number of cities that we formerly possessed reflects a kind of failure that just is unacceptable in an occupation. And then, on top of that, the prison scandal.

It’s nice to be able to say there are WMDs, even if the prospects that arise from that are frightening. But it would have been better to find these at the beginning of the war. Now, too much has gone wrong, too much has been screwed up. I can’t forgive a years worth of boneheaded mistakes for the sake of a Johnny-come-lately WMD.

Wasn’t Shamu a killer whale (not a dolphin)?

I think we have gotten to the crux of the argument. If you didn’t trust bush you will not trust his evidence.

If the evidence appeared the first week or so I would be more inclined to accept it. But now he “NEEDS” the evidence so badly that it’s sudden appearance seem to serendipitous.

If he would have just let Blix and friends stay and look for the WMD his credibility would be enormously improved.

As for evidence that bush lied: I find it hard to believe that any of his supporters would accept any proof. If Bush went on TV and confessed, they would say, “he’s just trying to stop the debate and move on”.

Without an independent third party to verify WMD finds this is just a magic act that mysteriously makes evidence appear out of thin air.

Things have gone to far politically for the “Amazing Rummy’s” magic act to stop the conspiracy theories.

Okay, Bob says “Things have gone to far politically for the “Amazing Rummy’s” magic act to stop the conspiracy theories,” and Stephen says “too much has gone wrong, too much has been screwed up.”

But look: if our knowledge of the facts change, shouldn’t we backtrack to where our political positions diverged as a result of those earlier mistaken facts?

Things have gone “so far politically” because of YOUR reactions to things you believed to be true (or not true). If you say there’s no winding back the clock even if you’re presented with new facts, you’re just saying, “Well, I’ve got myself so whipped up now that I can’t calm down—my heels are dug in and I don’t care what the truth is anymore.”

I agree that it’s too early to draw firm conclusions—one way or another, about the possible WMD finds. And yes, if they do pan out, it “would have been nice” to find them earlier. Just like it would have been “nice” if Japan surrendered when Doolittle bombed Tokyo and “nice” if Hitler had come out of his bunker with his hands up after D-Day. The absolute flawlessness your side demands in the excecution of a war is truly amazing.

If the WMD are found, then it’s not Bush’s fault that they were well-hidden, but the rationale for war will have proven justifed—if it’s the rationale that’s holding you up. If you have moral/ideological problems against war period, then that’s your right and just say so. If you think the war has been poorly conducted in some areas and could be conducted better, that’s something all of us with the benefit of hindight can agree on—it holds true about any war. Wars always includes setbacks, blunders, and strategies that don’t pan out. Name any war in history, even ones where one side indesputedly triumphed, and you’ll find dozens of events that in hindsight can be called “bone-headed mistakes.” We lost more soldiers on D-day than have been lost in the entire Iraqi conflict when landing crafts hit heavily fortified beaches a half mile from areas that were virtually undefended or already reduced. Roosevelt—that bonehead!

Martin,

Clearly, a rational human being (if there is such a thing) has to be willing to change his/her mind when presented with new evidence. In this case, all we know now is that a shell was found that may have contained sarin. If someone was against the Iraq war, but believes that the presence of any so-called WMD whatsoever would have justified the war, then certainly they will have a good reason to reconsider their position if this is confirmed.

However, it is also rational to consider the source of the information. This an administration that has made “Don’t confuse us with the facts” it’s credo.

To my mind, this is a lot more complicated than WMD -> Good War, No WMD -> Bad War. The war has to be seen in terms of cost and benefits. The benefits are unclear at this point.

As for the “Bush lied” crowd, it is pretty clear now that Bush was willing to manipulate the truth. Even if missile silos were found, that wouldn’t make him any more honest (although it would mean that his instincts were correct).

Woody:

Good post, considering we disagree on general philosophy, for the most part.

I’ve never thought WMD’s were the only reason for this war. It WAS the reason that the press has trumpeted, but there have always been other reasons as well. A primary reason was that we knew Saddam had WMD’s at some point (that has been corroborated over and over again), and Saddam had agreed to destroy them. However, he was never willing to fully prove that he destroyed them.

