Putting the Lie to the “Bush Lied, People Died” Meme

    WaPo reporter Walter Pincus has a brief summary  of a Foreign Affairs article Saddam's Delusions: The View from the Inside.  The “Bush Lied, People Died” meme should give way to a new one. Instead of the old proverb “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me” the meme should be: “Because Saddam fooled us once, we fooled ourselves the second time.”

    After the first Gulf War US intelligence found out that it had been fooled once. David Kay, formerly the UN’s chief weapons inspector, described the intelligence community mindset when he spoke on May 4, 2004  at the Miller Center of the University of Virginia. The intelligence community knew that Saddam Hussein had used mustard gas on the Kurds, had produced VX nerve gas and that he had a nuclear program prior to the first gulf war. Investigations after the war showed that the nuclear program was far more advanced than anyone suspected.

    Given the secretive nature of totalitarian governments and the success of Saddam’s deception, the intelligence community mindset on Iraq was best characterized by the motto “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.” Subsequently evidence was interpreted in terms of Saddam’s deception. Evidence casting doubt on the existence of Iraqi WMD programs was easily discounted. This tendency was reinforced by the politicization of the intelligence community.  Reports such as those on deceptive source Curveball  and DITSUM 044-02  might have slowed the push towards war by casting enough doubt on Iraq’s progress in making WMD. These reports were stopped at the top levels of the intelligence community.

    Now the Foreign Affairs article by Kevin Woods, James Lacey, and Williamson Murray gives us some additional perspective based on a recent Joint Forces Command Iraqi Perspectives Project. It is a story of two self-deceptions: Saddam deceived himself about the capabilities of his own military. He attempted to deceive his own people and the Western powers. Determined avoid being fooled twice, the US intelligence community misinterpreted his actions. Here are some quotes from the Foreign Affairs article.

Judging from his private statements, the single most important element in Saddam's strategic calculus was his faith that France and Russia would prevent an invasion by the United States. According to Aziz, Saddam's confidence was firmly rooted in his belief in the nexus between the economic interests of France and Russia and his own strategic goals: "France and Russia each secured millions of dollars worth of trade and service contracts in Iraq, with the implied understanding that their political posture with regard to sanctions on Iraq would be pro-Iraqi. In addition, the French wanted sanctions lifted to safeguard their trade and service contracts in Iraq. Moreover, they wanted to prove their importance in the world as members of the Security Council -- that they could use their veto to show they still had power.

Ibrahim Ahmad Abd al-Sattar, the Iraqi army and armed forces chief of staff, claimed that Saddam believed that even if his international supporters failed him and the United States did launch a ground invasion, Washington would rapidly bow to international pressure to halt the war. According to his personal interpreter, Saddam also thought his "superior" forces would put up "a heroic resistance and . . . inflict such enormous losses on the Americans that they would stop their advance."

After all, Saddam, probably thought, Ho chi Minh defeated the US by inflicting casualties.

Iraqi commanders were afraid to tell Saddam that his forces were not ready to fight.

“Some senior Iraqi military officers did not share their leader's assumptions, taking a more pessimistic view. The director of military intelligence, Zuhayr Talib Abd al-Sattar al-Naqib, commented that except for Saddam and the inner circle, most knowledgeable Iraqis secretly believed that the war would continue all the way to an occupation.

    Saddam played a double game on WMD. He had programs – but there is no evidence that the programs resulted in troops actually equipped and trained to use them.

When it came to weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Saddam attempted to convince one audience that they were gone while simultaneously convincing another that Iraq still had them. Coming clean about WMD and using full compliance with inspections to escape from sanctions would have been his best course of action for the long run. Saddam, however, found it impossible to abandon the illusion of having WMD, especially since it played so well in the Arab world.
Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" for his use of chemical weapons on Kurdish civilians in 1987, was convinced Iraq no longer possessed WMD but claims that many within Iraq's ruling circle never stopped believing that the weapons still existed. Even at the highest echelons of the regime, when it came to WMD there was always some element of doubt about the truth. According to Chemical Ali, Saddam was asked about the weapons during a meeting with members of the Revolutionary Command Council. He replied that Iraq did not have WMD but flatly rejected a suggestion that the regime remove all doubts to the contrary, going on to explain that such a declaration might encourage the Israelis to attack. [See Footnote #1 below]
By late 2002, Saddam finally tilted toward trying to persuade the international community that Iraq was cooperating with the inspectors of UNSCOM (the UN Special Commission) and that it no longer had WMD programs. As 2002 drew to a close, his regime worked hard to counter anything that might be seen as supporting the coalition's assertion that WMD still remained in Iraq. Saddam was insistent that Iraq would give full access to UN inspectors "in order not to give President Bush any excuses to start a war." But after years of purposeful obfuscation, it was difficult to convince anyone that Iraq was not once again being economical with the truth.

    Saddam fooled himself about his own technology, believing that it would prevail. Iraqi officers lied to him about the success of their programs. They had good reason to do so.

A 1982 incident vividly illustrated the danger of telling Saddam what he did not want to hear. At one low point during the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam asked his ministers for candid advice. With some temerity, the minister of health, Riyadh Ibrahim, suggested that Saddam temporarily step down and resume the presidency after peace was established. Saddam had him carted away immediately. The next day, pieces of the minister's chopped-up body were delivered to his wife. According to Abd al-Tawab Mullah Huwaysh, the head of the Military Industrial Commission and a relative of the murdered minister, "This powerfully concentrated the attention of the other ministers, who were unanimous in their insistence that Saddam remain in power.

    Saddam could have strengthened his defenses by insuring that his Army was trained, equipped and ready. He could not do this. A strong, prepared military would have been an internal threat. His systematic self-deception prevented him from doing this, as Woods, Lacey and Murray show.

    Those who want to argue that Bush lied about WMD should first prove that he knew the truth. He didn’t know the truth because the intelligence community failed. Some individuals in the community doubted that WMD programs constituted an immanent threat. If they had been able to make a stronger case and if the administration had been receptive to that case the war might have been avoided or fought differently. They didn’t and the war is now being fought. It may turn out to be a success. At present it looks like a serious Presidential mistake resulting from an intelligence failure. A mistake is not a lie.

    The rhyming couplet, “Bush lied,…” has framed the question in the public’s mind. Administration defendeers could try to defend Bush by reframing the question. In order to reframe the question, Bush supporters would have to argue that “Saddam lied, Bush fooled himself.” Not a snowballs chance.

NOTE; This post linked to Beltway Traffic Jam for 3/15/2006

Comments

[jpe]

Those who want to argue that Bush lied about WMD should first prove that he knew the truth.

Nonsense. He lied when he said he knew Saddam had WMD. Obviously, Saddam didn't, and no reasonable person in Bush's situation would've committed troops in that situation.

[BWE]

No. You're wrong. Bush lied and then tried to punish Joseph Wilson who called him on it by knowingly and maliciously having his wife's identity as a CIA agent published in the press.

He lied when he said he'd never met Achmed Chalabi. He Lied when he said that he would be a uniter rather than a divider. He lied when he said that he definitely wasn't conducting warrantless wiretaps, he lied when he said that he didn't know Jack Abramoff, he lied so unbelievably regarding 9-11 that it's even hard to respond. It's as if I said that The theory of evolution does not and cannot explain so much about the universe that we know. For instance, when and how did water evolve? How does it happen that gravity can hold us to the Earth, and at the same time allow us to step up without any trouble? How did it happen that the Earth is spinning at the exact rate that keeps us from feeling that movement?