WMD: Three Half-Rights Add Up to a Useless Fight

    This morning Walter Pincus reports Democration objections to Rep Peter Hoekstra and Sen. Rick Santorum  trying to prove that Bush was right about the presence of WMD in Iraq. The Democrats are trying to discount any evidence that might contradict their “Bush Lied, People Died” sound bite. Intelligence officials are downplaying the significance of Santorum and Hoekstra’s press releases showing that 500 chemical rounds have been found in Iraq. These rounds, they correctly point out, were manufactured in 1991. They were buried and had deteriorated. They might not have worked even if the Iraqi’s had had a chance to use them in 2002.

    The Bush administration was convinced, for good reason that Saddam had weapons stockpiles and programs to develop more weapons. Their mindset was that of a President and Vice President sworn to defend the country subject to another vital attack. If you want a sense of the gut feelings dominating the administration response after 9/11, watch the first ~20 minutes of the PBS documentary The Dark Side.

    The main purpose of the documentary is to demonstrate that Cheney and Rumsfeld forced the intelligence community to overestimate the threat. To give it credit, it does portray both men as skilled and experience government officials determined to prevent another attack.

    The Bush administration was, as I have been contending for some time, half right. The Iraqi’s did have a few WMD’s and some immature programs to develop more. They did not have a military trained and ready to use them. Now we have Santorum and Hoekstra attempting to prove that Bush was totally right. The Democrats want to prove that he was totally wrong.

    The 500 chemical munitions found since the invasion of Iraq prove only that Saddam had some munitions buried in the sand. And further finds will be dangerous for the soldiers or civilians who handle them. Both sides will use them to prove that their position on WMD’s is correct. If both sides could stop and look at the evidence in what it showed about Iraqi readiness to use WMD’s the argument might be settled.

NOTE: this post linked to Beltway Traffic Jam of 06/23/2006.

WMD

Comments

[warren]

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[Jon]

To a large extent, the administration has only itself to blame since it hyped the possible WMDs (7 mobile bio labs, reconstituted nuclear programs, 1000s of tons of chem weapons, active smallpox, botulism) etc.

What we have found are some old, possibly abandoned and deteriorated shells. I don't think that Santorum etc. are half right, because these are definitely not the WMDs we went to Iraq to find.