Any war has multiple rationales, as well as multiple costs and benefits. Its really too early to totally guage the cost/benefit scenario. The situation has to evolve—though its safe to say its not a great situation yet. I do believe it has the possibility to be great though.

Remember that had the US looked at WWII with a short term viewpoint, D Day would have been considered an utter failure. The Battle of the Bulge would have left us devastated at our lack of planning. Pearl Harbor would have become a quagmire of “missed opportunities” with a focus to blaming FDR.

The discovery of sarin gas leans us to the conclusion that there were in fact WMDs left. But there are still many other possibilities to explain this away, and we need to fully explore them before passing judgement.

One thing for certain is that the media is pronouncing Iraq a failure, but then again they have done so before (remember when the supply lines were being reinforced and the media quailed at the effort, or when Baghdad was going to be a bloody quagmire…etc). As Americans, we have lost the patience that we once had, and we have become complacent. We want everything NOW and we want it perfect the first time around. As we have found out in the great history of our nation, that simply is impossible to do.

Well well well, Now we have one artillery shell with binary sarin capabilities built into it or we don’t. So far nothing conclusive exists to clarify this one way or another. We do have the presence of Sarin, which is relatively easy to manufacture, at the site of an explosion. Or maybe we don’t, as yet the hard facts are few; but this is important enough to care even if this is a single weapon that slipped through our fingers. It is not proof of an imminent threat to the USA which everyone believes at this point did not exist in Iraq.

WMD is a loose term and was used before the war because it was a loose term. A thousand shells is a lot more than one, I assume that our analysis of weapons in the arms depots we knew about was thorough enough not to allow a thousand shells with binary Sarin loads to slip through our fingers. Or maybe we were so undermanned for the job that we could have let that happen. I hope not. If a thousand shells exist in Iraq containing Sarin in its binary form that would be a tactical problem for our forces but not a strategic issue for our nation. Wars are begun because of strategic analysis, tactical analysis is used to tell us how to fight them in detail. Strategic analysis of this present evidence for the presence of Sarin would not have compelled us to attack Iraq in force if ten thousand similar shells were known to exist and be ready for immediate use.
Henri

The WMDs were fundamentally important to the case for war. Without them, even with allegations of terrorist support would not be enough to convince Americans that war was necessary. Additionally, they are a crucial linchpin for the international case for war.

Henri, I’d say that the Administration failed to prove that Al Quaeda and Saddam were active co-conspirators, and that alone sinks the imminent threat argument. However, finding one shell like this may indicate others exist. It may just be one shell that got mixed into a lot of normal ones, but the likelihood is that there are many more like it elsewhere.

As for chemical weapons being easy to make, it might be true, but the infrastructure required to prevent the people making this stuff from killing themselves in the process is substantial. You can do homemade ricin, Sarin is a much different matter.

Stephen,
Again Stephen you miss the point. The issue here is: do the tactical impacts of weapons available to Saddam at the time we attacked Iraq add up to a strategic cause for preemptive war? That is: does the presence of certain weapons which are tactical implements of warfare in Saddam’s arsenal justify a preemptive attack by US forces designed to take over the nation of Iraq? We had lots of options with total air superiority.
If those weapons were biological in nature there might be an argument that they gave strategic weight to a cause for war. That is if they contained the inventory of biological materials promoted by Bush & Co. through Powell and others. If there was any evidence of nuclear capability that would obviously make the case for war. These you may notice are different weapons with different implications related to their destructive capacity. But Chemical weapons are far less destructive of human life than the other two and require a lot of effort to deliver substantial amounts of the material to a target.
The issue is not did that Bad Man Saddam have any WMD but did he have sufficient WMD available to him to create a strategic cause for war. Or were the weapons he had likely to create tactical obstructions to victory but provide no real threat to our prospect of victory or to our nation.
The presence of Sarin in Iraq is no surprise, and yes it is dangerous but if they had the binary chemicals stored somewhere they could easily assemble it.
In my time in CBR school Chemical, Biological and Radiological training in the Army it was made clear to us that we could deal with virtually any chemical attack with appropriate garb. That Biological attack was less certain and more dangerous to our forces than chemical but that Nuclear force was the greatest threat of all to our military’s ability to fight. To treat them as equal is absurd when none of our analytical tools for thinking about warfare scenarios treat them as equal. That is why the use of WMD as the term for Saddam’s capability prewar was so misleading.
By the way if a wacky cult in Japan could make Sarin I think a well trained Iraqi chemist would have no trouble.
henri

henri- That is: does the presence of certain weapons which are tactical implements of warfare in Saddam’s arsenal justify a preemptive attack by US forces designed to take over the nation of Iraq?

As I recall, the war got started when the U.S. began to pressure Iraq to comply with the cease-fire agreement of Gulf War I and to comply with the many resulting U.N. resolutions. Had Iraq indeed complied with the above mentioned requirements there would have been no “no-fly” zones, no 1441, a solid and verified account of the destruction of the weapons, and an on-going monitoring program put into place.

Had Iraq fulfilled its obligations and then had the U.S. made a preemptive move I would completely agree with you that this war was not justified. But at every turn over the past thirteen years Iraq had the opportunity to comply and instead chose to stall, delay and deceive. After 9/11 time was up.

Henri, Sarin is a weapon of mass destruction if there ever was one—I can’t believe you’re trying to downplay its deadliness. It takes just 1 mg of Sarin to kill an average person!

Initial reports are saying that the shell contained 3-4 liters of the stuff. If delivered with maximum efficency, that is enough to kill 3-4 MILLION people.

The Tokyo cult, fortunately, had a lousy delivery system which was ineptly handled—they weren’t even close to possessing the technoligical prowess needed to create a shell with binary loads.

Martin,
your million death scenario is based on delivery of the weapon to an appropriate target with a density of unprepared humanity not even possible in the real world. The variability of the environment containing the targeted population is a real factor here.
The capacity to deliver that shell to any location where it could threaten even a hundred people in the USA is questionable. Your alarmist scenario is typical of the fear used to support our drive to war by the Bush Administration. The delivery system used in the Japanese subway was intended to concentrate a significant amount of Sarin on a large unprotected population in an enclosed space. How many died there? Is that number of deaths likely from one shell in a battlefield scenario? Not likely.
Your apparent premise that such weapons were made and handed over to Terrorists is an actual falsehood of substantial magnitude. The real utility of such weapons is far lower than that of biological and nuclear. I am certain that we can find a case where one shell could kill a hundred or more unprepared people but a million? Really? the delivery of a killing dose is not easy in an open air environment. Explosives or even aircraft full of fuel are the weapons of choice of terrorists because hauling the equipment around to deliver large amounts of Sarin is easy to detect.
We have huge nuclear weapons available to terrorists on our own soil inside our nuclear waste facilities. Saddam never had a delivery system capable of striking the USA with even a single shell. The plausible use of weapons is the real issue hiding under your campaign of fear mongering. Thousands of those shells in Iraq would have no real effect here unless our intelligence community were far more incompetent than anything that exists. Sarin is detectable in exquisitely small amounts.
The idea that this single shell is the proof that the smoking WMD needed to justify this war exist is ludicrous. We have committed ourselves to a war that has cost us dearly in the real world, far more dearly than your worst fantasies about sarin could actually accomplish. Try telling unschooled civilians about those fantasies of deadliness but don’t try telling someone who understands the use of such weapons in a tactical situation how many people one shell could kill.
The delivery of explosive weapons here serves terrorism better than the use of Sarin in artillery shells in Iraq. The lies about amounts of Sarin available and deadliness underlying your argument are typical of this whole war. They are naive and missing facts that make your stupendious numbers of deaths ludicrous in fact.
Henri

Henri, why are you accusing me of lying? I never said that one shell would kill millions. I was only pointing out the tremendous potential lethality of Sarin (which the shell contained). Did you not notice that I said “if delivered with maximum efficiency?”

A shell is a tactical weapon, designed to kill, as you say, mere hundreds—and this only in a concentrated barrage. But let’s not lose sight of the real issue here. That Sarin EXISTS—and if you’ve got it, if you’re capable of building it into relatively advanced hardware like a binary shell, then you can easily place it in other delivery systems as well. According to expert Some simpler, manual delivery systems, according to what I’ve seen, are potentially far more deadly.

UN resolutions demanded that ALL such weapons be identified and destroyed, but now it’s showed up in the hands of terrorist-affiliated groups.

So here’s the key:

You can deny that Saddam or Saddam loyalists supplied such weapons to these terrorist groups, if you wish, that they just found them one day as they dug randomly in the sand. But this forces us to believe that Al-Zarqawi, all by his lonesome and on the run, is far better at locating hidden weapons of mass destruction than Hans Blix, ten years of UN inspectors, and the entire concentrated forces of the US military moving at relative will through the countryside.

No, somebody who KNEW where those weapons were gave them to the terrorists—and it’s time to acknoweldge it. If this reports bears out, accusing the other side of “lying” and demonizing those who point out cold hard truths just isn’t going to cut it anymore. The rules of the game have changed.

Martin
The lie is not yours, I am sorry if that is what you took my statement to mean. But 3 to 4 million deaths, come on how inflamatory is that statement?
WMD is nothing if not a generalization of the destructive force of various weapons. The rules do not change just because we find a binary weapon that was misused by the resistance in Iraq.
The reality is that we fought a war that was based on inaccurate information including totally false details about amounts and locations of hundreds of tons of such weapons told to the UN in an attempt to get them to approve this war. Now the smallest amount of military material of any kind that could possibly qualify as WMD is clutched to the bosom of pro-war writers as if it met the standards you used before the war to justify our military invasion of Iraq.
It is not your personal veracity at stake here but the meaning of our Republic and the western Empire which we lead in the world.
It is a world made more dangerous by gross exaggerations of the kind I found in your posting. you are not the liar here but you do not appear to be as interested in the whole truth as I hope the rest of our citizens might be.
Henri

Henri:

So far om the great Iraqi war debate, the logic of the left has been focused on one primary point: We went to war because of WMD’s and there are none!

Now that a WMD HAS been found, there is a mad scramble to preserve that logic. Your argument is indicative of this shift. Now the argument shifts to whether this WMD was actually all that dangerous, whether it could have been properly utilized for maximum impact, and whether it indicates stockpiles of similar weapons.

How embarassing it must be for you to take this tack and try to run with it. Let’s just run the appeasement gamut a little bit further shall we?
Let’s say we find a cache of sarin laden shells—-shall we then focus on whether they could have targeted the US with these shells?

How about holding Saddam accountable to the cease fire promises he made? Why is that such a difficult concept? Scott Ritter, Richard Butler, Hans Blix and David Kay all agreed on one thing: Saddam did NOT comply with UN resolutions. The degree of non compliance was at issue.

As I have previously stated in this thread, the existence of ONE WMD does not prove the existence of major stockpiles. But, to hear you and the left talk, the existence of one WMD means NOTHING.

I’ll await the next shift in your logic with great anticipation.

A couple of points-

VIOLATING UN RESOLUTIONS: Israel. ‘Nuff said.

THE NEW “GAME”: If you look back about a year, it looked like the war was actually fitting the “cakewalk” model and that there was probably not going to be any WMD found. The war critics were complaining about an illegal war, and the war supporters were wondering aloud what happened to that guerilla war the doves were so worried about.

Fast forward one year — The war is not a cakewalk. We are facing serious armed resistance. (Call it terrorism if you want, but it doesn’t change the facts.) The prison pictures are making us look like Nazis. (Not that we ARE.)The Vietnam comparisons, which originally struck me as facile, or becoming rather apropos. In short, the war critics were right that it would be a quagmire.
The flip side is that it appears there may have actually been significant WMD. IF SO, Sean Penn can eat his Oscar words, which struck me as ridiculous at the time, that “actors know” there is no WMD. (Actors being some sort of all-knowing shamans.) Michael Moore can semi-eat his words (if that is possible) that the war was waged for “fictitious reasons”; Bush fudged the facts, but if there is a big stockpile of Saddam-era-and-supposed-to-be-destroyed WMD out there then he was, shall we say, dishonest but correct.

In short, there is hardly anyone who doesn’t have a lot of ‘splainin to do. Except for me, because I was too much of a wimp to make up my mind about the war. All I know for sure is that Bush an incompetent, malevolent boob who is undermining everything good that has happened in this country since 1954. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Joe, Martin et al. have all missed the point. The simplified reason for fighting the war was that Saddam had WMD. But that in itself is not enough to warrant an invasion.

Lots of nations have WMD, and are not going to be invaded. The point is that Iraq was a target because it was considered a ‘threat’ to the US. By invading Iraq the world was going to be made a safer place.

I have not seen ANY evidence to suggest that Iraq was a credible threat to the US. Their army certainly wasn’t. And the amount of disinformation, regarding the Iraqi threat, that was disseminated prior to the war would suggest that the US/UK governments didn’t have concrete evidence that they were either.

Of course far from making us safer the war has done the opposite. It was a bad idea that has gone wrong. 15,000 Iraqis (civilians?) have been killed and about 1000 of the coalition. The middle east is more unstable now than ever and the Bush administration has been unable find/secure WMD’s. In fact it looks like the WMD might have found there way into the hands of terrorists. This after David Kay had said that “we were all wrong” about Iraq retaining WMDs. They don’t have a clue what’s going on, and there’s no way they should be playing Age of Empires with the lives of millions of Musilms miles from America.

How any of this validates the claims or arguments of those supporting the war is beyond me.

Pardon me for the double post, but I feel quite strongly about this :P

Bob:
I’m glad you arent the original Bob Hope, who was around during WWII.

Upon seeing the devastation at Omaha Beach in the Normandy D-Day invasion, you might have been fighting gallantly for the overthrow of the FDR administration.

You might have intoned that the world was not any safer in the days and weeks after D-day; in fact, truth is it was MORE dangerous. You might have pointed to later Allied losses during the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Forest as indicative of the US’s collective idiocy.

You might have railed against the lack of information about the hedgerows etc that complicated the invasion. You might have called for the removal of those responsible—perhaps even calling for the resignations of Harry Hopkins or Dwight Eisenhower.

You might have called the American and Allied deaths into question (how could we possibly send those young men to their watery deaths—-certainly there must have been another way, you might have whined).

You might have questioned whether Hitler was ever really a danger to the United Stateswhat with an entire ocean between the two countries, and perhaps you would have insisted that it was a EUROPEAN war that didnt involve us.

You might have taken a high moral position, and suggested that any kind of abuse of German POWs made us the moral equivalent of Dr. Josef Mengele and his cohorts who ran the Nazi death camps.

Its startling, isnt it, that when you look back at history, you could make pretty much the same arguments about WWII that you are making about Iraq.

I don’t think the comparisons between the scourge of the Third Reich and Saddam’s impotent threat have any grounding in reality.

None whatsoever.

Is the thrust of your argument that because the US fought a thoroughly just war sixty years ago, that all wars ever after should go undebated and unopposed?

Joe bag o ?
I might have been born a woman or my mother might have been born a man or my great great great grandfather might have died in jail in France but none of those things happened.
To compare Saddam to Hitler and Iraq to Germany and Japan and Italy is plainly ill informed twaddle from a bag of something overripe. To equate opposition to this war to opposition to WWII is plain silly. Get some real information together Joe and write about it before everyone notices that your information bag is full of nothing.
Henri

Joe bag o ?
does every speculation on earth about any set of innane possibilities mean something in this blog? Whew, what a bagful of empty that last post of yours is, why should we write at all if that degree of propaganda is the response we get out of our writing? Fill your bag with a few more facts for your own sake if not for the rest of us. That last post had nothing but bad equations based in unconnected fantasies of impossible behaviors. You most often do a lot better than that joe. Whew, what a bag full of empty.
henri

Joe’s point (and he’s done an excellent job of illustrating his position with facts, unlike his detractors) is that the same arguments used against World War II have been recycled by those who oppose this war—and it’s likely that history will regard them in the same manner.

It’s pretty funny to hear such indignation about comparisons to World War II by those who can’t look at Iraq and see anything but Vietnam.

Bob-

What would your foreign policy have been towards Iraq in 2002?

Would you have continued the policy of containment? Keep Saddam in his box? To do so means conintuing a U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia (UBL’s No. 1 reason to hate us) while indirectly protecting Syria and Iran (Saddam was there biggest threat). To do so means protecting the status quo in the Middle East; keep the oil flowing, let Saddam write his checks to the families of the suicide bombers, and hope the Islamist movement goes away. Containment strategies have been disastrous in the Middle East because you have to protect one bad guy to contain another (a.k.a. Saddam in the 80’s). Iraq was no exception..

You could have gone a step further and talk like we were going to get serious, and maybe even send some more troops to the region. Threaten him and he will come around. I think that’s the John Kerry position and the reason he gives for his vote to authorize the war. But when he doesn’t come around, and Saddam’s whole strategy was based on survival (to outwit, outlast, outplay), what do you do then?

You could have just ended the no-fly zones, place some sanctions on Iraq, and hope for the best. The U.S. would be predictably portrayed as weak and unwilling to stomach a fight. No doubt Saddam would be emboldened to continue his quest to control the flow of oil by threatening his neighbors with his presumed nuclear and biological weapons. The Shiites in the South could go live in Iran, and the surviving Kurds could hide in the hills of Turkey. There would be no more Marsh Arabs.

Or you could choose to bring the whole thing to a head. Force the issue and be prepared to live with the consequences, including “owning” a broken country if need be.

Look, all of the above choices are difficult with a wall of negatives to go with any gains. But I supported the change in policy towards Iraq that the Bush Administration took almost three years ago because after 9/11 it was time to end the status quo over there. That means I have to live with the consequences of a resulting war and occupation, and my support will not waiver even once we hit the “1000 body bag” event the press is planning. I ask you to also consider the consequences of your policy of choice.

Martin, comparing the invasion of Iraq to WWII is absurd. Really, there is no way that boat will float. It is a complete non-starter.

George, I agree there was no easy or obvious choice to be made. And Iam not sure I can offer any easy alternatives.

I offer this quick thought; Getting rid of Saddam was fine by me but it had to be done much more thoughfully and with far less of the “we don’t need a permission slip” mindset. They had to get more international support, and for example, that was never going to happen while they refused to give the weapon’s inspectors more time. If they were worried about WMD why didn’t they let Blix have the time he required to finish his job? If I was to speculate, and it’s just my opinion, I would say that the invasion of Iraq was all done with the election timetable in mind. They were in a rush, they didn’t have time to win the hearts and minds of most of their allies, so they pushed ahead regardless. Lack of international support and the increased legitimacy that it might have brought, has made the job in Iraq very difficult for the US, and has prevented the Iraqis from enjoying the benefits of a Post-Saddam world, which has itself increased Iraqi antipathy towards the US, which in turn……….

This was not the way to do it. How can you fight a war and reconstuct a country according something as arbritary as an election calendar? Almost any option would have been preferable to that.

Henri—-absolutely amazing that someone of your intellect couldnt follow what I wrote. Had you taken the time to internalize what I wrote, rather than dashing of your knee jerk reaction to it, you would have noticed that I did not compare WWII to Iraq.

What I DID do was compare Bob Hope’s reaction to today’s war to what his reaction might have been to WWII. Do you see the difference?? Can I possibly make it any clearer for you?

My point was simply to demonstrate that in ANY war, there are positives and negatives, and sometimes—most times—-its somewhere in between. Today’s left wants war to be perfect in execution, with perfect information obtained without detracting from any single person’s rights.

All I did was take Bob’s “rules of the game” and apply them to a different situation. And in doing that, I was able to illustrate how silly those rules are.

Joe, the point I was making was that war is not something to be undertaken unless you have excellent reasons for doing so and have exhausted all other alternatives. This was the case with WWII, but not so in Iraq.

The threat from Saddam did not warrant a unilateral invasion of Iraq, and all the inevitable horrors that are associated with any war. The invasion of Iraq and was optional, and that makes the negligence, misery and death resulting from it far uglier than that of any just or necessary war.

Bob-

Thank you for your candid response. I wholeheartedly agree that the execution of this war has been anything but flawless, but I would counter that no war ever is.

Joe Biden said on Imus one morning that he could think of a thousand things that we should have done differently on Iraq. Then he paused and said that if we would have done all of them we might not be any better off than we are now. That’s honesty over politics that you don’t get much from Capital Hill, and it brings into focus just how imperfect even hindsight is when you are dealing with people, religion, and war.

I pray for the best in Iraq, but my support for this war won’t end because things are not always going according to plan. Let’s just hope it gets better soon.

Henri,

While I think this edges the war farther to justification, it doesn’t kick it over the threshold. If this is a Sarin Shell, then we should acknowledge what that can imply. All my time here, I have told people that I set facts higher than speculation and personal ideology.

While I agree that the term WMD is a bit broadly defined, in terms of the scale of the destruction they can cause, I would warn you that it is the definition we’ve arguing by this whole time, so we will look like we’re splitting hairs if we try and argue that this Sarin Shell is not a WMD. A definition we have already stipulated within this forum defines them as Chem, Bio, Nuclear and Radiological weapons, particularly those intended to cause greater death tolls than a conventional weapon of similar form and shape.

I started this topic for a number of reasons The simple truth of the matter is, I wanted to be proactive on this subject, and stay true to by long stated principle of letting facts guide theories and interpretations. If there are indeed WMDs, we don’t need to be spinning this. We need to insist that the administration follows up on the facts. You’ve seen the harm that denying the heretofore absence of found WMDs has done to Bush’s political fortunes. Denying the presence of this one, should it turn out to be real, is not a good idea for us either. Let us see how this develops.

One thing for sure: The military, and the Republicans supporting this war need to get on this case, and find out what’s going on. If they are so intent on proving there are WMDs, they should waste no time, and dismiss no good leads in finding the brothers and sisters of the little lost Sarin shell Shells come in batches, and I sure want to get to the others before whoever has them figures out what they’ve got, or failing that does something with them. This is no longer just a policy issue, this is an issue of national security.

Martin:

Please stop generalizing. After all, who was it who started this whole discussion, who admitted the signficance of this find, if it is what it is? Besides, If there is precedent for being counterfactual when it is politically convenient, your side hasn’t set a good example. In the face of a long drought of proof for Weapons of Mass Destruction, you and others insisted that the presence of those weapons was an undisputed fact, or else you claimed it was never an important issued for the war, both counterfactual at the time. The latter sentiment still is.

As much as I want my party to win, I would prefer it be done on the stable foundation of sound facts and valid interpretations. To win on lies or misleading statements is to still lose, and just be Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

George, all that you have said is reasonable. And difficult to argue with.

So, for the most part, I agree with you. I still believe that they should not have gone down this path, because the situation before the invasion was not condusive to a favourable outcome. But since they have, I too, hope they stay as long as is necessary, and prosecute this war fully and to a successful conclusion.

Thanks Bob-

It especially hurts on days like today where the lead story is we possibly bombed a wedding party.

Joe,
Simply put the exercise you preformed in the posting above, the one that I reacted so strongly to, was one of the favorite exercises of Hitler’s propagandists. They used that tactic of “misplacement of disputation” in order to create ridiculous positions for people who would never have taken them,comparing opposition to incursions in Poland and Austria to opposition to the defense of Germany in the end of WWI. THey also constantly beat the drum of equating anyone who opposed the early actions of the Nazi party to defeatism and hatred for the Fatherland.
This is not a new tactic. To malign people’s positions is easy using tactics such as these, it is the heart of propaganda. Since, in fact, the projections of the writer have no basis in the real world the writer is free to let his imagination create the worst scenario for viewing the falsely placed opinions of his target. This tactic was used in Germany in rediculing opposition to Hitler’s march toward WWII. Not much in the methods of propagandists has been invented for this war.
I would no more compare Bush to Hitler than I would compare our troops to Saddam’s secret police because of our failures in Abu Gharib. But I can compare defense of this war on such sleazy terms with propaganda used pre and during early WWII in Germany. The tactics are the same. Does that make you feel better?
henri

I see, Henri. You’re not comparing Bush to Hilter—just Bush’s supporters to Hilter’s supporters.

After using words like “sleazy” and “propaganda” to describe any point of view that doesn’t square with your own partisan opinions, it rings a little hollow to accuse others of “maligning people’s positions.”

What starts with H and rhymes with democracy?

Please, guys, keep it clean. This needs to be an argument about the facts, not about whatever low opinions we have of the other side.

Let us talk implications of things before we start talking about the comparative morality of them.

joe,
I do believe that you can tell the difference between my castigation of your tactics and any belief that I might have about you as an individual. We are talking about your tactics in a specific post, not those of all of Bushes supporters here. Making conclusions about what I think of broad groups of people from my statements about your tactics in persuasion is likely to lead you into unsafe territory. Hypocracy is the mother of hype and the poor innocent bastard stepchild of misperception based on inconsistent practices of thought. Think on that a while.
henri

henri:

You are a pretty good propagandist yourself. I’ll admit to enjoying your posts, while I will also state my disagreement to them.

I find it very important, when trying to guage the hypocrisy of an argument, to put the logic into a different context. This allows me to see whether the logic actually holds up, or whether it only holds up in that one particular instance. Its a bit like repeating a scientific thesis—-if it isnt repeatable, its not really a thesis.

There are many examples on both sides, but lets use the argument that someone who hasnt served in military combat should not order troops into battle—-we’ve seen both sides use that argument. Democrats during the Clinton years railed against that idea, yet have used it to bash Bush. Republicans used that idea against Clinton, but refute it for Bush.

Henri, by showing the logic to be inconsistent, you can then show that the argument is illogical.
That is what I have done in regard to many comments about Iraq. When people make statements, as Teddy Kennedy did, that compare the abuse in Abu Ghraib with the abuse under a tyrannical dictator, they are inflammatory, intentional and UNTRUE. The logic is just not there, and needs to be shown.

Hi,

I don’t understand how you can compare the WWII to the war in Iraq. I’m French and find that really offensive. WWII was about defending our country and allies that were being openly attacked. We lost 600000 soldiers and civilians and we were occupied. 100000 resistants were deported. And that’s just for France. US entered the war because they had been attacked at Pearl Harbour by the Japanese, who were Germans’ allies. This was clear cut. No doubt. (Btw, unlike some Americans have told me, France is not being ungrateful, which is a stupid argument to make, but I’ve heard it so many times, it has become ridiculous. We don’t “owe” the US anything for our freedom, just as much as you don’t owe us the fact that you are not British today. France is independant and it doesn’t mean we disagree that we are US enemies. Just wanted to point that out)

Your war isn’t clear, as this discussion shows. US attacked Iraq based on suspicions (high or not). “There may or may not be WMD …”, “It may or may not be a stockpile”, …

Besides that, why didn’t Hussein use his alledged stockpiles against American troops when they invaded Irak, instead of hiding them? That’s just plain stupid. The guy was obviously going to loose and he is supposed to hate US and want to attack regardless of the cost, so why didn’t he do that, to cause as many casualties as possible, if he really had tons of weapons ready to use that he could deploy in 45 minutes or very fast?

What is really bothering me is that the US didn’t wait for further proof the UN was asking for and went despite of the opinion of the other countries. Now that it is a mess, Bush is asking those very countries he didn’t give a damn about, to send soldiers to get killed in a war they didn’t have a say about. That’s not gonna work. We have had too many stupid wars to not learn from them. I just hope we can hold our positions and not give in to pressure.

Whoever your future president will be, I just hope he’ll realize US foreign policy and behaviour outside have to change.

I suppose these shells weren’t used for the WMD…This all is a kind of a provocation or threat from the side of the Iraquis. This will develop into the real danger in case if it is not stopped.